In Scotland there have been several instances of the separate burial of the human heart. The earliest known is that connected with the founding and erection of Newabbey, or the abbey of Dulce Cor, in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, by Derorgilla, daughter of Alan the Celtic Lord of Galloway, and wife of John Baliol, of Barnard Castle, father of the unpopular competitor for the Scottish crown. Baliol, to whom she was deeply attached, died an exile in France in 1269; but Derorgilla had his heart embalmed, and as the Scotichronicon records, "lokyt and bunden with sylver brycht;" and this relic so sad and grim she always carried about with her. In 1289, as death approached, when she was in her eightieth year, she directed that "this silent and daily companion in life for twenty years should be laid upon her bosom when she was buried in the abbey she had founded;" the beautiful old church, the secluded ruins of which now moulder by the bank of the Nith. For five centuries and more, in memory of her untiring affection, the place has been named locally the Abbey of Sweet-heart.
History and song have alike made us familiar with the last wish of Robert Bruce, the heroic King of Scotland, when, after two years of peace and contemplation, he died in the north, at Cardross. He desired that in part fulfilment of a vow he had made to march to Jerusalem, a purpose which the incessant war with England baffled, his heart should be laid in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and on his death-bed he besought his old friend and faithful brother soldier, the good Sir James Douglas, to undertake that which was then a most arduous journey, and be the bearer of the relic. "And it is my command," he added, to quote Froissart, "that you do use that royal state and maintenance in your journey, both for yourself and your companions, that into whatever lands or cities you may come, all may know that ye have in charge, to bear beyond the seas, the heart of King Robert of Scotland."
Then all who stood around his bed began to weep, and Douglas replied:
"Assuredly, my liege, I do promise, by the faith which I owe to God and to the order of knighthood."
"Now praise be to God," said the king, "I shall die in peace."
It is a matter of history how Douglas departed on this errand with a train of knights, and, choosing to land on the Spanish coast, heard that Alphonso of Leon and Castile was at war with Osman, the Moorish king of Granada. In the true spirit of the age, he could not resist the temptation of striking a blow for the Christian faith, and so joined the Spaniards. He led their van upon the plain of Theba, near the Andalusian frontier. In a silver casket at his neck he bore the heart of Bruce, which rashly and repeatedly he cast before him amid the Moors, crying:
"Now pass on as ye were wont, and Douglas, as of old, will follow thee or die."
And there he fell, together with Sir William Sinclair, of Roslin, Sir Robert and Walter Logan, of Restalrig, and others. Bruce's heart, instead of being taken to Jerusalem, was brought home by Sir Simon of Lee, and deposited in Melrose Abbey. Douglas was laid among his kindred in Liddesdale, and from thenceforward "the bloody heart," surmounted by a crown, became the cognizance of all the Douglasses in Scotland. Bruce was interred at Dunfermline; and when his skeleton was discovered in 1818, the breast-bone was found to have been sawn across to permit the removal of the heart, in accordance with the terms of his last will.
But of all the treasured hearts of the heroic or illustrious dead, none perhaps ever underwent so many marvellous adventures as that of James, Marquis of Montrose, who was executed by the Scottish Puritans in 1650.
On his body being interred among those of common criminals, by the side of a road leading southward from Edinburgh, his niece, the Lady Napier, whose castle of Merchiston still stands near the place, had the deal box in which the trunk of the corpse lay (the head and limbs had been sent to different towns in Scotland) opened in the night, and his heart, "which he had always promised at his death to leave her, as a mark of the affection she had ever felt towards him," was taken forth. It was secretly embalmed and enclosed in a little case of steel, made from the blade of that sword which Montrose had drawn for King Charles at the battles of Auldearn, Tippermuir, and Kilsythe. This case she placed in a gold filigree box that had been presented by the Doge of Venice to John Napier, of Merchiston, and she enclosed the whole in a silver urn which had been given to her husband by the great cavalier marquis before the Civil War. She sent this carefully guarded relic to the second marquis, afterwards first Duke of Montrose, who was then in exile with her husband; but it never reached either of them, being unfortunately lost by the bearer on the journey.