ELIZABETH DE BURGH

Queen of Scots

Born in 1284 probably in Ireland She was to become the countess of Carrick. Elizabeth was the daughter of Richard de Burgh the Earl of Ulster, one of King Edward I most prominent and powerful Anglo Irish supporters, by his wife Margaret, apparently the daughter of St. John de Burgh senior of Lanvalay. She would have grown up at the English court and on her father’s extensive estates and lands in Ireland. In the very late13th century she was introduced to Robert the Bruce, the Earl of Carrick and heir to the Scottish throne. He had joined the English court to gain the support of King Edward I and possibly with the direct intention with allying himself with Elizabeth’s father.

The Scottish widower had a young daughter to care for, so a match with Ulster’s daughter was an easy way of killing two birds with the one medieval stone. Elizabeth de Burgh was a great beauty and about ten years his junior. They married in 1302 at Writtle, Chelmsford near Essex in one of the Bruce’s English manors. Four years later after the defeat and execution of William Wallace, the Scottish nation turned to Bruce to carry on their struggle for independence and, in defiance of Edward, he took the crown of Scotland. During his coronation at Scone Abbey, revelry outweighed the proper seriousness of the event and Elizabeth is said to have rebuked her husband for playing Kings and Queens like children (at the mid summer revels). She was evidently a woman of mature and earnest character.