Saturday, March 25, 2023

Robert the Bruce on This Day in History

 

This day in History: Robert the Bruce became the King of Scots (Scotland) on this day in 1306. 

"In 1317, the Pope demanded that King Robert I of Scotland (better known as Robert the Bruce) embrace a truce with the English in the First War of Scottish Independence. He didn't. For his refusal to follow the Pope’s orders, Robert was excommunicated. Scottish nobles took their King’s defiance to the next level in 1320 in a letter known as the Declaration of Arbroath. It was the first time in history that an organized group of people asserted it was the duty of a King to rule by the consent of the governed and the duty of the governed to get rid of him if he didn’t. 'It is not for honors or glory or wealth that we fight,' they declared, 'but for freedom alone, which no good man gives up except with his life.' See Seven Centuries Since William Wallace." Source

The snubbing of the pope by Robert the Bruce came to be one of the greatest and oldest acts of civil disobedience.


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