Alexander Bruce, F. R. S., second Earl of Kincardine (1629-1681)

Abstract Not very much is known about Alexander Bruce, second Earl of Kincardine. His grandfather, Sir George Bruce, laid the foundations of the family fortune between about 1590 and his death in 1625. He purchased coalfields in the vicinity of Culross, in Fife, purchased or set up salt works, built the ‘Palace of Culross’ in 1597, and was knighted some time between 1604 and 1606. His son, George Bruce, who died in 1643, and who married Mary, daughter of Sir Robert Preston of Valleyfield, was Alexander Bruce’s father. Alexander Bruce was the second son, and it was his elder brother, Edward, who was made first Earl of Kincardine by Charles I in 1647. When he died unmarried in 1662, Alexander Bruce succeeded to the title and the estates. Nothing at all is known of Bruce’s history before 1657, when he was twenty-eight years of age. But there exists a series of letters, now in the possession of Lord Elgin, written to Bruce by Sir Robert Moray, starting in the summer of 1657 and continuing to the summer of 1673, when Moray died. The letters in this remarkable series are not evenly distributed through the years, nearly a half of them—there are almost one hundred and twenty in all—having been written between the autumn of 1657 and the end of 1658; thereafter we have, on the average, only about four letters per year. These letters are the chief source of our knowledge of Bruce’s character, interests and scientific activities.