Art News

Broadsword Linking Sir Alex Douglas Home and Robert the Bruce Sells

LONDON.- A broadsword dating from 1705, with a much older Scottish blade from the 14th Century, passed down through the Douglas family to Sir Alec Douglas Home of the Hirsel, former British Prime Minister, sold for £10,800 at Bonhams sale of Antique Arms and Armour, on July 28th. The inscriptions and heart referred to on the sword, hark back to a famous journey of Sir James Douglas to the Holy Land with King Robert the Bruce’s heart which ended with Douglas’s death fighting the Moors in Spain in 1330. The date of 1331 on the blade is almost certainly commemorative. The story of this crusade with the heart of Robert the Bruce became part of the Douglas family history and the heart on this sword recalls the actual earlier sword carried by James Douglas on the ill-fated crusade to the Holy Land which ended in Moorish Spain. Robert the Bruce’s body is buried in Dunfermline Abbey, and his heart in Melrose Abbey. His embalmed hea