Robert III (
c.1337–1406), earl of Carrick (1368–90), king of Scots (1390–1406). Eldest son of Robert, steward of Scotland, later Robert II. His baptismal name was John, but he took the name Robert when he became king. In his own alleged words, Robert III was ‘the worst of kings and the most wretched of men!’ His reign was marked by disorder and by violent quarrels among his relatives and leading nobles, which the elderly king proved unable to stem.
From 1384, the incapacity of his father left John responsible for the administration of justice; but in 1388 he himself was incapacitated by a kick from a horse, and his brother Robert, earl of Fife, was made guardian, an office which he continued to hold for a year or two after John's accession in 1390 as Robert III. Neither Fife nor the king himself proved able to contain the flood of disorder, particularly in the north, where Forres was sacked in 1390, and Elgin in 1391 by another of the king's brothers, Alexander, earl of
Buchan, the ‘Wolf of Badenoch’.
Robert was faced in 1398 with a struggle for power between Fife, created duke of
Albany in that year, and the king's 20-year-old son David, created at the same time duke of
Rothesay, and appointed in his turn lieutenant for a period of three years. Rothesay proved energetic, but his energy aroused hostility. In 1402 he was removed from office in a coup evidently organized by Albany and the earl of
Douglas, and died in captivity shortly after. Robert III could do nothing to check the power of these nobles, despite the disastrous result of a battle which they provoked against the English at
Homildon Hill (14 September 1402). In 1406 he tried to send his remaining son James (b. 1394) to safety in France, but he was captured by ‘pirates’ off Flamborough Head and sent to captivity in England. Robert's death followed almost immediately on the shock of the news.
Bruce Webster
