Background
He was the fourth son of Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, and the Earl"s second son by his second wife Elizabeth, daughter of James Townsend Oswald.
He was the fourth son of Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, and the Earl"s second son by his second wife Elizabeth, daughter of James Townsend Oswald.
Bruce entered the Army at the age of seventeen, with the purchase of a commission as ensign and lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards on 18 June 1830. His promotion to lieutenant and captain was purchased on 22 February 1833. Bruce served as adjutant of the regiment from 28 May 1835 until July 1836 and then on the staff of Sir Edward Blakeney, the commander-in-chief in Ireland.
He returned to England in that year and served briefly as a surveyor-general at the Board of Ordnance.
He was promoted major of his regiment, without purchase, on 16 September 1856, and served until he retired as a lieutenant-colonel on the half-pay unattached list on 7 December 1858. In 1858 Bruce was appointed governor to the seventeen-year-old Prince of Wales, following the dismissal of the Prince"s tutor Frederick Waymouth Gibbs.
He attended the Prince during his time at Christ Church, Oxford and Trinity College, Cambridge between 1859 and 1861, and accompanied him on his trips to Rome in 1859 and Canada and the United States in 1860. On 7 December 1859 he was promoted major-general.
In 1862 he went with the Prince of Wales on a tour of the Near East, where he caught a fever.
Following Bruce"s death Sir William Knollys was appointed comptroller and treasurer to the Prince.