The previous chapters have been concerned with charting the careers and influence of the successive lords of Skelton and Annandale, with assessing the extent of their power and their impact on the world of their day. The remainder of this study examines the basis of that power in terms of resources, lands and men, and the social network within which they operated. It begins by detailing the Brus estates in both England and Scotland, their source, their extent, their gains and losses and their relative worth to the respective branches of the family; for, of all his assets, it was land and its right management which provided a baron's most enduring resource, enabling him to attract men to his service, to sustain a living standard commensurate with his image and maintain his position among his peers. The initial grants of land which together made up the holdings of the first Robert de Brus and formed the basis of the family's wealth and prestige, fall into three separate areas, Yorkshire, Hartness and Annandale, each with its own distinctive composition, development, management and problems. It is these regions, which had all come to Robert by 1124, that will be considered first, followed by those estates which were acquired subsequently by the two separate branches of the family over the next one hundred and fifty years.

The circumstances under which the first Robert de Brus was granted those lands in Yorkshire which would form the core of his English barony have already been discussed, together with their entry in Domesday Book as a unique twelfth-century addition.