Robert III of Scotland

Robert III (c. 1337 – 4 April 1406), born John Stewart, was King of Scots from 1390 to his death in 1406. He was also High Steward of Scotland from 1371 to 1390 and held the titles of Earl of Atholl (1367–1390) and Earl of Carrick (1368–1390) before ascending the throne at about the age of 53 years. He was the eldest son of King Robert II and Elizabeth Mure and was legitimized by the second marriage of his parents and by papal dispensation in 1349.

John joined his father and other magnates in a rebellion against his great-uncle David II early in 1363 but submitted to him soon afterwards. He was married to Annabella Drummond by 1367. In 1368 David created him Earl of Carrick. His father became king in 1371 after the unexpected death of the childless King David II. In the succeeding years, Carrick was influential in the governance of the kingdom but became progressively more impatient at his father's longevity. In 1384 Carrick was appointed the king's lieutenant after swaying the general council to remove Robert II from direct rule. Carrick's administration saw a renewal of the conflict with England. In 1388 the Scots defeated the English at the Battle of Otterburn where the Scots' commander, James, Earl of Douglas, was killed. By this time Carrick had been badly injured from a horse kick, however, it was the loss of his powerful ally, Douglas, that saw a turnaround in magnate support in favour of his younger brother Robert, Earl of Fife, to whom the council transferred the lieutenancy in December 1388.

In 1390, Robert II died and Carrick ascended the throne as Robert III but without authority to rule directly. Fife continued as Lieutenant until February 1393 when power was returned to the king jointly with his son David. At a council in 1399 owing to the king's "sickness of his person", David, now Duke of Rothesay, became Lieutenant under the supervision of a special parliamentary group dominated by Fife, now styled Duke of Albany. After this, Robert III withdrew to his lands in the west and for a time played little or no part in affairs of state. He was powerless to interfere when a dispute between Albany and Rothesay arose in 1401, leading to Rothesay's imprisonment and death in March 1402. The general council absolved Albany from blame and reappointed him as Lieutenant. The only impediment now remaining to an Albany Stewart monarchy was the king's only surviving son, James, Earl of Carrick. After a clash with Albany's Douglas allies in 1406, the 11-year-old James tried to escape to France. The vessel was intercepted and James became the prisoner of Henry IV of England. Robert III died shortly after learning of his heir's imprisonment.

John Stewart was born around the year 1337 to Robert, Steward of Scotland, and heir presumptive to the throne, and his wife Elizabeth Mure. Robert's mother Marjorie and her half-brother, David II, were the children of the first Bruce king, Robert I.

Robert Stewart and Elizabeth Mure were married in 1336 by traditional marriage, recognized as legally binding but not recognized by the Church. The marriage was criticized for being uncanonical, so they married a second time in 1349, after receiving a papal dispensation from Pope Clement VI dated 22 November 1347. Therefore, although their children were legitimate, having been born after the first marriage of their parents, John, his three brothers and six sisters were legitimised by their parents' second Church-sanctioned marriage. Styled Lord of Kyle, John is first recorded in the 1350s as the commander of a campaign in the Lordship of Annandale to re-establish Scottish control over English occupied territory. In 1363, he joined his father along with the earls of Douglas and March in a failed insurrection against Robert's uncle, David II. The reasons for the rebellion were varied. In 1362, David II supported several of his royal favourites in their titles to lands in the Stewart earldom of Monteith and thwarted Stewart claims to the earldom of Fife. The King's involvement and eventual marriage with Margaret Drummond may also have represented a threat in the Steward's own earldom of Strathearn where the Drummonds also had interests, while Douglas and March mistrusted David's intentions towards them. These nobles were also unhappy at the king's squandering of funds provided to him for his ransom, and with the prospect that they could be sent to England as guarantors for the ransom payments. The friction between the King and the Stewarts looked to have been settled before the end of spring 1367.

On 31 May 1367, the Steward resigned the earldom of Atholl to John, who by this time was already married to Annabella Drummond, the daughter of the queen's deceased brother, Sir John Drummond. David II reinforced the position of John and Annabella by providing them with the Earldom of Carrick on 22 June 1368 and the tacit approval of John as the king's probable heir. A Stewart succession was suddenly endangered when David II had his marriage to Margaret annulled in March 1369 leaving the king free to remarry and with the prospect of a Bruce heir.

On 22 February 1371, David II (who was preparing to marry the Earl of March's sister, Agnes Dunbar) unexpectedly died, presumably to the relief of both John and his father. Robert was crowned at Scone Abbey on 27 March 1371 and before this date had given John — now styled Steward of Scotland — the ancestral lands surrounding the Firth of Clyde. How the succession was to take place was first entailed by Robert I when female heirs were excluded; David II attempted unsuccessfully on several occasions to have the council change the succession procedure. Robert II quickly moved to ensure the succession of John when the general council attending his coronation officially named Carrick as heir — in 1373 the Stewart succession was further strengthened when parliament passed entails defining how each of the king's sons could inherit the crown. After the coronation John Dunbar who had received the Lordship of Fife from David II now resigned the title so that the king's second son, Robert, Earl of Monteith could receive the Earldom of Fife — Dunbar was compensated with the provision of the earldom of Moray.

A son, David, the future Duke of Rothesay, was born to Carrick and Annabella on 24 October 1378. In 1381, Carrick was calling himself "lieutenant for the marches" sustained by his connections to border magnates such as his brother-in-law, James Douglas, son of William, Earl of Douglas, whom he succeeded in 1384.