Thomas Bruce was a Scottish nobleman, third Lord Bruce of Kinloss, and first Earl of Elgin.
Background
Born in Edinburgh in 1599, Thomas Bruce was the second son of Edward Bruce, 1st Lord Kinloss and his wife, Magdalene Clerk. The family estates included Whorlton Castle and manor given to his father by James I in 1603. James I granted custody of Thomas, and the estates, to his mother, Magdalene, until he came of age.
Career
During Charles I"s period of Personal rule, Bruce maintained close relations with the court. He attended the King for his coronation in Scotland in 1633 and the title, Earl of Elgin, was created for him on 21 June 1633. The year after performing in Thomas Carew"s masque, Coelum Britannicum, he graduated Master of Arts from the University of Oxford in 1636.
Bruce was invested as a Knight in 1638 at Windsor, along with William Villiers and the Prince of Wales.
Bruce continued in royal favour. He was created 1st Baron Bruce of Whorlton, in the English Peerage, on 29 July 1641.
In 1643 he was appointed "Keeper of the King"s Park" at Byfleet, a role he held until 1647. Although Bruce"s sister Christian Cavendish, Countess of Devonshire was a notable Royalist, Bruce himself took the side of the Parliamentarians, serving on several county committees from 1644 to Pride’s Purge.
Bruce was later described by Sir Philip Warwick as "a Gentleman of a very good understanding, and of a pious, but timorous and cautious mind".
He recounted how Bruce expressed some uneasy regret for his actions, that he had tried to avoid parliament when he could and denied having been one of the handful of lords that condemned Archbishop Laud to death. Bruce"s second wife, Diana Cecil, died on 26 February 1658 without issue. Thomas Bruce died on 21 December 1663 at the age of 64.