Robert Bruce, the sixth Robert de Brus of Annandale and the seventh de Brus of the Annandale line, was the eldest son of the preceding lord and a grandson of the Competitor. He was born on July 11, 1274. The place of his birth is uncertain--Ayrshire says Turnberry; Dumfriesshire says Lochmaben. Geoffrey le Baker calls him an Englishman (_nacione Anglicus_), and records that he was 'born in Essex,' to which another hand adds, 'at Writtle,' a manor of his father's. Geoffrey, it is true, like several other chroniclers, confuses Bruce with his grandfather, the Competitor; and he may mean the Competitor, though he says the King. Hemingburgh makes Bruce speak to his father's vassals before the Irvine episode as a Scotsman, at any rate by descent. In any case Bruce was essentially--by upbringing and associations--an Englishman. It was probably in, or at any rate about, the same year that Wallace was born. At the English invasion of 1296, they would both be vigorous young men of twenty-two, or thereabouts. During most part of the next decade Wallace fought and negotiated and died in his country's cause, and built himself an everlasting name. How was Bruce occupied during this national crisis? Considering the large territorial possessions and wide social interlacings of the family in England, their English upbringing, their traditional service to the English King, their subordinate interest in Scottish affairs, the predominance of the rival house of Balliol, and the masterful character of Edward, it is not at all surprising that Robert Bruce should have preferred the English allegiance when it was necessary for him to choose between England and Scotland. On August 3, 1293, indeed, he offered homage to Balliol on succeeding to the Earldom of Carrick. But on March 25, 1296, at Wark--three days before Edward crossed the Tweed--he joined with his father and the Earls of March and Angus in a formal acknowledgment of the English King; and on August 28 he, as well as his father, followed the multitude of the principal Scots in doing homage to the conqueror at Berwick. With this political subjection one is reluctant to associate a more sordid kind of obligation. Some six weeks later (October 15) it is recorded that 'the King, for the great esteem he has for the good service of Robert de Brus, Earl of Carrick, commands the barons to atterm his debts at the Exchequer in the easiest manner for him.' But the elder Bruce continued to be designated Earl of Carrick in English documents after he had resigned the earldom to his son, and it can hardly be doubted that the debts were his. It is a small matter, indeed, yet one would like to start Bruce without the burden.