General Robert Bruce
(1813-1862)

Major-General the Honourable Robert Bruce was governor to Edward, Prince of Wales.

Born on 15 March 1813, Bruce was the second son of Thomas, the seventh Earl of Elgin (the collector of the Elgin marbles), and was brother to the distinguished diplomat and Colonial Governor, James, the eighth Earl of Elgin, Viceroy of India. Another brother, Frederick, was British Ambassador to China. 

He entered the Grenadier Guards in 1830, became a Captain and then a Lieutenant-Colonel in 1844, and a Major-General in 1859.  He was private secretary to his brother, Lord Elgin, when he was Governor-General of Jamaica (1841-1847) and when he was Governor-General of Canada (1847-1854). In 1858 he was chosen by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to be governor to the seventeen-year-old Bertie, a post he held until his death. 

Dour and strict but fundamentally good-natured, Bruce was instructed that in the execution of his ‘momentous trust’ he was strictly to ‘regulate all the Prince’s movements, the distribution and employment of his time, and the occupation and details of his daily life.’ He was furthermore to instil in his charge ‘habits of reflection and self-denial, the strictest truthfulness and honour, above all the conscientious discharge of his duty towards God and man.’ It has to be said that in at least several of those objectives he failed miserably. 

Bruce died in his sister’s rooms at St James’s Palace on 27 June 1862 of a fever he caught in the marshes of Jordan while accompanying his charge on a tour of the East. He was interred in the Abbey Church, Dunfermline. Bertie confided to his doctor that he had lost in him ‘a most useful and valuable friend.’ The wreath on his coffin was inscribed ‘A last token of love and respect from Albert Edward and Alice.’