Hi Bruce listers, My apologies if I sounded touchy, I had hoped the attempted humour "Ye Gods, Marty, don't let a Yorkshirman etc" would indicate the tone I hoped to convey. I guess it must be like those pesky Canadians, who DO have a common border with USA being upset at being called Ameican, not to mention the American couple I met in Austria last year who were keen to tell me the STAMFORD they lived in was NOT the Stamford in New York state, (I didn't even know there was one,) but in Conneticut. I'm not sure exactly, but I would hazard a guess it is a lot less than 200 miles they were talking aboutin terms of York and Edinburgh. And here I shall reitereate that York is equidistant from London and Edinburgh. I did not have to go looking at a map, Daniel and April, to check my "bold statement." I lived there for fourteen years and apart from the people's general knowledge of the place, there is a milestone just outside the city wall at Micklegate Bar which has 200 miles London on one side and 200 miles Edinburgh on the other. I think you may have been looking at the distance "as the crow flies," whereas the milestone indicates distance by road, and the roads are more circuitous north of York because of rivers and the more rugged terrain generally, but it is that which would have mattered to travellers before the days of mechanised transport. (Not clutter, guys, this is an important genealogical consideration in the context of population movements in the middle ages etc.) The time we are talking about was the late 1100-1300's. As an aside, there is no County of Edinburgh. Your map should have indicated Midlothian, added to which, the Bruce's were never connected with Edinburgh anyway. Scone in Perthshire was the Royal seat in those days, or perhaps Stirling and Dunfirmline should also be the area we are talking about. Dunfirmline is not far from Edinburgh in a straight line, but, being the other side of the Firth, in the days before it was bridged it was a considerable distance away in time. The Bruce was buried at Dunfirmline Abbey. (And before I am taken to task over this statement, I know his heart was taken to the Holy Land and finally interred in Melrose Abbey.) As for the inter-relationship of the English and Scottish Bruce's it would seem my posting of 27 February 2001 has been missed by some, wherein I set out the descent of the eight successive Robert Bruces from the one who came with the Conqueror in 1066 to Robert I, King of the Scots, who was the hero of Bannockburn in 1314. Genealogy folks, not clutter: the first Robert's grandson was the one granted land in Annandale. I had set out to display the connection between the Yorkshire Bruce family and the Scottish one, not to suggest anything odd about two families of the same name living in two different countries. I derived much of this information from "King Robert the Bruce, 1274-1329" by Karl Pearson, F.R.S. This was a subscription printing by the Cambridge University Press, and the flyleaf has an inscription by me dated 1971, "Whilst (as yet) I have proved no link of modern Yorkshire BRUCE's with the Scottish line, there seems no doubt all Bruce's in Britain are descended from Robert de Brus." He is the Robert of 1066. (Maybe all claimed Bruce descendents could be DNA tested, to see if this hypotheseis holds true!) Similarly, to those who consider I have "cluttered" the site, that was not my intention at all; I thought I was helping. The medieval system of government in different countries like England and Scotland is difficult enough for foreigners to understand without a misunderstanding of the geography as well, and I myself have found it useful in reserching my wife's ancestry in Lincolnshire, the very next county to Yorkshire, to have had some geograpical guidence along the way, for example an area which in years gone by was literally an island cut off from communication and social events like marriage with areas we would consider within easy walking distance from a modern map proved valuable in tracing one particular person, who heppened to be a boatman. ----- Original Message ----- From: <BLeeWM@aol.com> To: <BRUCE-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2001 12:21 PM Subject: Re: Clutter > Have to say, I enjoyed them too! > > > ==== BRUCE Mailing List ==== > > >