James II
Author: Christine McGladdery
Date: 1990-07-15 02:38:47+00:00
Description: In this study of the reign of James II of Scotland, the king is viewed in the context of the Stewart monarchy, from his struggles to overcome his early adversity and the legacy of his father's style of kingship, to the serious political crises of his reign. The relations between the king and his subjects, and the complex balance of power in medieval Scotland are examined, particularly the significant crisis precipitated by James II's attack on the Black Douglases, the greatest of all late medieval magnate families. The changing nature of political involvement among the nobility and the role of
Publisher: John Donald

First published in Great Britain in 1990

This completed revised edition published in 2015 by John Donald, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh

EH9 1QS
www.birlinn.co.uk

ISBN: 978 1 904607 89 2

Copyright © Christine McGladdery 1990, 2015

The right of Christine McGladdery to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

Printed and bound in Britain by Bell and Bain Ltd, Glasgow

Contents

List of Plates

Foreword

Preface: The King with ‘the fyre mark in his face’

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

Maps and Genealogical Tables

Chapter 1: The Legacy of James I (1424-1437)

chapter 2: Protecting the Rights of the Crown (1437-1440)

chapter 3: The Principle of Consent (1440-1445)

chapter 4: The Rise of the ‘New’ Black Douglases (1445-1449)

chapter 5: Ambition and Assertion (1450-1452)

chapter 6: Confrontation and Crisis (1453-1455)

chapter 7: Recovery and Compromise (1455-1456)

chapter 8: Consolidation and the Road to War (1457-1460)

chapter 9: Profile of a King – the Sources
chapter 10: Establishing Perceptions

Conclusion

Glossary

Appendix: The Auchinleck Chronicle

Bibliography

Index

List of Plates

1

Contemporary portrait of James II from the Diary of the Austrian traveller, Georg von Ehingen.

2

Contemporary portrait of Charles VII of France from the Diary of Georg von Ehingen.

3

Contemporary portrait of Henry VI of England from the Diary of Georg von Ehingen.

4

Philip ‘the Good’, duke of Burgundy, Mary of Gueldres’ great-uncle.

5

Isabella Stewart, duchess of Brittany, the second sister of James II.

6

Silver groat of James II minted at Edinburgh.

7

Seal of Mary of Gueldres, from a nineteenth-century impression.

8

Treaty of Brussels, 1 April 1449, which sealed the marriage contract between James II and Mary of Gueldres, brokered by Philip duke of Burgundy.

9

Roxburgh, aerial view looking east, with the site of the castle on the central mound.

10

Blackness castle, West Lothian, situated on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth.

11

Stirling castle, looking to the western side of the rock on which it stands.

12

Tomb of James ‘the Gross’, 7th earl of Douglas in St Bride’s Church, Douglas, Lanarkshire.

13

Threave castle artillery tower, Galloway, built by Archibald ‘the Grim’, 3rd earl of Douglas in the late fourteenth century.

14

Mons Meg, made at Mons in 1449, one of two great bombards presented to James II by Philip duke of Burgundy in 1457.

Foreword

A young man, dressed in a doublet and hose and wearing a broad-brimmed hat, looks confidently ahead of him. His hands rest on a dagger at his belt, and to his right stands a shield bearing the arms of Scotland. On the left side of his face, stretching from his forehead to his chin, is the vermilion birthmark which led the ‘Auchinleck chronicler’ to describe him as the king ‘that had the fyre mark in his face’. This is James II of Scotland as portrayed by Jörg von Ehingen, an Austrian visitor to the Scottish court in the 1450s.

Who was James II? Over the years, scholarly opinion has varied as to his character and policies, though there is probably general agreement that he was the first successful Stewart ruler of Scotland – successful that is in the sense that, unlike his three predecessors, he was neither forcibly removed from office nor assassinated. There was, however, rather more to James II’s kingship than mere survival. His determination to increase the authority and resources of the Crown was coupled with an understanding that he had to rule with consent of the Three Estates in parliament or general council, even if that sometimes meant forcing his will on these assemblies. A ‘new’ nobility, more acceptable to the king’s view of the royal status, appeared with the first creations of lordships of parliament in the mid-1440s; and Stewart prestige abroad was enhanced by the marriages of four of King James’s sisters – Margaret, Isabella, Mary and Eleanor – in France, Brittany, Veere and Austria respectively during the late 1430s and throughout the 1440s. Above all, James II and his queen Mary of Gueldres convincingly secured the future of the dynasty by producing five surviving children, three sons and two daughters.

Given the paucity of narrative and ‘official’ sources for this reign, however, much remains obscure and controversial; and Christine McGladdery displayed courage in producing the first scholarly monograph on James II in 1990. Since that time, there has been a veritable explosion of historical research and writing on fifteenth-century Scottish politics and society; and this new volume on the king embraces all of it to great effect, producing a much fuller and more balanced reassessment of the reign than before. Dr McGladdery modestly remarks that this revised James II is not a biography of the king in a conventional sense – the lack of appropriate source material precludes this – but rather a ‘life and times’ of King James, speculating about character and motive where possible.

Some of these speculations provide us with fascinating insights into the character of the king. For example, following the celebration of James II’s marriage to Mary of Gueldres on 3 July 1449, both king and queen appeared in Holyrood Abbey attired in purple, ermine-lined robes. Was the choice of purple, with its imperial associations, deliberate, a veiled message to the king’s greatest subjects, the Black Douglases, that King James intended to be master within his own realm and that he would not share power with anyone, not even with a family which was as famous in Burgundy and France as the royal Stewarts themselves? Perhaps this symbolism at the outset of James’s personal rule points back to the exalted royal status sought by his father – which James II sought to emulate – and forward to the ‘imperial’ claims of his son, James III, in 1469.

The aggressive assertion of royal authority during James II’s personal rule – a mere eleven years – led, perhaps inevitably, to the struggle between the king and the Black Douglases which ended with the death or exile of all of the latter by 1455. In this long war of attrition, we see perhaps the darker side of King James’s nature. Thus William 8th earl of Douglas, at court in January 1452, needed a safe-conduct even to meet his sovereign little over a month later, when he was stabbed to death by the king, assisted by some of the earl’s former supporters. The ensuing civil war showed the two sides at first fairly evenly matched; but James II prevailed through a sustained undermining of Douglas support in the south, and a great deal of luck. Prudently, he never personally engaged a Douglas army in battle, preferring the much more effective method of conducting sieges of Douglas castles with his beloved artillery. These guns played a major role in the last great set-piece siege of the war, a month-long investment of Abercorn castle on the Forth in the spring of 1455; and James II wrote enthusiastically to his ally, Charles VII of France, describing the fall of the castle and the hanging of its defenders. The Black Douglases, formerly the ‘war wall’ of Scotland against English invasion, had been reduced to fugitive clients of the English state.

In the mid sixteenth century, Bishop Lesley remarked that in the time of James II’s ‘later daies, his realme was in quiet prosperous estaite’. But in these ‘later daies’, James II was only in his mid-twenties; and for some of his subjects, the war never seemed to end. The wars with the Black Douglases were immediately succeeded by wars against the English. Admittedly, the king was well supported in his efforts to recover the lost burghs of Berwick and Roxburgh. His death at the age of twenty-nine during the siege of the latter – appropriately through the explosion of one of his bombards – heralded another Stewart minority and leaves question marks hanging over James II’s character and kingship. Was he a strong ruler whose effectiveness was curtailed by his early death? Or a warlord who, like Henry V of England earlier in the century, died soon enough to save his reputation? Or someone else altogether? This thoughtful study provides an excellent pathway to an answer.

Norman Macdougall

Preface:
The King with ‘the fyre mark in his face’

The publication of James II in 1990 attempted to provide a view of the reign of a king who had received very little close attention from historians of Scotland’s mediaeval past, and followed my doctoral research at the University of St Andrews into Crown-Magnate relations between 1437 and 1460 under the inspirational supervision of Norman Macdougall.[1] It was produced at a time when received views of the period as one of aggressive conflict between kings and magnates were being challenged; the so-called ‘new orthodoxy’. The substantial research into many aspects of late mediaeval Scotland that has been undertaken in the twenty-five years since James II was published has challenged assumptions and deepened understanding of this period sufficiently to require a significant revision of some of the views expressed in 1990 and a re-assessment of the reign that will, hopefully, address some of the errors and misconceptions in that earlier volume and contribute to what remains an ongoing debate and exploration of fifteenth-century Scotland, its monarchy and the exercise of political authority within its borders.

Any period of history is influenced by what has gone before, and the reign of James II needs to be understood in a much broader unfolding of perceptions of authority and the presentation of power within the Stewart dynasty that succeeded to the Scottish throne in 1371 in the person of Robert II. The struggle to impose royal authority under the early Stewart kings, lieutenants and governors has been explored comprehensively by Stephen Boardman in his volume, The Early Stewart Kings: Robert II and Robert III, and Michael Brown’s James I continued the analysis and elucidation of evolving Stewart kingship.[2] As the notes and bibliography in this volume will demonstrate, a great debt of gratitude is owed to the published output of and informative discussions I have had with these and many other colleagues, and this reassessment of the reign of James II is necessary in order to present a far more considered analysis of the available evidence, although any shortcomings remain my own responsibility. The close examination of fifteenth-century Stewart kingship was initiated by Norman Macdougall’s masterly political study of the reign of James III, and his enthusiasm and encouragement brought a number of research students into the field of late mediaeval Scotland in the 1980s and 1990s, including Stephen Boardman, Michael Brown, Michael Penman and Roland Tanner and each has made a significant contribution to the development of a deeper understanding of Scottish history through the wisdom and skill of an inspiring historian and teacher.[3]

It is not possible to embark on a study of the reign of James II without acknowledging the work of Annie Dunlop in her impressive study The Life and Times of James Kennedy, Bishop of St Andrews, which, although focused on the bishop, analyses many aspects of James II’s own life and times. Her assessment of the king was coloured by his association with Kennedy, whom she portrayed in a very positive light, and when discussing the downfall of the Livingstons, she countered Tytler’s accusation that it was engineered by James II and Bishop Kennedy by stating that ‘the subtle callousness and sustained duplicity which it implied were foreign to the nature of the two reputed arch-plotters’.[4] In fact, this revision would suggest that such character traits may not be dismissed so readily, and may be a product of Annie Dunlop’s reluctance to view James II and bishop Kennedy in such a negative light rather than a hard assessment of the evidence. Nevertheless, The Life and Times of James Kennedy remains an excellent and informative secondary source for this period.

The problem of James II is that he had become embedded firmly in a Scottish historiographical tradition that saw the fifteenth century as a time when Scottish kings battled against the unreasonable and violent ambitions of their principal nobles; the ‘over-mighty’ magnate thesis. A significant revision of this view was undertaken from the late 1970s, with Jenny Wormald observing that ‘Nothing is harder to break through than the lingering idea that Scottish lords thought only of fighting and killing people, and to suggest that it is much more likely that they were interested in many other things as well.’[5] Work by Alexander Grant has deepened understanding of the nature and attitudes of noble society, and although the so-called ‘new orthodoxy’ is now regarded as having swung the pendulum too far in the direction of magnate co-operation and support for the crown, research into this period provided a vital stimulus to further academic study into aspects of mediaeval and early modern Scotland. Certainly, the analysis from recent research has not caused the pendulum to revert to the view of largely unbridled magnate rapacity portrayed by writers in the sixteenth century, but has highlighted the complexities of circumstances, personalities and contemporary perceptions.[6] It is, after all, the purpose of a pendulum to swing.

One of the principal elements to emerge in the course of recent study has been the importance of perceptions in the presentation of power, both royal and noble. Examination of the physical manifestation of such presentation through castle architecture, for example, has provided considerable insight into the exercise of lordship. As Richard Oram has argued, the nature of lordship expressed through castles in the fifteenth century may be seen as a confident proclamation of ‘wealth, power and lineage’ which sought to convey by visual means the establishment of perceived rights and ambitions and the nature of effective local authority that may be found articulated also in personal and private agreements between lords.[7] Bonds and indentures, far from being necessarily sinister and exclusive of royal authority, may be understood within the context of making regional power work and resolve tension, although there were often those who felt excluded or disadvantaged by such agreements. There were occasions also where the practice was unacceptable to the king, and the reign of James II provides a prime example in the bond between the earls of Douglas, Crawford and Ross; held to be the reason why James II stabbed to death his most powerful magnate. However, this came about for reasons far more complex than one agreement between three Scottish earls, and was illustrative rather of the serious consequences of the imbalance that could occur when there was a clash between perceptions of authority and jurisdiction and the requirements of personal interests and public duty.

In James II, the Scots had a Stewart monarch who developed a personal concept of kingship which owed much to his father’s robust and elevated attitudes, but was tempered by a far more confident and assertive body in the three estates sitting in regular assemblies of parliament or general council. The work of the Scottish Parliament Project and, in particular, Roland Tanner, has been invaluable in shedding light on this aspect of royal government and proving beyond doubt the serious W aws in Robert Rait’s assertion that the mediaeval Scottish parliament was no more than a ‘rubber stamp’ for royal policies.[8] James II’s itinerary, based on the issue of royal charters and letters, shows him to have been based more regularly in Edinburgh than anywhere else, but there is ample evidence also that he travelled frequently and extensively throughout the realm and ventured across the border into the English Marches. His son, James III, would be criticised for not doing this, as such activity and accessibility was seen as a laudable aspect of mediaeval kingship, although James II’s enthusiasm for military and diplomatic ventures, with their attendant costs, led on occasion to mild but firm rebuke from the three estates.

Although the title of this volume is James II, it is not a biography of that king in any exhaustive sense, as the patchy nature of the records prevents much more than speculative analysis of character and motive, and it seeks rather to examine and evaluate the surviving evidence from the period of his reign and assess views drawn from wider secondary sources. Professor Gordon Donaldson, writing of the reign of James II in 1967, stated that ‘the motives which shaped the actions and policies of both the government and its opponents are so uncertain as to be unintelligible’, and it is hoped that this pessimistic view may now be challenged with greater confidence than ever before, although that process is, necessarily, ongoing and open to revision.

NOTES

1.

McGladdery, James II (Edinburgh, 1990).

2.

S. Boardman, The Early Stewart Kings: Robert II and Robert III (East Linton, 1996); M. H. Brown, James I (Edinburgh, 2000). Also crucial in assessing aspects of magnate power during this period is M. H. Brown, The Black Douglases: War and Lordship in Late Medieval Scotland, 1300-1455 (East Linton, 1998).

3.

N. Macdougall, James III (Edinburgh, 2009). This is a completely revised edition of N. Macdougall, James III: A Political Study (Edinburgh, 1982). That contribution is far wider than those named!

4.

A. I. Dunlop, The Life and Times of James Kennedy, Bishop of St Andrews (Edinburgh, 1950), 106, n.

5.

J. M. Wormald, Lords and Men in Scotland: Bonds of Manrent, 1442-1603 (Edinburgh, 1995), 93.

6.

A. Grant, Independence and Nationhood: Scotland 1306-1469 (London, 1984); J. Wormald, ‘Taming the Magnates?’, in K. J. Stringer (ed), Essays on the Nobility of Medieval Scotland (Edinburgh, 1985), 270-80; M. H. Brown, ‘Scotland Tamed? Kings and Magnates in Late Medieval Scotland: A Review of Recent Work’, Innes Review, xlv (1994), 120-46. Dr Grant’s many published articles on this period have been invaluable in conducting research for this revision, and may be found in the bibliography. I would also like to thank him for his helpful advice, particularly in discussing the death of William 8th earl of Douglas.

7.

R. D. Oram, ‘Castles, Concepts and Contexts: Castle Studies in Scotland in Retrospect and Prospect’, Château Gaillard, 23 (2008), 349-59; R. D. Oram, ‘The Greater House in Late Medieval Scotland: Courtyards and Towers, c.1300–c.1400’, in M. Airs and P. S. Barnwell (eds), The Medieval Great House (Rewley House studies in the historic environment, 1) (Donington, 2011), 43-60; Wormald, Lords and Men, 93.

8.

R. J. Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament: Politics and the Three Estates, 1424-1488 (East Linton, 2001), 2, citing R. S. Rait, The Parliaments of Scotland (Glasgow, 1924), 32.

Acknowledgements

The passage of twenty-five years since writing James II, published in 1990, following soon after the completion of my PhD thesis in 1988, has allowed considerable time for reflection and absorption of the substantial work that has been undertaken within the field of research into fifteenth century Scotland and the broader subject of mediaeval power politics. The depth and quality of that work has made the complete revision of the 1990 volume not only justifiable, but desirable, if only to correct the mistakes and revise some of the opinions expressed there. I find myself re-stating my comments in the acknowledgments of that earlier volume to the extent that I owe a deep debt of gratitude for the many helpful suggestions, conversations and responses to my own questions over the course of re-thinking the reign of James II, and to name everyone who has helped in this way would still require a companion volume! This particular Stewart monarch has been a lurking presence in my life since 1982, when Dr Norman Macdougall suggested that I may like to consider pursuing research into this relatively neglected period, and was good enough to shoulder the burden of supervising my attempt to do so. Under his meticulous oversight, my interest in fifteenth-century Scotland deepened and developed, and I have maintained it ever since, although the demands of teaching have broadened, necessarily, my focus. Jenny Wormald, who acted as external examiner for my PhD thesis in 1987 and encouraged my efforts, has continued to be a great influence in the exploration of crown-magnate relations, not least through her enthusiastic championing of the study of Scottish history.

My colleagues at the University of St Andrews have been unfailingly supportive, and I would like to pay particular tribute to Professor Michael Brown and Dr Katie Stevenson for helping to clarify issues concerning the presentation of power in this period, although Michael’s prolific rate of publication had me racing back to revise sections of the book rather more often than I would have wished. In addition to Norman, Michael and Katie, my views have been challenged over the years, almost invariably justifiably, in conversations with Stephen Boardman, Barbara Crawford, David Ditchburn, Sandy Grant, Roger Mason, Richard Oram, Michael Penman and Roland Tanner. Although I have not agreed with every challenge, I have been forced to think very carefully indeed about the nature of evidence and how to draw defensible conclusions, and I hope they will recognise their influence! In addition to these experienced historians, I owe a debt of gratitude to the rising generation of history postgraduates whose fresh insights and enthusiasm suggest a bright future for the subject, and I would like, in particular, to thank Claire Hawes for sharing some very compelling ‘hot-off-the-press’ ideas as this re-write reached its conclusion.

Over a twenty-five year association with John Donald, I thank John and Val Tuckwell and their successors in Birlinn Ltd, particularly the extraordinarily patient Mairi Sutherland, who has navigated me through this revision and brought it to fruition. Dr Constanze Schummer provided invaluable assistance and advice on German sources, and I would like to record my heartfelt thanks for the helpful attention shown by Frau Ruß and her colleagues in the Württembergische Landesbibliothek, which was immensely helpful in securing high-quality images from the fifteenth century diary of Georg von Ehingen. I am grateful particularly for permission to reproduce the contemporary image of James II in all his colourful glory and fiery face for the cover of this volume.

The process of writing places some stress on family life divided (not always equally) between the fifteenth and twenty-first centuries, but for grounding me in the latter, I owe deep thanks to Henry, David and Sarah. Similarly, for the inestimable benefits of friendship offered by those whose names would require another companion volume, I offer my gratitude and would like particularly to register my appreciation to Richard Oram and Andrew Eccles for their kind permission to use photographs from their own collections in the plates section of this volume. The slightly bizarre interpretation of certain events during the reign of James II advanced by Kevin Philpott may not have found their way into the book, but were always entertaining! For never letting his eyes glaze over when I talk about History, I thank the dog.

Christine McGladdery

Abbreviations

A.B. Coll.

Collections for a History of the Shires of Aberdeen and Banff

AB Ill.

Illustrations of the Topography and Antiquities of the Shires of Aberdeen and Banff

Abdn Counc.

Extracts from the Council Register of the Burgh of Aberdeen, 1398-1570

ADN

Archives départmentales du Nord

APS

Acts of the Parliament of Scotland

Beckynton Corr.

Official Correspondence of Thomas Beckynton

Brechin Reg.

Registrum Episcopatus Brechinensis

Cawdor Book

The Book of the Thanes of Cawdor; a series of papers selected from the Charter Room at Cawdor, 1236-1742

CDS

Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland preserved in Her Majesty’s Public Record Office

Cold. Corr.

The Correspondence, Inventories, Account Rolls and Law Proceedings of the Priory of Coldingham

CPL

Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters

CSSR

Calendar of Scottish Supplications to Rome

Dundee Chrs

Charters, Writs and Public Documents of the Royal Burgh of Dundee

Dunf. Reg.

Registrum de Dunfermelyn

Edin. Chrs

Charters and other Documents relating to the City of Edinburgh

EHR

English Historical Review

ER

Exchequer Rolls of Scotland

Extracta

Extracta e Variis Cronicis Scoci

HBC

Handbook of British Chronology

HMC

Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts

IADNB

Inventaire sommaire des archives départementales du Nord. Série

IR

Innes Review

Lindores Liber

Liber Sancte Marie de Lundoris

Melvilles

The Melvilles Earls of Melville and the Leslies Earls of Leven

Melrose Liber

Liber Sancte Marie de Melrose

Milan Papers

Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts existing in the archives and collections of Milan

Morton Register

Registrum Honoris de Morton

NRAS

National Records and Archives of Scotland

NLS

National Library of Scotland

North Durham

The History and Antiquities of North Durham

Paisley Reg.

Registrum Monasterii de Passelet

PSAS

Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland

RMS

Registrum Magni Sigilli Regum Scottorum

Rot. Scot.

Rotuli Scotiae in Turri Londinensi et in Domo Capitulari Westmonasteriensi Asservati

RPS

Records of the Parliaments of Scotland

Rymer, Foedera

Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae et Cuiuscunque Generis Acta Publica

SHR

Scottish Historical Review

SHS

Scottish History Society

SP

Scots Peerage

SRS

Scottish Record Society

SSL

Studies in Scottish Literature

STS

Scottish Text Society

Stirling Chrs

Charters and other Documents relating to the Royal Burgh of Stirling

Wigt. Chrs

Wigtownshire Charters

Places mentioned in the text (north of the Tay).

Places mentioned in the text (south of the Tay).

Adapted from Atlas of Medieval Europe, ed. D. Ditchburn, S. MacLean and A. Mackay, 2nd edn (2007), p. 205 (original map © M Jones)

CHAPTER 1

The Legacy of James I (1424-1437)

Bonfires were lighted, flagons of wine were free to all and victuals publicly to all comers, with the sweetest harmony of all kinds of musical instruments all night long proclaiming the praise and glory of God for all his gifts and benefits.[1]

With these words, the writer of the Book of Pluscarden conveyed the deep relief attendant on the birth of twin boys to James I and his queen, Joan Beaufort, on 16 October 1430. The queen had given birth to four daughters by 1430, and was to bear another two, but it was the securing of the male succession to the Scottish crown that occasioned the levels of joy described above, and Walter Bower, writing his Scotichronicon in the 1440s, states that the elder twin was called Alexander but he died in infancy, leaving his brother, James, as the only surviving son of James I.[2] Although the Stewarts owed their place on the Scottish throne to their descent from Robert Bruce, the choice of the name Alexander may have been intended as a link to the more distant ancestry of Alexander III, and the perceived image of peace, prosperity and strong kingship that he had come to represent.[3] Naming the second twin James offered continuity with his father’s name and was to be favoured significantly by subsequent Stewart monarchs.[4] The second Stewart king to bear this name was to rule Scotland, nominally and then personally, from 1437 to 1460; a reign that witnessed ongoing tensions in the presentation of monarchical power against the perceptions and expectations of those James II sought to govern.

The assassination of James I in 1437 ended the reign of a Stewart king determined to rule in a manner that would raise and extend the power and position of the royal dynasty to which he had fallen heir in 1406. Establishment of the Stewart dynasty had been fraught with difficulties, discussed more fully elsewhere, including periods of weak royal authority, factional politics and infirmity.[5] Although it has been demonstrated that there was some continuity of government and administration, the principal regional lords (many of them members of the Stewart family or in alliance with them) acquired considerable power and autonomy and a strong sense of their personal rights and jurisdiction. From the accession in 1371 of the first Stewart king, Robert II, the Scots experienced a manner of rule by kings and governors that operated with a comparatively light touch, and the return of James I in 1424, after eighteen years as a captive in England, required a significant readjustment in perceptions of the exercise of political power; a readjustment achieved with a deliberate ruthlessness that culminated in the assassination of the king in an attack involving the collusion of members of his own household.

The stamp of monarchical authority and prestige which he had driven to establish, and which had largely eluded the first two kings of the Stewart dynasty, was a central factor in subsequent Stewart kingship. However, the consequences of the conspirators’ actions in 1437 were that the Scottish kingdom was faced with all the uncertainties and potential instability of a lengthy minority, as Prince James was only six years old. Those responsible for the assassination of the king were well aware of this, viewing it as an opportunity to direct and manipulate policy and, perhaps, mould the child-king into a monarch with a perception of the exercise of royal authority more acceptable to those with a vested interest in maintaining their local and regional authority.

Walter Bower, abbot of Inchcolm, drew a largely positive portrait of James I in his Scotichronicon, written in the 1440s, praising the king for his strength and attention to the administration of justice. However, Bower’s admiration of strong kingship cannot obscure the fact that strength exercised arbitrarily had a negative as well as a positive impact, and the exercise of successful kingship in mediaeval Scotland required a measure of sensitivity, comprehension and ability to compromise when necessary or expedient. Authoritarian rule that took little account of regional structures or the complex vested interests of the nobility, and ignored the vital delegation of authority necessary to enforce royal policy in late mediaeval Scotland, was potentially vulnerable. Greatly as James I admired the more centralised government of England, witnessed first-hand during his eighteen-year captivity, and aspired to enjoy the fruits of regular taxation, he was unable entirely to emulate the kingship exercised by his English counterpart, Henry V. It is possible to perceive the fatal W aw in James I’s kingship stemming from having served his royal apprenticeship in a country whose government did not operate in precisely the same manner as the one he inherited, and frustration at what he would have seen as the thwarting of his legitimate plans and ambitions was mirrored in the frustration felt in many quarters at the king’s insensitivity, arbitrariness and intransigence.

The assassination of James I in February 1437 was in no sense the result of a popular revolt, but nor can its significance be down-played, as it was the culmination of frustration caused by a determined manner of kingship that had generated a dangerous level of fear, uncertainty and hatred in the minds of a group of personally aggrieved conspirators who believed, in the face of his resistance to persuasion or remonstration, that the removal of the king was the only course left to them.[6] The killing of James I was no spur-of-the-moment action by heated opponents driven to impetuous anger, but a calculated gamble on redefining the mechanisms of royal authority. The involvement of the king’s uncle, Walter Stewart, earl of Atholl, and his grandson, Robert Stewart, show that this was an action intended to shift power into the hands of another branch of the Stewart family, as had occurred (although rather less dramatically) with the palace coups witnessed from 1384 onwards.[7] Atholl would be the man best suited to assume the leadership of the minority government for his six-year-old great-nephew, and although Bower hints darkly that Atholl aimed for the crown itself, it may be that the removal of the intransigent James I and the opportunity to mould the young James II into a king better able to understand his responsibilities towards his subjects was the intended outcome. Certainly, Michael Brown pointed out that Atholl would have been ‘within one life of the throne’ and that his brother, Robert duke of Albany had not scrupled to remove his nephew and heir to the throne, David duke of Rothesay, in 1402 when his imminent succession threatened to challenge Albany’s regional interests, although the ultimate failure of the conspiracy means that this must remain a matter for speculation.[8]

Considerable detail concerning the events that led to the assassination of James I is given in two accounts, the earliest one by Piero del Monte, a Venetian envoy sent to Scotland in 1435 to collect the papal tenth. He was in London when he sent a letter to Pope Eugenius IV only one week after the assassination of James I, claiming that his information came from a letter sent by Queen Joan to her uncle, Cardinal Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester.[9] However, del Monte was also in contact with Anthony Altani, bishop of Urbino and papal nuncio to Scotland, who had attended the General Council in Perth on 4 February and was still there at the time of the king’s death, making him an obvious source for del Monte.[10] John Shirley was an English author, translator and scribe in the service of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, and his account of events in 1437, The Dethe of the Kynge of Scotis, was translated from a Latin source, very similar in detail to French chronicle accounts.[11] Shirley’s account is richest in detail and, even allowing for dramatic licence including the use of reported speech, it is possible to point to a reasonable degree of accuracy where details may be verified, and the work sheds fascinating light through contemporary eyes on the serious consequences of a breakdown of trust between crown and subjects. That this involved men very close to the king, by blood and service, only underlined the perilous weakening of the king’s personal authority as a result of riding roughshod over those whose co-operation was vital to the delivery of stable and effective rule.

Notwithstanding the role foreseen for Atholl and his grandson in the longerterm consequences of the action, it was Robert Graham, lord of Kinpunt in West Lothian, who is placed at the centre of the conspiracy in Shirley’s account. He was certainly a man with known antipathy to James I, dating at least from the attack on the Albany Stewarts launched by the king in 1425, and he had been chosen, probably through the influence of Atholl, to act the unusual role of speaker in the general council of October 1436.[12] This was held in the aftermath of a disastrous royal campaign to the borders in August with the intention of recapturing the castle of Roxburgh; a Scottish stronghold that remained in English hands. The campaign should, on the face of it, have been a popular one demonstrating James I’s strong military leadership and royal authority in restoring a captured crown possession. However, any plans for a short, sharp strike against Roxburgh were doomed to failure, as the garrison was well-supplied and relief came speedily from a force led by Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, John Kemp, archbishop of York and Thomas Langley, bishop of Durham. Finding himself in the field facing an approaching English army and surrounded by a Scottish army containing many who would have been increasingly resentful towards him, the king appears to have taken fright and W ed from the siege in some disarray, leaving his precious artillery weapons behind.[13] The details of James I’s ignominious failure to retake Roxburgh castle became embellished in the accounts of chroniclers in the sixteenth century, but it is clear from contemporary sources that there were some ugly undercurrents at Roxburgh that go some way to explaining the dramatic events that followed within six months of the campaign.

The purpose of the general council that met on 22 October appears to have been to prepare the ground for a renewal of the campaign against the English and secure revenue to this end. The records show a particular focus on legislation designed to ensure that the crown would have authority over cross-border dealings involving private agreements and ransoms ‘of Inglismen’, prohibitions on certain trade and the imposition of currency restrictions. However, the accounts of Piero del Monte and John Shirley are explicit in stating that the focus of this meeting of the general council was the king’s demand for money. Given the costly debacle of the August campaign, this was royal insensitivity taken to extremes and it elicited a strong reaction from the estates as ‘all who heard it were provoked to hatred and indignation’.[14] The choice of Robert Graham to act as speaker for the estates was indicative of the high state of tension created by the king’s actions. Well equipped through his legal training to remonstrate with James I on behalf of the three estates, Graham was nevertheless a man with significant personal enmity towards the king, and this appears to have over-ridden his remit to present the arguments for resisting the king’s unacceptable behaviour. In Shirley’s account, Graham chose to ‘sette handes uppoun the king his souerayne lorde, saying these wordes: “I arest you, sir, in the name of the three astattes here nowe assembled in the present Perlement”’.[15] The stunned silence with which this action seems to have been met by those present indicates the degree to which there was still no political will to stage an outright coup and set the king aside, and James I must have sensed the weakness in Graham’s position when he had him arrested for his insolence. However, that he did not take the threat represented by this extraordinary action particularly seriously is shown in the fact that he contented himself with accepting Graham’s voluntary exile.[16] This was a mistake, because the failure of the confrontation in parliament must have convinced Walter, earl of Atholl and his grandson, Robert Stewart, that there was no alternative to the removal of the king by force.

One of the features of the many accounts of the assassination and its aftermath was the speculation concerning motive, as contemporaries strived to understand why Atholl, in particular, would have turned so drastically against his nephew and sovereign. James I appears to have regarded this surviving branch of his family with favour and assumed their loyalty. However, Atholl’s sons, David and Alan, had died in the service of the king, and steady royal encroachments upon his territorial interests in Perthshire meant that Atholl was doubtful concerning how much of his inheritance would be permitted to pass to his grandson. Certainly, the focus of Atholl’s landed interests was the lucrative earldom of Strathearn, which he had fought hard to acquire, but James I’s insistence that he held this only in life-rent meant that it would revert to the crown as soon as Atholl was dead.[17] Robert Stewart appeared to be close to the king, but it is questionable that this denoted more than physical proximity. Shirley describes Robert Stewart as being ‘right familiar with the king and had all his commandments in the chamber’, but adds that ‘he knew well the false treason that was purposed and was consented thereto’.[18] This was written after the assassination and therefore with the benefit of hindsight, but it seems that, to James I, the pressures and tensions that he had placed on Atholl and Robert Stewart were no more than the necessary processes of exercising strong royal authority and promoting crown interests; a disastrous misreading of the willingness of these men to accept with docility all that the king’s actions presaged. Undoubtedly, ease of access to the king enabled Atholl and Stewart to plan the ground for a successful attack, calling upon suffciently alienated and disgruntled men from Perthshire and Fife to act as the foot-soldiers. Apart from Robert Stewart, Robert Graham and Graham’s son, Thomas, the other named conspirators were men with links to Duke Murdac’s family; Thomas and Christopher Chambers, burgesses of Perth, the Barclay brothers of Tentsmuir in Fife, John and Thomas Hall and Henry Macgregor, probably also from Perth, which proved to be a crucial recruiting-ground for those hostile to the king.[19]

The estates met at Perth on 4 February 1437, and the king had obviously planned to stay on in his quarters in the Dominican friary at Perth, providing the opportunity for the conspirators to finalise their plans and set a date for the deed.[20] The role of Robert Stewart was to circumvent any security measures; an easy matter when he was in charge of the king’s domestic arrangements. According to Shirley, the assassination took place in the early hours of 21 February, with Stewart tampering with the locks and placing planks across the ditch that protected the garden by the king’s chamber to enable the assassins to enter. Dramatic details follow of James I, alerted by the noise of scuffles with his household servants, ordering the doors to be held while he sought escape, first through a window which he could not break, and then by pulling up W oor boards to drop down into a stone sewer. Ironically, the sewer’s outlet had earlier been sealed on the king’s orders because he had lost a number of tennis balls while playing at the friary. His hiding place was discovered by Thomas Chambers and the king fought his attackers until Robert Graham struck him through with his sword. Shirley states that ‘it was reportid by trew persoones that saw him dedde that he had xvi dedly woundes in his brest withowte manny other in diverse places of his body’.[21] Such a concerted attack certainly demonstrated clear intention to kill, and Shirley states that this intention extended to the queen, but when the conspirators burst into her chamber and found her standing

astonyed as creatur that had lost kyndely resoun, oone of the traytourse wounded her vilaynosly and wolde have slayn her ne had nott be on of Sir Robert Grame’s soones that thus speke to him and sayde, ‘What wolle ye do for schame of youreselfe to the queene? Sche is bot a womman, lett us go and seke the king.[22]

The clemency shown by one of Robert Graham’s sons, possibly Thomas, was to prove disastrous for the conspirators, and they appear to have realised that at the time. After killing the king, the account states that they returned to seek the queen, but she had W ed the scene and a sufficient stir had been created by then to prompt the assassins to leave Blackfriars with all haste.[23]

As Robert Graham reportedly observed during his W ight from Blackfriars, the failure to kill the queen meant that ‘wee have cause to dreede gretly leste sche wolle purswe us and labour to do vengeaunce uppon us’.[24] Within the context of mediaeval royal marriages, James I seems to have involved his queen in government to a greater extent than his predecessors, and she fulfilled one of the principal duties of a mediaeval queen in the aftermath of the assassination by moving with speed, despite the wounds sustained in the attack on her husband, to secure the position and interests of her six-year-old son. The young prince, James duke of Rothesay, was in Edinburgh at the time in the charge of John Spens, who had served as his steward since 1431. This must have increased the immediate fears of the queen’s party, as Spens had been a prominent servant of Walter earl of Atholl, who would by then have been viewed with deep suspicion regarding his involvement in the conspiracy. It may be that one of the other men in Rothesay’s household, John Balfour, pre-empted any danger from Spens by securing the prince on behalf of Queen Joan, who had arrived in Edinburgh by 27 February. Balfour was certainly a major recipient of lands that may have been forfeited by Spens as the result of his execution, although this is not stated explicitly in extant records.[25] William Crichton, the keeper of Edinburgh castle, was a prominent member of the queen’s party, having secured and enhanced his position through administrative service to James I, and this made Edinburgh the logical choice for establishing the royal council in the aftermath of the assassination, with the queen acting as unofficial regent for her son. As regarded pursuit of the conspirators, the queen’s energy and determination demonstrated the truth of Graham’s observations when leaving the scene of the murder.

Contemporary sources reveal shock and revulsion at the assassination and although this is hardly surprising given the nature of the sources and their intended audience, it may nevertheless reflect a genuine sense that such actions were reprehensible and damaging to the principles of law and the sanctity of the office of the crown, whatever the provocation. Regicide was the ultimate crime in mediaeval society as it challenged not only accepted political structures but, through the sacerdotal rights of coronation and unction, constituted an act against God. The unpopularity of James I was such that many of his subjects may have breathed a sigh of relief at his removal without necessarily endorsing the methods used to bring it about. However, the central point regarding the assassination of James I was that he had crossed a line (if not several) in the principles of good lordship, and the sense that he had acted as a tyrant is evident in contemporary accounts. The manner in which power was exercised and determination of those who were to be instrumental in exercising that power, was at the root of what preceded and followed the murder of the king. Initially, the effective transition of authority to the queen cannot have been a foregone conclusion, and there would have been a period of uncertainty while the queen and council endeavoured to establish the scale of the threat and formulate their response.

Securing the person of the, as yet, uncrowned James II was crucial, and the queen’s success in this dealt a blow to any hope Atholl and his fellow conspirators may have had of benefiting from the removal of James I. Although a precise date is not given, Shirley’s account states that Robert Stewart and Christopher Chambers were the first of the conspirators to be captured, and this provided an opportunity for the queen’s party to underline both their authority and their effectiveness by having Stewart paraded round Edinburgh, tortured publicly and made to proclaim his guilt. That the queen was aware of the advantages in promoting a positive impression of the murdered king and the villainy of his attackers is clear in the action taken to display the body of James I prior to his burial in the Carthusian Priory founded by him just outside Perth. Further dramatic impact had been provided by the papal envoy, Bishop Altani, who declared that he had confessed the king eight days earlier and ‘uttered a great cry with tearful sighs, and kissed the piteous wounds; and he said before all the bystanders that he would stake his soul on his having died in a state of grace, like a martyr, for his defence of the common weal and his administration of justice’.[26] Such an endorsement could not but strengthen the queen’s efforts to bolster her position, and the executions of Stewart and Chambers are described by Shirley and the writer of the Book of Pluscarden in pitiless detail, culminating in their heads being placed on spikes on the gates of Perth. The Pluscarden account states that the Barclay brothers of Tentsmuir escaped secretly to France, but were captured and taken to John duke of Brittany who meted out the punishment suffered by their co-conspirators in Scotland.[27] It is not clear exactly when Walter earl of Atholl was seized, but he may have been taken by William earl of Angus in mid-March after he had taken the heads of Stewart and Chambers to Perth for display, and Michael Brown has suggested that Atholl may have remained in his castle at Methven, by Perth, aware of the failure of the plot, but trusting in a defence based on denial of complicity beyond being aware of his grandson’s intentions.[28]

Although there was undoubtedly a period of uncertainty and confusion in the aftermath of the assassination, this does not mean that the government of Scotland lacked focus or direction. Indeed, there was considerable continuity of personnel in this transitional administration, supporting nobles with experience and aM nities who could offer stability and authority on behalf of the crown. Of particular relevance to this stability was the role of the three estates, sitting in parliament and general council, although the summoning of parliament for March 1437 must have been a hasty aO air that could not have allowed for the traditional forty-days’ notice. For the trial of so important a magnate as Atholl, with his place in the royal line of succession, the authority of parliament was required, and this was also to be the occasion of the formal coronation of the new king. The traditional site for the inauguration and, since 1329, the coronation of Scottish kings was Scone, but proximity to Perth and the knowledge that others involved in the assassination, such as Robert Graham, were still at large, would have made it expedient to choose a more secure location. A charge had been delivered by the new king’s council to the community of Perth on 7 March to fortify the burgh as a result of the murder of James I, and the burgh of Perth was to seek a pardon in April for the part its inhabitants played in the death of the king.[29] It was therefore in Edinburgh that the coronation of James II took place, and the first parliament after the assassination of James I was held there on 25 March 1437, the primary business of which was to direct the coronation of the new king and confer public legitimacy on the actions of the minority government.[30]

The earliest source for this assembly states that ‘the three estates of the realm compearing at Edinburgh, all the earls, nobles and barons, and the freeholders, of the said kingdom coming to Edinburgh castle, they lead forward our aforementioned lord king with great applause and pomp for the praise of God and gladness of all the people to the monastery of Holyrood of Edinburgh for solemnly receiving the crown of the kingdom of Scotland in the same place’.[31] Holyrood abbey was to have particular significance for James II as it was the site of his birth, coronation, marriage and burial, but the consequent celebrations appear to have taken place back in Edinburgh castle under greater security than could be offered at Holyrood.[32] James II was crowned by Michael Ochiltree, bishop of Dunblane, rather than the more senior bishops, Wardlaw of St Andrews, Cameron of Glasgow or Lichton of Aberdeen. Cameron was out of the country on diplomatic business, and the speed of the arrangements may explain the choice of Ochiltree, in addition to the fact that he was a staunch supporter of the queen, although it seems puzzling that Wardlaw could not have travelled from St Andrews to perform this important function.[33] The symbolic act of coronation accomplished, those assembled in Edinburgh proceeded to the trial and execution, on 26 March, of Walter earl of Atholl, who was led from the tolbooth and forced to wear a paper crown intended to mock him for his failed pretensions. Shirley claims that, because it was Easter week, Atholl was spared the hideous torture suffered by the other conspirators but was merely beheaded.[34]

Although the rounding up and punishment of the remaining conspirators would have been regarded as important, the serious danger had passed. The men involved in the assassination were steadily turned in to the government authorities by those who wished their loyalty to be recognised, and the capture of Sir Robert Graham by Robert Duncanson of Struan and John Stewart Gorme of Atholl was of particular significance given his pivotal role in the assassination.[35] The court was no longer in Edinburgh, but had relocated to Stirling castle by the time that Graham was tried and executed in April. Unlike Atholl, who protested his innocence to the last, Graham was openly defiant and unrepentant, with Shirley recording his final speech from the scaffold in which he declared, ‘I have thus slayne and delyvered you of so cruelle a tirant, the grettest enemye the Scottes or Scottland myght have.’[36] The severe and public punishment of the perpetrators of regicide would have been portrayed as upholding the principles of law and natural justice, and notwithstanding the ambivalence that may have been felt concerning the merits of James I’s removal, many would have welcomed the opportunity to draw a line under the events of February 1437 and move forward with the reign of the new king.

NOTES

1.

Liber Pluscardensis, ed. Felix J. H. Skene, 2 vols, The Historians of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1877-80), ii, book 11, chapter 5, 284.

2.

Scotichronicon by Walter Bower, gen. ed. D. E. R. Watt (Aberdeen, 1987), viii, 263. Alexander died before 1434.

3.

N. Reid (ed.), Scotland in the Reign of Alexander III (Edinburgh, 1990), 207.

4.

The name James was not unprecedented within the Stewart family, but was chosen for the third son of Robert III, with the first and second sons called David and Robert respectively. However, once James became king in 1406, the name became very popular for Stewart princes and James III went so far as to call two of his sons James; James duke of Rothesay (the future James IV) and James, marquis of Ormond and duke of Ross.

5.

S. Boardman, The Early Stewart Kings, Robert II and Robert III (East Linton, 1996).

6.

M. H. Brown, James I (Edinburgh, 1994), 172-188.

7.

Boardman, The Early Stewart Kings.

8.

Brown, James I, 86, 182.

9.

R. Weiss, ‘The Earliest Account of the Murder of James I’, EHR, lii, 479-91.

10.

Brown, James I, 194-5.

11.

M. Connolly, ‘“The Dethe of the Kynge of Scotis”: A New Edition’, SHR, lxxi (1992), 46-69.

12.

For an explanation of Graham’s role as speaker on this occasion, see R. J. Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament: Politics and the Three Estates, 1424-1488 (East Linton, 2001), 69-70.

13.

Brown, James I, 164-5.

14.

Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707, K. M. Brown et al. (eds) (St Andrews, 2007-14), http://www.rps.ac.uk/ - searchable database with full records, translation and notes [hereafter, RPS] 1436/10/1-14; Weiss, ‘The Earliest Account of the Murder of James I’, 485; Brown, James I, 174-5; Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 69-70.

15.

Connolly, ‘The Dethe of the Kynge of Scotis’, 52-3; R. J. Tanner, ‘“I arest you, sir, in the name of the three astattes in perlement”: The Scottish Parliament and Resistance to the Crown in the Fifteenth Century’, in T. Thornton (ed.), Social Attitudes and Political Structures in the Fifteenth Century (Stroud, 2000), 101-17; R. A. Mason, ‘Kingship, Tyranny and the Right to Resist in Fifteenth-Century Scotland’, SHR, lxvi (1987), 125-51; Brown, James I, 175-6.

16.

Brown points out that changes of government had been effected in previous ‘palace coups’, but a conservative reluctance to take this step against a king with the temperament of James I seems to have prevailed on this occasion. Brown, James I, 176.

17.

Brown, James I, 181-2.

18.

Connolly, ‘The Dethe of the Kynge of Scotis’, 57.

19.

Brown, James I, 183-4; M. H. Brown, ‘“I have thus slain a tyrant”: The Dethe of the Kynge of Scotis and the Right to Resist in Early Fifteenth-Century Scotland’, IR, xlvii (1996), 24-44.

20.

There is no official record of this assembly, but it is mentioned in Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon, who states that visiting papal legate, Anthony, bishop of Urbino, was received by the king and clergy ‘at a general council at the royal town of Perth begun on 4 February’. RPS, A1437/2/1.

21.

Connolly, ‘The Dethe of the Kynge of Scotis’, 62; Brown, James I, 187.

22.

Connolly, ‘The Dethe of the Kynge of Scotis’, 59.

23.

Brown, James I, 188. Pursuit was given by David Dunbar and a groom of the king’s chamber, but although Dunbar is said to have killed one of the conspirators and wounded another, he was himself wounded in the encounter and the groom was killed. Connolly, ‘The Dethe of the Kynge of Scotis’, 63.

24.

Connolly, ‘The Dethe of the Kynge of Scotis’, 63.

25.

Brown, James I, 195-6. Spens was steward to Walter, earl of Atholl and custumar and deputy sheriff of Perth.

26.

Liber Pluscardensis, ii, book 11, chapter 9, 290.

27.

Ibid., 290-1.

28.

Brown, James I, 197.

29.

PSAS, 33: 425; Brown, James I, 184.

30.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 76-7. This is mis-dated in APS, ii, 31 as 20 March. RPS, 1437/3/1.

31.

RPS, 1437/3/2. A payment of £134 3s 4d was made by the burgh of Haddington towards the coronation expenses, £100 came from the customs of Edinburgh and £50 from the colliery at Tranent. Exchequer Rolls of Scotland [hereafter, ER], ed. J Stuart et al. (Edinburgh 1878-1908), v, 24, 36, 53.

32.

Concerns with both comfort and defence are suggested in the disbursement of £6 5s for a feather mattress and pillow for the king to be sent to Edinburgh castle, and the provision of gates of Spanish iron for the same fortress – ‘ferri Hispanie ad portas ferreas et alia necessaria dicti castri’. ER, v, 36.

33.

Extracta e Variis Cronicis Scocie [Extracta], (Abbotsford Club, 1842), 237; Brown, James I, 198. Tanner speculates that Wardlaw’s absence may be explained by the long-standing tension between the bishop and James I regarding anti-barratry legislation. Nevertheless, this need not have prevented him participating in the coronation of the new king unless he regarded the personnel around the king (and was perhaps regarded by them, in turn) with continuing hostility. Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 78.

34.

Connolly, ‘The Dethe of the Kynge of Scotis’, 62. The status and age of Atholl may also have spared him the full horrors of hanging, drawing and quartering.

35.

ER, v, 55.

36.

ER, v, 10; Connolly, ‘The Dethe of the Kynge of Scotis’, 67; Brown, James I, 198.

CHAPTER 2

Protecting the Rights of the Crown (1437-1440)

But alas that our kings should so often be young men in whose time justice is often halting.[1]

The vagaries of life-expectancy in the middle ages meant that acceptance of the principle of primogeniture led to the strong possibility of kings dying while their successors were still minors. Although not desirable, it was hardly an insurmountable problem when government institutions and administrative practice could proceed even without an adult male monarch in personal control. The king’s council would be constituted to include men who had experience through their social position as members of the higher nobility or as practised administrators and churchmen, and these were supported by officials who saw to the day-to-day administration of government in terms of finance, justice and diplomacy. Serious political and economic instability was highly undesirable, and although perceptions of royal minorities as inherently and persistently volatile and chaotic may be questioned, they could offer an opportunity for personal aggrandisement amongst ambitious members of the nobility. The minority of James II was no different and the competing ambitions of factions and individuals are apparent in the records for this period, although the actual position of the king and preparations for power to pass into his hands, when his minority was deemed to be at an end, were not challenged seriously. In fact, recent research into the records of the mediaeval Scottish parliament has demonstrated a greater degree of administrative continuity under competent and experienced personnel than previous studies of the reign have appreciated.[2]

The initiative seized by the queen following the assassination of James I allowed her to secure and protect her son, thus bolstering her own position in the political manoeuvrings that led up to the coronation in March. However, if she had intended to capitalise on the oaths of fidelity sworn to her by the three estates at her husband’s insistence in having her role as regent for her son recognised in 1428 and 1435, she was to be disappointed.[3] Decisions regarding the minority government would have been made during the assembly held at Edinburgh in March, and although no official record survives, it is possible to infer the nature of these arrangements from later sources. The appointment of Archibald Douglas, duke of Touraine and 5th earl of Douglas as lieutenant-general was made, almost certainly, at a meeting of the three estates in a general council which took place around 6 May.[4] He was the obvious choice to head the royal minority government, as he had the bloodline (as James II’s cousin through his mother, Margaret Stewart, sister of James I), status and backing to make decisions and enact policy.[5] The office conferred quasi-regal authority on Douglas to act as the king’s representative and guard crown rights and privileges until such time as James II could assume personal control. However, there may have been a certain coolness between himself and the queen, as Douglas had been on the receiving end of James I’s arbitrary treatment in 1431, when the king had imprisoned him briefly in reaction to suspicions concerning his involvement with his cousin, John Kennedy, in pursuit of the latter’s ambitions in Carrick.[6] The father of the lieutenant-general, Archibald 4th earl of Douglas, had been granted the dukedom of Touraine by Charles VII in recognition of assistance provided by the Scots, under the leadership of Douglas and James Stewart, earl of Buchan (son of Murdac, duke of Albany), in fighting his campaign against English forces led by Henry V in his own campaign to be recognised as king of France. This involved fighting against an English army in which James I was himself present, and such was James’s view of his own position and authority, he looked askance at the independent actions of a noble who had grown wealthy and powerful through his own efforts and private agreements rather than as the result of direct patronage from the crown. However, the choice of Douglas to fill the role of lieutenant-general after the death of James I was logical not only because he had authority as a border magnate with a sizeable affinity, but through his close connections to existing members of the king’s council.[7]

Continuity of council personnel is apparent in the records, with John Forrester of Corstorphine, chamberlain, William Foulis, archdeacon of St Andrews and keeper of the privy seal, Walter Ogilvy of Lintrathen, treasurer and William Crichton, master of the king’s household, continuing to act as charter witnesses at the beginning of the new reign.[8] John Cameron, bishop of Glasgow, had been serving on the Council of Basle from 1434, arguing his royal patron’s case in the dispute over ecclesiastical policies. He was in Bruges at the time of James I’s assassination in February, but had returned to Scotland by April and resumed the office of chancellor. Douglas had strong connections to Cameron, who had served as his secretary in 1423, while Archibald was earl of Wigtown, but had been recruited into royal service soon after James I’s return to Scotland.[9] William Crichton was a Lothian baron whose father, Sir John Crichton, had built a tower house at the barony of Crichton, south of Edinburgh, in the late fourteenth century.[10] Crichton’s connections with the house of Douglas may have provided the entrée into royal service, but it was his assiduous application in that service which brought about his advancement from James I’s personal chamberlain to the enhanced position of master of the king’s household, sheriff of Edinburgh and keeper of Edinburgh castle.[11] These positions enabled Crichton to make important connections and possibly also to advance the careers of members of his own family, such as his cousin, George Crichton, who managed to attain through royal patronage the sheriffdom of West Lothian and built the castle of Blackness on the river Forth, designed in the form of a ship, reflecting Crichton’s role as Admiral of Scotland.[12]

However, most significant of all in the political manoeuvring that unfolded during the minority of James II, was the position of James Douglas of Balvenie, younger brother of Archibald 4th earl of Douglas and uncle to the new lieutenant-general. Although a member of the comital house of Douglas, it was not territorial influence upon which James Douglas based his career, but service to his kinsmen and to the crown. As Michael Brown has demonstrated, he stepped in to provide focus for the tenants and adherents of his brother, Archibald, after he was captured at Homildon Hill in 1402 and imprisoned in England, and he was rewarded in 1408 with lands in Moray, Aberdeenshire and on the Black Isle, securing in addition the castle of Balvenie in Banffshire. This northern focus to the new possessions of James Douglas, who was thenceforth styled lord of Balvenie, was to be used by him early in the next reign to advance the interests of his own sons; offspring of a late marriage in 1423 to Beatrice Sinclair, sister of William earl of Orkney.[13] However, his personal focus was on his possessions in the south, centring his lordship on his castle of Abercorn in West Lothian on the banks of the river Forth. This placed him within easy access of the court, generally to be found in Edinburgh, and had allowed him also to exploit the revenues of nearby Linlithgow.[14] From the return of the king in 1424, James Douglas of Balvenie was a frequent royal councillor offering his experience and service to the king as administrator and diplomat and establishing himself firmly in the ranks of James I’s inner council formed principally, although not exclusively, from the ranks of Lothian barons who recognised the advantages of direct service to the crown rather than through the traditional conduit of service to great regional magnates.[15] The promotion of James Douglas of Balvenie to the earldom of Avandale in 1437 in addition to the role of justiciar south of the Forth, demonstrates the reliance placed upon his uncle by Archibald 5th earl of Douglas. However, the relationship was one of mutual benefit rather than blind allegiance, as men such as Avandale and Crichton recognised the advantages provided by their own positions of influence constructed during the 1430s and were more concerned to advance these than to offer slavish devotion to the lieutenant-general.[16]

The role of the queen in the minority government of her son needed to be defined, and it was in the March parliament, or more probably the general council held in May, that she was assigned 4,000 merks and the keepership of Stirling castle, where she was to reside with her children. Further light may be shed on these arrangements by the credible interpretation of an incomplete entry in the Auchinleck Chronicle as referring to May 1437:

of the law and the kingis proffettis and of all the Realme and that the king suld come be him selfe and his and the queen be hir self and hirris bot the king suld ay remane with the queen. Bot scho suld nocht intromet with his proffettis bot allanerlie with his person.[17]

Although undated in the chronicle, this appears to relate to Joan Beaufort and lays stress on the queen’s role being the care of her children rather than control of royal finances, indicating that she had not been granted the extensive powers of regency that she may have wished. Such relegation may have been the result of attitudes to gender and her English nationality, but she was not left entirely without influence, as this recognised her right to have access and authority over raising her children, and she continued to manoeuvre for the maintenance of those rights and provide an alternative political focus until her death in 1445. Part of the problem underlying the establishment of authority in the first few weeks following the assassination of the king may have been the close association of the queen and her principal adherent, William earl of Angus, with the unpopular policies of James I. Although Angus had been instrumental in rounding up those implicated in the assassination of James I, there was little desire to see a regime that would continue in exactly the same vein as before, and despite clear continuity in personnel, those in control were prepared to make changes. Also, there was considerable rivalry and distrust between the Black Douglases and the Douglases of Angus (later known as the Red Douglases), which would have affected the attitude of Archibald 5th earl of Douglas to the queen’s inner circle when he assumed the mantle of lieutenant-general. Having stipulated the extent of Queen Joan’s remit, tensions were relieved further by the death of Angus in October 1437, and although his son James was to continue his father’s allegiance to the queen, he was only eleven years old when he succeeded as 3rd earl of Angus. William Crichton had also been a prominent supporter of the queen and may have been with the royal party at Blackfriars at the time of the assassination, but although he owed his position to advancement in the king’s service, he proved to be a great political survivor and was prepared to adjust his loyalties to maintain his position at the heart of royal government; a strategy he pursued successfully despite being ousted temporarily in the faction struggles of the 1440s.

Archibald 5th earl of Douglas exercised the office of lieutenant-general in a manner that recalled the methods used by earlier lieutenants and governors in the fourteenth century. This entailed heavy reliance on the support and co-operation of regional lords and those with experience in royal administration, and one of the first pieces of legislation enacted by the new regime was the revocation of all alienations made since the death of James I. This was an important action to take as early as possible after confidence and stability had been restored, and reflects concern that the rights and privileges of the crown should be protected, with no injudicious use of patronage by the new regime involving crown possessions without ‘the advice and consent of the three estates’. To ensure that this was policed, an inventory was to be made and all such grants recorded, until the king attained the age of twenty-one. Any alienations ‘made in hindering of the crown [. . .] shall be of no avail, force nor effect’.[18] Given that the act is undated, it has been the subject of some debate concerning to which assembly it belongs, but in a statement issued by the royal burgh court of Aberdeen on 6 May 1437, reference is made to a general council currently being held in Stirling.[19] The reason why this act may be supposed to belong to this council, rather than the March parliament, or the following year, is that this was arguably a more representative body than the hastily assembled March parliament, and the arrest of Robert Graham would have created a far stronger sense of security and stability. If it was also the occasion of the appointment of Archibald Douglas as lieutenant-general, it makes sense for the three estates to lay the ground rules for the long minority in prospect.

The role of the three estates acting in consultation over any such alienations indicates determination on the part of those who regarded conciliar government as an important safeguard against misuse of power to place certain restrictions on Douglas’s lieutenancy. This does not necessarily denote any outright hostility to Douglas himself, as he would certainly have been a party to the revocation legislation, but insistence on the lieutenancy being carried out with the aid and due consultation of the council recalls documents such as the appointment of David duke of Rothesay as lieutenant in 1399.[20] The use of patronage was pivotal in the exercise of political power, but could be misused to the detriment of the ‘common weal’, therefore it was necessary to place tight restrictions on the lieutenant, compelling him to consult and secure the approval of a wider political body than his own personal council. Application of this legislation is apparent in the royal charter granted on 1 June to David Ogilvy and his wife, confirming a grant of Inchmartin and other lands, given at Edinburgh under the great seal and witnessed by John Cameron, chancellor, John Forrester of Corstorphine, chamberlain, Walter Ogilvy of Lintrathen, treasurer, William lord Crichton, master of the king’s household and William Foulis, archdeacon of St Andrews and keeper of the privy seal. The charter was issued ‘ex deliberatione consilii nostri generalis’, and Roland Tanner has pointed out that this grant was on terms previously endorsed by James I and was clearly being granted with the consent of the general council in line with the legislation agreed in May.[21]

However, the removal of James I was undoubtedly the occasion for those whose ambitions had been kept in check by the strength of his personality to pursue their own interests and re-establish their perceived rights. At approximately the same time as the general council was meeting in Stirling in May 1437, Isabella, duchess of Albany (widow of Murdac duke of Albany and daughter of Duncan earl of Lennox, both of whom had been executed by James I in 1425 along with Isabella’s two sons) was holding her own court in Lennox on the Isle of Inchcailloch on Loch Lomond.[22] She may have been released from captivity, possibly in Stirling castle, shortly after the assassination, and her determination to reassert her rights in the Lennox, which had been taken under royal administration on the orders of James I, was underlined by her use of the titles ‘Duchess of Albany and Countess of the Lennox’. Interest in the Lennox attracted some initial dispute, in the form of a revival of claims by the Stewarts of Darnley. Alan Stewart of Darnley, whose interest in Lennox came through his mother, Elizabeth, the younger daughter of Duncan earl of Lennox, was in France leading a band of Scottish mercenaries when news reached him of the murder of James I. Although he may have thought that the removal of the king who had blocked Darnley claims to a part of the earldom would revive his chances, there is no indication that Alan’s aunt, Isabella, was prepared to offer any compromise.

Two entries in the Auchinleck Chronicle appear to be bound up with Darnley’s ambitions, with the first stating that, on 20 September 1438, ‘Allan Stewart lord Darnley was slane at polmais thorne be sir Thomas Boyd under ane assouerance taken betuix tham’. The second records that ‘The zere of god 1439 the 7th day of July sir Thomas Boyd was slane be Alexander Stewart buktuth and his sonis and mathow Stewart with his brother and uther sundry.’[23] Darnley may have entered into an agreement with Sir Thomas Boyd in a quest for allies to advance his perceived rights, which subsequently turned sour and resulted in a blood-feud, although there is no evidence that this involved Isabella. However, a further reference in the Auchinleck Chronicle to another event in 1439 would appear to underline the assertion of Isabella’s authority:

The samyn zere the 24th day of september John of Colquhoun the lord of Luss was slane in Inchmuryne underneth an assouerance be Lauchlane McClanis and Murthow Gibson.[24]

Colquhoun was the late king’s local agent in Lennox, and had either continued to act in that capacity or was having punishment inflicted on him in settlement of old grievances. Reference to an ‘assouerance’ and the involvement of Lauchlan Maclean of Duart may indicate a deliberate plot on the part of Isabella and her allies to remove the encroachment of royal intervention from the rights and customs vested in the lordship. Inchmurrin on Loch Lomond was the chief stronghold of the Lennox-Stewarts and Isabella re-established herself there and proceeded to build on alliances made with families such as the Campbells of Glenorchy. On 27 March 1437, Colin Campbell of Glenorchy appears to have used the occasion of the visit to Scotland of the papal legate, Bishop Anthony Altani of Urbino to secure permission for a portable altar, ‘on which in places suitable for the purpose he may cause mass and other divine offices to be celebrated in presence of himself and family’.[25] By October 1439, a papal dispensation had been secured for Colin Campbell’s marriage to Marion Stewart, grand-daughter of Countess Isabella (arranged by James I in 1425), and Colin received a grant from his wife’s grandmother on 4 October 1440 of lands at the head of Gare Loch in addition to other lands in Lennox.[26]

Stephen Boardman argues that these arrangements reflect acceptance, at least by the Glenorchy Campbells, of revived Albany/Lennox authority, although the early and childless death of Marion Stewart allowed Colin Campbell to seek alternative alliances.[27] As Michael Brown has shown, the Lennox was a powerful example of the strength inherent in local traditions and loyalties vested in the exercise of regional lordship, and when that lordship was exercised by a character as redoubtable as Isabella, it was prudent to accept rather than challenge a structure of power that was not overtly threatening to the crown.[28] It is understandable that the king’s minority council would have taken this attitude, but perhaps more surprising that James II should have done so once he assumed personal control of government, but the long-term success of Isabella’s assertion was acknowledged by the king as late as 1456, when he stated that the elderly countess of Lennox, not the king, possessed the revenue rights within the earldom.[29] Although based upon very different arguments, reassertion of claims to the exercise of regional lordship were also manifest in the north-east concerning the earldom of Mar; a conflict that was to rumble on throughout the reign of James II.[30]

Although the survival of record evidence from the minority of James II is patchy in places, there is reasonable coverage for the early years of the minority; enough to suggest that the principal preoccupation of the royal council was the continued safeguarding of royal interests. However, it was also necessary to conduct diplomatic business with England, where Henry VI had just emerged from his own royal minority.[31] On 18 September 1437, English letters of safe conduct had been issued at the castle of Berkhamsted by Henry VI to John Cameron, bishop of Glasgow, Alexander Seton lord of Gordon, Walter Ogilvy and John Forrester, in their capacity as ambassadors of the king of Scots tasked with concluding a peace with England. However, the commission appointed on 30 November shows that only Gordon remained from those listed in September, and he was to be accompanied by Alexander lord Montgomery, John Methven, secretary and provost of Lincluden, and John Vaus. It is possible that Cameron’s role as chancellor made it expedient for him to remain in Scotland, but the amended embassy proceeded to conclude a nine-year truce which was to come into effect from 1 May 1438.[32] Surviving records convey a sense of the conduct of Archibald 5th earl of Douglas’s lieutenancy, with proceedings from a general council held on Thursday 27 November 1438 in the tolbooth at Edinburgh stating that the assembly was summoned ‘by the most excellent prince and lord Sir Archibald duke of Touraine, earl of Douglas and of Longeville, lord of Galloway and Annandale, and lieutenent general of the realm’.[33] Although such a style of address is a clear projection of the status of his lieutenancy, the concluding clause of this general council, which appears largely to have dealt with brieves of inquest, carries a reminder of royal authority with references to ‘the most excellent prince our lord James most illustrious king of Scots’, and ‘Given under testimony of our great seal at Edinburgh on 28 November in the second year of our reign’.[34]

Notwithstanding this projection of authority, reference to another council held at Edinburgh on 24 December 1438 reflects concerns over ‘open and public reif or spoliation’, carrying the implication that the administration of law and order may not have been operating as smoothly as the council would have wished.[35] That Douglas may have been exploiting his office to commit some spoliation of his own is certainly suggested in the notarial instrument drawn up at the tolbooth in Edinburgh on 30 May 1438, which registers the complaint made by Egidia, dowager countess of Orkney, delivered previously before a council held at Perth, concerning the ‘wrongful spoliation of her lordship of Nethisdale’. No records survive of an earlier meeting of the council at Perth, but the confrontation at Edinburgh appears to have become heated when the countess was told that she would receive a full hearing ‘in the next council to be held in Perth’ and that, meantime, any court held in the lordship of Nithsdale would not prejudice her heritable rights. The countess’s spirited reply to this prevarication was a threat to disrupt the meeting of any such court.[36] Michael Brown has suggested that this was bound up with Archibald Douglas’s determination to recover the influence he had lost under James I and expand his lordship and authority within the Marches and the south-west. With Nithsdale occupying a strategic position between Annandale and Galloway, this may have included encroachment on the rights of his mother, Margaret duchess of Touraine, in the lordship of Galloway where, although nominally under her control, there is no evidence to show her exercising authority. Another casualty of Black Douglas ambition was James Douglas, the new earl of Angus, whose authority in the Marches was blocked during the lifetime of the lieutenant-general.[37]

The actions of Douglas in north-east and north-west Scotland were more placatory, as this was not the focus of his personal ambition. With the limited resources of his office as lieutenant, he chose to acknowledge the position of regional magnates and place their ambitions within the apparent authority of the crown. Personal alliances were an important method of securing support and loyalty, and it was to this end that Douglas formed an alliance with David Lindsay, earl of Crawford, in 1438 through the marriage of Crawford’s daughter, Janet, to William, the eldest son of Archibald Douglas. Similarly, the appointment of Alexander earl of Ross and Lord of the Isles as justiciar north of the Forth gave the stamp of government approval to a magnate whose ambitions and actions would be difficult to challenge should he choose to create problems.[38]

It was through a combination of personal ambition and political expediency that Archibald Douglas exercised his lieutenancy, and his actions were supported through his immediate circle in the royal council and monitored by the three estates in assemblies of the general council. Underlining this central role, the general council held at Stirling on Friday 13 March 1439 decreed that ‘there should be two sessions yearly, in which the lord lieutenant and the king’s chosen council shall sit’.[39] Also, the council ordained that ‘where there is any rebel or unruly men reset within or holding any castle or fortalice, or where there is any violent presumption of rebellion [. . .] that the lieutenant raise the country and pass to such houses and arrest those persons to the law [. . .] and if any [person] makes difficulty, [they are] to be arrested or to find surety [. . .]’.[40] Pursuit of personal ambitions in the localities may have been at the root of these concerns, but before the date set for the next meeting of the general council on 14 September, Archibald Douglas succumbed to a fever and died at Restalrig near Edinburgh on 26 June, possibly during the outbreak of plague recorded in the Auchinleck Chronicle: ‘the pestilens come in scotland and began at dumfres [Dumfries] and It was callit the pestilence but mercy for thar tuk it nain that ever recoverit bot thai deit within xxiiij houris’.[41]

Archibald was succeeded in the earldom of Douglas by his son, William, who was sixteen years old at the time, and this changed considerably the dynamics of the minority. This was a period that, through a combination of accident and design, also saw a number of minorities in magnate houses; a feature compounded by the dearth in the ranks of the higher nobility as a result of James I’s purges, failures of line and disputed succession. After the assassination of James I in February 1437, the only adult earls in Scotland were Archibald 5th earl of Douglas, William 2nd earl of Angus and David Lindsay, earl of Crawford. Malise Graham earl of Menteith and John earl of Sutherland were in England serving as hostages for the ransom of James I.[42] This contrasts sharply with thirteen Scottish earldoms in existence at the beginning of the fourteenth century, with four additional earldoms created between 1306 and 1437. Although there was always a certain amount of W uctuation due to forfeitures and failures of line, Alexander Grant calculates that there were, on average, between eight and ten earls active in Scotland at any one time during the mediaeval period.[43] The death of William earl of Angus in 1437, leaving a son who was a minor, reduced the numbers still further and, with the death of Douglas in 1439, leaving a son who was also a minor, there was no obvious successor to replace him in the office of lieutenant-general. Although James Douglas of Balvenie had been created earl of Avandale in 1437, he was not of the stature and following to fill the gap left by his nephew and it was this unprecedented vacuum in the ranks of those who, traditionally, had provided leadership that forced a new political strategy during the minority of James II.

One of the principal features of the nobility during the reign of James II was the emergence of a peerage rank known as lords of parliament. As with most such developments, this did not happen overnight but was in response to the particular circumstances of the minority. Alexander Grant’s research has shown that, below the rank of earl, those holding lordships and baronies would be recorded in documents as ‘de’, or ‘of’ a particular place or family; for example, Alexander ‘dominus de’ (‘lord of’) Montgomery, Herbert Maxwell of Caerlaverock. However, by 1445, there had been significant evolution of such titles into a distinct peerage linked to parliamentary attendance.[44] Under these designations, barons would appear as, for example, Alexander lord Montgomery (from Alexander lord of Montgomery) and Herbert lord Maxwell (from Herbert Maxwell of Caerlaverock – the place of his lordship being omitted entirely). Such styles may be found in earlier reigns, but not with any consistency, and their absence during the personal reign of James I suggests that he suppressed any such designation. Roland Tanner has argued convincingly that the renewal and rapid adoption of this peerage style followed the removal of James I, and suggests that a reference to Duncan Campbell of Lochawe as ‘dominus Duncanus miles dominus de le Cambel’ in May 1437 was an early example of this change.[45] Official documentation began to use this peerage style, indicating the consent, recognition and even encouragement of the royal council, which is not surprising when a principal member of that council, William Crichton, was using the style William lord of Crichton by 1438. The reason why such titles are designated ‘parliamentary’ peerages explains both their absence between 1424 and 1437 and their increased appearance thereafter. As has been argued, the central role of the three estates in the minority government was emphasised in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of James I, while the structure of government was being established. Part of the friction and tension evident during the reign of James I was the result of his unwillingness to have his actions blocked or inhibited by the authority of the three estates, and the reign of a new king who was still a child would have provided an ideal opportunity for those who wished to see the exercise of ‘good lordship’, with all that entailed in terms of judicious consultation, underlined with a recognition of the status of those members of the nobility eligible to attend parliament. A number of variations in designation occur in the period up to 1445, but the acceptance of the rank of lord of parliament was such that it became a form of patronage conferred upon those whose right to attend meetings of the three estates was a mark of their personal standing. Walter Bower records a list of ‘domini de parliamento’ in a version of the Scotichronicon written in the mid-1440s which, according to Roland Tanner, demonstrates clear recognition of the title, before the creations in the parliament of 1445, by a contemporary who was ‘a staunch supporter of officialdom in all its guises’.[46]

The chroniclers of the sixteenth century, peddling the firm agenda that the problems of the fifteenth century could be explained by the actions of over-mighty and self-serving nobles, produce tales of violence, manipulation and acts of aggression perpetrated by these families while the king was powerless to prevent their actions; a view that informed subsequent historiography until comparatively recently. While recognising that there was undoubtedly a measure of exaggeration and lurid detail intended to support the writers’ version of events as they understood them, and to convey a moral message, it is nevertheless important not entirely to dismiss the frictions and tensions to which they allude. The minority of James II witnessed several outbreaks of factional violence and tension which had the effect of reshaping the political map of Scotland and laid the foundations for the serious friction that exploded between James II and the Black Douglas family in the 1450s.

Evidence suggests that such frictions had greater resonance in the period following the death of the lieutenant-general in 1439. It has been pointed out that although the business of the minority government of James II was conducted within the framework of regular meetings of the three estates in general council and parliament, the nature of that business changed markedly after the death of Douglas. Legislation had been a feature of such assemblies during the reign of James I and even, to a certain extent, under the lieutenancy of Douglas, but the lack of a magnate with the stature to act as lieutenant-general following Douglas’s death in 1439 seems to have impacted on the level of authority which general councils could command in the early 1440s.[47]

The death of the lieutenant-general appears to have been the trigger for a serious power struggle at the heart of royal government, and the earliest indication of this was the queen’s re-emergence with the intention of increasing the limited powers allowed to her in 1437. She may have been making plans and improving her position even prior to the death of Douglas, and Michael Brown has argued that she sought to exploit the vacuum left in Perthshire by the execution of Walter earl of Atholl in 1437; there are certainly indications that she had courted the support of men of influence within that region. The Stewarts of Lorne appear to have been central to her plans, with Robert Stewart of Lorne playing an important role in Perthshire politics as well as having experience in royal service. Her initial move following news of Douglas’s death was to mirror one of her first actions following the murder of her husband in 1437, which was to secure possession of her son.[48] Although the queen had been granted access to and custody of her children, she does not appear to have been permitted to have the young king with her constantly. During July, she removed James from Edinburgh (and therefore the custody of William lord Crichton) and established herself in Stirling castle. This had been granted to the queen as her residence and was the place where, traditionally, royal children were raised. In the chronicles written in the sixteenth century, sinister implications were ascribed to this action, with Lesley and Buchanan stating that the queen smuggled her son out of Edinburgh castle without Crichton’s knowledge, taking him to Stirling (held by Alexander Livingston), who promptly proposed to besiege Crichton in Edinburgh castle.[49] This places the actions within an assumed context of mutual antipathy between Crichton and Livingston, who are portrayed in the manner of pantomime villains, each scowling at the other from the ramparts of their respective royal castles. Both writers also place the date of the queen’s actions before the death of the lieutenant-general who, they argue, harboured antipathy towards both Crichton and Livingston.

To the extent that the location of James II at this time may be determined, his itinerary, calculated by the dates and places where royal charters were issued, shows that, were the Great Seal to be kept with the king (which is by no means certain during a minority), James II was in Edinburgh on 10 July 1439 and in Stirling one month later, on 13 August.[50] It seems likely that the sequence of events was the illness and death of Douglas, the securing of the young king by his mother and their removal to Stirling, followed shortly thereafter by the queen’s remarriage to James Stewart of Lorne; styled the ‘Black Knight of Lorne’ in later chronicle sources. Although a younger brother of Robert lord of Lorne, and therefore not a man of obvious political status, the marriage created ties of kinship with the principal family providing the queen’s support-base in Perthshire, including David Murray of Tullibardine and Archibald Stewart; Murray sought the office of steward of Strathearn, and Archibald became sheriff of Perth. Another significant supporter of the queen was James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews, who had been the recipient of one of his nephew James I’s last acts of patronage in January 1437, when he provided Kennedy to the bishopric of Dunkeld, despite the opposition of both Pope Eugenius IV and the chapter at Dunkeld.[51]

The marriage, probably conducted in some secrecy, triggered an almost immediate response. The Auchinleck chronicler records that:

That samyn zere the thrid day of august the lord Kalendar Sir Alexander Levingstoun that tyme beand in the castell of Sterling with the qwene / Tuke the qwene and put hir in ane chalmere and kepit hir stratlye thairin / till scho was lowsit be the thre estatis at the counsall haldin at striuling that samyn zere the last day of august and that samyn tyme he tuke sir James Stewart the lord of lornis brother and William Stewart and put tham in pittis and bollit thaim / at that samyn counsall sir James was borowit be the lord Gordon sir Alexander Setoun lord of the Isles, Sir William of Crichton that tyme chancellor under the pane of thre thousand.[52]

It is unlikely that the queen would have anticipated the possibility that Alexander Livingston of Callendar would exploit his position as keeper of Stirling castle to imprison her in a room there, but this is what happened. Alexander Livingston was a Stirlingshire baron whose principal estate was Callendar, near Falkirk. He witnessed two charters during the early governorship of Robert duke of Albany, but does not appear to have been particularly active during the reign of James I, although he may have been knighted at the time of the king’s return in 1424 and is recorded as having accompanied William Sinclair, earl of Orkney and James Douglas of Balvenie to Durham to meet James I upon his release.[53] A Robert Livingston served as a hostage for the ransom of James I in 1424 and is recorded as having died in the Tower of London, but it is not clear whether or not he was Alexander’s son.[54] The arrival of the Livingstons in prominent royal service came about later in the reign, probably within the context of James I recruiting men from the wide affinity of James Douglas of Balvenie. Alexander’s brother, John, had served as steward to Archibald 4th earl of Douglas and subsequently became provost of Edinburgh, while a cousin, Robert, was master of works at Linlithgow palace during a period of refurbishment and high expenditure, as James I and Joan Beaufort sought to redesign it as a royal residence that would serve as a showcase for the new Stewart style. The exchequer accounts record substantial expenditure on Linlithgow, with £2440 Scots spent by James I’s master of works, John of Waltoun, by 1430. Denys Pringle suggests that the work was focused on the east range of the palace, including the great hall, and a magnificent and imposing entrance to the palace on the east side would have been W anked by statues and surmounted with the royal arms.[55] The custodianship of the important royal castles of Stirling and Linlithgow was certainly a mark of royal favour, and Livingston was in Stirling castle when Murdac duke of Albany was tried in 1425. The family was to build on the patronage received under James I to increase their position during the minority of James II, and they did this by pursuing assiduous loyalty to their noble patron, James earl of Avandale.

The reaction to the initiative taken by the queen in July was clearly one of alarm, as the prospect of her faction establishing a council that could erode the powers enjoyed by James Douglas earl of Avandale, William Sinclair earl of Orkney and William lord Crichton was a real possibility. Rather than a contest between two upstart members of the minor nobility, as portrayed by later writers, developments in the summer of 1439 marked a determination on the part of the existing members of the royal council to maintain their positions and see off any challenges. Although able to exploit his position as keeper of Stirling castle to make such a move against the queen, this was no private initiative of Livingston’s in search of greater personal power, but rather an action that could rely on appoval and backing from his powerful patrons and associates on the council, and it is possible that the expenses paid to James earl of Avandale in 1440 for his visit to Bute for discussions with the Lord of the Isles relate to this period of the queen’s remarriage.[56] Certain details of what occurred on 3 August may be gleaned from the agreement, or ‘appointment’, made in a general council held at Stirling on 4 September 1439. The men concerned in the arrest of the queen are named as Sir Alexander Livingston of Callendar, Sir William Cranston, James Livingston (eldest son of Alexander) and John Livingston (brother of Alexander) and the agreement was designed to gloss over the undoubted illegality of the action and provide public exoneration and justification for the perpetrators. Once again, the three estates were providing the forum for public exercise of royal authority and underlining the position of those who dominated the assembly. Although undoubtedly humiliated at the collapse of her plans, the queen was made to forgive the named perpetrators of her arrest, ‘and their assistants’, who justified their actions by declaring that; ‘their withdrawal of that liberty from her [. . .] was not done in villainy nor for villainy, harm nor slander to her person, nor for any lack, crime or fault that they or any of them were aware of or knew to her womanhood, but only for the safety of our sovereign lord, the worship of her person and the common good of the realm’.[57]

The identification of Sir William Cranston suggests the involvement of James Douglas earl of Avandale, as William’s father, Thomas, was an adherent of Archibald 5th earl of Douglas and William may have been working with his patron’s uncle in the period following the death of the lieutenant-general. Cranston certainly appears to have been with Livingston when the queen was arrested on 3 August, and they had been joined in Stirling by Avandale and Crichton shortly afterwards in order to work out the details of what could be done to resolve the awkward situation precipitated by the queen’s actions. It was clear that there could be no long-term imprisonment of the queen, but it was necessary to consider the implications of her remarriage and guard against future retribution on account of her ‘grief or displeasure against the said Sir Alexander, Sir William, James and John and their assistants’. In addition to this promise of forgiveness was the queen’s undertaking to commit ‘to the said Sir Alexander’s keeping our said sovereign lord the king, her dearest son, until the time of his age, and lend her castle of Stirling to him for his residence [. . .] and assigned to the said Sir Alexander for the upkeep of our said sovereign lord and his sisters [. . .] 4000 merks [. . .] assigned to her [the queen] by the three estates and for the same reason’. This amounted to a surrender to Livingston and the council of her role as custodian of the king and, presumably, his sisters. Access to the king was not denied to his mother, but a fear that she could use possession of her son in the future is reflected in the stipulation that she could visit him in Stirling ‘with unsuspected persons’ but:

for greater security, the said princess shall make such lords as are her men and retinue, at the desire of the said Alexander and of the persons written before, give the foresaid Sir Alexander [. . .] such letters under their seals that, if the said princess acts to the contrary of any [part] of the appointment [. . .] that they shall not assist her, nor act to the contrary of him [. . .] nor procure to be done nor said to him nor them, shame, villainy nor harm in any way [. . .]’.[58]

This was about as watertight as Livingston and his associates could make the agreement to release the queen without fear of being brought ‘nearer to death by means of the said princess, her procuration or servants’, and an offer to return to her the castle of Stirling and the custody of her son should Alexander Livingston die before James II reached his majority was undoubtedly a gesture for the sake of appearance. The appointment was witnessed by four bishops: John Cameron, bishop of Glasgow, John Winchester, bishop of Moray, John Bullock, bishop of Ross and Michael Ochiltree, bishop of Dunblane. William lord Crichton appeared in the role of chancellor, an office that he held at least from 10 July 1439, although the absence of earlier records means that he may have taken over the office from Cameron as early as the previous year.[59] Crichton was accompanied as witness for the barons by Alexander Seton, lord of Gordon and Walter Haliburton, lord of Dirleton (who was Avandale’s brother-in-law), and representing the burghs were William Cranston, burgess and commissioner of Edinburgh (Crichton’s deputy and a kinsman of the William Cranston named as one of the queen’s captors), James Parkle, commissioner of Linlithgow (deputy to George Crichton, sheriff of Linlithgow) and Andrew Reid, burgess and commissioner of Inverness. Cranston also procured the seal of David White, abbot of Cambuskenneth for the document.[60]

Significantly, the son of the late lieutenant-general, William 6th earl of Douglas, performed his first public duty by appending his signet to the appointment, ‘having the force and effect of his seal’, possibly indicating the introduction of the young earl into politics by his great-uncle, James earl of Avandale, in an effort to bolster his own position on the council.[61] This entire venture had been designed to consolidate the position of Avandale and Crichton at the centre of the royal council following the death of Archibald 5th earl of Douglas, and the enhancement of Alexander Livingston’s position came through the transfer of the king into his keeping. However, the terms of the appointment, even though on one level they represent a ‘whitewash’[62] for the council, nevertheless reveal real concerns about the likely attitude of the queen should she regain power. Joan Beaufort had not been deprived of her estates or her affinity, whatever restrictions may have been placed upon them under the terms agreed for her release, and despite the fact that she bore three sons to James Stewart of Lorne over the next four years, she had not abandoned her desire to exercise the authority that she felt to be her due. On 31 March 1440, the queen was in Falkland, confirming a charter issued in Ceres on the previous day in favour of Sir John Lindesay, lord of Byres. Witnesses to her confirmation were her brother-in-law and husband, Robert lord of Lorne and James Stewart, as well as David Stewart of Rosyth, David Murray of Gask and her husband’s younger brother, Archibald Stewart.[63] With the death on 9 April of Henry Wardlaw, bishop of St Andrews, the queen may have been in a position to put pressure behind the election of her ally, James Kennedy, bishop of Dunkeld to succeed Wardlaw in Scotland’s premier see.[64] Also, the role played by John Cameron, bishop of Glasgow, who had been replaced as chancellor by William lord Crichton, was far from over, as he was back witnessing royal charters from 1 February 1440 and may be counted among the queen’s allies at this time.[65]

Political alignments were far from static during the early 1440s, and it is possible to discern shifting patterns, as members of the council and those outside it made adjustments to suit their personal ambitions. Again, possession of the king appears to have been central to providing justification for actions and policies, and James II was returned to Edinburgh after his mother’s Stirling escapade, where he remained until August 1440, although he appears to have been at the chancellor’s castle at Crichton on 12 January when a crown charter was issued to Patrick Hepburn of Walchton of lands at Athelstaneford. Witnesses on this charter show that he was attended by Crichton, Walter of Haliburton, William earl of Orkney, Adam Hepburn of Hailes, Alexander Livingston of Callendar, Alexander Ramsay of Dalhousie, Sir James of Edmonston, John Livingston, burgess of Edinburgh and Master Richard Craig, royal clerk.[66] Reference is made to a general council that sat in Edinburgh on 20 February, although the only surviving business relates to the dispute between Alexander of Seton, master of Gordon, lord of Tullibody and William Keith, marischal, concerning claims to the castle of Dunottar. Once again, this underlines concerns about rights and revocations, and Roland Tanner has pointed out that the meeting took place in Edinburgh castle and not the usual location for meetings of parliaments and general councils at the Tolbooth in Edinburgh. Rather than being a full assembly, he argues that it may have been little more than a slightly expanded royal council; the witnesses were certainly men associated with Crichton.[67] William 6th earl of Douglas was also in Edinburgh, as he issued a charter to Andrew Kerr of Altonburn on 18 February, attended by Laurence of Abernethy, John Maxwell of Calderwood, George Campbell of Loudon, James of Auchinleck, John Ralston, rector of Douglas, Thomas Spens, his secretary, Alexander Nairn, James Rutherford, Thomas Cranston, and William and John Murray of Cranston. Michael Brown has argued that these men had associations with both Archibald 5th earl of Douglas during his period as lieutenant, and also with the affinity of William’s great-uncle, James Douglas earl of Avandale.[68] However, subsequent events show that any appearance of close collaboration between nephew and great-uncle was increasingly illusory as William sought to exert his own authority and independent choices as earl of Douglas. That he sought to distance himself from Avandale may be inferred from his selection of advisers, such as Malcolm Fleming of Biggar and, possibly, the former chancellor, John Cameron, bishop of Glasgow.[69]

On 2 August 1440, a meeting of the three estates in general council was held at the tolbooth in Stirling, and it is evident, yet again, that a principal preoccupation was with the administration of justice within the realm. The right of churchmen not to be troubled ‘in their persons nor in their goods’ was asserted, and the justiciars north and south of the Forth (Alexander MacDonald, earl of Ross and James Douglas earl of Avandale, respectively) were to hold justice ayres twice a year ‘according to the old use and custom’. This may represent a rather pointed reminder to the two men to fulfil the duties of their office, and the other business of the council is concerned with similar exhortations to those exercising rights of regality. Although the king was only approaching his tenth birthday, it was enacted that it was expedient that he ‘ride throughout the realm immediately . . . where any rebellion, slaughter, burning, plunder or forethought theft happens’.[70] Roland Tanner has speculated that the barely-veiled admonition of the justiciars and others who may have been exploiting the opportunities of minority rule, indicate the opening shots in a campaign against the position of Avandale, which showed behind it the hand of Cameron and William earl of Douglas.[71]

Concern about a major dispute in the north-east over succession to the earldom of Mar was addressed on 10 August in a letter of indenture made between the king and his council and Robert lord Erskine. The Erskine claim to the earldom of Mar was long and complex, but it rested upon the assertion that Robert lord Erskine’s mother, Janet, had a hereditary claim to the earldom.[72] Such claims had been parried and blocked by James I, but his assassination in 1437 had reactivated Erskine determination to pursue their claims, and Robert Erskine moved swiftly to have himself served heir under the terms of a charter issued on 9 December 1404.[73] An inquest was held on 22 April 1438, presided over by David Lindsay, earl of Crawford and sheriff of Aberdeen. Sir Alexander Forbes (with whom Erskine had sealed an indenture in 1435 concerning the furtherance of his claim to Mar and Garioch) also served on the inquest, and Erskine was retoured as lawful heir and infeft in half the earldom of Mar, following which Robert Erskine immediately assumed the title, earl of Mar and Garioch.[74] On 26 June 1439, Forbes received a charter from Robert Erskine, styling himself earl of Mar, for half of the lordship of Strathdee, which may have represented the ‘lands in Mar’ promised to Forbes by Erskine under the terms of the November 1435 indenture. Apart from this charter, a document dated 28 December 1439, in which the burgh of Aberdeen created ‘Robert of Erskine earl of Mar’ a burgess and member of guild, may indicate a measure of local recognition for Erskine’s position, although he received a more guarded acknowledgement by the council as a peer of parliament, appearing on documents as Robert lord Erskine.[75]

The death of Alexander Stewart earl of Mar in 1435 had raised ambitions beyond those of the Erskines, and another family vying for advancement in the north-east were the Setons of Gordon. The Setons were a Lothian based family, active on the borders and in royal service, but it was the marriage between Alexander Seton, second son of Sir William Seton (d. 1407) to Elizabeth Gordon in 1408 that encouraged their interest in the north-east. Elizabeth was the daughter of Sir Adam Gordon, who died at Homildon Hill on 14 September 1402 and, although succeeded by his son, John, the latter died in 1408, leaving his sister to succeed to the family estates of Gordon and Fogo in Berwickshire and the Aberdeenshire lordship of Strathbogie. This inheritance may well have been the stimulus for the marriage, and Alexander Seton appeared determined to establish himself in the Gordons’ long neglected northern estates. He pursued his objectives with energy and ambition, building up local alliances and seeking also to make contacts through service at the royal court, particularly with James I’s principal administrator, William Crichton. The importance of Crichton’s position as chancellor during the minority of James II led Alexander Seton’s eldest son (also Alexander) to divorce his wife in order to marry Crichton’s daughter Elizabeth, clearly hoping to benefit from his father-in-law’s political influence.[76]

The royal indenture sealed on 10 August 1440 stated that ‘for the gude and quiete of the land’, the castle of Kildrummy, the chief messuage of the earldom of Mar, should be committed to Erskine’s keeping during the minority, to be delivered to the king without obstacle at the end of that time, following which, the king and the three estates would examine the claims of all parties. Erskine was entitled to gather the fruits and revenues of half the earldom of Mar during that time, offering an account once Kildrummy was delivered to the king at the end of the minority. In return, Erskine was required to deliver the royal castle of Dumbarton to the crown.[77] However, on 22 August, Erskine produced the royal letter of 10 August in Aberdeen, ordering Alexander Seton lord Gordon to deliver Kildrummy to Erskine according to the decision of the general council held at Stirling on 2 August, indicating that Seton had not complied.[78] The terms of this indenture were not in accordance with the ambitions of either Crichton or his son-in-law, Seton, and it may reveal something of the power struggle that was taking place within the council. Chief witness was John Cameron, bishop of Glasgow, a man who was increasingly hostile towards James Douglas earl of Avandale, particularly in the light of opposing views regarding the papal schism. Although there is an impressive list of witnesses to the indenture, neither Crichton nor Douglas appears, which may indicate that it was Cameron’s hand directing the initiative and that Crichton’s personal interests were not sufficient to prevent this compromise with Erskine. However, Roland Tanner has argued that those men whose names appear may be shown to be predominantly sympathetic towards Crichton’s chancellorship and to have worked with him, therefore the indenture may have been a tactic to placate Erskine for the time being, in accordance with the legislation regarding revocation and alienation of crown possessions, in the expectation that a decision could be deferred until the end of the king’s minority.[79]

Even if the indenture implied a strong measure of consensus in government, it is clear that the position of William 6th earl of Douglas was representing an increasing threat to certain members of the royal council. One of the principal accusations made against William by later writers seeking to explain the events of November 1440 was that the young earl behaved in a manner that was haughty and ambitious, and that he was at the root of the breakdown of law and order in the country.[80] Although much of this interpretation was designed to draw a moral message about over-mighty magnates, it may be that his growing assertion of independence was a matter of considerable alarm for the core members of the royal council, particularly Crichton, Livingston and Avandale. The business of the council proceeded with the issuing of charters, three of which concerned the Ogilvies (Walter Ogilvy of Deskford and John Ogilvy of Lintrathen) and one, dated 20 September, confirming a grant made to James Douglas earl of Avandale. Witnesses to these charters included William lord Crichton, William earl of Orkney, Alexander Livingston of Callendar and the two Ogilvies, and the charters issued on 12 November include James Edmonston, whose family had long-standing connections to the earls of Douglas.[81] There was little to suggest that the arrival in Edinburgh, presumably at Crichton’s invitation, of William 6th earl of Douglas, his brother David and their adherent, Malcolm Fleming of Biggar, would have occasioned any misgivings on their part. No precise date is given for Douglas’s visit to Edinburgh, but the charters issued on 12 November may suggest a gathering of the council, however sparsely attended, to which Douglas was summoned. The Auchinleck Chronicle provides only the laconic entry:

Item IM iiijC xl Erll willam of douglas archebaldis son beand than xviij yeris of age & his brother dauid douglas was put to deid at Edinburgh and malcome W emyng of beggar was put to deid in that samyn place within thre days efter.[82]

It is reasonable to suppose that this was a deliberate plan to dispose of William and David Douglas, therefore there would have been an attempt to provide at least a veneer of process and justification. Forfeiture and execution were the preserve of parliament, but it appears as if some form of trial was held upon the brothers in the presence of the ten-year-old king and, being found guilty, they were taken out to the castle hill and beheaded. Compared with the killing of the 8th earl of Douglas in 1452, the death of the 6th earl appears to have passed with barely a ripple in the extant records, and it is not until the following century that writers provided elaborate and detailed reconstructions of what they believed to have taken place, including the presentation of a black bull’s head before the Douglases as they sat at table; a symbol of condemnation and death. From this embellishment, the events of November 1440 became known as the ‘Black Dinner’, and led to the composition of a rhyme recorded by David Hume of Godscroft:

Edinburgh castle, toun and tour

God grant you sink for sin

And that e’en for the Black Dinner

Earl Douglas got therein.[83]

However, a contemporary Burgundian source states that the ‘great men’ of the king’s council acted in response to the threat posed to the king’s rights by the actions of Douglas, and the line taken subsequently was that the victims had brought about their own demise.[84] Although Crichton and Livingston are portrayed by later writers as the architects of the Black Dinner in their greedy and self-serving pursuit of power, it is simply stretching the bounds of credulity to imagine that they would have done this as a private initiative. Even allowing for the fact that the young earl may have been W exing his political muscles too strongly and arbitrarily, it cannot gloss over the fact that the principal beneficiary of his death was his great-uncle, James earl of Avandale.

Only a full parliament had the authority to pass acts of forfeiture, but Malcolm Fleming, who had accompanied the Douglas brothers to Edinburgh, appears to have been forfeited and executed within three days of the Douglas execution and any impression that the events of November 1440 were carried out in a context of dubious and questionable legality is borne out in the furious response of Fleming’s son, Robert, claiming that the judgement given against his father had been ‘fals and rotten’.[85] Misgivings concerning the 6th earl’s abuse of his position does not excuse or explain the execution of his brother, David, and only a dynastic motive makes sense of this. With both sons of Archibald 5th earl of Douglas dead, leaving only a younger sister, Margaret, the entailed Black Douglas estates passed to Avandale as their nearest male relative. This occurred because the boys had not had sentence of forfeiture passed upon them (which would have brought their possessions into the hands of the crown), and their great-uncle became James 7th earl of Douglas, thus shifting the line of Black Douglas inheritance from one branch of the family to another; an action that was to have significant ramifications over the following decade.[86]

NOTES

1.

Liber Pluscardensis, ii, book 11, chap. 10, 291. This echoes the sentiments expressed in the bible in the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 10, verse 16: ‘Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child and thy princes eat in the morning.’ However, apposite though this quote is for the minority of James II, it prefaces a poem, ‘The Harp’, which almost certainly refers to the reign of James III. See below, pages 222–4.

2.

RPS to 1707, K. M. Brown et al. (eds) (St Andrews, 2007-14), http://www.rps.ac.uk/ - searchable database with full records, translation and notes. This includes my own interpretation in C. McGladdery, James II (Edinburgh, 1990).

3.

F. Downie, She is but a Woman: Queenship in Scotland 1424-1463 (Edinburgh, 2006), 100-1; M. H. Brown, ‘“(at Old Serpent and Ancient of Evil Days”: Walter, Earl of Atholl and the Death of James I’, Scottish Historical Review, 71 (1992), 40-1.

4.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 78-9; Brown, James I, 199. Brown states that the meeting occurred in June, although the records state that the general council was held c.6 May. RPS Jam II/1; 1437/5/1. The appointment at the beginning of May would support Tanner’s assertion that the elevation of James Douglas of Balvenie to the earldom of Avandale occurred by 10 May (citing ‘Argyll Transcripts’, II (i), 245) as a result of his nephew’s newly acquired authority as lieutenant-general.

5.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 78-9.

6.

Brown, James I, 133.

7.

A payment of £60 was made to Douglas in the account covering the period 18 July 1437 to 16 July 1438 as part of his fee in the office of king’s lieutenant, ER, v, 12.

8.

Registrum Magni Sigilli Regum Scottorum [hereafter, RMS], ed. J. M. omson and J. B. Paul (Edinburgh, 1882-1914), ii, 201 (misdated as 1439); William Fraser, The Melvilles Earls of Melville and the Leslies Earls of Leven (Edinburgh, 1890), iii, 31.

9.

Brown, James I, 79-80; Brown, The Black Douglases, 238.

10.

Crichton lies approximately two miles south-west of the village of Pathhead, roughly ten miles south of Edinburgh. For further details concerning Crichton castle, see C. Tabraham, Crichton Castle (HMSO, 1996).

11.

Alan R. Borthwick, ‘Crichton, William, of that ilk, A rst Lord Crichton (d. 1453)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford, 2004).

12.

Brown, James I, 237.

13.

Many of these possessions had come into Douglas hands through the marriage in 1362 of Archibald 3rd earl of Douglas to Joanna Moray. James Douglas was in his A fties when he married Beatrice. Brown, The Black Douglases, 234-5. See below, page 157.

14.

Brown, The Black Douglases, 234. e site of Abercorn castle is now within the estate of Hopetoun House, and is discernible only as a low, roughly circular mound at the western end of the gardens.

15.

Brown, The Black Douglases, 236-7.

16.

Fraser, William, The Douglas Book, 4 vols (Edinburgh, 1885), ii, 301; Brown, The Black Douglases, 250.

17.

RPS, 1439/9/1; Chron. Auchinleck, f. 121r. Tanner’s interpretation that the chronicle extract refers to 1437 rather than 1439 (as stated in McGladdery, James II, 18-19) is argued convincingly. Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 80.

18.

RPS, JamII/1. e general council to which this particular act belongs is not given, and it had been placed with the acts of the 1438 parliament (APS, ii, 31). ere has been some debate concerning the correct dating, and Tanner argues that it should be placed with the business of the general council held in Edinburgh on 20 March 1438 (see Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 86-7), but the current version of the parliamentary records compiled after careful evaluation of all the manuscript versions, places this act in 1437, probably at the general council held in May.

19.

Extracts from the Council Register of the Burgh of Aberdeen, 1398-1570 [hereafter, Abdn. Counc.], ed. J Stuart (Spalding Club, 1844), iv, 97.

20.

Boardman, Early Stewart Kings, 223-5.

21.

Fraser, The Melvilles Earls of Melville and the Leslies Earls of Leven [Melvilles] (Edinburgh, 1890), 3 vols, iii, 31; Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 81.

22.

W. Fraser, The Stirlings of Keir (Edinburgh, 1858), 214.

23.

Chron. Auchinleck, f.109r.

24.

Ibid,, f.109v.

25.

National Records and Archives of Scotland [hereafter, NRAS], GD112/3/2.

26.

NRAS, GD112/3/1.

27.

S. I. Boardman, The Campbells, 1250-1513 (Edinburgh, 2006), 145, 147-8. Colin Campbell of Glenorchy married A ve times: Mariota of Albany, Janet Borthwick, Janet Stewart of Lorne, Margaret ‘Robertson’ and Margaret Stirling of Keir. Ibid., xxv, table 4.

28.

M. H. Brown, ‘Earldom and Kindred: the Lennox and its Earls, 1200-1458’, in S. Boardman and A. Ross (eds), The Exercise of Power in Medieval Scotland, c.1200-1500 (Dublin, 2003), 221-4.

29.

‘quarum terrarum firmas antiqua comitissa de Lennax percepit, et de eisdem, et non rex, gloriatur, super quo consulendus est rex’. ER, vi, 165.

30.

See below, pages 28, 44, 49–51, 66–7, 94.

31.

Henry VI had succeeded his father, Henry V, in 1422, when he was only nine months old. His lengthy minority coincided with the reign of James I, following the release of the Scottish king from English captivity in 1424, and the major preoccupation with France following Henry’s assumption of personal rule was a factor in seeking to maintain a truce in Anglo-Scottish relations.

32.

George Falou, an Edinburgh burgess, was given a safe-conduct on 28 March 1438 to travel to the Low Countries to inform Scots residents there of the terms of the truce. Rotuli Scotiae in Turri Londinensi et in Domo Capitulari Westmonasteriensi Asservati [hereafter, Rot. Scot.], ed. D. Macpherson (London, 1814-19), ii, 302, 304, 306, 307, 310; Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland preserved in Her Majesty’s Public Record Office [hereafter, CDS], 4 vols, ed. J. Bain (Edinburgh, 1881-8), iv, 1103.

33.

RPS, 1438/11/1.

34.

RPS, 1438/11/1.

35.

RPS, 1438/12/1.

36.

Fraser, Douglas, iii, no. 403.

37.

Brown, The Black Douglases, 249.

38.

Ibid., 248-9.

39.

RPS, 1439/3/2. These meetings were stipulated to be held ‘on the morning after the Exaltation of the Holy Cross [14 September 1439] next to come, and the other to begin upon the first Monday of Lent [14 February 1440] next following thereafter’.

40.

RPS, 1439/3/3.

41.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 109v. There were sporadic outbreaks of plague during this period and although not on the scale of the infamous ‘Black Death’ of the mid-fourteenth century, people remained vulnerable to its effects. For Scotland, brief chronicle references may be the only record of such outbreaks.

42..

E. W. M. Balfour-Melville, James I, King of Scots (London, 1936), 294. Malise Graham was to be the longest serving hostage for the king’s ransom and was not released to return to Scotland until 1453.

43.

A. Grant, ‘Earls and Earldoms in Late Medieval Scotland, c.1310-1460’, in J. Bossy and P. Jupp (eds), Essays presented to Michael Roberts (Belfast, 1976), 24-40.

44.

A. Grant, ‘The Development of the Scottish Peerage’, SHR, lvii (1978), 1-27.

45.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 82-5.

46.

Ibid., 84.

47.

Ibid., 90; M. Brown,‘Public Authority and Factional conflict: Crown, Parliament and Polity, 1424-1455’, in K. M. Brown and R. J. Tanner (eds), The History of the Scottish Parliament, Parliament and Politics in Scotland, 1235-1560 (Edinburgh, 2004), i, 130.

48.

Brown, The Black Douglases, 257.

49.

John Lesley, The History of Scotland from the Death of King James I in the Year 1436 to the Year 1561 (Bannatyne Club, 1830), 13; G. Buchanan, The History of Scotland [Rerum Scoticarum Historia], trans. J. Aikman (Glasgow, 1827), ii, book 11, ch. 3, f. 4.

50.

RMS, ii, 202, 203.

51.

Brown, The Black Douglases, 257; N. Macdougall, ‘Bishop James Kennedy of St Andrews: A Reassessment of his Political Career’, in N. Macdougall (ed.), Church, Politics and Society: Scotland 1408-1929 (Edinburgh, 1983), 9.

52.

Chron. Auchinleck, f.109r.

53.

CDS, iv, 943.

54.

Balfour-Melville, James I, 293.

55.

Historical Manuscripts Commission: Reports of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts [hereafter, HMC] (London, 1870-), vii; Brown, The Black Douglases, 237; Brown, James I, 132; ER, iv, 609, 610, 658; D. Pringle, Linlithgow Palace (Edinburgh, 1996), 6-7.

56.

ER, v, 84.

57.

RPS, 1439/9/1; NRAS, SP13/16.

58.

Ibid.

59.

RMS, ii, 202. 201 is dated 3 May and records John Cameron, bishop of Glasgow as chancellor, but it has been misdated and actually belongs to 1437, not 1439.

60.

RPS, 1439/9/1.

61.

Brown, The Black Douglases, 258.

62.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 92.

63.

NRAS GD20/1/300 and 301.

64.

Kennedy was actually at the papal court in Florence at the time of Wardlaw’s death, but he had the strong support of Pope Eugenius IV, who saw Kennedy as a valuable ally against the schismatic conciliarist pope, Felix V and his supporters in Scotland.

65.

RMS, ii, 213, 223, 224, 226, 233-8.

66.

Records are not comprehensive for this period, but they show the king in Edinburgh fairly frequently from February to May 1440. RMS, ii, 212 (Crichton), 213-41 (Edinburgh); NRAS GD48/30/3 and 4.

67.

RPS, 1440/2/1; Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 94.

68.

Fraser, Douglas, iii, 303; Brown, The Black Douglases, 259. Thomas Cranston of that Ilk was the father of William Cranston, who had sought absolution in the ‘Appoyntement’ of 1439 for his part in the imprisonment of the queen, and James Auchinleck was consistently Avandale’s man.

69.

Fleming’s father had been killed by James Douglas of Balvenie in 1406, and Cameron’s experience and association with the 6th earl’s grandfather may have made him an attractive ally.

70.

RPS, 1440/8/2-4.

71.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 95.

72.

The Erskine claim to Mar had been pursued by Thomas Erskine (d. 1403/4) by right of his marriage to Janet Barclay (neé Keith; d. c.1413), stated to have been a great-granddaughter of Gartnait earl of Mar (d. before 1305). The exact lineage linking Janet to Gartnait is now obscure, but it seems to have rested on her descent from Ellen, daughter of Earl Gartnait, who was succeeded by his son, Donald earl of Mar (killed at the battle of Dupplin in 1332). Ellen married John Menteith (d. 1354), by whom she had a daughter, Christian, who married Sir Edward Keith of Sinton, by whom she is said to have had a daughter, Janet. Christian married subsequently Sir Robert Erskine; a second marriage for both parties. Her daughter, Janet, married Sir David Barclay of Brechin and, as her second husband, Sir Thomas Erskine; her step-brother from her mother’s second marriage, although no blood relation. There are some grey areas in this lineage, which is based on a pedigree compiled in 1709 by George Erskine, bailie of Alloa. Sir Thomas died before 18 May 1404 and was succeeded by his son Robert, later first lord Erskine, who continued to pursue his claim, through his mother Janet, to the earldom of Mar. Testimony given in 1447 confirmed that Janet was the daughter of Sir Edward Keith, but does not name her mother. NRAS, GD124/5/2; Illustrations of the Topography and Antiquities of the Shires of Aberdeen and Banff [hereafter, AB Ill.] (Spalding Club, 1847-68), iv, 197-8.

73.

NRAS, GD124/1/123. This gave the life-rent of Mar to Alexander Stewart, who had married Isabella, countess of Mar, but allowed succession to pass to Janet’s heirs should there be a failure of Isabella and Stewart’s line, which happened in 1435.

74.

Alexander Forbes and Robert Erskine entered into an indenture on 17 November 1435, the terms of which were that Forbes offered to assist Erskine in recovering the earldom of Mar and lordship of Garioch in return for 100 merks or lands in Mar, subject to Erskine’s success. NRAS, GD124/1/137; AB Ill., iv, 188-9. A retour was a return to the royal chancery of a jury’s findings concerning rights of inheritance. According to Sir Robert Douglas, Erskine was served heir to the other half of the earldom of Mar in October 1438, and this is repeated in the arguments presented in the sixteenth century regarding Erskine’s rights to Kildrummy. The Miscellany of the Spalding Club, (Spalding Club, Aberdeen, 1841-52), v, 275. Such an assertion may be a misreading of the ensuing precepts of infeftment for the half of the earldom of Mar awarded in April, as although Erskine is styled earl of Mar, there is no further indication that this denoted possession of all the lands of the earldom.

75.

S. I. Boardman, ‘Erskine Family (per. c.1350-c.1450)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

76.

M. H. Brown, ‘Regional Lordship in North-East Scotland: The Badenoch Stewarts. II: Alexander Stewart Earl of Mar’, Northern Scotland, 16 (1996), 34.

77.

RPS, 1440/8/5; AB Ill., iv, 192; NRAS GD124/1/147.

78.

NRAS GD124/1/148.

79.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 97-8.

80.

Lesley, History, 15; Buchanan, History, f. 15; Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, The Historie and Cronicles of Scotland, ed. A. J. G. Mackay (Scottish Text Society, 1899-1911), i, 40; Chalmers of Ormond, Ane Cronikill of the Kingis of Scotland (Maitland Club, 1830).

81.

RMS, ii, 245-51.

82.

Chron. Auchinleck, f.121r-121v.

83.

David Hume of Godscroft, The History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus (Edinburgh, 1644), 158.

84.

Waurin, Jean de, Chroniques et Anchiennes Istoires de la Grant Bretagne (London, 1864-91). v, 213-14; Buchanan, History, ii, 123; Lesley, History, 13. Such an argument was not unlike the defence offered by James II in 1452 after he had killed William 8th earl of Douglas. See below, pages 133–4.

85.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 98; Charter Chest of the Earldom of Wigtown, 1214-1681, ed. F. J. Grant (Scottish Record Society, 1910), nos 23-5, 29; P. F. Tytler, The History of Scotland from the Accession of Alexander III to the Union (Edinburgh, 1882), ii, 382-3. Although writing his history of Scotland in the nineteenth century, Tytler used primary sources which have since been lost, but that he appears to have recorded faithfully.

86.

An entail of 1342 established that the Douglas inheritance should pass through the male line. Brown, The Black Douglases, 41.

CHAPTER 3

The Principle of Consent (1440-1445)

I shall be loyal to God and holy church, and to the three estates of my realm.

(Oath taken by the king in parliament, June 1445).[1]

Although the violent transfer in 1440 of the Douglas earldom from William 6th earl of Douglas to his great-uncle seemed a significant gain for that branch of the family, it brought its own problems for the ageing and corpulent 7th earl, known as James ‘the Gross’.[2] The Black Douglas affinity was widespread and complex in terms of regional and personal loyalties, and it would be misleading to see the inheritance as passing seamlessly to the new incumbent. Although Archibald 4th earl of Douglas’s widow, Margaret, continued to use the title duchess of Touraine, the death of her grandson in 1440 ended the Douglas claim to the dukedom and other French possessions bestowed on the 4th earl by Charles VII.[3] The focus of Black Douglas lordship had been the southwest of Scotland and had emerged in the context of strong territorial and administrative interests along the Anglo-Scottish border. This regional dimension to Douglas lordship developed further during periods of weak or absent royal leadership and was not bound up intrinsically with close royal service as was the case with James Douglas of Balvenie’s career. Certainly, Black Douglas interests and acquisitions had expanded beyond the south-west heartland, particularly with the marriage of Archibald 4th earl of Douglas to Joanna Murray, heiress to the significant Murray inheritance, which included Bothwell in Lanarkshire. However, although he had received a considerable portion of his mother’s lands, the focus of the new 7th earl’s lordship was West Lothian. James the Gross succeeded to Douglasdale, Lauderdale, Eskdale and the Forest, but Annandale had lapsed to the crown in the absence of direct heirs, although the 6th earl’s young widow, Janet Lindsay, pressed a claim to at least a portion of his inheritance.[4] Euphemia Graham, widow of Archibald 5th earl of Douglas and mother of the executed Douglas boys, was in possession of a terce including Bothwell in Lanarkshire, but she was persuaded to exchange this for the baronies of Carmunnock and Drumsegard in Clydesdale, probably at the time of her remarriage to James Hamilton of Cadzow. This marriage received papal dispensation on 26 February 1441 and the petition states that they ‘desire to be united in matrimony at the common will and consent of their kinsmen and friends and also for the sake of peace and concord among their subjects’. The implication is that marriage between Hamilton, a principal supporter and adherent of the 7th earl’s family, and the mother of the 6th earl, from whose line the Douglas earldom had been snatched, was to be promoted as serving to heal discord and enmity.[5] The unentailed lordship of Galloway and Wigtown passed to the surviving sister of the 6th earl, Margaret Douglas, styled ‘fair maid of Galloway’ in later sources, and this element of the Black Douglas inheritance was not beyond recovery if the new earl could engineer a marriage between Margaret and his eldest son, William; duly accomplished and granted papal dispensation in 1444.[6]

However, if James Douglas was the principal beneficiary of the execution of his great-nephews, it is clear that this had not been achieved without a measure of compromise and expectation of benefit to other members of the council. William Sinclair, earl of Orkney had been a consistent presence at court during this period, and was linked very closely to the Black Douglases through marriage. His wife was Elizabeth Douglas (sister of the 5th earl), and his sister, Beatrice, was married to James 7th earl of Douglas. During the period when his brother-in-law was lieutenant-general, there had been an angry exchange between Douglas and Orkney’s mother, Egidia, concerning her rights in the lordship of Nithsdale. By offering support to his other brother-in-law, James Douglas, the Sinclairs may have hoped to see off further interference, but the new Douglas earl’s determination to pull Galloway firmly back within his control must have been viewed with dismay by the Sinclairs and, increasingly, the Crichtons. William lord Crichton would have hoped to increase his family’s influence in the south-west, where the Crichtons of Sanquhar held tenancies in Annandale and Nithsdale. William had made an agreement with his cousin, Robert Crichton of Sanquhar in April 1440, whereby each would recognise the other as heir to their estates should they fail to be survived by their own sons, and William Crichton’s acquisition of lands in Dumfriesshire in February indicates that he was looking to expand Crichton influence beyond his Lothian possessions. His position as chancellor gave him considerable authority, increasing the attraction of ties of personal lordship, and it was possibly with this in view that Herbert Maxwell, a leading tenant of the earls of Douglas in the south-west, came to Edinburgh in August 1440 and again in January 1441, perhaps seeking assurances from Crichton and the royal council concerning his position regarding the exercise of Douglas lordship in the period surrounding the Black Dinner.[7]

The steady accumulation of Crichton influence extended to the Douglases of Dalkeith, and the death of James lord of Dalkeith, which probably occurred late in 1440, presented an opportunity for the Crichtons to consolidate that influence. The chancellor’s cousin, George Crichton of Blackness, had married Dalkeith’s widow, Janet Borthwick, by the spring of 1441 and a declaration followed on 22 May stating that her son, Sir James Douglas of Dalkeith, was incapable of discharging his duties due to mental incapacity. This must have raised George Crichton’s hopes that he would be able to exploit his new wife’s tenure of the barony of Morton, and facilitate the expansion of Crichton interests in the south-west, where the Douglases of Dalkeith held several estates. James Gifford of sheriffhall, who was married to Dalkeith’s sister, was given custody of his brother-in-law, although this was challenged by Dalkeith’s younger brother, Henry.[8] Henry Douglas was lord of Borgue in Galloway, and was married to Margaret, daughter of James 7th earl of Douglas, therefore the vested interests of those who had engineered the Black Dinner were increasingly at odds, particularly as James earl of Douglas chose, rather provocatively, to style himself ‘lord Dalkeith’ on 5 June.[9]

Another point of friction was the earldom of Moray. James Dunbar, earl of Moray, died in 1430 leaving two heiresses, Janet and Elizabeth, whose marriages, to James Crichton and Archibald Douglas respectively, probably occurred in 1442. Michael Brown has speculated that plans to secure these marriage alliances may have been laid at a meeting held in Elgin on 31 August 1440 on which date a charter was issued by Alexander Seton, lord of Gordon, witnessed by James earl of Avandale, George Crichton, George Haliburton and John and Alexander Dunbar. Tensions over the earldom of Mar, and Gordon interests there, formed the backdrop to this visit and Gordon’s marriage to Crichton’s daughter increased the chancellor’s interests in the north.[10] James Crichton was the eldest son of the chancellor, and his marriage to the elder heiress of Moray may have raised hopes of securing the earldom itself. He certainly received the barony of Frendraught in Aberdeenshire, while Archibald Douglas, second son of James earl of Douglas, received the lands of Kintore on his marriage to the younger heiress, Elizabeth, but as relations between Douglas and the Crichtons deteriorated, these marriages became a serious source of tension.

The first recorded meeting of the three estates in general council following the Black Dinner was held on 3 April 1441, although only one piece of business survives in the form of a charter to Sir Alexander Seton of Gordon and his wife. This followed on Gordon’s resignation of his lands into the king’s hands ‘at Edinburgh in our general council in the presence of many witnesses’.[11] Nothing exists in the official records concerning reactions to the Black Dinner, and it would appear that the general council had been called to sanction the expenses required for foreign diplomacy, as an embassy was despatched to Brittany in the summer with a remit to negotiate a marriage for James II’s second sister, Isabella, with the son of John duke of Brittany who, according to a Breton source, had sent ambassadors to Scotland to suggest his eldest son, Francis count of Montfort, as a husband for Isabella. The general council was certainly very well attended and the witness list included Walter Bower, abbot of Inchcolm, who was engaged around this time in writing his great work, the Scotichronicon, which is so frustratingly silent on the events of James II’s minority.

Apart from diplomatic business, tension was apparent during this period in the matter of ecclesiastical politics, with John Cameron, bishop of Glasgow drawing some serious fire. Having reappeared as a witness in official records for the first half of 1440, he disappeared thereafter until 1444, and although it is possible that he was hostile to the Black Dinner and its outcome, having been associated with the family of the lieutenant-general, it is more likely that any antipathy he bore towards the new 7th earl of Douglas was based upon their contrasting attitudes to papal politics. A petition had been sent in the name of James II to Pope Eugenius IV, on 3 March 1441, in which Cameron was attacked in no uncertain terms:

John bishop of Glasgow, a son of perdition [. . .] is not immune from the damnable deeds of certain other traitors, his associates and adherents, even after dissensions, seditions, schisms, rebellions, sieges of castles, homicides, wars, plundering of royal lands, and very many other hateful enormities formerly perpetrated by some traitorous magnates to the prejudice of the king, then in his tenderest age, and of the kingdom.[12]

The background to this vehement condemnation of Cameron was the factional dispute being waged within the papacy. Cameron’s political career had been bound up very closely with James I’s relationship with the papacy and his determination to extend secular control over the church in Scotland, particularly the restriction on clerics leaving the realm without securing permission from their bishop or the chancellor. A statute was passed to the effect that a cleric should show ‘good and honest cause for his passage, and make faith to him that he will do no barratry [. . .] And that this statute be not only extended to those who do barratry in times to come, but also to those now outwith the realm that are convicted of barratry’.[13] Barratry was the purchase of benefices, or pensions from benefices, at the papal curia, and the king’s objection to the practice rested on the fact that it took currency out of the realm and limited (at least theoretically) crown influence over a lucrative source of patronage. Matters came to a head when Cameron’s rival, William Croyser, archdeacon of Teviotdale, informed Pope Martin V that the Scottish legislation against barratry originated with Cameron, and tension over this matter continued after the death of Martin V in 1431 and the election of the new pope, Eugenius IV.

This dispute was played out against the wider backdrop of the so-called ‘Little Schism’, which reopened some of the wounds created by the earlier ‘Great Schism’. Briefly, this was the period between 1378 and 1417 when, following the death of Gregory XI and the election of a new pope, Urban VI, some of the cardinals disputed the choice and elected Clement VII as a rival in Avignon. In an effort to put an end to the schism, the Council of Pisa elected a third pope, Alexander V, in 1409, but the schism was not healed and Boniface IX succeeded Urban VI in Rome and was succeeded in turn by Innocent VII and Gregory XII, while Benedict XIII in Avignon succeeded Clement VII. Resolution came only with the deposition of the rival candidates by the Council of Constance in 1417 (Gregory XII resigned in 1415, but Benedict XIII refused) and the election of a single pope, Martin V. The schism had the effect of increasing secular patronage as European rulers divided their support along political lines, and although the authority of the papacy had been weakened considerably in that respect, the principle of conciliar authority had been enhanced.

The Council of Basle held its first full session on 14 November 1431 and although James I made no official overtures to the council until 1434, the Scots had unofficial representation in the person of Thomas Livingston, abbot of Dundrennan, an unwavering supporter of the conciliar movement.[14] On 8 February 1434, John Cameron, bishop of Glasgow was incorporated into the council, as was William Croyser who launched strong attacks on the ‘anti-papal’ legislation and its architects, Cameron and James I.[15] The dispute rumbled on with the barratry laws remaining unrepealed but largely unenforced, and the situation changed dramatically in 1437 with the assassination of the king and Cameron’s return to Scotland and his place on the royal council. He retained the post of chancellor in 1437, probably through the support of Archibald 5th earl of Douglas, whom Cameron had served as secretary in the early 1420s, but he may have been replaced by William Crichton even before the death of the lieutenant-general in 1439. During that year, problems emerged again within the papacy with a minor line of rival popes claiming apostolic succession from Benedict XIII. Although there was little significant political support for the rival pope, Felix V, there was some support in Scotland, particularly from James 7th earl of Douglas, in the ‘Little Schism’ that lasted until 1449.[16]

The trigger for the attack on Cameron may have been an edict issued in the name of the three estates in 1441 stating that ‘no Scot may go to Basle, adhere to the Council, nor obey it’. Although the original edict does not survive, its terms are described in a letter of response sent by the Council of Basle to the ‘prelates, barons and counsellors of James II.[17] The moving force behind this edict may have been James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews, who had re-emerged onto the political stage to take up Cameron’s pro-papal position. Both men would have incurred the hostility of the Scottish conciliarists, principally James 7th earl of Douglas. If the purpose of the petition of 3 March 1441 was designed to remove Cameron from both government and the bishopric of Glasgow, his enemies failed to achieve this, as he remained in possession until his death on 24 December 1446. In addition to Kennedy, John Winchester, bishop of Moray was a pro-papal presence in Chancellor Crichton’s government, as was William Turnbull who was to achieve a position of influence through both papal and royal service. Having studied at St Andrews and Louvain, Turnbull became papal chamberlain to Eugenius IV, and after returning to Scotland in the winter of 1439/40, he was promoted rapidly to the office of keeper of the privy seal; an office acquired by 6 August 1440.[18] As Roland Tanner has argued, lay patronage over church provision was nothing new or particularly unusual, but the combination of papal schism and the opportunities for local aggrandisement offered by a royal minority heightened the tension, particularly when more than one candidate was provided to the same benefice. For example, when the bishopric of Dunkeld became vacant after the translation of Kennedy to St Andrews, Eugenius IV, from the papal curia in Florence, provided Alexander Lauder, whereas his rival, Felix V, provided the staunch conciliarist, Thomas Livingston, who had been deprived of the abbacy of Dundrennan by Eugenius IV because of this stance. At Aberdeen, Eugenius provided Ingram Lindsay, while Felix backed the provision of James Douglas, third son of James the Gross, for whom high church office was clearly being sought at this stage.[19] This provision was made on 30 May 1441, although James Douglas would have been only sixteen at the time and therefore unable to take full charge of the bishopric, thus providing the opportunity for his father, acting as guardian, to gain possession of the temporalities.[20]

The repeated concerns recorded in contemporary documents reflect a widespread problem of ‘spoliation’ of church possessions that clearly the royal council was struggling to address.[21] Exertion of influence over religious houses and offices expanded the power and authority of local magnates, and one example of this may be seen in the strong determination of Alexander MacDonald, earl of Ross to enhance MacDonald gains in the mainland earldom of Ross by seeking to control the appointment to the bishopric of Ross. His preferred candidate was Andrew Munro, whose provision was backed by Felix V. However, when Eugenius IV provided a rival candidate, Thomas Tulloch, Ross responded with such hostility that Tulloch supplicated the pope on 22 November 1440 concerning payment of his debts and provision for his kinsmen if, on his return to Scotland from Rome, ‘he should expire or be impeded or if he should happen to die before obtaining the said bishopric or its fruits’.[22] Tulloch had reached Flanders in February 1441 and had returned to Scotland by 3 April when he witnessed a charter issued in a meeting of the general council, but that Ross’s position was not a principled stance in support of the Council is clear in that he switched sides between the rival popes on three occasions in order to secure Munro’s provision. The strength of such secular support is demonstrated by the need to offer a pension to Munro from the revenues of the see in a clear attempt to buy him off in the face of Tulloch’s ultimately successful provision.[23]

Such struggles over ecclesiastical patronage were not limited to the great magnates, as demonstrated by the complex and long-running dispute over the priory of Coldingham.[24] The position of Coldingham was a curious one, as the right of institution of its priors was vested in the bishop of St Andrews, possibly representing a survival from the period before the Anglo-Scottish border was defined in 1237. However, Coldingham had been granted to the Benedictine house of St Cuthbert of Durham by the agreement of the kings of Scots and ‘divers earls of Dunbar’ and, despite an attempt by Robert III to annex it to the monastery of St Margaret of Dunfermline, Durham’s rights were confirmed by royal charter in 1392 and an act of James I’s parliament in 1424.[25] Nevertheless, the wealth of the priory and the lucrative office of bailie (which conferred administrative control and temporal jurisdiction over the lands of Coldingham) proved an attractive lure for secular interference and the exploitation of historical rights during the 1440s. These were triggered by the death on 6 December 1441 of William Drax, prior of Coldingham, with John Wessington, prior of Durham speedily appointing a Durham monk, John Oll, to the office. However, Andrew of Kirkcaldy, abbot of Dunfermline, decided to assert Dunfermline’s claim to patronage and presented his own candidate, William de Boys. The weight of legal evidence attesting Durham’s rights over the office of prior of Coldingham seemed compelling, and James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews assessed the case and found in favour of Durham, prompting an appeal to the pope by the abbot of Dunfermline. John Oll was invested and a precept for his induction issued on 18 January 1442, although the dispute seems to have necessitated his appearance before the king’s council at Stirling on 11 June in order to present documents from Henry VI, Cardinal Beaufort (the queen’s uncle), Henry Percy, 3rd earl of Northumberland, warden of the East March, and Richard Neville, 5th earl of Salisbury and warden of the West March. A letter from Prior Wessington stated that ‘to despoil us of our right over the priory of Coldingham is expressly against the truces between the realms’, and an agreement to Oll’s presentation was reached.[26] Such a concession avoided debilitating conflict with England that would have been unlikely to succeed in the face of a stronger legal case from Durham, although the matter of the office of bailie was to prove a much thornier issue.

One of the reasons why Coldingham was the focus of so much contention was that the region had been deprived of its dominant magnate, George Dunbar, earl of March, after his forfeiture by James I in 1435.[27] The office of bailie of Coldingham and a tack of its lands of Aldcambus were coveted by Sir Alexander Hume of that Ilk, lord of Dunglass, the son of Alexander Hume, bailie of Coldingham and adherent of Archibald 4th earl of Douglas, who had died with his patron at Verneuil in 1424, but Sir David Hume of Wedderburn, brother of the former bailie, challenged his nephew for the right to the bailiary.[28] Both Humes held their lands from Sir Adam Hepburn of Hailes, steward of March, therefore initial support given by Hailes to David’s claims placed him in a strong position and he was granted the bailiary by Prior Wessington of Durham on 16 September 1441.[29] Protests from Alexander Hume led to a compromise solution being sought between the two claimants involving a division of the disputed possessions, but the appointment of John Oll to Coldingham reignited the dispute with both Humes appealing to Durham; after much deliberation, the decision of September 1441 was overturned when, at Durham on 14 May 1442, Alexander Hume received a patent of the bailiary of Coldingham for life. During that period, Hailes had switched his backing from David to Alexander, and the latter had also obtained letters of recommendation from James earl of Angus, Adam Hepburn of Hailes and James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews; all men with very close links to Crichton’s council. Alexander Hume received formal admission to the office at Stirling on 20 May at the request of the king, Bishop Kennedy and the earls of Angus, Crawford and Mar.[30]

This agreement has interest beyond the apparent resolution of the Coldingham dispute, as it is the only time in the official records that Robert lord Erskine is styled ‘Earl of Mar’. Erskine had been pressing his claims to Mar at every opportunity and, on 28 March 1441, a notarial instrument related that John Brown of Kennet, on behalf of Sir Robert Erskine, ‘called Earl of Mar’, sought from Sir William Crichton, chancellor, retour of the lands of Garioch. In an intriguingly terse insight into the strained relations between Erskine and Crichton at this point, Brown of Kennet notes that Erskine stated he had given the retour to the chancellor, but Crichton maintained he did not have it ‘nor did he know where it was’.[31] It is apparent that the Erskine family was endeavouring to prepare their ground, gathering all documentary proofs and records relating to the earldom of Mar and, on 19 July 1441, a crown charter of confirmation was issued to Alan Erskine of lands given by Thomas earl of Mar which, although undated, must have been issued in the early 1350s, as it was witnessed by John Rait, bishop of Aberdeen; an office held by him between 1351 and early 1355. Witnesses to the confirmation included William lord Crichton, Alexander Seton, lord Gordon and Alexander Livingston of Callendar, therefore Erskine family interests in the north-east were achieving some measure of official recognition at this stage. However, a firm ruling on the matter of the earldom of Mar continued to elude Erskine, and that he was still seeking a legal resolution is shown in the following year when a decree was obtained from the lords of the king’s council on 1 May 1442, for ‘Robert, Earl of Mar and Lord Erskine’, that William lord Crichton should grant letters of sasine in Erskine’s favour of the earldom [of Mar] and lands of Garioch, or return his retour endorsed.[32] This decree was witnessed by, among others, James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews, John Cameron, bishop of Glasgow, Michael Ochiltree, bishop of Dunblane and James Livingston, captain of Stirling. For Erskine, his designation as earl of Mar on 20 May 1442 must have appeared to be the culmination of his hopes and the subsequent designation of Robert’s heir, Thomas, as master of Mar in the audits of 1446 has been interpreted as tantamount to official recognition by the council of Erskine possession of Mar.[33] However, this did not denote a caving-in of council opposition to Erskine acquisition of the earldom of Mar, and was no more than Erskine manoeuvring within the restrictions specified by the indenture of 1440. Resolution of the dispute over the earldom of Mar would not be reached until 1457.

The decision concerning the bailiary of Coldingham did not bring to an end disputes over ecclesiastical possessions in the south-east, as the archdeaconry of Teviotdale provided another W ash-point which illustrates the extent to which James, 7th earl of Douglas, also known as James the Gross, was being excluded from and opposed by the royal council. William Croyser, an ally of Douglas, had been ousted from the archdeaconry of Teviotdale by Patrick Hume, kinsman of Alexander Hume of Dunglass, and Douglas used his position as justiciar south of the Forth to attack the council’s decision to appoint Alexander Hume to the office of bailie of Coldingham, stating that it had been made by only a ‘partiale consale’ which was consequently ‘of na strenth na vertu’.[34] James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews, had returned from Rome with authority to act on behalf of the pope against adherents of the Council of Basle, and tensions were running high when he convened a Provincial Church council in July 1442 in which the bishops provided by Felix V were deprived and excommunicated by Eugenius’s appointees; Kennedy of St Andrews, Lindsay of Aberdeen, Tulloch of Ross and Bruce of Dunkeld. James the Gross appeared at the church council in support of his kinsman, William Croyser, venting his displeasure in terms strong enough to cause ‘certain prelates [to W ee] by night’, suggesting that Kennedy, Lindsay, Tulloch and Bruce feared personal attack. Certainly, Douglas’s fury at finding himself opposed by Kennedy and his fellow bishops led him to despatch Croyser to the Council of Basle in order to secure the support of Felix V in having his son, James, translated from the bishopric of Aberdeen to St Andrews.[35] James the Gross had been unable to make effective his son’s provision to Aberdeen, therefore his chances of supplanting Kennedy in St Andrews were remote, but it is indicative of the deep hostility harboured by the 7th earl of Douglas against the leading members of the royal council. His alienation was the result of his passionate determination to exploit the opportunity offered by his acquisition of the earldom of Douglas to extend the interests of his branch of the Black Douglas family as far as possible, and to pursue his own agenda regardless of the claims and sensibilities of his erstwhile allies. The comparatively short but intense period of James the Gross’s personal aggrandisement came to an end on 10 March 1443, when he died at his principal castle, the West Lothian stronghold of Abercorn.[36]

The death of James the Gross ushered in a new phase in the minority of James II; one which would upset the relative balance achieved by the royal council under the chancellorship of William lord Crichton in the preceding few years. Roland Tanner has shown that, from the establishment of the minority government in 1437, there had been evident concern to pass statutes and conduct other government business with as broad a basis of support as was possible or practicable. To this end, meetings of the three estates in general council were comparatively frequent, and other decisions were seen to be made by at least an expanded royal council that could claim a representative mandate.[37] However, if James the Gross had been determined to extend the influence of his family following the transfer of Black Douglas authority in the wake of the Black Dinner, the succession of his son, William, as 8th earl of Douglas took this to a new level. The presentation of William lord Crichton and Sir Alexander Livingston of Callendar as the two opposing villains of James II’s minority has been shown to be an unsophisticated reading of events by the chroniclers of the sixteenth century, magnified in subsequent historiography. As chancellor, Crichton was undoubtedly in a position to exert the greatest political influence in collaboration with other leading members of the royal council and with the co-operation and acquiescence of the three estates in parliament and general council. Livingston’s position rested upon his keepership of the royal castle of Stirling and possession of the young king and his sisters, having been awarded custody in 1439 in the terms of the ‘appointment’. He had co-operated with Crichton and Douglas of Balvenie at the time of the Black Dinner, but would have posed little threat to Crichton up to the death of James the Gross in 1443. However, the political dynamic changed with the succession of William to the earldom of Douglas, as he sought a closer alliance with the Livingstons, recognising the advantage provided by physical possession of the king if he was to manoeuvre his opponents out of power. Alexander Livingston was very much the junior partner in this new axis, but his support offered Douglas the chance to represent his actions in 1443 as being carried out in the name of the king; actions which included an outright attack against the Crichtons.

On 16 August, Alexander Livingston swore on oath that he was not guilty of procuring the death of Malcolm Fleming of Biggar at the Black Dinner in 1440, thus shifting the blame to his confederate, Crichton, and neatly air-brushing out the role of James the Gross.[38] This was part of a process that prepared the ground for an attack on the Crichtons, as the Auchinleck Chronicle states that, on 22 August 1443, William earl of Douglas:

come to bernetoun [Barnton] in lothian with ane gret ost and with him the forsaid kingis counsall beand with him and his houshald and schortlie he askit the hous on the kingis behalf and schew the kingis lettres of commandement to ask It and suthlie Andrew Crichton than beand thair in captain answered syand that the hous was in the kingis hand and Nicol of Borthwick and James of Crichton was under burrowis to the shiref / Sir William of Crichton and thai put in be him on the kingis behalf and sid thai wald nocht gif him the hous bot gif it were of the sherrif’s bidding and then the erll remanit about the hous in proper person iiij days and iiij nights and on the fifth day he schew the kingis banere and than thai gaf it our condicionaly that thais suld haf fredome vi days to remuf thair gudis and thaimself and he kest it doune within iiij days efter.[39]

Barnton tower belonged to the chancellor’s cousin, George Crichton of Blackness, and Douglas was justifying his attack by having the twelve-year-old king accompany him to the siege along with his household. The chronicler states that the attack was made ‘at the command of James II’, with letters presented bearing the king’s seal, and the best response that could be made by the garrison was that their position was sanctioned by William Crichton as sheriff of Edinburgh, and he was himself acting on the king’s behalf, therefore they could not deliver the house into Douglas’s hands without express permission from Crichton. According to this account, there was an impasse of four days until Douglas had the bright idea of unfurling the king’s banner, carrying the royal device, which trumped Crichton’s authority and allowed the besieged to arrange a surrender on terms, permitting them to remove themselves and their possessions from the tower before Douglas had it ‘kest doune’. The usefulness to Douglas of Livingston as custodian of the king is thus demonstrated during this encounter, as it enabled him to back up his actions with the appearance of full royal authority, and this is the point at which the two royal castles of Stirling and Edinburgh may be seen, however briefly, as the headquarters of rival factions. The Douglas-Livingston alliance held the king and summoned a general council to convene at Stirling on 4 November, and contemporary comment is provided once again by the Auchinleck chronicler:

Thar was a counsall generale haldin at Stirling the ferd day of novembre in the hender end of the quhilk counsall thai blewe out on sir William of Crichton and sir George of Crichton and thar advertence and Incontinent efter the out blawing Sir George and Sir William tuke away Sir John Forrester’s gudis that is to say schepe and nolt and syne Sir George tuke the erll of Douglas’ horses and brynt his grangis of Abercorn and Strabrok and uther five placis and brynt the samyn tyme the black nestis [Blackness].[40]

Surviving records for this general council show that its business was concerned with the ongoing problem of attacks on church property and also a formal declaration of allegiance to Pope Eugenius IV. William earl of Douglas appears to have approached his own bid for power with a greater grasp of strategy and tactics than his father, and was quick to abandon the essentially lost cause of support for the Council of Basle, because this removed at a stroke the principal grounds for antipathy towards his family from leading pro-papalist bishops such as James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews, James Bruce, bishop of Dunkeld and John Winchester, bishop of Moray. The statutes declared that ‘firm and fast obedience be kept to our holy father Pope Eugenius [. . .] and that rigorous process be made against those who favour schism [. . .] And that no person, spiritual or temporal, change the said obedience until the king and the realm ordain and decree thereupon’.[41] Roland Tanner has detected Kennedy’s hand behind the strident terms of the statute against oppressors of the church, proposing the use of cursing and exclusion from government. It states that ‘no person who is a notorious robber, disturber or invader of holy church, nor anyone against whom process of cursing is led, be received in the king’s [castles or places] nor in his presence, nor admitted to council or parliament, heard or answered in law [. . .] but ever eschewed as cursed until the said person comes to amend and give compensation to the party, and obtains absolution in form of law’.[42] This was a strong statement of intent against despoilers of the church, but also useful for placing adversaries beyond access to royal government and, crucially, the presence of the king. This Douglas rapprochement with Rome may also have secured permission for William 8th earl of Douglas’s marriage to his second cousin, Margaret, which took place in 1443. Following on from the marriage of her mother, Euphemia Graham (widow of Archibald 5th earl of Douglas) to James Hamilton of Cadzow in 1441, the breaches in the Black Douglas affinity caused by the Black Dinner were being if not sealed, then at least plastered over.

Having dealt with this official business, the council ended with the ‘blowing out’, or condemning as rebels, of the Crichtons, who would have had better sense than to attend this council. William Crichton continued to use the title of chancellor, but although the first official document bearing the name of James Bruce, bishop of Dunkeld as chancellor was issued on 7 September 1444, he may have been serving in that office for some time before that date. Crichton retaliation appears to have been swift and aimed at Douglas and his allies. Sir John Forrester of Corstorphine had his lands targeted, probably because he took part in the assault on Barnton. The Forrester family had been burgesses in the fourteenth century, but Sir Adam Forrester (d. 1405) had moved into royal administration, rising to hold important household offices and serving as an ambassador. He made substantial loans to the crown and was rewarded with lands including Corstorphine, to the west of Edinburgh, which became the principal seat of the family where they built a castle and founded a collegiate church. Sir Adam Forrester was succeeded by his son, John, who became a staunch adherent of James I, serving as royal chamberlain and having his lands of Corstorphine erected into a barony in 1425. During his career in royal service after the return to Scotland of James I, Forrester would have been part of the Lothian affinity of James Douglas of Balvenie, and his transition to the minority council following the assassination of his royal patron in 1437 would have been part of that continuity in council personnel. This Douglas connection would explain his transfer of support to William 8th earl of Douglas, son of his erstwhile ally, and would indicate also why the Crichtons singled him out for retribution as, in addition to having estates within easy striking distance of Edinburgh, they may have regarded his attack on them as reneging on former friendship.[43] Douglas had his granges of Abercorn and Strathbrock burned, and although his father’s great castle of Abercorn would have been too strongly defended to invite attack, the reference to the burning of George Crichton’s castle at Blackness ‘the samyn tyme’ shows that hostility, including the seizure of livestock, was mutual.

The view of the minority of James II as being a time of violence and breakdown in law and order has some resonance in 1443-4. Documentary evidence becomes much more scarce, and that which does survive gives an impression of depredation and uncertainty. The dispute over Coldingham W ared up again, with Sir David Hume of Wedderburn, who had never accepted the appointment of his nephew as bailie, protesting to Prior Wessington of Durham that Alexander Hume was holding Coldingham as a fortalice from which he launched raids on the lands and possessions of David’s family and on Adam Hepburn of Hailes.[44] It took the mediation of James earl of Angus to produce a settlement on 16 January 1444, allowing David Hume to recover his stolen sheep and cattle and to receive compensation for his losses.[45] It may be tempting to read too much into documents such as the licence issued at Stirling on 27 September 1443 under James II’s signet to Alexander Ogilvy of Inverarity to fortify his house and strengthen it with an iron gate, but the timing for such home-improvements does allow speculation concerning perceptions of security in Angus.[46]

The Mar dispute W ared up once more, as Robert Erskine had continued to complain that the chancellor had failed to honour the terms of the 1440 indenture which allowed Erskine to hold Kildrummy castle until the matter could be resolved upon the king’s attainment of his majority, therefore he had taken the castle by force, provoking the royal council to seize Erskine’s castle of Alloa.[47] If Erskine was complaining that Crichton had failed to honour the indenture, it begs the question whether or not Erskine had fulfilled his obligation to surrender the royal castle of Dumbarton. Although the eleven-year-old king visited Dumbarton in 1441, during William Cranston’s time as comptroller, this does not mean that Erskine had surrendered keepership of the castle to representatives of the minority government, and the dispute that W ared up in 1443 suggests that he had not.[48] According to the account given in the Auchinleck Chronicle, Dumbarton castle was in the hands of Erskine’s man, Sir Robert Sempill, when it was captured by Patrick Galbraith in circumstances that appear to have involved a dispute and some subtle trickery. On 15 July, Patrick Galbraith was in the outer bailey of the castle, apparently having the keeping of that bailey with entry at the Wallace tower. He was in Sir Robert Erskine’s employment as part of the castle garrison but, for some reason not stated in this account, Erskine removed Galbraith from his post and ordered him to leave the castle. Having apparently done so, Galbraith returned the following day and was granted entry to remove the rest of his belongings, bringing with him only three or four ‘unharnest’ [unarmed] men. He proceeded to capture the porter and take the outer bailey by force, removing Sir Robert from the inner bailey and taking control of the whole castle. Interestingly, the chronicler implies that this did not happen immediately, but that Galbraith’s action in taking the outer bailey was commended, presumably by the burgesses of Dumbarton, who supplied him while he secured the rest of the castle, and Annie Dunlop suggests that Galbraith was an Erskine man who had been suborned by the minority government to ensure the delivery of Dumbarton castle.[49] Certainly, he was rewarded from crown revenues for his ‘services in the Castle of Dumbarton’, before handing it over to Robert Livingston of Callendar, but he received confirmation of a charter, dated 8 June 1444, from Robert ‘Earl of Mar and Lord of Erskine’, granting to him the lands of Garscadden in the sheriffdom of Dumbarton.[50] It may be that the events in Dumbarton in 1443 were indicative of no more than a personal feud between Galbraith and Sempill, rather than a government inspired plot, and it seems that any discord within the ranks of the Erskine affinity must have been resolved fairly swiftly.

Mar and Garioch continued to be the focus of considerable interest and, on 11 June 1444, an instrument dealing with the excambion of lands between Erskine and Lyle refers to the lands and earldom of Garioch; on 16 June, Robert is styled earl of Mar and Garioch, having agreed to pay 110 marks annually to William Sinclair, earl of Orkney. For his part, Orkney undertook to ‘complete all such agreements made between the said Earls and Robert Lyle of Duchal’.[51] Orkney’s interests in the area came through his wife, Elizabeth Douglas, who had secured rights to the profits of the lordship of Garioch, and it is clear that some serious negotiations between Erskine, Orkney and Lyle had resulted in a compromise deal that acknowledged Erskine as earl of Mar and Garioch.

However, notwithstanding all Erskine’s manoeuvrings, the political climate was shifting and changing in 1445, and this is demonstrated most clearly in the position of Alexander Forbes. The Forbes family had resided at Drumminor castle at least since the late thirteenth century, on a site known later as Castlehill. However, on 4 July 1440 there is the first recorded mention of a house being built at Drumminor (in Strathbogie, Aberdeenshire), in the form of a memorandum for payment of the builders, witnessed by Alan Erskine, described as ‘ane honorabil man’.[52] It had clearly been decided to relocate the castle to a site approximately one and a half miles south of the original, taking advantage of a more sheltered location, and the new Drumminor, also known as Castle Forbes, became the chief residence of the Forbes family; its form and design, although obscured by later building, doubtless serving to underline and enhance the Forbes’s advancing status.[53] Alexander’s personal interests in the neighbouring earldom of Mar are indicated in the terms of an indenture made at Perth on 26 March 1444 between Robert Lyle of Duchal and Sir Alexander Forbes, in which Lyle grants Forbes the lands of Strathdee and Kindrochit ‘with his part of the castale of the samyn’ in return for the lands of Cluny and Whitefield in Strathearn and Angus. The political uncertainties concerning Mar are alluded to in this document, acknowledging the problems that might be encountered in having the agreement executed. A proviso is made that the grant is conditional on Lyle recovering possession of his half of the lands of Mar, at which time he undertakes to issue a charter to Forbes. Also, the indenture provides for possible future reversal of fortune as, should the king ‘recover or take the forsaide landis of Mar fra the said Robert or fra his ayris’, Forbes would have regress and free entry to his lands in Strathearn.[54] Almost one year after sealing this indenture, Lyle issued a charter, dated 19 February 1445, in which he is designated ‘lord of Duchal and of half the lands of the earldom of Mar’; evidently having recently succeeded his father as lord of Duchal. With his succession appears to have come increased confidence concerning his claim to part of the Mar estates, as he duly granted to Sir Alexander Forbes of that Ilk his lands of Strathdee and Kindrochit [Braemar] and ‘his part of the castle thereof’, in the earldom of Mar, for the blench duty of one penny.[55]

The absence of a mention of Erskine in this arrangement may indicate that any commitment felt by Forbes and Lyle to the Erskine cause was weakening, possibly as the result of a concerted effort by the dominant faction on the king’s council, including the new earl of Huntly, to court their support. Lyle had married the eldest daughter of Andrew lord Gray, demonstrably involved with the royal council, therefore there may have been some inducement offered to Lyle to tread softly regarding an alliance with Erskine and support for his ambitions in Mar.[56] Lyle’s own ambitions seem to have included involvement in the struggle to secure control in the Firth of Clyde, as he is mentioned in the Auchinleck chronicler’s account of the killing of Sir James Stewart of Auchingowan at Drumglass near Dumbarton on 31 May 1445.[57] Stephen Boardman argues that the granting of the custodianship of Dumbarton to Robert Livingston, following the Sempill-Galbraith dispute, annoyed Duncan Campbell who viewed the expansion of Livingston authority, albeit as agents of the crown, with suspicion. Stewart of Auchingowan was a close relation of Campbell’s wife, and the implication that Lyle was involved increasingly with the Douglas-Livingston faction, which was putting pressure on the Campbells in the region, is borne out by Duncan Campbell’s loss of the keepership of the royal castle of Dunoon and his replacement by Robert Livingston of Callendar.[58]

Further indications of tension between Erskine and Forbes may be seen in an undated agreement made between Robert Erskine and his son Thomas (styled earl of Mar and master of Mar, respectively) and Sir Alexander Forbes in which the latter states that he has ‘submittyt hyme and his sonnys forsayde and his mene to my lord of Marr forsayde and to his consale apon al wnkindnes wrangkis and iniuris don be hym or his sonnys to my sayde lord of Marr’.[59] For their part, the Erskines undertook to take counsel concerning matters of injury against Forbes. The document appears in the archives with a suggested date range between 1435 and 1453, but it must have been made before Forbes became Lord Forbes in 1445, and certainly before Robert Erskine’s resignation in 1448. Forbes and Erskine were clearly on good terms up to 1440 and, given that the document is seeking a resolution of conflict or disagreement, it suggests the tensions of the early 1440s. The careful wording indicates that, although Forbes may have been hedging his bets in guarding against the possibility of Erskine securing his rights to the earldom of Mar in the future, the relationship was under pressure and required to be placed on this formal footing. In making independent agreements with Lyle, Forbes was also tacitly linking himself with the Douglas-Livingston faction at court, and must have reasoned that his regional ambitions could best be advanced by a W exible attitude to the interests of those in power.

A meeting of the general council was held at Stirling on 6 February 1444, surviving records for which show an impressive level of participation by burgh commissioners attending to business focused largely on burgh disputes.[60] However, Roland Tanner believes that this assembly served to underline further the Douglas grasp on political authority, to which end a further revocation was issued in the name of the king. This revocation is alluded to in a charter in favour of Sir Alexander Hume, dated 13 November 1444, which confirms his rights to the lands of Chirnside ‘notwithstanding the general revocation of all grants of lands, possessions and offices until our legitimate estate, made in our last General Council held at Stirling’.[61] The scope of this revocation was wider than that passed by Archibald 5th earl of Douglas in 1438 as it encompassed lands, possessions and offices, allowing Douglas to bestow patronage on his supporters in the form of royal offices, which was a powerful inducement to co-operation.[62]

The ousting of William Crichton from government caused him to throw in his lot with the queen’s faction, which included her second husband, James Stewart of Lorne, James Douglas, earl of Angus and James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews. The attitude of the queen’s party is shown in a letter of inhibition issued to the burgh of Aberdeen in November 1444, forbidding any payments to be made out of the revenues ‘to tha persownis that nw has the kyng in gouernance’.[63] On 20 November, the Aberdeen magistrates declared that they would await the decision of the three estates on the matter, indicative of both caution and a measure of uncertainty over who actually exercised authority at that time. A fierce power struggle was certainly taking place, with Methven castle (probably held on behalf of the queen) suffering a brief siege at which the king himself appeared on 29 November, offering the same symbolic justification for the besiegers’ actions as was used at Barnton.[64] Once Methven was surrendered, the castle was committed to the keepership of Alexander Livingston of Filde, second son of Sir Alexander Livingston of Callendar, in a further indication of the benefits to that family of alliance with the Douglases.[65]

Early in 1445, an attack was launched on the possessions of another member of the party opposed to the expansion of Douglas interests. Although William 8th earl of Douglas had repudiated his family’s allegiance to the Council of Basle in 1443 in a move that must have met with the approval of James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews, his subsequent actions had not endeared him to the prelate and there were other magnate interests that sought to reduce the position of Kennedy still further. The Auchinleck chronicler states that:

Item thair was ane richt gret herschipe maid in fyf be thir personis The erll of Crawford, James of Livingston, that tyme kepar to the king and captain of Stirling The Ogilvies all Robert reach, the laird of Kadzoch and uther sundry and this herschipe was maid on sanct androis land be the maist force and Incontinent efter bishop James Kennedy cursit solempnitlie with myter and staf buke and candill contynually a yere and Interdytit all the placis quhar thir personis ware [. . .][66]

Such an attack on Kennedy involving, among others, David Lindsay, earl of Crawford, James Livingston, custodian of the king, and James Hamilton lord of Cadzow (a close supporter of the Douglas earls), demonstrates the extent of the threat to those who opposed the new regime, and it is likely that the attack came after a royal charter dated 5 February was issued confirming the privileges of St Andrews University.[67] Certainly, the bishop’s solemn cursing of those involved echoed the spirit of the 1443 statute against any who attacked the church, but he was suffciently out of favour to face threat of deprivation in June.

The increasing security felt by the Black Douglas faction prompted the summoning of a parliament (the first to be held since 1437) to Perth in June 1445 which, according to the Auchinleck chronicler, ‘Remanit thar bot iii days and was continewit till Edinburgh becaus of the siege that was liand about the castell on the kingis behalf and Sir Wiliam of Crichton was in till it / and held it ix oulkis and than gaf It to the king throu trety [. . . ].’[68] The siege of Crichton in Edinburgh castle was a further escalation in a power struggle in which victory would establish official sanction for authority exercised in the name of the king for the remainder of his minority. However, before moving on to Edinburgh, the business transacted at Perth seems to have included the swearing of reciprocal oaths on the part of the king and the three estates; oaths that Roland Tanner regards as providing ‘a fascinating insight into the perceived powers of Parliament and Estates over the Crown’.[69] The essential ingredients of the oaths were loyalty, protection and counsel, and although there is nothing intrinsically new in this articulation of the relationship between the king and his estates, the oaths do spell out in significant detail the manner in which the three estates defined their role in government. The importance of articulating this relationship stemmed from the considerable uncertainty and disquiet caused by James I’s style of government and arbitrary decision-making, owing little to the ‘good counsel’ of the three estates. It should therefore be seen in the context of the preoccupation of the royal council, from the establishment of James II’s minority government in 1437, to operate in a manner that gave authority and protective oversight in matters of government to as wide and representative an assembly as possible. The statute of revocation designed to safeguard royal possessions during the minority was restated in 1445, but it is the king’s oath which provides the most compelling insight into what may be characterised, very loosely, as an articulation of contemporary political theory. The king swears to the three estates that he will: ‘keep, defend and govern each estate in their own freedom and privilege, with all my goodly power, according to the laws and customs of the realm; neither to add to nor diminish the law, custom and statutes of the realm without the consent of the three estates [. . .]’.[70] Although the political situation in the summer of 1445 may permit a more cynical interpretation of these oaths as underlining the authority being exercised by the Black Douglases at the heart of royal government, there is an evident continuation of the concerns expressed throughout the extant records of James II’s minority that royal rights be safeguarded. In addition to this, however, is the clear expectation that the relationship between the king and the three estates needed to be defined not only for a period of royal minority but also as the basis for that relationship once the king assumed personal authority; particularly the concern that the king would not ‘diminish’ laws, customs and statutes. Given that James II was nearly fifteen years old, the end of his minority was no distant prospect and this would have given added impetus to such statements of intent.

NOTES

1.

RPS 1445/3.

2.

When recording the earl’s death in 1443, the Auchinleck chronicler states that ‘thai said he had in him four stane of talch [tallow] and maire’. Chron. Auchinleck, f. 109v. Bishop Lesley also states that Douglas ‘was ane man of gryit stature and verrey fatt’. Lesley, History, 16.

3.

Brown, The Black Douglases, 220-1.

4.

She appears to have been stone-walled by James 7th earl of Douglas, but negotiations were reopened in 1445 as William 8th earl of Douglas sought allies. NRAS, Calendar of Charters, ii, 321.

5.

M. G. Kelley, ‘The Douglas Earls of Angus: A Study in the Social and Political Bases of Power of a Scottish Family from 1389 until 1557’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Edinburgh University, 1973), 28-32. Under Scots law, a terce was a third part of a husband’s possessions that could be claimed by his widow. Calendar of Scottish Supplications to Rome [hereafter CSSR] (1433-47), ed. A. I. Dunlop and D. MacLauchlan (Glasgow, 1983), iv, 745. James Hamilton of Cadzow had been knighted by 10 August 1440, as he appears as a witness to the indenture made in general council on that date as Sir James Hamilton.

6.

Fraser, Douglas, i, 421; CSSR, iv, 1045.

7.

RPS 1440/8/5; RMS, ii, 258.

8.

Registrum Honoris de Morton [hereafter Morton Register] (Bannatyne Club, 1837), ii, 219.

9.

Brown, The Black Douglases, 264-5; NRAS 1100, Roxburgh, 1094.

10.

Brown, The Black Douglases, 269; RMS, ii, 370.

11.

RPS 1441/4/1.

12.

CSSR, iv, no. 748.

13.

RPS 1428/3/10.

14.

J. H. Burns, ‘The Conciliarist Tradition in Scotland’, SHR, xlii, no. 134 (October 1963), 89-104; J. H. Burns, ‘Scottish Churchmen and the Council of Basle’, IR, xiii (1963), 1-53, 157-89.

15.

Ibid.

16.

McGladdery, James II, 26-7.

17.

R. K., Hannay, ‘A letter to Scotland from the Council of Basel’, SHR, xx (1923), 54

18.

RMS, ii, 242, 266-7; J. Durkan, ‘William Turnbull, Bishop of Glasgow, 1447-1454’, IR, 2 (Glasgow, 1951), 20-1.

19.

Dunlop, Kennedy, 41-2.

20.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 104. Temporalities were the properties or revenues of a religious body or individual.

21.

RPS 1438/12/1; 1440/8/2; 1443/11/2-3.

22.

CSSR, iv, 722.

23.

RPS 1441/4/1; Dunlop, Kennedy, 42; CPL, viii, 239; Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 102-3.

24.

For an analysis of the Coldingham dispute in the context of methods and practices in dispute resolution, see J. Armstrong, ‘“The Fyre of Ire Kyndild” in the Fifteenth Century Scottish Marches’, in S. A. (roop and P. R. Hyams (eds), Vengeance in the Middle Ages: Emotion, Religion and Feud (Farnham, 2006), 51-84.

25.

J. Raine, The History and Antiquities of North Durham [hereafter, North Durham] (London, 1852), app. 20, 92; The Correspondence, Inventories, Account Rolls and Law Proceedings of the Priory of Coldingham [hereafter, Cold. Corr.], ed. J. Raine (Surtees Society, London, 1841), 95-6, 130-2; RPS 1424/38.

26.

CPR, ix, 456-7, 298-9; Cold. Corr., 255, 125, 142-3.

27.

Brown, James I, 155-6.

28.

A tack is a lease of land. The designation ‘of that Ilk’ denoted the head of a family associated with a place/estates bearing that name.

29.

The grant was for forty years and was to include Aldcambus in exchange for some of Home’s lands. Dunlop, Kennedy, 51; Cold. Corr., 120-1, 147; Raine, North Durham, app. 99, no. 563; R. B. Dobson, ‘Wessington, John (c.1371–1451)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).

30.

Cold. Corr., 157, 123-4, 126; Raine, North Durham, app. 99, no. 567.

31.

NRAS, GD124/1/149.

32.

NRAS, GD124/1/150 and 151; Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae Medii Aevi Ad Annum 1638, ed. D. E. R. Watt and A. L. Murray (Edinburgh, 2003), 3. An instrument of sasine was a legal record of the transfer of ownership of land or property

33.

AB Ill., iv, 49; ER, v, 235; Dunlop, Kennedy, 183.

34.

Cold. Corr., 147-8.

35.

Copiale Prioratus Sancti Andree, ed. J. H. Baxter (St Andrews, 1930), 322-3; Dunlop, Kennedy, 44; Brown, The Black Douglases, 266.

36.

Chron. Auchinleck, f.109v.

37.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 106-7.

38.

Charter Chest of the Earldom of Wigtown, 29. After he had secured the earldom of Douglas, James sought to placate Robert, the heir of Malcolm Fleming of Biggar, by ensuring that he was able to succeed to his father’s forfeited lands, and arranged the marriage between Fleming and Douglas’s third daughter, Janet. Fraser, Douglas, i, 446.

39.

Chron. Auchinleck, ff. 110r-110v.

40.

Ibid., f. 110v.

41.

RPS 1443/11/3.

42.

RPS 1443/11/2; Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 109.

43.

Elizabeth Ewan, ‘Forrester family (per. c.1360–c.1450)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

44.

Cold. Corr., 147-8.

45.

Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts [hereafter HMC], Col Milne Home (London, 1902), 21.

46.

NRAS, GD 205, box 1, 2.

47.

(is comes from an account by Sir Robert Douglas of a document in the Mar charter chest, AB Ill., iv, 192, n.1.

48.

ER, v, 129.

49.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 110r; Patrick Galbraith’s name appears on an instrument, dated 13 January 1439, narrating that ‘on the sands on the north side of the castle of Dumbarton’, (omas Erskine promised good lordship to Galbraith, described as Erskine’s ‘kinsman and squire’. His name appears also as one of the counsellors appointed to arbitrate between Sir Robert Erskine, styled ‘lord of Mar’, and Sir Alexander Forbes, on an undated document, probably belonging to the early 1440s. NRAS, GD124/1/424; AB Ill., iv, 190; Dunlop, Kennedy, 56.

50.

ER, v, 145-6; NRAS, GD124/1/425. Robert Sempill witnessed an instrument, dated 11 June 1444, concerning an exchange of lands by Thomas Erskine, master of Mar, on behalf of Robert ‘earl of Mar and lord Erskine’ and Robert Lyle of Duchal, and both men appear together on a document of resignation of land by Robert ‘Earl of Mar and of Garioch, Lord of Erskine’, to Countess Isabella of Lennox on 10 December 1448. NRAS, GD124/1/155, 427.

51.

NRAS, GD 124/1/156. Garioch was a lordship, not an earldom, so this may be a mistaken transcription. Under Scots law, excambion refers to the exchange of lands.

52.

A. and H. Tayler (eds), The House of Forbes (Spalding Club, 1937), 37. This may be the same Alan Erskine seeking confirmation of a charter in 1441.

53.

H. Gordon-Slade, ‘Drumminor, formerly Castle Forbes: An Investigation into the Original Building of a Mid-Fifteenth Century Palace House’, PSAS, xcix (1966-7), 150.

54.

AB Ill., iv, 194-5.

55.

NRAS GD124/1/155, 156, 157. Forbes had already received half of the lordship of Strathdee from Erskine in 1439, therefore the grant from Lyle seems to have consolidated his position there for a token fee and a land excambion. Lyle’s claim to half of the lands of Mar seems a dramatic escalation from the ‘moiety’ being claimed by his father in 1404, and indicates a more aggressive attitude to Lyle claims of descent from a younger coheiress of Ellen of Mar.

56.

His elevation to the peerage as Robert lord Lyle came in 1452, probably as a result of loyalty and support offered to his father-in-law and the king during the crisis over the killing of the 8th earl of Douglas in February 1452.

57.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 110v. The Auchinleck chronicler also names Robert Boyd and Sir Alexander Cunningham as having been involved in the incident.

58.

Boardman, Campbells, 150.

59.

NRAS, GD52/1079. The men named as offering counsel are: John Cockburn, Thomas Wemyss, William Sempill, James Skene, William Murray, Alan Erskine, John Drummond and Patrick Galbraith. See also Wormald, Lords and Men, 95-6.

60.

RPS 1444/1-3.

61.

HMC, Twelfth Report (London, 1891), vii, 85. For a discussion of its purport and previous misinterpretation, see Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 110-12.

62.

Ibid.

63.

Abdn Counc., i, 399; Dunlop, Kennedy, 69.

64.

RMS, ii, 283.

65.

ER, v, 201, 219, 230.

66.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 111v.

67.

St Andrews University Evidence, 10. It is not entirely clear whether the attack came before or after the confirmation of this charter.

68.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 111r.

69.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 112-13; RPS 1445/1-6; J. Pinkerton, The History of Scotland from the Accession of the House of Stuart to that of Mary, with Appendices of Original Papers (London, 1797), i, 476-7; R. J. Lyall, ‘The Medieval Scottish Coronation Service: Some Seventeenth Century Evidence’, IR, xxviii (1977), 15. Although these oaths have been described as ‘coronation oaths’, they had nothing to do with the king’s coronation and this description comes from their appearance in a seventeenth-century collection of coronation oaths. I am indebted to Roland Tanner for pointing this out.

70.

RPS 1445/3.

CHAPTER 4

The Rise of the ‘New’ Black Douglases (1445-1449)

It is easy to form good laws: the difficulty lies in the execution. The chief felicity of a nation is to have few laws, and to be accustomed to obey them.[1]

When parliament reconvened in Edinburgh in June, it is clear that the bishops and abbots, sitting as the first estate in parliament, were determined to use the occasion of the first parliament since 1437 to underline once more their concerns regarding the violation of ecclesiastical rights and possessions. A transumpt was made on 28 June of two papal bulls (from 1375 and 1426 respectively) concerned with the protection of clerical property and the witnesses recorded on this transumpt show an impressive attendance including four bishops, nine abbots, eleven barons and six burgh commissioners.[2] Five days later, the witnesses on a charter recording the creation of the lordship of Hamilton on 3 July have only seven of the thirty witnesses to the transumpt in common, but there had been a subtle change in the designation of the ‘lords of our parliament’ from William lord of Somerville in June to William lord Somerville in July (likewise Herbert lord Maxwell and Alexander lord Montgomery). As discussed above, this was a refinement in the evolving process of defining a rank of the nobility with a status below that of earl with rights and obligations to attend and be consulted in assemblies of the three estates.[3] It is significant also that it appears to have been a development embraced by William earl of Douglas as a form of patronage for his supporters, now that he was established at the heart of the royal council.

However, rather than transferring parliament to Edinburgh in order to proceed with the siege of the castle, the assembly was there to put the final seal on negotiations, conducted in some part by Edinburgh burgesses, that saw Crichton surrender the castle in the first week in July on fairly generous terms.[4] Although he did not regain his position as chancellor at this time, he was not in disgrace and appeared as a charter witness on royal documents, and his designation as William lord Crichton shows that he was included in the official recognition of this particular baronial rank.[5] Although undoubtedly packed with their own supporters, the parliament that resumed in July was one in which the Black Douglases could proclaim their success and secure recognition of their authority. The presence of the brothers of William 8th earl of Douglas, styled Archibald earl of Moray and Hugh earl of Ormond respectively, underlined their role in this new royal government, and Henry Douglas of Borgue reaped the benefits of alliance with his Black Douglas brother-in-law by securing recognition as lord of Dalkeith.[6] Alexander Forbes may have acquired his peerage title as Lord Forbes at this time, as this is his designation in subsequent documents, and his son, James Forbes, sought to secure his own position in the political hierarchy of the north-east through a bond of manrent, sealed on 30 September 1444, with Alexander Seton lord of Gordon. In strengthening their hand regarding the earldom of Mar, it was certainly in the Douglas faction’s interest to propitiate a man such as Forbes, whose position as sheriff-depute of Aberdeen and wielder of significant local influence in the region could be used to further what were being presented as royal interests in the north-east during the minority.[7] Others whose loyalty was rewarded between June and July include Laurence Abernethy who became Lord Saltoun of Abernethy, in addition to Andrew lord Gray of Foulis and Patrick Lyon, Lord Glamis. James Hamilton of Cadzow joined the ranks of the lords of parliament as Lord Hamilton, having advanced his status within the affinity of James Douglas of Balvenie through his marriage in 1441 to Euphemia Graham (widow of Archibald 5th earl of Douglas and mother of William and David Douglas, executed at the Black Dinner). Hamilton’s connection with the new Douglas faction may have been strengthened further by the fact that his mother, Janet, was the daughter of Alexander Livingston of Callendar.[8]

Research by Alexander Grant has shown that such lordship titles were being used increasingly from 1437, and the 1445 parliament demonstrated their usefulness as a form of patronage that could be conferred on those men who already regarded themselves as having a stake in the exercise of royal government, but for whom this was official recognition and sanction. These titles were not, generally, territorial in nature except where they may have used the name of a lord’s existing estates, but were essentially personal and derived from the family name.[9] In that sense, the development of this form of recognition and its absorption into Scottish royal government was part of the increasingly personal nature of relationships based on loyalty and service within the Scottish polity reflected, to some degree, in the parliamentary oaths of 1445. For example, aside from the official business conducted in parliament, the high turnout in Edinburgh of members of what may loosely be described as the political community, allowed for transactions that demonstrated this inter-connection between royal government and personal concerns. Walter Ogilvy of Beaufort sought a bond with the king’s council, dated 7 July, the terms of which bound him to life-long support of the king (a conventional statement of duty), but also promised that he would take ‘no part in the undoing’ of the king’s councillors and to warn of any threatened danger.[10] This too had parallels in previous agreements, but there was a highly personal element to the context in which this bond was made, which was the effort being made by Ogilvy to consolidate his own position as head of his family. This included an indenture made in Edinburgh the day before the bond with Sir Alexander Livingston of Callendar and his son, James, captain of Stirling castle. The indenture secured a marriage alliance between Christian of Erskine and James, the eldest son of James Livingston, and the terms included the stipulation that Walter Ogilvy was to have ‘royal letters patent for delivery of said Christian’, and the Livingstons undertook to ‘procure crown confirmation of the said Walter’s office of sheriff-depute of Forfar and Banff ’ under his brother, Alexander Ogilvy of Auchterhouse.[11] As Michael Brown argues, the significance of this is that, ‘For loyalty to the crown to be expressed in a private bond and linked to private considerations suggests the reduction of allegiance to the crown and its officers to the level of non-royal lordship’.[12] Public declarations of loyalty to the crown and the king’s councillors within an atmosphere of private back-room deals had particular resonance in 1445 as William 8th earl of Douglas sought to consolidate his hold on power through such agreements, and there is every indication that he was not alone in this. The influence that he and his allies, such as the Livingstons, could exert during this period would have attracted those seeking to benefit from access to royal patronage. One example of this may be seen in the experience of James Auchinleck of that Ilk, who benefited from the support he had given to William earl of Douglas when, on 3 July, he secured for his son, John, a royal charter of lands in the sheriffdoms of Kincardine and Aberdeen.[13]

Only one non-Douglas earldom was created in the 1445 parliament, with Alexander Seton, lord of Gordon becoming earl of Huntly. He was William Crichton’s son-in-law and had been involved in his family’s expansion into the north-east from their original base in East Lothian. Originally bearing the name of Seton, Alexander chose to adopt his mother’s family name of Gordon when his interests became focused on the north-east. It may be that he had signalled his willingness to work with the new regime, which had agreed to accommodate in government his father-in-law, the former chancellor, and Gordon’s contacts in an area where conflict was likely to reignite and where they were establishing their own interests would have been attractive to the Douglas party.

The extent of business conducted both within and outside the parliament of June/July 1445, and the evidence for a very high attendance in Edinburgh during that period, may obscure the fact that those granting their imprimatur to documents were not entirely representative of the wider political community and comprised, unsurprisingly, those prepared to lend at least tacit support to the Douglas faction. However, there were also losers in this new political alignment. While parliament was being held in Edinburgh, the queen lay ill at Dunbar castle (in the keepership of her ally, Adam Hepburn of Hailes and his son, Patrick) and after her death there on 15 July, she was taken to Perth for burial next to James I at the Charterhouse. She died during the siege, but exact circumstances are not recorded, so it is assumed that she fell ill. Constant child-bearing (she had at least eleven children) may have taken its toll on her health and made her susceptible to infection, but that is necessarily speculative. This ended the hopes of her confederates that she could provide a rival political focus to the Douglases, and Dunbar castle was placed under siege until Adam Hepburn of Hailes ‘gaf our the castell of Dunbar throu trety’.[14] The queen’s second husband, James Stewart of Lorne, and the three sons she had borne him, W ed into exile in England rather than obey the summons to appear in parliament.[15] In 1445, all three boys, James, John and Alexander, would have been below the age of six and although an entry appears in the Auchinleck Chronicle under 1449 that states: ‘That samyn yere in the moneth of may sir James stewart the qwenes knycht was tane apon the se be the W emyngis befor the son and thair was put to deid and of thaim that come with him viiixx of ynglismen’, the date is clearly wrong, as a safe-conduct was issued to Stewart to come to England as late as August 1451.[16] The queen’s other ally, the nineteen-year-old James Douglas, earl of Angus, was also summoned to appear and answer charges of rebellion, but wisely stayed away.[17] Although he suffered no direct action against his title and possessions, he was excluded from participation in royal government and saw the end of his betrothal to James II’s sister, Joanna, who was sent abroad with Princess Eleanor to seek a continental marriage alliance.[18] Angus was dead by the following year, and was succeeded by his brother, George, as 4th earl of Angus. He was probably no more than eighteen at the time, but was attending court as a charter witness fairly regularly thereafter, which may indicate a tacit acceptance by the Black Douglases of their cousin’s participation in government and the lack of any threat posed by him at that time.[19]

There follows a serious dearth in official records, and although this may be an accident of survival, it may be interpreted also as marking a change in attitude to formal assemblies of the three estates by the new Douglas-dominated council. The political connections, expertise and forceful backing inherent in a coalition of Crichton, Livingston and Douglas may, Roland Tanner suggests, have obviated the need to summon the three estates on any regular basis, although this may not be as sinister as it appears given that the witness lists on documents reflect a reasonably wide-ranging representation of people conducting council business.[20] Nevertheless, the 1445 parliament had marked a shift in the conduct of minority politics, and the next four years would be dominated by William 8th earl of Douglas and his close allies.

It is in this context that developing claims of lordship and territorial acquisition in the north and north-east of the kingdom should be viewed, as the Black Douglases needed to advance their interests through alliances with other prominent magnate families. Through their acquisition of the earldom of Ross, the MacDonald Lords of the Isles had established themselves in the region by this time and were using Dingwall as the administrative centre of their mainland earldom. Alexander earl of Ross had achieved recognition of his gains only grudgingly after the death of Alexander earl of Mar in 1435 had removed the principal royal agent in the north, but his use of the earldom title was recognised only after the death of James I in 1437 by a minority government that had little choice but to acknowledge Ross’s position and grant him the office of justiciar north of the Forth.[21] The inability of the king’s council to interfere with Ross’s gains during James II’s minority did not mean that he had no interest in building connections with those exercising power in the king’s name, as the likely reassertion of adult Stewart kingship was a not-too-distant prospect. However, of more immediate concern was the acknowledgement of boundaries of lordship within a region where Ross was not the only magnate seeking to expand and consolidate territorial interests. The arriviste Setons of Gordon were striving to increase the power and prestige of their newly acquired earldom of Huntly, with territorial interests from Angus to Morayshire, and had signalled already their ambition regarding the earldom of Mar. Into this mix was added the territorial ambitions of the sons of James the Gross, with Archibald Douglas acquiring through marriage the earldom of Moray and his younger brother, Hugh, being created earl of Ormond with estates centred on the Black Isle; adjacent to the earldom of Ross. As Michael Brown has shown, this had crucial ramifications for the exercise of power during a period of weakened royal authority, and meant that those magnates with a personal stake in the region needed to manage the practice of territorial lordship within the context of private agreements.[22] The emergence of the Black Douglases as victors in the struggle to assert their position in the south of Scotland and at the heart of the royal council meant that national and regional politics were intertwined, and the connections forged by Alexander lord Gordon in the north-east and through his marriage to the chancellor’s daughter, Elizabeth Crichton, were sufficient to lead the Douglases to seek accommodation with him after they had secured power at court, which would explain the timing of his elevation to the earldom of Huntly in 1445. In order to establish a meaningful presence in the north-east beyond the simple nominal possession of estates, the Douglases needed to secure allies to promote their interests, and they may have hoped that Huntly’s connections with Ross would be useful in negotiations with an earl whose relationship with the royal council had been less than harmonious.[23]

However, Huntly was asserting his ambition in Angus in a manner which brought him into conflict with David earl of Crawford in 1446. The storm-centres of unrest during the minority continued to include the church, particularly concerning pursuit of secular rights over offices. Arbroath abbey, for example, was the focus of a dispute concerning the office of abbey justiciar, with Alexander Lindsay, master of Crawford, having been chosen to exercise that office. However, the Arbroath monks were unhappy at the manner in which Alexander exploited his role, which they did not feel to be in the best interests of the abbey and, although no specific charges have survived, this would almost certainly have involved abuse of the abbey’s revenues and resources; according with protests against ‘spoliation’ voiced in the records since 1438. Certainly, the hostility that erupted in 1446 was no sudden development, as Walter Paniter, abbot of Arbroath, had petitioned the pope on 21 October 1441 for the authority to pronounce sentences of excommunication against ‘all and sundry of whatsoever dignity or estate who offer violence or loss to the monastery’. The extent of the problem is shown in the plea that, owing to serious intimidation by those who ‘do not fear to oppress, molest and disturb ecclesiastical persons’, the abbot should be granted power of ‘citing the delinquents and usurpers by public edict on the door of the cathedral churches as if they had been personally cited’.[24]

The abbot’s reaction to Alexander Lindsay’s abuse of his office was to depose him in favour of Alexander Ogilvy of Inverarity (a cousin of Sir John Ogilvy, hereditary bailie of Arbroath), nephew of Sir Walter Ogilvy of Lintrathen.[25] Huntly was an ally of Sir Walter, but David Lindsay, 3rd earl of Crawford, was married to Marjory Ogilvy, cousin of Alexander Ogilvy of Inverarity and daughter of Alexander Ogilvy of Auchterhouse; demonstrating the complex inter-connections between these families. Although not a regular attender at court, the exchequer accounts for 1445 show that Alexander Ogilvy of Inverarity served as sheriff of Forfar, bailie of Panmure and keeper of Methven castle, therefore he had an established record of royal service. The Ogilvies were named by the Auchinleck chronicler as having taken part in the raid against Bishop Kennedy’s lands in 1445, for which they had been cursed by the bishop, and he links this with the hostility in January 1446, stating that:

The yere of god 1445[6] the 23rd day of January the erll of Huntley and the Ogilvies with him on the ta part and the erll of Crawford on the tother part met at the yettis of Arbroath on ane sonday laite and faucht and the erll of Huntley and wat Ogilvy W ed and thair was slane on thair party Sir John Oliphant laird of Aberdalghy; Sir William Forbes; Sir Alexander Barclay; Alexander Ogilvy; David of Aberkerdath with uther sundry and on the tother part the erll of Crawford himself was hurt in the feild and deit within viij days / bot he and his son wan the field and held it and efter that a gret tyme held the Ogilvies at gret subjectioun and tuke thair gudis and destroyit thair places.[26]

The inclusion of Alexander earl of Huntly in this encounter, which became known as the battle of Arbroath, had been regarded by chroniclers as a matter of chance because he was staying with the Ogilvies at the time and would have felt obliged to take their part. However, Michael Brown has shown that his role in this had far more to do with the heightened tensions in the north-east and the struggle for dominance in regional politics than has been supposed, and Huntly’s presence should be seen as a deliberate intervention on the part of his Ogilvy allies.[27] The death of David, 3rd earl of Crawford as a result of wounds received in the battle is recorded by the Auchinleck chronicler as having occurred within eight days of the battle, and he maintains in the following entry that ‘the forsaid erll of Craufurd lay four days abone the zerd and thair durst no man erd him quhill the forsaid bishop send the prior of St Andrews and [. . . ]’.[28] This is contained in an incomplete entry which describes the harrying of Kennedy’s lands in 1445 and may be an instance of monastic moralising in that he implied that reluctance to bury Crawford was a direct result of the bishop’s curse, which had to be removed by Kennedy’s emissary, the prior of St Andrews, before burial could take place. However, an even more Gothic twist in the plot is provided by another chronicle source (probably following a local tradition in Angus), which states that Alexander Ogilvy, severely wounded, was taken to Crawford’s castle of Finavon, where his cousin Marjory, distraught when her husband succumbed to his wounds, smothered Ogilvy to death.[29] Certainly, the interest and detail furnished by the chroniclers reflects the deep concern about depredations committed against the church, and Kennedy’s involvement is recorded to the extent that he offered refuge in his castle at St Andrews to ‘the monks and their servants’ from Arbroath, who may have W ed in advance of the battle with Abbot Walter, described as ‘so old and feeble that he could not usefully govern’.[30]

The fight at Arbroath involved the wider affinities of Huntly and Crawford and represented a struggle over jurisdiction and local authority that encompassed important families such as the Ogilvies. With the death of Earl David, his son, Alexander, became earl of Crawford and asserted his dominance in Angus in a manner sufficiently forceful to lead the Auchinleck chronicler to describe him as ‘a rigorous man and ane felloun [. . .] [who] held all angus in his bandoun’.[31] Huntly’s defeat and, by extension, the defeat of the Ogilvies, meant that magnates who distrusted his ambitions in the north-east and wished to advance their own may have decided that their best policy would be to unite in opposition to him. By doing so, not only could the Douglases secure their interests in their northern estates, but also reassert a measure of oversight in the region by the royal government.

Michael Brown has advanced the persuasive argument that, rather than seeing the bond made between the earls of Douglas, Crawford and Ross as one made shortly before James II, on learning of its existence, summoned William 8th earl of Douglas to Stirling in order to confront him, it may belong instead to 1446. The central problem presented by this famous bond is the fact that it has not survived, therefore its precise terms have been a matter of speculation. The bond is mentioned as the grounds for James II’s violent confrontation of Douglas in almost all sources from the Auchinleck chronicler onwards, and is embedded in the historiographical portrayals of the reign of James II. However, the only source to offer a date for the bond, 7 March 1445, is the unreliable and error-ridden Annales of Scotland by Sir James Balfour of Kinnaird, written in the seventeenth century, stating that it was an offensive and defensive league against all, excluding ‘not the king himself’.[32] If Balfour’s precise date and description of terms may be questioned, Michael Brown argues that it is plausible nevertheless that such an agreement between the three earls was initiated at this time of tension over territorial and jurisdictional interests in the north-east, and to place this tripartite bond in the context of a private agreement couched in terms that were in keeping with written bonds of the period, would enable a more judicious analysis.[33] If the bond was made in the aftermath of the battle of Arbroath in January 1446, it would be in the context of establishing the mechanisms for mutual support and assistance and the resolution of any conflicts of interest arising between the three men; working specifically to exclude Huntly and limit his ambitions rather than to attack him. It was unusual for bonds to be made between three relatively equal parties, but the particular circumstances of competing ambitions in the north-east were themselves unusual, and the attraction of one of the bond’s signatories being the man exercising authority within the royal council would have been compelling for men whose independent actions had the potential for inviting future royal backlash. Alexander earl of Ross had seized and maintained his position in the north without direct royal sanction, but the possibility of official recognition would have been well worth securing. To cement this, the marriage between Ross’s son, John MacDonald, and Elizabeth Livingston, daughter of James Livingston, custodian of the young James II and ally of Douglas, may have been agreed at this time; an alliance that was to play a central role in Ross’s response to James II’s actions shortly after he assumed personal control of government in 1449.

If a measure of concord had been reached in the north-east in 1446, problems W ared up once again in the south-east of the kingdom when, in April, Sir Patrick Hepburn repossessed the castle of Dunbar (surrendered on terms by his father, Adam, after the siege in 1445) and also captured and imprisoned John Oll, prior of Coldingham.[34] This may have been intended as a reprisal for raids carried out on his property by Oll’s ally, Alexander Hume, and in a letter from Prior Oll, dated 10 November 1446, he stated that he had been held for ‘a great and intolerable ransom’. Shortly after this, on 30 November, Archibald Dunbar, son of the dispossessed earl of March, captured Hailes castle, possibly with a view to using it to negotiate the return of Dunbar castle.[35] Discussions on how to respond to this may have occurred when the court held its Christmas celebrations at Stirling, during which period the death occurred, on Christmas Eve, of John Cameron, bishop of Glasgow within his episcopal castle, ending a long career first in Douglas and then royal service. The new calendar year saw a response from the royal council to Dunbar’s seizure of Hailes, with the despatch of the master of Douglas, brother of William earl of Douglas, to recover it.[36] (at Dunbar did not put up much of a fight is suggested in the Auchinleck chronicler’s curt observation that he ‘syne cowardlie gaf it owr to the master of Douglas sodanlie’.[37] Although resolution of conflict in this area took some time, the castle of Dunbar remained in crown hands, but on 2 February 1449, an accord was made between the Humes and the Hepburns in the form of a double marriage alliance. Ellen, daughter of Sir Alexander Hume, was to marry Adam (son and heir of Patrick Hepburn of Hailes) and Hume’s son (also Alexander) was to marry Hepburn’s sister, Agnes.[38] Again, debilitating conflict was resolved, at least for the time being, through a private and personal alliance.

Diplomatic negotiations with England had also taken place in early 1447, when Robert Livingston of Linlithgow was sent on the king’s business to Cardinal Beaufort and Edmund Beaufort, 2nd duke of Somerset and marquis of Dorset; uncle to James II. Negotiations appear to have stretched to five weeks, for which Livingston received part-payment for his expenses of £44 16s, but this must have occurred before the death of Cardinal Beaufort in April 1447, and it is not clear what, if any, agreements were reached.[39] The Auchinleck chronicler’s reference to William’s brother, James, as ‘master of Douglas’ when he intervened in the Dunbar dispute reflects a reshuffling that took place within the Black Douglas family in 1447. James and Archibald Douglas were twins, and the efforts by James the Gross to secure a bishopric for his son, James, indicates that it had been accepted previously that Archibald was the elder twin. However, on 26 August, an indenture was made to the effect that James was the elder and was referred to thereafter as ‘Master of Douglas’, and heir to his brother, William, should he die without a legitimate son. The rationale behind this adjustment is not stated, but the Douglas succession needed to be clarified in the face of four years of childless marriage between William and Margaret Douglas (a situation that remained the same by the time of William’s death in 1452) and the fact that his next-eldest brothers were twins. The reversal of the previously accepted seniority may have reflected James Douglas’s growing chivalric reputation and the desire to have Archibald established firmly in the north, expanding Black Douglas influence from his base as earl of Moray. This indenture was witnessed, among others, by Alexander earl of Crawford and three recently elevated lords of parliament, Alexander lord Montgomery, Laurence lord Abernethy and John lord Lindsay of Byres.[40]

Also rumbling on was the dispute over the earldom of Mar, and a letter was issued by the council to Robert and Thomas Erskine on 12 May 1447, charging them to deliver Kildrummy castle and place it at the king’s disposal during his forthcoming trip to the north. It further stated that David Murray of Tullibardine and Robert Livingston, comptroller, were being sent ahead to make arrangements, and the Erskines were charged to deliver Kildrummy to the king’s commissioners under pain of forfeiture, according to the terms of an ‘appointment’ made to that effect.[41] The terms of the ‘appointment’ have not survived, and the king’s visit to the north does not appear to have taken place, probably because there was still an impasse over the surrender of Kildrummy. Sir Robert Douglas gives details of an indenture (now also lost) in the Mar charter chest, dated 20 June 1448, which must have been the culmination of attempts to resolve the problem. According to Douglas, the indenture was sealed by the king and council on the one part and Robert lord Erskine on the other, specifying that Erskine was to give up Kildrummy ‘to any the King should appoint, to be kept by them till the king’s majority and then to be delivered up to either of them who should be found to have right to it, at the sight of the three estates’. In return, Erskine’s castle of Alloa ‘and all the furniture and warlike stores found therein’, were to be delivered up to Erskine.[42] The indenture was issued under the privy seal and witnessed on behalf of the council by William Turnbull, bishop of Glasgow, James Livingston, keeper of the king’s person, [Patrick] lord Graham and [Andrew] lord Gray. For Erskine’s part of the indenture, the witnesses were Sir Henry Douglas of Lochleven, Thomas Wemyss and William Auchterlonie of Kelly.[43] This would appear to have resulted in the surrender of Kildrummy to the crown before 21 July 1448, at which point Archibald Dundas, brother-in-law of Sir Alexander Livingston of Callendar, became keeper.[44] However, it signalled the end of the fight for Robert lord Erskine as, on 11 September, he secured a crown charter in which he resigned all his lands and offices to his son, Thomas, reserving only a life-rent. It is possible that Robert Erskine was suffering from declining health, worn out by the sustained legal wrangling of the previous half-century, and the seizure of Alloa and the loss of the keepership of Kildrummy must have been the last straw. He may have felt that the mantle for continuing the fight could best be assumed by his son, Thomas, whose position would be bolstered by his assumption of the lordship, and Thomas was designated lord Erskine from this time.

James II visited Aberdeen in July 1448, as there is a reference to the king being presented with two tuns of wine from Gascony, six lights (candles) of three stones of wax and twelve half-pounds of scorchets (sweetmeats made from sugar and W avoured with rose-water and eaten with wine) by the citizens of Aberdeen, although a less happy note was struck by the theft of a silver cup belonging to the king, valued at 53 shillings and fourpence, while staying at the house of an Aberdeen custumar.[45] Although no record survives to confirm it, the king may also have visited the newly-surrendered Kildrummy castle in order to underline crown rights in Mar.[46] Approaching his eighteenth birthday, it may have been deemed prudent for him to travel more widely in order to show himself to his subjects and demonstrate his royal presence in expectation of his assumption of full personal rule, but it would serve also to demonstrate the presence and authority of the Black Douglases within his personal council. If Douglas had entered already into a personal bond with Ross, this had created a link with the royal council which would have been welcomed by Ross even if it necessitated some compromise on his part concerning other gains; such as allowing royal officials to take command of Inverness castle, where James II witnessed a charter on 24 July.[47] Ross had been persuaded to recognise the exercise of Douglas lordship in the north, including Hugh Douglas’s new earldom of Ormond, centred on the Black Isle and taking its title from an ancient moot (council) hill at Ardmanach, and encompassing Avoch and Eddirdour, Duffus in the sheriffdom of Elgin and Aberdour and Crimond in Buchan.[48] Dingwall, the chief castle of the earldom of Ross, served as Alexander MacDonald’s administrative centre after the eastward shift from the traditional Hebridean focus of the lordship of the Isles at Finlaggan on Islay, and without a stated agreement its proximity to the new territorial influence of Ormond could have been a potential source of tension. A younger brother, John Douglas, was styled lord of Balvenie, having been allocated his father’s possessions of Balvenie and Boharm in Banffshire and Brachlie and Petty in the sheriffdom of Inverness and Strathdearn.

However, this expansion of Douglas lordship in the north of Scotland was an addition to, rather than a detraction from, the focus of their presentation of power; the Anglo-Scottish border. The impact of the ‘Black Dinner’ may have had serious repercussions for the nature of border lordship, but William 8th earl of Douglas appears to have been intent on reclaiming important aspects of Black Douglas heritage that would link him and his family with the legendary exploits of ‘the Good’ Sir James, close friend and ally of Robert Bruce, and the subsequent role of the Black Douglases as defenders of the Scottish Marches (and, by implication, the kingdom) against the English from the early fourteenth century onwards. In order to underline this status, the Black Douglases were able to use the cross-border raiding that broke out with some severity late in 1448 to take the lead in defending their king and countrymen from such incursions. The Auchinleck chronicler records that:

That samyn yere [1448] the 23rd day of October was the battel of lochmaben stane within the parrische of St Patrick Quhar Hugh of Douglas erll of Ormond was chieftan on the scottis syd and with him Sir John Wallace of Craigie the lord of Johnston the lord of Somerville’s son and heir David Stewart of castell myll the sherrif of Ayr with uther sundry gentillis of the westland and thair men was callit iiiim And on the Inglis syde the younger Percy Sir John of Pennytoune Sit John Herntoun war chiftanis and with thaim sex thousand of Inglis men quhare thar chiftanis war tane and xvc men with thaim / slane drownit vc And on the scottis syd xxvi slane and tane / bot na man of reputacoun war tane nor slane bot Sir John Wallace deit efter that he come hame throu misgovernance.[49]

This encounter is known as the battle of Sark or Lochmabenstone, and should be viewed in the context of tension within the Marcher wardenships, particularly as the Black Douglases were seeking to make their mark there. The details of the battle, its motives and the list of those involved was elaborated and confused by writers in the sixteenth century but it was, essentially, a confrontation between Hugh Douglas, earl of Ormond and his supporters, and Henry Percy, lord Poynings (son of Henry Percy, 2nd earl of Northumberland) and men of his affinity. The ‘gentillis of the westland’ alludes to those drawn from Clydesdale and Ayrshire, such as John Wallace of Craigie, John, son of William lord Somerville and Stewart of Dalswinton, sheriff of Ayr. Although they offered valuable support to Ormond and helped achieve a victory in battle, they were not drawn from the traditional Douglas affinity in the west and middle Marches, leading Michael Brown to suggest that this indicated ‘only limited enthusiasm’ for recent developments in the focus of Black Douglas lordship.[50] To the Black Douglases, their victory provided a propaganda coup in this practical demonstration of their claims to be defenders and champions of the Scottish realm but, as with other aspects of the presentation of Black Douglas power, there was an element of ‘smoke and mirrors’ that concealed underlying weaknesses.

A good indication of this is provided in the contemporary chronicler’s entry concerning one of the principal allies of William 8th earl of Douglas. He states that ‘The yere of god 1449 Sir James auchinleck was slane be richert coluile the 20th day of aprile and within v or vi days cowartlie gaf our the castell and was hedit and iii sum with him and Incontinent efter that he come furth the castell was castin doun be erll william of douglas James son.’[51] The principal protagonists in this account were James Auchinleck of that Ilk, who had appeared regularly within the close affinity of William earl of Douglas, witnessing charters and serving on his council, and his neighbour, Richard Colville of Ochiltree. Although this may have the surface appearance of a local feud, it represented a challenge to Douglas lordship in the area and prompted Douglas to besiege Colville until he surrendered his castle, whereupon he was beheaded with three of his men and, to underline the consequences of opposing Douglas lordship by attacking his close adherents, the surrendered castle was ‘cast down’.

Nevertheless, the 8th earl continued to embrace a Douglas heritage that enhanced the position and reputation of the family beyond the borders of Scotland, and it is clear that he was setting out to present himself as the natural successor to all the continental gains (territorial and renown) brought to the Douglases through the martial exploits of Archibald 4th earl of Douglas and duke of Touraine. After Archibald’s death, his wife, Margaret Stewart, was permitted to retain a life interest in the duchy and continued to use the title, duchess of Touraine, but when William Douglas attempted to establish and transfer these rights to himself, his arguments must have been tenuous in the extreme and certainly received little joy from the French king. In a reply to articles submitted to him by the chancellor ‘in the name of Margaret, elder Countess of Douglas, the Earl of Douglas and Margaret of Douglas, his wife’, Charles VII replied that Archibald 4th earl of Douglas had been granted Touraine ‘en forme et maniere d’appanage’ and, according to French law, it could be held only by the Douglas himself and ‘the heirs-male of his body’. The sting in this was the pertinent observation that, ‘the present Earl of Douglas was not descended of the body of the late earl, and therefore could have no claim to the duchy’, as it could not be claimed by a descendant of the female line (thus ruling out Margaret of Galloway, the surviving grand-daughter of the 4th earl) ‘or collateral’.[52] The firmness of this rebuttal, despite the conventional protestations of aO ection for the house of Douglas, left little room for appeal.

No matter how extensively the Black Douglas family had managed to increase its hold on territory, offices and influence on the royal council since 1440, the fact remained that this had been accomplished through some highly dubious means and had not had time to establish deep roots. The slick public-relations campaign that presented the Douglases in a carefully constructed package of power, influence and established authority rested on foundations weakened by the number of contemporaries who were no longer over-awed by the sheer size of their territorial gains. The Douglas name carried an established recognition of authority carved out through military might and unswerving loyalty to the crown founded on the tradition of service initiated by ‘the Good’ Sir James Douglas, when he demonstrated loyalty to Robert Bruce that went beyond the king’s death. This was the stuO of legend by the fifteenth century, and the killing of James Douglas in battle while fulfilling his promise to take Bruce’s heart on crusade was celebrated in John Barbour’s epic poem, ‘The Bruce’, composed in the 1360s. (at this was still very much part of the national consciousness is shown by the annuity paid from the royal exchequer to the dean and chapter of Aberdeen for the promotion of the anniversary of John Barbour.[53] The heraldic coat of arms borne by the Douglases thereafter depicted the blood-red heart in addition to the crowned lion of Galloway and the stars of the Murrays (added when Archibald 3rd earl of Douglas married Joanna, the Murray heiress), and each proclaimed their rights and status within the Scottish kingdom. However, there is a sense that William 8th earl of Douglas and his brothers were working extremely hard to express this heritage during the late 1440s, which is illuminating in itself.

One way in which this may be seen is in the composition of an allegorical poem, The Buke of the Howlat, by Richard Holland, who served as secretary to Archibald Douglas, earl of Moray. Many Scottish noble families could claim impressive pedigrees and traditions of loyal crown service, but the Black Douglases appeared to take this further in order to present an image that set them apart from and superior to other nobles. This is articulated in Holland’s poem, composed as a moral message through the actions of an owl (howlat) who attends a council of birds and complains of his unhappiness because of his dull and ugly plumage. Feeling pity, each of the other birds offers the owl a feather from their own plumage, but once he finds himself attired so magnificently, he behaves with arrogance and pride, proclaiming himself to be greater than all the rest. Disgusted by this attitude, the other birds take back their feathers leaving him more hideous than before.[54] The moral is clear but, given the fate of the Black Douglases, it may appear somewhat double-edged. There can be no doubt that Holland’s motive was to W atter and proclaim the status of his Douglas patron, and he followed the Douglases into exile following the death of Moray in 1455. In this allegory, the owl represents the arriviste nobles who have no comparable track record of hard-won authority based upon special royal favour and established personal rights. The exploits of the family in exercising effective border lordship offered protection to the realm and served the crown in a manner that could not be matched by other Scottish nobles, and this is a theme developed by Holland at great length in his poem.[55]

This focus on the dimension of Douglas power bound up with traditional border lordship explains the meeting at Lincluden in December 1448, where William earl of Douglas issued a number of statutes connected with Marcher law. This was a council which, in addition to defining and formalising existing statutes relating to the exercise of law in the Marches ‘in tyme of weirfar’, bound the ‘lordis, frehaldaris [and] [. . .] bordouraris’ gathered at Lincluden to support Douglas in his implementation of the statutes and underlined his special, formal role in the exercise of this hereditary authority; an authority with particular relevance after the battle of Sark in October.[56] Douglas was promoting the claims of traditional rights and jurisdictions, but he needed the support and affirmation of personal loyalty from those who could make it work. This followed a period when James I had reasserted royal authority over border lordship, as in other manifestations of magnate power, and he had issued very similar statutes (probably incorporating existing Douglas versions) in parliament in March 1430. Significantly, as Michael Brown points out, neither of the March wardens, Archibald 5th earl of Douglas nor William earl of Angus, was appointed to serve as constable of the Scottish army that embarked upon the campaign to recapture Roxburgh in 1436.[57] The suspicion with which James I viewed significant magnate authority would have tempered Black Douglas ambition during his reign, but with the death of the king in 1437, the door was open once more to the articulation of that ambition in terms that proclaimed their rights and traditions, but were careful to emphasise service to the crown. Nevertheless, that service was framed in terms of a special relationship with the king, which carried an expectation that the crown would recognise and appreciate the Douglases in that light. The glory and significance of Douglas Marcher lordship is encapsulated in Archibald 4th earl of Douglas’s designation of himself as ‘great guardian of the Marches of Scotland’, and William 8th earl of Douglas emulated such styles by adding ‘defender of the kingdom’ to his name on a joint supplication with James II to Rome, dated 15 January 1444 and, in a significant expansion of that modest title, ‘William earl of Douglas and Avandale, Great Guardian of the Kingdom of Scotland and Prince and Lord of Galloway’ on a supplication to the pope dated 29 January 1450.[58] None of this contained an overt threat to the crown if seen in the context of special crown service, but it was highly significant within the developing relationship between William Douglas and James II as the latter emerged from his minority with his own perceptions of crown rights and the presentation of royal authority.

It became increasingly apparent that personal lordship was at the root of conflicting perceptions of the exercise of power and the extent to which the authority of the king should override all other loyalties. Although this was implicit in the lord-man relationship during the fifteenth century, with the conventional rider ‘saving allegiance to the king’ incorporated into most agreements of maintenance and service, it is probable that kings wanted rather more than what they may have regarded as mere lip-service. Great magnates required assurances from their affinities, whether tenants on their estates or men bound to them by more personal ties, that they would be loyal and supportive of their policies and interests; in other words, that they would make the exercise of lordship work. Scottish kings also required fealty and consent from their subjects in order to rule effectively and although this mutual relationship was not without its problems when interests and perceptions collided, most notably as the result of onerous financial impositions by the crown, success could be measured by the extent to which some balance was achieved. Force could be, and was, used on occasion, but the antipathy generated could be counter-productive, therefore the prudent course was to seek agreement and alliances based on mutual benefit. Within the W uctuating fortunes of those who held the balance of power during the minority of James II, the role of parliament and general council featured strongly up to 1445, and the Douglas-dominated royal council up to 1449. Apart from a brief period of disgrace in 1444, William lord Crichton was the great political survivor of the minority, continuing to serve on the council and regaining the office of chancellor by November 1447 after the death of James Bruce, bishop of Dunkeld; an office he held until just before his death in 1454.

Crichton’s experience would have been a welcome asset to the royal council, and he was certainly one of the men involved in diplomatic negotiations for the marriage of the king; an occasion that would signal James II’s effective emergence onto the political stage. Scottish diplomacy during this period had been conducted within the context established by James I of seeking advantageous continental marriage alliances. He had managed to secure the marriage of his eldest daughter, Margaret, to the Dauphin Louis, eldest son of Charles VII of France; a marriage that took place in Tours on 25 June 1436. Although Margaret died at Châlons on 16 August 1445, very unhappily married to Louis, before she could become queen of France, this alliance had moved the Stewarts forward in the diplomatic marriage stakes and raised the expectations of the royal council in seeking matches for James II and his other sisters.[59] The general council held on 3 April 1441 would have dealt with the arrangements for an embassy to travel to Brittany during the summer months in order to respond to overtures from John, duke of Brittany. According to a Breton source, Duke John had sent ambassadors to Scotland to suggest his eldest son, Francis count of Montfort, as a husband for James II’s second sister, Isabella. Having received word from his ambassadors that Isabella, although attractive, was not a clever conversationalist and appeared rather simple, he ordered them to return quickly to Scotland and conclude the alliance, citing St Nicolas’s estimation that a woman was clever enough if she could distinguish between her own chemise and her husband’s doublet![60] A Scottish embassy was despatched comprising Sir George Crichton, William Foulis, archdeacon of St Andrews and Sir William Monypenny, and the contract was signed on 19 July.

The terms of the marriage alliance stipulated that Isabella should receive a dowry of 100, 000 saluts d’or (gold crowns) from James II (or from the royal council, given that James was only eleven years old at the time) and that the duke should settle on her a jointure of £6000. By the time Isabella sailed for Brittany in October 1442, she would have been fifteen years old and attended by an impressive entourage. The marriage took place at the castle of Aurai on 30 October 1442, only two months after Francis had succeeded his father as duke of Brittany. An agreement was made that Francis and Isabella would be recognised as James II’s heirs should he fail to produce legitimate heirs of his own, although this would have been viewed as a safeguard rather than a likely eventuality. The marriage between Isabella and Francis was successful enough to produce two daughters, even though this weakened future Scottish pretensions to a Breton succession, and Isabella was suffciently astute to withstand her brother’s efforts to have her return to Scotland after the death of her husband in 1450 in order to have another marriage arranged for her.[61]

The position of William Monypenny on this embassy reveals a man who was to carve out a career for himself in assiduous diplomatic service to the crowns of both France and Scotland. He may have travelled to France with Princess Margaret Stewart for her marriage to the Dauphin Louis in 1436, but he had extended his services to Charles VII by 1439 and was to serve both Charles and his son and successor, Louis XI. He also served, and was rewarded by, James II and James III, demonstrating the value of men who forged connections and used their knowledge and experience to provide useful and lucrative links between Scotland and the continent.[62]

A third continental alliance followed with the marriage of Mary Stewart, the fifth daughter of James I, to Wolfaert van Borselen, the son and heir of Henry lord of Veere, Sandenburg, Flushing, Westkapelle, Domburg and Bronwershaven, who served as admiral to Philip duke of Burgundy. In addition to the influential contacts this would establish in the Low Countries, it brought closer contact with the immensely wealthy and powerful dukedom of Burgundy. Mary was twelve years old when the marriage took place in June 1444, and her husband was granted the title earl of Buchan by the Scottish king. Mary and Wolfaert had a son, Charles, in 1451, although he pre-deceased his parents.[63] Trade with the Low Countries was central to the Scottish economy, with the mutual benefits of such trade making the forging of closer alliances very attractive to both sides, and David Ditchburn has suggested that the Stewart-Veere marriage was one of the most successful of the alliances made through the Stewart princesses in the fifteenth century. Certainly, the connections forged on the continent in the 1440s were valued and exploited by the Scottish minority council of James II.[64]

Negotiations were held in 1446 between Scottish and Burgundian diplomats, seeking confirmation of commercial rights and privileges that had been agreed in 1427; negotiations which were completed in 1447. Hopes that Charles VII would assist in finding suitable alliances for James II’s third and fourth sisters, Joanna and Eleanor, led to the two princesses setting sail from Scotland in the summer of 1445, reaching Tournai on 19 August to be met with the news of their sister Margaret’s death. They joined the French court at Tours on 9 September and a letter was sent from James II to Charles VII on 27 May 1447, proposing that Eleanor marry Margaret’s widowed husband, the Dauphin Louis. It is not clear whether or not this tactless suggestion originated from the king or his council, but although it was promoted energetically, and at some cost, by William Monypenny, it was not taken further.[65] Eleanor and Joanna remained at the French court, but further overtures were made when Monypenny (described as ‘escuier d’escuieres’ of the French king) was given an English safe-conduct to travel to Scotland concerning the marriage of Eleanor, princess of Scotland.[66] Encouraged by this, another letter was sent on behalf of the Scottish king on 9 January 1448 asking for French assistance in finding a suitable bride for James II as well as his sisters, but the lack of suitable French brides prompted Charles VII to suggest that the Scottish ambassadors looked to Burgundy.[67]

An alliance with Philip ‘the Good’, duke of Burgundy, would have appeared very attractive to the Scots and, although Philip did not have legitimate daughters of his own, he was able to exploit his relationship with the neighbouring duchy of Gueldres. The three daughters of Duke Arnold and his duchess, Catherine of Cleves, offered the potential to forge useful alliances, and Charles VII had been keen to suggest Arnold’s eldest daughter, Mary, as a bride for Charles, count of Maine and brother of René of Anjou, in 1441. However, Duke Philip had been unenthusiastic about this match, and the excuse was made that her father was unable to raise the suggested dowry, although the transfer of Mary to the Burgundian court in 1442 certainly suggests that Philip wished to secure her as a useful diplomatic pawn. Mary was taken under the protection of Isabella of Portugal, third wife of the duke of Burgundy, and may be found in the records attending the young Princess Catherine, newly married to Charles, count of Charolais, Burgundy’s son by his first marriage to Michelle de Valois.[68] Within Duchess Isabella’s household, it was to Catherine’s immediate circle of attendants that Mary was attached, although her own status is indicated in a record from 1445, describing her as having ten personal attendants, including her carver, Robert de Harper (a personal servant responsible for serving Mary at table, literally carving her food).[69]

Contact with Gueldres was made with a view to assessing matrimonial possibilities; a Scottish herald and Burgundian envoy visited Arnhem at the end of June 1446, requesting to ‘see the maiden of Gueldres’ on 5 July.[70] As Mary was established at the Burgundian court and new plans had been devised to marry her to Albert of Austria, this may actually refer to the ten-year-old Margaret, Mary’s younger sister who still resided at her father’s court. Interest in an alliance was sparked, and in 1447 Duke Arnold sent Otto de Puflich, a knight in his service, to visit James II in Edinburgh, almost certainly to continue discussions regarding a possible betrothal and, on 6 May 1448, James II commissioned the chancellor, William lord Crichton, John Ralston, bishop of Dunkeld and Nicholas Otterburn, official of St Andrews and canon of Glasgow, to act as ambassadors to the duke of Burgundy empowered to negotiate a suitable marriage alliance with the houses of Burgundy, Gueldres or Cleves.[71] Negotiations may already have been fairly advanced, with the Scots seeking to secure the best deal available to them; possibly Margaret of Gueldres. Fiona Downie points out that the document issued on 6 September 1448, in which Duke Arnold grants plenary powers to Mary’s great-uncle, Philip duke of Burgundy to arrange his daughter’s marriage to James II, actually states that he is to arrange the marriage of Mary to Albert, duke of Austria and Margaret to the Scottish king.[72] However, the situation had altered with the recent rejection of Burgundy’s expansionist intentions by Albert duke of Austria, and this included the dissolution of the proposed marriage to Mary of Gueldres. At the same time as plans for an Austro-Burgundian alliance collapsed, Charles VII had secured a Franco-Austrian alliance using James II’s sister, Eleanor Stewart, who married Duke Sigismund of Austria-Tyrol per verba de presenti in the church of Beaumont near Chinon on 8 September 1448, before commencing her journey to Innsbrück.[73] Philip duke of Burgundy moved swiftly to adjust his plans and exploit the carte blanche given by Gueldres, and the Scottish ambassadors experienced the full magnificence of Burgundian hospitality with banquets held on 26 August and 12 September, during which the substitution of Mary for her younger sister may have been arranged.[74]

Having agreed to the marriage in principle, it remained to negotiate the details, and discussions would have continued until both sides were satisfied with the arrangements. It is in this context that a tournament held in Stirling on 25 February 1449 should be seen, as although such an occasion could serve a number of different purposes, one of these would certainly have been the continuance of discussion concerning the king’s marriage.[75] Those who participated in the jousting included Burgundian champions, Jacques de Lalain, his uncle, Simon de Lalain and their companion Hervé de Meriadec, a Breton squire in Burgundian service. Ostensibly, they had come to Scotland in order to challenge James master of Douglas (brother of William, 8th earl of Douglas) and other Scottish champions, in a chivalric encounter in the lists as part of a tournament staged by the king. David Ditchburn argues that the challenge, although it may have been mooted as early as July 1448, was accepted in September shortly after the plans to form a Hapsburg-Burgundian alliance through Mary of Gueldres collapsed, which makes connection with plans for the marriage of Mary to James II extremely plausible.[76]

The tournament is described in considerable detail in an account by Georges Chastellain who, although he declares that he was not present at the encounter, states that he received a report from those who were personally involved.[77] The king agreed to judge the six combatants, with Jacques and Simon de Lalain and Hervé de Meriadec on the Burgundian side, and with James Douglas (brother of William earl of Douglas), James Douglas of Ralston and John Ross of Hawkhead on the Scottish side; and Chastellain describes the preparation of the lists at Stirling and the feasting and entertainment that accompanied the tournament. With James II presiding, The Scottish combatants arrived with Earl William and ‘fully four or five thousand men’ which, if true, suggests a highly popular and well-attended display of chivalric prowess. The king’s role was further underlined when the Burgundian combatants ‘went to do reverence to the King of Scotland’ and James II descended from his throne to grant their request that he confer the order of knighthood upon them. Chastellain states that ‘they were to fight with lances, axe, sword and dagger à outrance, or until the king signified his will’.[78]

The author’s details of the combat, perhaps unsurprisingly, portray the Burgundians as getting much the better of the encounter, with each of the Scottish champions finding themselves at the mercy of their opponents. Simon de Lalain fought with John Ross of Hawkhead who had his spear knocked from his hands, causing the fight to be continued with poleaxes. Gaining the advantage, Simon drove Sir John back and, according to Chastellain, the latter ‘began to weary, and to lose strength and breath’ and would have been at Simon’s mercy ‘if they had not been parted by the king’. Similarly, Hervé de Meriadec was fighting ‘the other James Douglas’ who was struck by his Breton opponent ‘so hard on the head with his poleaxe that he knocked him to the ground, stunned, face down’.[79] The encounter between Jacques de Lalain and James master of Douglas was somewhat more even, with de la Marche stating that they ‘pressed each other so closely that they had no weapons remaining to them neither the one not the other except for a dagger that the Scotsman held; and the said Sir Jacques held him by the arm near the hand in which he held the said dagger, and he held him with the other hand beneath the elbow, so that they turned themselves around the lists by the strength of their arms, and that went on for a long time’. Eventually, when the Burgundian champions came together against Douglas, James II threw down his truncheon and ended the fight.[80]

Stirring though the report of such an encounter is, it contains elements of more immediate interest in the shifting relationship between the king and the Black Douglases. Although James II presided over the tournament, the chroniclers’ accounts state that the encounter had been arranged by Douglas and Jacques de Lalain, and Katie Stevenson has suggested that the position of leadership in the presentation of chivalric culture at the Scottish court had become another point of friction between the king and the Black Douglases. James Douglas had an established chivalric reputation and was to fight Jacques de Lalain again in 1450 in a pas d’armes at Chalon sur Saône sponsored by Philip duke of Burgundy, during the pilgrimage to Rome undertaken by William 8th earl of Douglas and his brother. This showed that the Douglases were able to ‘operate in a European context, outside the constraints of its relations with the Scottish crown’ and increased James II’s anxieties about the erosion of the primacy of his position in Scotland in terms of authority and control.[81] Political developments were bound up with such displays of chivalric prowess, and although the contemporary chronicle accounts discuss the spectacle of the tournament as an end in itself, there was far more involved in the timing of this encounter. The important position of Jacques de Lalain within the Burgundian court and Meriadec’s role as counsellor to Philip duke of Burgundy suggest an active diplomatic role concerning negotiations for the marriage alliance that followed, whether or not such negotiations were overt or conducted behind closed doors during the course of their visit, while ‘the king feasted them very grandly, and gave them honourable gifts’. It seems no coincidence that it was shortly after the Burgundian champions had returned home that Arnold duke of Gueldres travelled to Brussels and sealed the marriage contract on 1 April.[82]

The detailed agreement that became known as the treaty of Brussels was not simply a marriage alliance between Scotland and Burgundy, as its terms encompassed a broader agreement which included also the dukes of Gueldres and Brittany. The inclusion of Arnold duke of Gueldres is hardly surprising given that he was Mary’s father, but the involvement of Francis I of Brittany, married to James II’s second sister, Isabella, demonstrates the importance of interwoven networks built through marriage alliances. For Duke Francis, Burgundy represented an ally since 1442, and he and his wife had been recognised as heirs to James II until such time as he secured the succession. Each of the signatories was bound actively to assist one another against all putative aggressors ‘by land or sea’, and no negotiations with other powers should be effected until agreed by all parties to the treaty.[83] Relations between France and Burgundy were prone to tension and periods of outright hostility during this period, therefore it is important not to think in terms of Franco-Burgundian diplomacy, but to separate the aims and ambitions of each according to specific circumstances. Although Charles VII of France was not a signatory or beneficiary of the treaty of Brussels, the Franco-Scottish alliance had been renewed on 31 December 1448 by the same ambassadors who negotiated the treaty with Burgundy, therefore the Brussels treaty would not have posed a threat to the French king. In fact, it contained the proviso that the Scots would not be bound to take any action detrimental to the alliance with France, and Charles offered to underwrite the settlement agreed by the Scottish king for his new bride in the event of James’s death.

The sheer scope of those involved, however peripherally, is indicated in the entry in the Auchinleck Chronicle stating that those charged with bringing the queen home to Scotland did so with the counsel of the ‘king of fraunce The duke of sawoy [Savoy] The duke of ostrich [Austria] the duke of bertane [Brittany] the duke of burgunze [Burgundy]’.[84] In addition, Henry lord of Veere had been active in the arrangements by virtue of his son’s marriage to James II’s fifth sister, Mary Stewart, ‘lady of Buchan’, and it was Mary Stewart’s husband, Wolfaert van Borselen (who held the title, earl of Buchan), who was to lead the Burgundian party escorting Mary of Gueldres to her new home in Scotland. Certainly, James II and his counsellors must have been very happy with these new developments in 1449, as the treaty would have secured a more prestigious and lucrative alliance for the Scots than they had looked for at the outset of negotiations, and it had the added advantage of securing an ally who could supply the king with the high-quality artillery weapons for which he had such strong enthusiasm, as well as strengthening further the commercial interests of the Scots in the Low Countries.

The extant records give some indication of the scale and complexity of the preparations that accompanied the period leading up to the wedding. The treaty signalled an immediate change in status for Mary, who was thenceforth styled ‘la Royne descosse’ in the Burgundian accounts.[85] Philip duke of Burgundy pledged the payment of Mary’s very substantial dowry of 60,000 écus, and although there does not seem to have been any contribution from Gueldres, James II agreed, on his part, to provide his new queen with an impressive tocher (marriage settlement) of 10,000 écus per annum.[86] This was no inconsiderable sum, and placed the Scots under financial pressure as a consequence. Even the undoubtedly wealthy duke of Burgundy could not provide such a sum outright, and the dowry was to be disbursed in three instalments, dependent upon James II delivering his part of the agreement. The town of Courtrai was required to pay a subsidy of 400 livres on 12 April 1449, in order to help finance the duke’s expenses for the wedding of ‘nostre belle niepce de Gheldres’, and there are records of substantial expenditure by Duchess Isabella on clothes for Mary.[87] A magnificent send-off for the bride was arranged at Bruges in June, with the Burgundian champion Jacques de Lalain once more performing in a tournament, as he had at Stirling in February; a further indication of his involvement in negotiations for this marriage. Expenses dated 2 June refer to the presence of ‘la duchesse de Gueldre’ and ‘Adolphe de Clèves’, showing that Mary’s mother and brother (but, perhaps pointedly, not her father) had come to wish her well on her journey to Scotland.[88]

A very detailed account of the journey and the marriage celebrations is given by Mathieu d’Escouchy, a chronicler from Picardy whose writings cover the years 1444-67.[89] William lord Crichton, the Scottish chancellor, travelled to the Burgundian court to escort Mary on the journey to her new home and position, setting sail from Sluys at 4 a.m. on Sunday 9 June in a convoy of ‘xiii gret schippis and ane craik’, including five galleys containing Burgundian artillery weapons.[90] This gift of weapons was an important element in Mary’s dowry and explains the number of ships required to transport it. The Burgundians were famous for their production of high-quality artillery weapons and James II had inherited his father’s fascination with guns and would have welcomed these and later additions to the Scottish royal armoury.[91] A favourable wind allowed the party to reach the Forth estuary just over a week later, on 18 June, where Mary stepped ashore to make symbolic visits to the Isle of May to pray at the shrine of St Andrew [sic] and possibly also the island of Inchcolm. D’Escouchy does not name Inchcolm, but David Ditchburn argues for the likelihood of the Augustinian abbey being an appropriate site for Mary’s pious devotions, particularly as she continued to the Augustinian hospital of St Anthony at Leith where she and her entourage rested.[92] Mary’s party proceeded on horseback to Edinburgh to meet the king and offer formal submission, amid scenes of public celebration and music, at which point she would have been delivered into the hands of those who would form her personal household. On 25 June, James II was at Stirling to ratify the marriage contract under the great seal with all its clauses and conditions, including the conventional safeguards concerning the possible death of the contracting parties, under which circumstances, in the event of Mary dying within a year of the marriage, the dowry would be repaid. The king specified lands and possessions to be given to the queen amounting to a value of 10,000 écus per annum, although it is highly questionable that Strathearn and Atholl, the castle and lands of Methven and the palace and great customs of Linlithgow would yield that amount.[93] Nevertheless, on 29 June, James II issued a receipt for 10,000 écus, paid as an instalment of the agreed dowry and, by 1 May 1450, he had received 30,000 écus in two instalments, although no further reference to the dowry is made in the extant Scottish records.[94] Another clause ratified on 25 June was that any sons of the union between James and Mary would have no right to the duchy of Gueldres if the duke left legitimate male children. Given that Duke Arnold had a son, Adolph, this was an apparent safeguard against possible future complications, but it was an undertaking that did not prevent James III from seeking to exploit internal tensions in Gueldres in 1472.[95]

The marriage was celebrated at Holyrood Abbey on 3 July 1449, and Mathieu d’Escouchy appears to have been furnished with details of the proceedings from a first-hand account. Miscellaneous payments are recorded in the exchequer accounts connected with the king’s marriage and the coronation of the queen, including £12 paid to John Dempster for cloth to make the king’s marriage robes, described by D’Escouchy as being lined with white. After the ceremony, the royal couple appeared in purple, ermine-lined robes and this would have been the last occasion on which Mary would have been seen with her hair loose and uncovered to proclaim her virginal status prior to the consummation of the marriage. As David Ditchburn points out, there may be some significance in the choice of purple as the colour of these robes, with its association with imperial imagery. Even if this point should not be over-stated, it is clear that James II was a Stewart king with a strongly developed sense of royal dignity and the presentation of power, and it is likely that the opportunity for such visual messages was particularly important as he emerged from his minority. Indeed, it has been suggested that such a message may have been aimed at the Black Douglases and their Livingston allies. Although they are not named specifically in the extant records, they would almost certainly be present at the celebrations, and it is tempting in the light of what was to happen in the next couple of years to detect a steely determination on the part of James II to underline his arrival in the centre of the political stage.[96] A desire to impress the Burgundians and other participants in the celebrations is apparent in the detail incorporated into D’Escouchy’s description of the wedding feast:

When [the king and queen] were seated, the first dish to be brought in and presented to them was a boar’s head, which had been painted and stuO ed, on a huge plate. Round the head were a good thirty-two banners, with the arms of the king and the other lords of the country. Then, the stuffing was set on fire, to the great joy of everyone in the room. Next, a fine and beautifully made ship was brought in, which had a forecastle, masts with a top, and cords of silver. Then the earl of Orkney entered, with four knights, followed by the meat course, comprising various dishes. Each dish was brought in by some thirty to forty people, all carrying plates [. . .] and as each plate was set down, the waiter knelt until the person served had started eating [. . .] At another table, a patriarch, three bishops, an abbot and other clerics, were merrily celebrating their king’s wedding. These five prelates were drinking heavily from a huge wooden goblet, without pouring anything back; for wine and other drinks seemed in as plentiful supply as sea-water. The same thing happened at the table of knights and squires of Scotland. This feast lasted four or five hours, during which time a very large number of dishes were served.[97]

Such an elaborate feast was designed to impress visitors to the Scottish court and to present the Stewart monarchy in as impressive a light as possible in order that such impressions could be taken back to Europe and strengthen the benefits of alliance, although there is certainly a hint of satire in the portrayal of the prelates.

Mary’s considerable entourage, as befitted her new status as queen, included Henry Junem, keeper of the queen’s wardrobe, and Herman, master of her stable, with payments made to Mary’s former tutor, Henry Vanderfelde and his sons in 1452, suggesting that these men travelled with Mary’s entourage in 1449.[98] One of Mary’s principal attendants was Isabel de Lalain, a member of Isabella, duchess of Burgundy’s household. She was also the sister of Jacques de Lalain, the Burgundian knight who had fought in the Stirling tournament in February and acted as diplomatic intermediary for his lord, Philip duke of Burgundy. Isabel’s role was apparently to provide assistance and companionship to Mary of Gueldres as she settled in to her new position, and it was not until July 1450 that she set out to return home, although this proved to be a hazardous and eventful journey. Isabel sought recompense from the English crown for being plundered at sea by subjects of Henry VI, for which she was paid £40 on 2 July, and she received a warrant of safe-conduct on 24 August for herself and twenty-two attendants to cross from England to Flanders or the March of Calais.[99]

The coronation of Mary of Gueldres as queen of Scotland would have been the occasion of her being issued with her own seals, and her principal seal depicts the arms of Scotland and Gueldres on a shield placed beneath an open crown supported by an angel.[100] This placed emphasis on family connections rather than the more traditional imagery drawn from Marian iconography, and indicates the more practical associations of administration and government alongside the king.[101] Certainly, the queen was present in the first parliament held in Edinburgh in January 1450 by James II after his marriage and assumption of personal rule. Mary’s role was to support the complaint made by the Scottish bishops concerning the requisitioning by royal officers of the estates of deceased prelates; a staged presentation that underlined the conventional role of a queen interceding on behalf of worthy plaintiffs and pleading with the king, thus offering an opportunity for the king to show mercy and compassion without appearing weak. However, the other business of parliament, concerned with stipulating the details of her dower, would have had much sharper personal interest for the queen, and provided the context for the first act of aggression carried out by the king following his assumption of personal rule.[102]

NOTES

1.

Pinkerton, History of Scotland, i.

2.

RPS 1445/9.

3.

RPS 1445/10. For a comprehensive analysis of the emergence of this rank of the Scottish nobility, see Grant, ‘Scottish Peerage’, 1-27.

4.

On 9 July 1445, a payment of 20s is recorded to David Henry for going out from the castle of Edinburgh and coming to the king. ER, v, 181, 276.

5.

NRAS GD148/1/11, RH6/311; NLS, Acc. 5976, box 6, 10; Fraser, Douglas, iii, no. 413.

6.

Brown, The Black Douglases, 274.

7.

NRAS, GD44, Gordon Castle Muniments.

8.

Alan R. Borthwick, ‘Hamilton family (per. 1295–1479)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

9.

Grant, ‘Scottish Peerage’, 2.

10.

NRAS RH6/311.

11.

NRAS GD45/27/106.

12.

Brown, ‘Public Authority’, 142.

13.

NRAS GD148/11.

14.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 111r.

15.

There is a payment of £40 to Patrick Cockburn for his ‘labours and expenses at the siege of the castle of Dunbar’: ER, v, 305; Rot. Scot  ., ii, 327, 331, 347; Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae et Cuiuscunque Generis Acta Publica [hereafter, Rymer, Foedera], ed. T. Rymer (London, 1704-35), ii, 675.

16.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 121v; Rymer,   Foedera, ii, 682. It is possible that the chronicler was relating an account of Stewart’s death at a later date.

17.

RPS 1445/7.

18.

Fraser, Douglas, ii, 42.

19.

HBC, 467.

20.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 121.

21.

N. Macdougall, ‘Achilles’ Heel? The Earldom of Ross, the Lordship of the Isles and the Stewart Kings, 1449-1507’, in E. J. Cowan and R. A. McDonald (eds),   Alba: Celtic Scotland in the Middle Ages (East Linton, 2000), 250.

22.

M. H. Brown, ‘The Great Rupture: Lordship and Politics in North-East Scotland (1435–1452)’, Northern Scotland, 5 (2014), 1-25

23.

Ibid., 14.

24.

CSSR, iv, 827.

25.

Lord Lindsay, Lives of the Lindsays, a Memoir of the Houses of Crawford and Balcarres (1858), i, 128.

26.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 111v.

27.

Brown, ‘The Great Rupture’, 14-15.

28.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 111v.

29.

Extracta, 242. If Auchinleck is right to state that David earl of Crawford died of his wounds eight days after the battle, it implies that Ogilvy was also being treated for his wounds at Finavon for that length of time until his cousin Marjory took matters into her own hands.

30.

CPL, x, 168, 208; Dunlop, Kennedy, 78.

31.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 112.

32.

Sir James Balfour of Kinnaird, Annales of Scotland in Historical Works, ed. James Haig (London, 1824–5), i, 173.

33.

Brown, ‘The Great Rupture’, 15.

34.

Raine, North Durham, app. 22, no. 96.

35.

Cold. Corr  ., 156-7.

36.

Armstrong, ‘The Fyre of Ire Kyndild’, 70-1. As Jackson Armstrong observes, this may refer to Archibald Douglas, earl of Moray in view of the fact that it was not until 1447 that his twin brother, James, was declared the elder. However, there is no other reference to Archibald as ‘master of Douglas’ in extant records, and the Auchinleck chronicler may have written this account after James Douglas was given this designation. His pretensions to the bishopric of Aberdeen had certainly been abandoned by this time.

37.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 111r.

38.

W. Fraser,   The Scotts of Buccleuch (Edinburgh, 1878), ii, 39-41. The contract contains the proviso that Adam Hepburn may marry Ellen if he ‘has nocht the dochter of James of Levingstoune to wyff ’. This may refer to Marion Livingston, who later married William 3rd lord Crichton, but no details of any prior arrangement survive.

39.

ER, v, 304.

40.

RMS, ii, 301; Fraser, Douglas, iii, 306.

41.

AB Ill., iv, 196-7;   ER, v, 306.

42.

Sir Robert Douglas, The Peerage of Scotland: Containing an Historical and genealogical Account of the nobility of that Kingdom, from their Origin to the Present Generation (Edinburgh, 1813), 467.

43.

Ibid.; NRAS, GD124/1/1.

44.

ER, v, 306; W. Fraser,   History of the Carnegies, Earls of Southesk (Edinburgh, 1867), 69.

45.

ER, v, 307.

46.

Abdn. Counc  ., v, 731.

47.

He held Inverness from at least 1436, as the result of a compromise settlement with James I. Fraser,   Southesk, 69.

48.

The earldom of Ormond may have been created out of Margaret of Galloway’s patrimony in Aberdeen and Inverness. Pinkerton,   The History of Scotland, i, 198; Brown, The Black Douglases, 269.

49.

Chron. Auchinleck, ff . 113r –113v.

50.

Brown, The Black Douglases, 279. The Johnstones were a family from the west march, but their principal interests appear to have been the consolidation of their own position.

51.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 121v.

52.

Fraser, Douglas, iii, 305.

53.

ER, v, 6, 47, 141, 197, 240, 283, 322, 403, 445, 567, 638.

54.

F. Riddy, ‘Dating the   Buke of the Howlat’, Review of English Studies, xxxvii, no. 145 (February 1986), 1-10; Marion M. Stewart, ‘Holland of the Howlat’,   IR, xxiii (1972), 3-15; Marion M. Stewart, ‘Holland’s “Howlat” and the fall of the Livingstons’,   IR, xxvi (1975), 67-79.

55.

For a full analysis of this, see M. H. Brown, ‘”Rejoice to hear of Douglas”: The House of Douglas and the Presentation of Magnate power in Late Medieval Scotland’,   SHR, lxxvi (1997), 161-84.

56.

APS, i, 715.

57.

Brown, ‘Rejoice to hear of Douglas’, 180.

58.

CSSR, i, 142; iv, 987; v, 310.

59.

L. A. Barbé,   Margaret of Scotland and the Dauphin Louis (London, 1917), 97-113, 150-83.

60.

Arthur le Moyne de la Broderie, Histoire de Bretagne (Rennes, 1906), iv, 303: ‘Par saint Nicolas, j’estime une femme assez sage [. . .] quand elle sait mettre différence entre sa chemise et le pourpoint de son mari.’

61.

Dunlop, Kennedy, 147-8.

62.

Norman Macdougall, ‘Monypenny, William, first Lord Monypenny (d. in or before 1488)’,   Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

63.

His godfather was Charles the Bold, count of Charolais and heir to the duke of Burgundy. Charles attended the university of Louvain, but died in 1464. Mary Stewart, lady of Buchan, died on 20 March 1465. Dunlop,   Kennedy, 66; A. W. K. Stevenson, ‘Trade between Scotland and the Low Countries in the Later Middle Ages’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Aberdeen, 1982), 76-81.

64.

D. Ditchburn, ‘Scotland and the Netherlands in the Later Middle Ages: The Other “Auld Alliance”’,   Handelingen van de Koninklijke Kring voor Oudheidkunde, Letteren en Kunst van Mechelen (Mechelen, 2001), 33-55.

65.

Joanna may have accompanied her sister Eleanor without specific invitation as a speculative venture to secure a suitable match. However, although her sister Margaret died in 1445, Joanna was to spend twelve years at the French court without securing a betrothal, and she was sent back to Scotland with her youngest sister, Annabella, in 1458.

66.

Rymer, Foedera, ii, 1377-654.

67.

J. Stevenson (ed.),   Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Wars of the English in France during the Reign of Henry the Sixth, Rolls Series, 2 vols (London, 1861-4), ii, 197.

68.

Isabella of Portugal was the third wife of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, and was the daughter of John I of Portugal and Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster. Charles, count of Charolais was, in due course, to become the godfather of Charles, son of Wolfaert van Borselen and Mary Stewart.

69.

Lilles, Archives départmentales du Nord [hereafter ADN], B1978, f.330, 334: B3410/115835; B1969, f.338; B3415/116429.

70.

D. Ditchburn, ‘The Place of Gueldres in Scottish Foreign Policy,   c.1449-  c.1542’, in Grant G. Simpson (ed.),   Scotland and the Low Countries, 1124-1994 (East Linton, 1996), 62.

71.

Lilles, ADN, B427/15853.

72.

Downie, She is but a Woman, 71.

73.

This meant that vows were exchanged (Sigmund’s by proxy), but the marriage was to be formalised at a later date.

74.

Downie argues that this rapid readjustment may not have had the approval of Mary’s father, but he does not seem to have been in a position to prevent it. Downie,   She is but a Woman, 72.

75.

D. Ditchburn, ‘Rituals, Space and the Marriage of James II and Mary of Guelders, 1449’, in F. Andrews (ed.),   Ritual and Space in the Middle Ages (Proceedings of the 2009 Harlaxton Symposium) (2011), 181-3, 187-9.

76.

Ibid., 181.

77.

George Chastellain, ‘Histoire du bon chevalier Messire Jacques de Lalain frère et compagnon de l’ordre de la Toison d’Or’, in P. Hume Brown (ed.),   Early Travellers in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1973), 33-4. Details of the tournament are given also in Oliver de la Marche,   Memories (Paris, 1884) ii, 105.

78.

Hume Brown, Early Travellers, 33-4. There was no Scottish order of knighthood at this time, therefore Chastellain may be referring to the symbolic expression of favour.

79.

de la Marche, Memories, 105. Chastellain identifies this James Douglas and the first cousin of ‘count duglas’, but de la Marche appears to have only sketchy details concerning him. John Ross of Hawkhead was later given the keepership of Blackness castle. K. C. Stevenson,   Chivalry and Knighthood (Woodbridge, 2006), 181.

80.

Ibid.

81.

K. Stevenson, ‘Contesting Chivalry: James II and the Control of Chivalric Culture in the 1450s’,   Journal of Medieval History, xxxiii, no. 2 (2007), 208.

82.

Hume Brown, Early Travellers, 38; NRAS, SP7/14; Lille, ADN, B308/15876; Ditchburn, ‘Rituals, Space and the Marriage of James II’, 183.

83.

NRAS SP7/14.

84.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 121v.

85.

Downie, She is but a Woman, 78.

86.

Two écus (gold crowns) were worth one Scots pound, therefore this equated to £30,000 Scots.

87.

Dunlop, Kennedy, 100; J. H. Baxter, ‘The Marriage of James II’,   SHR, xxv (1928), 71.

88.

Baxter, ‘Marriage of James II’, 71.

89.

Mathieu D’Escouchy, Chronique, ed. G. du Fresne Beaucourt (Paris, 1863-4), i, 176-7.

90.

Ibid; Chron. Auchinleck, f. 121v.

91.

K. De Vries, ‘A 15th Century Weapons Dowry: The Weapons Dowry of Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy for the Marriage of Mary of Guelders and James II of Scotland in 1449’,   The Royal Armouries Yearbook, vi (2001), 22-31; R. G. Smith and K. De Vries,   The Artillery of the Dukes of Burgundy, 1363-1477 (Woodbridge, 2005), 120-1.

92.

This is a mistaken reference to the shrine of St Adrian, the focus of pilgrimage to the Isle of May. The Exchequer Rolls record payment for a boat and other expenses incurred by the queen for going ‘to the monasteries of St Anthony of Leth and Holyrood of Edynburgh’,   ER, v, 381-2.

93.

The possessions granted to the queen were to be expanded substantially in the parliament held in January 1450. See below, pages 96–7.

94.

James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews, may have been in Burgundy pursuing payment in January 1452 when he is granted an ordinance for a small payment towards the remaining part of the dowry. Lilles, ADN, Musée, B427;   RMS, ii, 329, 345; Dunlop, Kennedy, 135 (‘Ordonnance de payement de 1600 salus en déduction des 35,000 écus dus pour le douaire’). Brussels, 3 January 1452.

95.

NRAS, SP7/14. The contract was witnessed by William lord Crichton, chancellor, William Turnbull, bishop of Glasgow, Thomas Livingstone, bishop of Dunkeld, William 8th earl of Douglas, Alexander lord Montgomery and William lord Somerville; Baxter, ‘The Marriage of James II’, 71; Macdougall,   James III, 115-120.

96.

Ditchburn, ‘Rituals, Space and the Marriage of James II’, 185–6, 190, 195.

97.

D’Escouchy, Chronique, I, 181–2; R. Vaughan,   Philip the Good (Woodbridge, 2002 [new edition]), 112.

98.

ER, v, 386-7, 500, 535, 688.

99.

CDS, iv, 1225-6.

100.

The king’s privy seal depicted the arms of Scotland supported by two lions rampant beneath a crown.

101.

Downie, She is but a Woman, 92-4.

102.

RPS/1450/1/32. The original is in NRAS, Register of the Great Seal, C2/4/1, ff. 2 r-v. It contains numerous lacunae and an undamaged version is held in Lille, ADN, Musée 107.

CHAPTER 5

Ambition and Assertion (1450-1452)

and hecht him gud lordschipe the quhilk he had nocht gottin bot ewyn the contrary in all thingis.[1]

During the minority, James II remains something of a shadowy figure whose character and attitude to what was going on around him is almost impossible to discern. Fleeting glimpses of the boy-king appear as his presence was used to underpin the actions of particular factions, and payments made for his comfort, education or entertainment furnish some sense of how he lived. However, although his views during his minority are a matter for speculation, his character was revealed in greater depth once he started to act on his own account and documents issued by him may be held to indicate his consent or personal initiative. His marriage to Mary of Gueldres, which had taken place in July 1449, brought with it, as well as the offer of a substantial dowry and the increase in prestige, certain obligations to provide a tocher for his new queen that would amount to the sum promised at the ratification of the treaty of Brussels. The principal concern facing James II at the outset of his personal rule was therefore financial, and he needed to augment the royal coffers as soon as possible. Although the late-minority government had been dominated by William 8th earl of Douglas, he was not concerned personally with the day-to-day administration of the realm, which was more the preserve of chancellor Crichton and his associates. However, Douglas had encouraged the augmentation of the Livingston family’s position during the period after 1445, because of the benefits to his exercise of authority provided by the presence of the young king, then in the custodianship of James Livingston, son of Sir Alexander Livingston of Callendar and keeper of Stirling castle. The extended Livingston family used the opportunities offered by Douglas support to expand their influence through holding various crown offices, which included financial positions such as comptroller and the keepership of various castles. This was an arrangement of mutual convenience rather than a defined alliance, and with the assumption of personal rule, the issue of access to the king through the Livingstons was moot, as William earl of Douglas and his brothers were able to build on familiarity developed during the king’s minority to be sure of a seat at his council table on their own account.

There are a number of ways in which the character of the king may be assessed in the first year or so of his personal rule. If the continuity of personnel on sederunt lists and charters is examined, the Douglas dominance at court was clear, with the ever-present William lord Crichton continuing to bring his experience and authority to the administration. If this is viewed as reliance that obviated the king acting according to his own wishes, then there is some justification for the observation that ‘the king would not free himself fully from the constraints of minority government at any point before 1455’.[2] However, there was some sense in continuing to seek the advice of those with experience in royal government, and this is not necessarily an indication of manipulation. The young king had not, like his father, been absent from his kingdom during his formative years and, however brutal and unsettling some of the events he witnessed may have been, this was part of a royal apprenticeship that would have included training in martial skills, hunting and the royal duties connected with government administration. He would have attended assemblies of the three estates and had been taken to sieges and on at least one progress to the north. In that sense, he was not a raw, bewildered boy when he grasped the reins of power, but a king who understood what his role should be and had every determination to exercise it. If his views ran initially along similar lines to Douglas, that should not be too surprising, as he would have spent a great deal of time associating with him, but that closeness carried its own dangers when perceptions and ambitions collided.

Another member of the council who was to be very close to the king during the early 1450s was William Turnbull, bishop of Glasgow. He was an early graduate of the university of St Andrews (founded by Henry Wardlaw, bishop of St Andrews in 1413), taking a masters degree in 1420. He continued his studies at the university of Louvain and became dean of the Arts faculty of St Andrews in 1430. While in Florence in the 1430s, Turnbull was described as papal chamberlain to Eugenius IV, and he returned to Scotland from the continent in the winter of 1439-40 where he achieved rapid promotion within the royal administration as keeper of the privy seal; an office acquired by 6 August 1440 and held even after his promotion to the bishopric of Dunkeld in 1447.[3] He was a canon of Glasgow when he was provided to Dunkeld on 10 February 1447, but before he could be consecrated, he was translated to the bishopric of Glasgow on 27 October.[4] His importance on the royal council was as a counter-balance to Douglas for, although his family had traditional associations as tenants of Archibald 4th earl of Douglas, such ties seem to have been severed by the Black Dinner, and William Turnbull was no uncritical admirer of the 8th earl. He was not alone in this, as John Ralston, who had become bishop of Dunkeld in 1447 following Turnbull’s translation to Glasgow, and Thomas Spens, who was consecrated bishop of Galloway in 1450, were also men with former connections to the Black Douglases, but who can hardly be seen as close adherents of the new regime.

The first extant charter issued after the king’s wedding was a confirmation upon resignation to Alexander Corbet of lands within the lordship of Annandale, issued at Linlithgow on 21 July 1449.[5] The witnesses included William Turnbull, bishop of Glasgow, John Ralston, bishop of Dunkeld, William lord Crichton, chancellor and James Livingston, great chamberlain. The following month, on 22 August, the king sealed an obligation at Stirling to pay his comptroller, Robert Livingston, the sum of 372 full pounds of Flemish money (the equivalent of £930 Scots) by the following April. This was to be paid at Bruges ‘out of the sum due to the king for the tocher of his consort, Mary Queen of Scotland’. This was stated to be the balance found due to Robert by the auditors of the exchequer, but ‘if Robert should be paid in Flanders 63 full pounds, in virtue of another assignation by the king, that sum should be deducted from the former’.[6] This is clear indication that the king was already in debt to Robert Livingston, who was employed on royal business in Flanders, and may offer some explanation of Livingston’s subsequent fate. Other charters issued in the autumn of 1449 concerned commissions and letters of credence, and confirmation of possessions and offices, such as the confirmation of Richard Bothwell as abbot of Dunfermline; an office he had held since 1444.[7] On 5 November, the king was at Edinburgh when he confirmed a charter by William earl of Douglas to his brother, James master of Douglas; a detailed agreement drawn up at Douglas castle on 2 May. In addition to Turnbull and Crichton, the confirmation was witnessed by three lords of parliament, William lord Somerville, Patrick lord Glamis, Andrew lord Gray and Master Nicholas Otterburn, secretary and John Arous, archdeacon of Glasgow.[8] The entry of James II into personal rule signalled an understandable desire to have royal confirmation of rights, possessions and personal agreements, particularly if these had been made during the minority. It is worth noting that, between April 1445 and December 1449, only three charters appear in the Register of the Great Seal and although that number increases when charters from other sources are considered, it remains less than 40 in four years. The significant increase from the winter of 1449-50 is a clear indication of the change in style of government once the king’s authority was looked to for validation.[9]

If indications of character may be read from actions, it is possible to see in James II’s timing for his attack on the Livingston family elements of a ruthless manipulator in the mould of his late father. In September 1449, Sir Alexander Livingston of Callendar, the principal member of the Livingston family, was serving on an embassy to England with John Ralston, bishop of Dunkeld and Andrew Hunter, abbot of Melrose, the purpose of which was to negotiate an extension of the Anglo-Scottish truce. He appended his seal to an indenture in Durham on 18 September, agreeing to prolong the truce until 19 November, but this was to be his last action as a favoured crown representative.[10] The first indication that the king had the Livingstons in his sights appears in an entry in the Auchinleck Chronicle, which records a number of pieces of information together on the same folio. The chronicler mentions that William Turnbull said his first mass in Glasgow and runs that information into the next entry ‘the xx day of september [. . .]’. As Turnbull had been consecrated as bishop of Glasgow in April 1448, it is unlikely that he waited until September 1449 to say his first mass there, so the date refers to the attack on the Livingstons when the chronicler states:

the xx day of september James of Levingstoune was arrestit be the king and Robyn kalendar capitane of Dunbertane and Jhon of levingstoun capitane of the castell of doun and David levingstoun of the grene zardis with syndry utheris and sone eftir this sir alexander levingstoun was arrestit and robyn of levingstoun of lichqw that time comptroller and James and his brother alexander and Robyne of lithqw war put in the blakness and thair gudis tane within xl days in all placis and put under arrest and all thair gudis that pertenit to that party and all officeris that war put in be thaim war clerlie put out of all officis and all put doun that thai put up and this was a gret ferlie[11]

This suggests that James Livingston, royal chamberlain, was arrested only two days after his father had sealed the indenture at Durham, and the members of his kindred to share his fate may be untangled from this account to include Robert of Callendar, keeper of Dumbarton castle, John Livingston, keeper of Doune castle and David Livingston of Greenyards (near Doune). The chronicler states that Sir Alexander Livingston and Robert Livingston of Linlithgow, comptroller, were arrested shortly after, although Sir Alexander Livingston was almost certainly still in England and this probably alluded to Alexander of Filde, the younger brother of James Livingston, and their cousin, Robert Livingston of Middle Binning.[12]

Blackness castle was in the keepership of Sir George Crichton, and he and his cousin, William lord Crichton, were key figures in carrying out royal orders to arrest the Livingstons; the comprehensive nature of their downfall is encapsulated in the chronicler’s statement that, in addition to having all their goods seized, all officers put in by them were removed from office and ‘all put doun that thai put up’. The chronicler’s view of this as a great wonder (‘ferlie’) implies the suddenness of the attack, the motives for which have been the subject of some debate. The theory that this action had been taken by the king against the Livingstons in some kind of revenge attack for their seizure of his mother, Queen Joan, in 1439, which had resulted in her removal from the royal council and, for the most part, access to the king himself, would carry more weight if the ultimate victims of the ensuing prosecution were the principal players on that occasion, namely Sir Alexander Livingston of Callendar and his son, James. In fact, the former had clearly been alerted to the danger that would face him if he returned to Scotland, and had W ed into exile; a fact registered in a supplication to Rome by James II dated 1 June 1450, which states that Alexander ‘on account of rebellion and excesses against the king of Scotland [. . .] has been expelled from the said kingdom and all his goods confiscated’.[13] However, had the king really wished to visit retribution on the man who had imprisoned his mother, he surely could have chosen a time when he would be certain the man was within his grasp. To attack when Livingston was absent could be seen as a deliberate ploy not to confront him directly and to give him every opportunity to make his escape. Similarly, James Livingston survived the attack, and suffered only temporary imprisonment before escaping to the security offered by his new son-in-law, John Macdonald, Lord of the Isles and earl of Ross. In fact, the Livingstons whose fate it was to suffer the penalty of execution were Robert Livingston of Middle Binning, comptroller, and Alexander Livingston of Filde. The younger Alexander had served as constable of Stirling castle under his father’s keepership and captain of Methven castle, and a charter had been issued by James II when he was at Falkland on 15 February 1449 to his ‘squire and domestic’, Alexander Livingston, son of Alexander Livingston of Callendar, of lands in Perthshire, including Filde in Glenfarg.[14] Whatever position of favour in the king’s household this grant implies, Alexander of Filde did not have long to enjoy his new title.

The attack was justified in the formal proceedings of the first parliament to be called during James II’s personal rule, which was held in the tolbooth at Edinburgh commencing on 19 January 1450 and sitting to conduct business until 2 February. This was a highly symbolic assembly which was very well attended and marked the end of the council’s stewardship of the rights and resources vested in the crown and also removed the barriers to new grants and legislation which needed royal assent.[15] The king’s authority within an assembly of the three estates in parliament was also necessary to pass sentences of forfeiture, and the proceedings against the Livingstons underlined that royal authority in the strongest terms possible. The Auchinleck chronicler’s statement that ‘thar was forfaltit Schir alexander levinstoun lord Kalendar and James dundas of thet Ilk and Robert brus the lard of clackmannis brother And James of levingstoun sone and air to the said alexander was put to deid and Robyne of levingstoun of lithqw that tyme comptroller was put to deid baith togidder on the castlehill thair heidis strikin of’ is inaccurate in that James Livingston was not executed, but rather his younger brother, Alexander Livingston of Filde.[16]

Nevertheless, the circumstances of the Livingstons’ downfall appear to have gripped the attention of the Auchinleck chronicler, who demonstrates considerable eagerness to record all the events associated with the attack. Having stated that the downfall of the Livingstons had caused great wonder and amazement, the chronicler continues ‘and in that samyn tyme the forsaid James dochter that was spousit with the lord of the Isles come till him sodanlie with few personis with hir and thai met in dumbertane sir duncan persone and led hir with him to kintyre the xxiii day of the said moneth and it is to wit that the first arresting was maid at the brig of Inchebelle on kylwyne betuix glasqw and kirkyntulloch’.[17] This seems to be an account of the escape of Elizabeth Livingston, who may have been with her father, James, when he was arrested three days earlier. Elizabeth was married to John MacDonald lord of the Isles and earl of Ross, an arrangement that may have been made in 1448, but had been only recently concluded. Nicholson has suggested that the marriage alliance between MacDonald and Elizabeth was viewed with hostility by Douglas, and one interpretation of Holland’s Buke of the Howlat put forward by Marion Stewart is that it was aimed at the Livingstons for having pretensions above their station in seeking such alliances. However, this is not really borne out by the evidence, as the Douglases did not seem to have any objection to the match and may even have brokered it within the context of securing their own position in their northern territories.[18]

It is hard to determine James II’s views on the Ross-Livingston marriage, but it is clear that the person with the greatest grievance in the light of the downfall of the Livingstons was undoubtedly the young John MacDonald, having only recently succeeded his father, Alexander, who died in Dingwall in April 1449. John was fifteen when he became Lord of the Isles and earl of Ross, and his hopes of greater influence at the heart of royal government through alliance with the daughter of one of the king’s closest adherents had been dashed in more ways than one. The allusion in the chronicler’s account to Elizabeth Livingston being met at Dumbarton by Duncan Pearson suggests that he was in the service of John MacDonald. His name is recorded in a grant from the exchequer to John’s father, Alexander lord of the Isles, in 1438, and his agency in helping Elizabeth to return to her husband shows that Ross still had hopes of retaining the benefits conferred upon him at the time of his marriage, such as the grant of Urquhart castle.[19] An entry in the Auchinleck Chronicle referring to events in 1451 stated that James Livingston ‘eschapit subtelly fra the king and his counsall out of the abbay of halyrudhous and was cummand to the lord for supple & succour that resauit him richt thank/fully ’.[20] It is not clear when this subtle escape from Holyrood occurred, but it may have pre-dated the parliament of January 1450, which explains James Livingston’s evasion of the headman’s axe.

The execution of Robert Livingston of Middle Binning has the most obvious explanation in terms of the financial element contained in the attack on the family. The debt owed by James II to Robert Livingston would have been cancelled by the latter’s forfeiture and execution, but there may have been suspicions regarding the extent to which Livingston used his office to subvert the revenues that came through his hands. In 1451, the king assigned £123 13s 7d ‘to satisfy the poor creditors from whom the late Robert of Levingstoun, the king’s comptroller, received goods and merchandise for the use and expenses of the king’s household before his removal from office and before the entry on office of Alexander Napier’.[21] Before this, on 23 August 1450, James II wrote to Henry lord of Veere, his sister Mary’s father-in-law, claiming as escheat a chest of silverware which had belonged to Robert Livingston.[22] This was connected with the plundering of a Scottish ship, the Copin Ring, which had been wrecked at Veere, and William Turnbull, bishop of Glasgow and George Crichton had written to the lord of Veere and to ‘the lady of Veere’ in 1450 to ask for redress; a request that was repeated by Turnbull on 10 July and by the king on 28 August. In the latter communication, James II asked that restitution be made to a deputation of Edinburgh merchants, including George Falou, who was also named in the letter concerning the recovery of Livingston’s silver.[23] The financial strain of providing the queen’s tocher has been assumed to supply the strongest motive for the attack on the Livingstons, and the amount promised to her on 25 June 1449 had included income from possessions which were being held and administered by the two Livingstons, Alexander and Robert, who suffered execution in 1450; the castle and lordship of Methven; and the palace and customs of Linlithgow. However, Tanner has pointed out that the queen was not a noticeable beneficiary of the Livingston downfall in the short term, with Methven no longer included in the grant made to her in January 1450, having been replaced by the earldom of Menteith and Doune castle. Nevertheless, Doune had been in the keepership of John Livingston, a former warden of the royal mint at Stirling, who was named in the Auchinleck chronicler’s account of those who hade been arrested in September 1449.[24]

The other family to suffer in the attack on the Livingstons was that of James Dundas of that Ilk, who was the brother-in-law of Alexander Livingston of Callendar. This was a family whose base was at Dundas in West Lothian, just outside Edinburgh, and they had benefited from their support for the Livingstons by acquiring the keepership of the castles of Kildrummy and Restalrig, held respectively by the brothers of Sir James, Archibald and Duncan Dundas. These men were undoubtedly ‘put out’ from office at the same time as their elder brother was imprisoned in Dumbarton castle, and Archibald Dundas chose to react with defiance at this perceived injustice when he ‘stuffit the towre of dundas’ while the January parliament was still in session.[25]

Although the business of that parliament included processing the forfeiture of the Livingstons and their allies, there was also a considerable amount of legislation enacted, some of which were earlier acts passed by the three estates in the reign of James I and simply restated, but there were others which represented new legislation, offering some indication of the priorities laid down at the start of this new phase in the reign of James II.[26] The sheer weight of business transacted in this parliament accounts for the fortnight spent processing the various elements, and the records reveal a strong emphasis on the proper administration of justice and the enforcement of existing laws against spoliation and intimidation so that ‘the king’s peace be sure to all men’.[27] Legislation was enacted to levy fines upon those who brought false accusations before the justices, and punishment was also to be brought against those who sought to stock-pile ‘vittles’ in order to profit from their sale during times of dearth, struck counterfeit money or exported bullion from the kingdom without permission. In addition to these economic measures, two pieces of legislation concerned the conservation of salmon stocks in the face of ‘slaughter of salmon at a time forbidden by law’.[28] The long-running dispute between Dundee and Montrose was also addressed, with a committee established to examine the evidence and deliver a report on ‘the Monday in the middle of Lent next to come’.[29] Those officers of the crown who served as justices, chamberlains and coroners were reminded of their remits and the need to discharge their duties without asking ‘wrong custom’ or travelling the realm attended by more than a ‘competent and easy number to eschew grievance and hurting of the people’. Such concerns appear to reflect the problem of opportunism and corruption during the minority, which extended to officers travelling with large and intimidating bands of retainers. Recognising that the work of justices could be impeded by ‘masterful men’, one statute ordained that any such impediment should be notified to the king and that he ‘shall provide remedy thereof with his secret council in all haste’.[30] The term ‘secret council’ referred to the king’s inner circle, or privy council, which at this time would have included the three Williams; Douglas, Crichton and Turnbull.

The king’s personal rights were reiterated in the largely conventional statutes forbidding any treasonable acts against ‘the king’s person or his majesty’. This distinction extended offences against the king to encompass more than direct physical harm, but also actions that damaged or trespassed upon a much wider concept of royal rights and dignity, and it was this that may be seen to have underpinned much of what followed in the next few years. However, the statutes of the 1450 parliament contain considerable detail that had a much sharper focus on the events of the minority, such as the proclamation that any who ‘lays hands on his [the king’s] person violently, regardless of what age the king is, young or old, or receives any that are convicted of treason and holds them against the king, or that stuO s houses of his own in furtherance of the king’s rebels [. . .] shall be punished as a traitor’. Another statute concerned the punishment of any who offer aid to those convicted or ‘that shall happen to be convicted in time to come for certain crimes committed against the king, or against his mother of good memory’.[31] Justification for the attack upon the Livingstons and their allies are central to these statutes, but they may reveal more about the king’s attitude than any other. Although Alexander Livingston had carried out the imprisonment of the queen, the young king may have felt himself to have been mishandled during the events of 1439, and the participation of William Crichton and Douglas’s father, James the Gross, may have occasioned some slight discomfort in the chancellor and the earl when this statute was proclaimed.

The desire to have parliament and general council placed at the heart of James II’s exercise of kingship is emphasised in the statute which ordained that a committee or council be set up to examine all acts of parliament or general council held ‘in our sovereign lord’s time and in his father’s time’. This covered the period from 1424 until 1449, and twelve men were chosen to represent the three estates in order to determine which acts were held to be ‘good and agreeable’ and report to the next general council to be held at Perth. The twelve men were chosen from the three estates, with the clergy represented by John Cranach, bishop of Brechin, Richard Bothwell, abbot of Dunfermline and John Scheves, clerk register and vicar of Edinburgh. To represent the barons, Andrew lord Gray, Sir David Murray of Tullibardine, Alexander Nairn and Thomas Cranston of that Ilk were chosen, and those representing the burgh commissioners were Gilbert Menzies from Aberdeen, William Liberton from Edinburgh, John Haddington from Perth and Sir Thomas lord of Abercromby. The term of their commission was to commence on 23 February.[32] This careful deliberation was intended to sharpen focus on parliamentary legislation as an important dimension of royal authority and to allow time for due consideration concerning claims made upon crown rights.

One such claim was the revival of the Erskine claim to the earldom of Mar, which was raised yet again on 26 January by Thomas Erskine, pleading on behalf of his father ‘the very powerful lord Sir Robert Erskine of that Ilk’, that ‘justice or remedy be made to his father concerning the earldom of Mar with the pertinents, pertaining to his father by law of heritage’. These rights, argued Thomas, had been withheld unjustly, and he responded to Crichton’s rejoinder that the council was upholding the statute passed in 1438 that protected all possessions in the hands of the crown at the time of James I’s death until the present king should reach his ‘lawful age’, with a demand that this delay in passing judgement should not ‘prejudice, harm or inconvenience’ Erkine’s claim. He demanded a public instrument to be drawn up to that effect and this was witnessed by James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews, William Turnbull, bishop of Glasgow, John Ralston, bishop of Dunkeld, William earl of Douglas, George earl of Angus and Alexander earl of Huntly.[33] Although Crichton could argue that he was abiding by the letter of the law in invoking the 1438 statute, it appears that Erkine’s claim was not something that could be dismissed outright as it was met with procrastination rather than rejection.

Also on 26 January, William earl of Douglas received two charters under the great seal confirming his rights to ‘all the lands of Ettrick Forest and Selkirk Forest [. . .] for his faithful service done and to be done’.[34] A second charter confirmed William in ‘all the lands of the lordship and regality of Galloway’. It was stated that these were William’s by hereditary right and had been resigned voluntarily by the king’s ‘most beloved aunt Margaret duchess of Touraine’.[35] The royal grants were made in blench ferme, for the annual payment of one arrow at the hill of Selkirk for rights in the Forest, and for Galloway, payment of one red ruby at the bridge of Dumfries, a well-known Galloway landmark; both payments to be made ‘if asked’ on the feast of St John the Baptist (24 June). Certainly, a ruby was a high status payment denoting not only the importance of Galloway, but also the wealth of Douglas and his ability to supply such gems if requested, although in practice, such payments were viewed as token conditions which bound the granter and the recipient in a manner that preserved the symbolic authority of the granter, but allowed the practical transfer of rights to the recipient. Rubies came from Sri Lanka and Thailand and would have been sold by European traders. The charter also renounced previous rights in the Forest held by James I. That William 8th earl of Douglas may justifiably have regarded his position in relation to the king to have been close and harmonious is certainly suggested by the erection of Douglas’s town of Strathaven into a burgh of Barony, a monetary gift from the king of £27 9s 4d, confirmation of the arrangements for Douglas succession and a charter which recognised William’s marriage to Margaret Douglas and remitted any payments due for wardship or relief.[36] Douglas was not the only magnate to take this opportunity to secure royal recognition of gains made during the minority, as Alexander earl of Huntly, present in parliament, had his own position confirmed on 29 January.[37] However, the importance of the grants and generosity shown to William earl of Douglas lies in his having secured royal recognition in parliament for the gains that he and his father had made since 1440, and his apparent success in presenting himself as the rightful inheritor of traditional Black Douglas lordship.

Attacks on the church, including ecclesiastical rights and possessions, was an unsurprising addition to the legislation in view of the attention this problem received throughout the minority, and there was a strong emphasis in this parliament on the ‘freedom of Holy Church’ and the rights of bishops to bequeath their possessions. In an assembly that included eight bishops, the charter issued on 24 January that declared the right of testament of bishops was an important gesture of patronage to the church, and coincided with the return of James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews, to favour. He was accompanied by William Turnbull of Glasgow, John Ralston of Dunkeld, John Winchester of Moray, Robert Lauder of Dunblane, John Cranach of Brechin, Thomas Tulloch of Ross and George Lauder of Argyll. This concession to the leaders of the first estate allowed them to bequeath moveable possessions rather than having them seized by the crown after their deaths. According to the bishops, such requisitions made it impossible to settle debts, leave legacies or provide for masses to be said for their souls because their estates were left with no money to pay for such provisions. Moveable goods were listed as ‘gold, silver and gilded things, jewels, precious objects, communion cups, goblets, utensils, spoons and vessels’, although they were to include also ‘corn, cattle, horses [. . .] and other animals’. Although on the face of it this statute appeared to give away a lucrative source of crown income, the king had weighed the benefits against the resentment and obstruction that could result from alienation of the bishops, and he could afford to show largesse in this matter in the hope of reaping the rewards of gratitude and co-operation. Crucially, he used the occasion to secure for the crown the right to the temporalities (revenues) of vacant bishoprics, so the generosity had not been all one-way. The importance of presenting this charter to the bishops in parliament emphasised the basis of the relationship between the adult king and his first estate, and the occasion called for a display of strong royal symbolism in which the new queen was to play her part.

Parliament was, traditionally, an all-male preserve, but there were occasions when queens made an appearance in order to supplicate or intercede on behalf of a particular person or group. Mary of Gueldres fulfilled this role in January 1450 by pleading with James II on behalf of the bishops as they and the assembled clergy were ‘prostrated on their knees’ awaiting the king’s judgement. The king duly found in their favour on the grounds of the devoted service that they had offered ‘since the time of his infancy’ and through ‘the supplications of the most illustrious lady the queen’. William lord Crichton was commanded to have the charter of rights drawn up under the great seal and presented to each of the bishops of the kingdom.[38] This was an impressive piece of royal theatre, but it had the serious purpose of presenting a facet of royal authority that showed generosity in contrast, or as a complement, to the presentation of royal strength and determination to punish wrongdoers and enforce the law, as seen in other parliamentary business of this session.

The presence of the queen in parliament had a more personal consideration than simply offering symbolic support to her husband’s projection of generosity as, on 22 January, a charter was issued under the great seal which set out the earldoms, lordships and other possessions to be provided in payment of the queen’s dowry. This charter acknowledged the agreement by James II through his ambassadors to pay Mary ‘10,000 écus in the money of France’, but it was to be reinforced ‘by the consent of our three estates in full parliament’ in order that the grant be seen ‘as more firm and secure’. Mary was to receive

the earldoms of Atholl and Strathearn, the lordship and palace of Linlithgow, the great customs of Linlithgow, the lordship of Menteith with Doune Castle, the lordships of Strath Gartney, Drummond and Duchray, also the lordships of Strathord, Kinclaven, Desschier, Toar, Fortingall, Glen Lyon, Glen Dochart, Strathbraan, Appin of Dull with the land of Rannoch, the lordships of Brechin, Badenoch and Abernethy, the great custom of the burgh of Perth, Inverness Castle, with the great customs of the burgh of Inverness, the great customs of the burgh of Aberdeen, [and] £100 annually of the money current in Scotland, which extends in annual rents to the value and sum of 10,000 écus.

There was an impressive list of witnesses to this charter, including the bishops of St Andrews, Glasgow, Dunkeld, Moray, Dunblane, Brechin, Ross and Argyll, and William lord Crichton, chancellor, William earl of Douglas and Avondale, lord of Galloway, George earl of Angus, Archibald earl of Moray, Hugh earl of Ormond, Alexander earl of Huntly and William earl of Orkney. Representatives from the burghs of Edinburgh, Perth, Linlithgow and Stirling were also witnesses, ‘with the seals of various prelates and barons’.[39] Although this appears to be a substantial list of possessions, it amounted to little more than had been promised at the ratification of the marriage treaty the previous June, although the earldom of Menteith and the castle of Doune had replaced Methven castle. Roland Tanner doubted that the possessions outlined above would have brought in a sum equivalent to 10,000 écus, and if the king had engineered the downfall of the Livingstons with the intention of augmenting the queen’s tocher, then it is curious that she was not a more substantial beneficiary.[40]

In fact, it was William earl of Douglas who gained most from the forfeitures of the Livingstons and their allies, receiving charters of lands escheated to the king as the result of the forfeiture of James Dundas of that Ilk. One of the first actions taken after the three estates rose at the beginning of February was to deal with the siege of the tower of Dundas, provisioned and held by Archibald Dundas in defiance of his brother’s arrest and forfeiture. James II and his immediate council must have been gratified at the results of this crucial first meeting between the king and so many of his politically active subjects in parliament, and they would have been eager to build upon the positive image by demonstrating military authority at the siege of Dundas. Douglas may have been despatched to take command of the siege, but the Auchinleck chronicler states that the king attended personally and, when Dundas refused to surrender the castle, the king

Incontinent laide ane sege about It that remanit quhill the latter end of aprile and than It was gevin oure and all that war in It war put in the kingis grace and thai war tane and sum send till a castell and sum till utheris and the hous was cassyn doune and the stuf thairof partit betuix the king and the erll of douglas Schir willam of crechtoun and sir george of crechtoun.[41]

The settlement reached at the conclusion of the siege is illuminating because there do not seem to have been harsh retributions visited upon the besieged, who were, by the king’s grace, sent to various castles, presumably to be held until their captors could secure a ransom. The tower of Dundas was destroyed, or at least slighted, and the goods contained within it were divided between Douglas and the Crichtons.

Efforts to re-establish royal authority over unruly barons who created problems for the church may be seen in a letter from James II to Robert Boyd of Tinwald, issued at Edinburgh on 24 April, instructing him not to go to the kirk of Largs on the following Friday with a host of followers against the abbot and convent of Paisley, but to pursue any grievance through the lawful channels.[42] Similarly, a letter sent by the king on 12 May to William Nudrie of Brechin instructed him to command John Cullace of Balnamone to stop interfering with the community of Brechin and disturbing the inhabitants of that city.[43] Nevertheless, by the time that the three estates re-assembled in a meeting of the General Council at the tolbooth in Perth on Monday 4 May, at least the problem of the siege of Dundas castle had been resolved. Although the tolbooth was the venue for the estates to assemble together and make public pronouncements, business appears to have been conducted in the ‘Friars’ church’, or Perth Charterhouse; James I’s personal foundation where he and his queen, Joan Beaufort, had been interred. There was a large element of symbolism in the grant made by their son, James II, to William Hay of Erroll, hereditary constable of Scotland, of patronage of the parish of Turriff. This grant was intended to heal a rift that had occurred between Hay’s grandfather, also Sir William, and James I when the latter forced the elder Hay to resign his rights to the parish church of Erroll, in order that the king could use it to endow his new foundation at Perth; the very place where reparation to Hay’s grandson was being made in 1450.[44] This was an important gesture as it created an opportunity for the king to make a personal connection with Hay, holder of the hereditary household office of constable, that was to prove unwavering in the years to come. Other business included deliberation by the lords auditors of causes and complaints over a case concerning teinds from the lands of Rait, and legislation was discussed concerning punishments to be imposed on those who were found guilty of bringing poison into the realm, whether they be foreigners or ‘any person born in the realm of Scotland’.[45] The threat of poison seems to have been a sporadic fear indicated by the passing of such acts, but may have masked a more general restriction or excuse for searching goods brought into the realm. In the January parliament, a named council of twelve had been set up to investigate all acts of parliament or general council passed since 1424, and although they had been instructed to report their findings to ‘the next general council to be held at Perth’, no record survives of such a report.[46]

It is possible that diplomatic relations formed part of the discussions in this assembly of the three estates, as James II had informed Charles VII in a letter dated 23 April 1450, that ‘matters touching the French king’ would be raised in the General Council to be held in May.[47] The truce with England had been extended in November 1449 and negotiations may have been taking place which led to a confirmation of the truce on 9 June.[48] With Charles VII still dealing with the threat of English claims to French possessions, he would not have welcomed his Scottish ally’s closer rapprochement with England, however temporary, but any discussion on the matter has not survived in the records. The grant to Hay was dated 12 May and ratified and confirmed by the king on 16 May, by which time he was back in Stirling. By mid-May, the king must have been pleased at the manner in which his royal authority was being imposed, and further cause for satisfaction would have been provided by the queen’s first pregnancy, which may have been in its early stages when she appeared in parliament to intercede for the bishops. However, these hopes were dashed when, according to the Auchinleck chronicler, ‘The zere of god 1450 the 19th day of maii qwene mary partit with barne in strivling xii oulkis befor hir tyme and the barne liffit bot the space of sex houris’.[49] This premature birth ended any present hope of securing the succession, but the queen was not yet seventeen years old, so there was every reason to believe that future pregnancies would be successful.

Although William lord Crichton and his cousin George had benefited from the disgrace of the Livingstons, Chancellor Crichton was quick to offer practical financial support of his own to the king. The comptroller’s account of 1450 shows a loan to the king by Crichton of £500, and on 12 June 1450, Crichton received a charter of the lands of Castlelaw in reward for faithful counsel, service and in recompense for £2080 14s 6d advanced for the expenses of the king’s household, in addition to a further loan to the king of £400.[50] Crichton was clearly a very wealthy man whose support for the king extended beyond the practical administrative skills upon which he had based his service to the crown since the reign of James I. It is not clear what the Crichtons made of the patronage that continued to be lavished on William 8th earl of Douglas as the principal beneficiary of the Livingston forfeitures, as he received a further grant of lands in the sheriffdoms of Lanark and Linlithgow on 22 May that had belonged to James Livingston, the executed Robert Livingston ‘burgensis de Linlithqw’ and James Dundas.[51] Douglas must have felt suffciently secure in his relationship with James II to make plans to travel to Rome for the papal jubilee in 1450, and the significance of this journey lay in the opportunity for Douglas to build on the presentation of Black Douglas power already achieved in the years following his father’s death in 1443, and make personal connections on the continent.

He may have hoped to reclaim lost Douglas possessions such as the dukedom of Touraine, despite the very forthright rebuttal received from Charles VII, and his departure in October must have led to discussion and speculation at the royal council.[52] An English safe-conduct, valid for three years, was issued on 12 November for William earl of Douglas, his brother James, Sir James Hamilton, Sir John Ogilvy, Sir Alexander Hume, Sir William Cranston, Sir Nicholas Campbell and others.[53] However, Douglas appears not to have waited for this safe-conduct for an overland route at the start of his journey to the continent, but took ship on a vessel belonging to Alan lord Cathcart to the Low Countries, possibly Bruges, whence he travelled to Lille to be received and entertained by Philip duke of Burgundy on 12 October.[54] He may have been joined there by other members of his entourage who had availed themselves of the English safe-conduct, including ‘several knights and esquires of Scotland’. Chief among his companions on this journey to Rome was his brother, James, master of Douglas, who was already well-known in Burgundy through the chivalric exploits that had led Jacques de Lalain, his uncle, Simon de Lalain and Hervé de Meriadec to travel to Scotland in 1448, ostensibly to fight James Douglas in the lists, but also to act as envoys of the duke of Burgundy to the Scottish court. A further display of this chivalric dimension of Black Douglas power occurred when James Douglas and Simon de Lalain met in combat once again at the pas d’armes arranged by Philip duke of Burgundy at Chalon sur Saône, judgement being given by Toison d’Or King of Arms.[55] When at Lille, the Douglases enjoyed the lavish hospitality of the Burgundians, including a feast held in their honour itemised as including beef, mutton, pork, mustard; brown and white bread; 2 hares; 10 pheasants; 1 heron; 4 bitterns; 156 rabbits; 72 partridges; 10 geese; 12 water birds; 34 dozen larks; 231 chickens and 56 brace of pigeons.[56] Further details of Douglas’s journey to Rome are provided by John Law in his short chronicle; an abridgement and continuation of Bower’s Scotichronicon, which was written in the early sixteenth century and confirms the presence with William of his brother, James, and Sir James Hamilton.[57]

Although James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews, had been present at the General Council of May 1450, he also travelled to Rome for the papal jubilee and was absent from the realm between August 1450 and April 1452.[58] He had his own concerns related to business within his diocese including rights of jurisdiction, and he was also keen to secure papal backing for his new college foundation at the University of St Andrews, which was dedicated to St Salvator on 27 August.[59] Although there is no evidence that he travelled with Douglas, Dunlop suggests that Kennedy shared William Turnbull, bishop of Glasgow’s suspicions concerning the earl, and that his business in Rome would allow him to ‘keep watch upon the movements of Douglas’.[60] This may be a case of reading history backwards, but Turnbull and Kennedy were, at best, lukewarm to the position that William 8th earl of Douglas had secured at the Scottish court, and Turnbull had attained a central role in the king’s inner council, making him an important adviser to James II during this period. As has been shown, his royal service as keeper of the privy seal, secretary, charter witness and diplomat placed him close to the king at a time when James II was making the transition from minority to personal rule. The king’s support for Turnbull is evident in his command to Scottish merchants in the burghs of Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen to furnish a loan to Turnbull for the payment of costs incurred securing papal bulls for his provision to the bishopric of Glasgow, and he was involved also in Turnbull’s plan to found a university within his episcopal burgh.[61] Although Turnbull could not journey personally to Rome, he would have had his pleas presented by his representative, Andrew Durisdeer, who was in Rome in November, and the concession of an extension of Jubilee privileges benefited Turnbull in that he was permitted to offer one-quarter of the expenses that would have been incurred in travelling to Rome on the high altar at Glasgow, a third of which was to go to the cathedral and the rest to Rome.[62] On 7 January 1451, the pope, Nicholas V, issued the foundation bull for Turnbull’s University of Glasgow as a studium generale, which would provide classes in theology, canon and civil law and the arts.

Whether or not Douglas was under Kennedy’s surveillance, he exploited all the opportunities that his progress to the continent afforded, and a meeting with Charles VII would have made perfect sense as, even if there was no realistic hope of recovering former Black Douglas possessions in France, he would have been eager to make a personal connection with Charles VII within the context of presenting his own incarnation of Black Douglas lordship, embracing the glories and gains of the last century.[63] The Anglo-Scottish truce ratified by James II on 9 June 1450 had unsettled Charles VII, who may have felt that the Scottish king’s congratulatory messages in April and July concerning French military victories in Normandy and Gascony could be backed by more practical support. William Monypenny, acting for Charles VII, approached Turnbull on the matter, and the bishop replied on 17 July assuring the French king that he had placed his concerns before James II and wished him ‘the accomplishment of all your high and noble desires’.[64] As this was hardly the response that Charles VII was seeking, discussions with William earl of Douglas may have offered hope of more useful intervention from a great Scottish border magnate. This phase of Douglas diplomacy occupied the period up to Christmas 1450, but Douglas was in Rome by January 1451. The contemporary Auchinleck chronicler is curiously silent about Douglas’s trip to Rome, but some detail is supplied by John Law’s chronicle, which states that the earl arrived in magnificent attire and presented such an impressive appearance that he was ‘commended by the supreme Pontiff above all pilgrims’.[65] Any damage that had been inflicted on the name of Douglas by the adherence of William’s father, James the Gross, to the Council of Basle, had been repaired by 12 January, on which date Douglas secured a papal indulgence to choose his own confessor. On 15 January he obtained permission to provide the nomination to ten secular benefices, as well as an extension of the indult to choose confessors that covered William’s siblings, and permission for their mother, Countess Beatrice, to have a portable altar.[66]

Further evidence for Douglas’s presence in Rome occurs in a supplication dated 6 February 1451:

Lately the Pope granted to William earl of Douglas then present in the Roman court, prorogation for two months to present a fit person for the canon and prebendary of Cambuslang, in the patronage of the earl [. . .] but the said earl, who is on his journey from Rome back to Scotland, doubts that on account of the dangers of the ways and of the sea, he may not be able to present a fit person within the time of prorogation and therefore supplicates that the Pope would extend the term for other three months with strict prohibition to the bishop, vicar, official or whatsoever others to dispose of the same in any way.[67]

The bishop alluded to in this supplication was William Turnbull, and this may suggest some knowledge on Douglas’s part that matters back in Scotland were running against his interests. Law offers the unequivocal statement that the instigators of James II’s attack on Douglas’s interests during his absence on the continent were William Turnbull, William Crichton and his cousin, George Crichton, and states that the conspiracy extended to procuring the death of Douglas.[68] This may have been a simple reflection of later events, but the king’s actions were offering a clear challenge to Douglas’s interests.

James II was in Melrose on 4 December 1450 with a substantial following including William and George Crichton, Bishop Turnbull, George earl of Angus and several knights, mostly from Lothian, including William Borthwick, Alexander Ramsay of Dalhousie and John Logan of Restalrig.[69] Although this may have been the occasion of the king making his first official visit to the abbey at Melrose and meeting with the men of the middle and east Marches, the timing would have seemed ominous to those safeguarding Douglas’s interests at home. It is not clear whether this office of stewardship was being performed by Hugh Douglas earl of Ormond or his younger brother John Douglas of Balvenie, but either would have recognised the dangers inherent in the king’s actions during the winter of 1450-1, particularly after the death at Threave of the king’s aunt, Margaret, duchess of Touraine.[70] James I had granted his sister Margaret a liferent of the earldom of Wigtown and the lordship of Galloway, with the intention that they would revert to the crown on her death. However, William 8th earl of Douglas had been loath to lose such possessions and had compelled Margaret to resign her rights in his favour; a resignation that had been ratified by the king himself in the previous January and Douglas had used subsequently the title ‘lord of Galloway’ in official documents. This ratification was at the heart of the dispute over Galloway, because any claim by the king that Margaret’s possessions held in life-rent reverted to the crown would be countered by Douglas’s subsequent crown charter of January 1450.

James II’s attitude to Douglas had undergone an apparent change in the intervening period, and this may have had very complex causes. It is clear that the king was still under an obligation to secure sufficient income for the queen, as agreed in his marriage settlement of 1449, in order to ensure that the duke of Burgundy continued to pay instalments of the dowry. However, rather than using the forfeiture of the Livingstons to endow the queen (although she did receive the barony of Callendar, forfeited by Sir Alexander Livingston, late in 1451), the principal beneficiary had been Douglas, and the king may well have regretted his earlier generosity.[71] In addition to this, he may have been irked by Douglas’s journey to Rome, particularly in view of the earl’s presentation of himself in a manner that would have appeared quasi-regal. A relationship that, in all probability, developed in the context of friendship and familiarity during the 1440s and included an element of admiration by the boy-king for the slightly older and personally dynamic William Douglas, would have been challenged by the aspirations of James II as he emerged from his minority to assume his birthright. This is, necessarily, a matter for speculation rather than having an evidential basis, but it is worth remembering that historical characters were as motivated by emotion and caprice as cold logic. Also, those men who formed the king’s inner council had their own misgivings about the position of Douglas, and would have fed James II’s own developing resentment.

In order to prepare the ground for a royal challenge to Black Douglas authority, James II needed to establish connections with men whose regional focus had been within the traditional area of Douglas lordship. The extent and depth of allegiance to the present earl of Douglas was variable and may, in some cases, have been a simple matter of local expediency, but it was important for the king and his supporters to probe those allegiances and offer the alternative focus of royal lordship. There were few stronger indications of the authority of royal lordship than in the conspicuous exercise of judicial power, and the king was in Lochmaben holding a justice ayre in January 1451, and had proceeded to Ayr on 13 February where he issued four charters in favour of ‘his beloved cousin’ Sir Gilbert Kennedy of Dunure, and one in favour of John Kennedy.[72] The grants made to Gilbert of lands in the sheriffdom of Ayr, the keepership of Lochdoon castle and the office of bailie of Carrick, set the seal on a relationship with Kennedy that included confirming him as head of the Kennedy kindred; a matter that had been in dispute with his half-uncle.[73] Gilbert Kennedy was married to Katharine Maxwell, also named in the grants, and he was the nephew of Margaret, duchess of Touraine, which may indicate that the king was hoping to consolidate his claims to Margaret’s titles of Galloway and Wigtown by securing support from her wider kindred and affinity. One of these was Andrew Agnew, who had received the patronage of Duchess Margaret but was one of the losers in William earl of Douglas’s aggressive assumption of Margaret’s rights, making him a ready supporter of the king’s intervention in the south-west, for which he was to benefit directly.[74]

The king’s actions in the early weeks of 1451, coupled with his appearance at Melrose in December, appear to be focused very pointedly on probing weak areas of Douglas lordship, and this was certainly the case with the charter issued to Robert Colville of Ochiltree at Lanark on 16 February. Robert was the son of Richard Colville, who had been beheaded by William earl of Douglas in 1449 in revenge for Colville’s slaying of one of the earl’s retainers, James Auchinleck. By forging a link with Robert Colville, James II was exploiting consciously the deep antipathy felt by Colville towards Douglas for the execution of his father, and this particular grant of the lands of the baronies of Ochiltree and Oxnam and lands in the sheriffdom of Roxburgh, embraced Colville’s wife, Christian Crichton, the daughter of William lord Crichton’s kinsman, Robert Crichton of Sanquhar.[75] Kinship ties between the chancellor and Robert Crichton would have made them natural allies and royal supporters, and the reward for such loyalty had been demonstrated in a royal charter of confirmation issued to Robert Crichton of Sanquhar on 31 March 1450 of lands near Moffat in Annandale.[76]

Although it would be misleading to see this as a mass renunciation of ties to Douglas in favour of the king, there is enough evidence to suggest, at the very least, a significant design on the part of the king to proffer the enticements of direct royal lordship. Of course, the king was at the head of the hierarchy of political authority in the kingdom in any case, with any other allegiances held ‘saving allegiance to the king’, but such theoretical pronouncements did not obviate tension when personal relationships were strained and men were called upon to decide what constituted ‘good lordship’ and where their own interests could best be served. William lord Somerville, a Clydesdale baron whose parliamentary lordship had been encouraged by Douglas was, nevertheless, a consistent member of the king’s council during this period.[77] It may be that those men who had been supporters of James the Gross did not necessarily transfer that allegiance wholeheartedly to his son, and when John lord Haliburton agreed to the marriage of his heir, George, to the daughter of Douglas’s adversary, Patrick Hepburn, it demonstrated his willingness to pursue divergent personal interests.[78]

The king’s energetic focus on Douglas interests in Scotland may have prompted a message to be sent to the earl while he was at Rome, which would explain his decision to return home, as he had left Rome by 6 February. However, he does not appear to have been in any great haste to get back to Scotland and may have travelled to the French court before sailing to England where he availed himself of the English safe-conduct issued the previous November. The English herald, Garter King, was sent ‘to the sea coast, there to await the arrival of the Earl of Douglas of Scotland, about to come to England from the court of Rome, and conduct him to the King’s presence’.[79] If John Law is correct in his assertion that Douglas returned to Scotland on 7 April, then he took his time travelling through England, which may have been prudent until he could receive intelligence concerning the nature and extent of the threat facing him. Although Law is insistent that the king and his advisers desired Douglas’s death, this may have been an interpolation based on his knowledge of what was to come, but there certainly appears to have been a hostile response to Douglas’s reappearance in the assertion that ‘the king forthwith gathered an army against the earl [. . .] and approached Craig Douglas in warlike fashion, and having taken the castle, razed it to its foundations’.[80] Craig Douglas was a small castle within Ettrick Forest, and although not one of the major strongholds of Black Douglas lordship, it may have been chosen to provide a symbolic gesture to Douglas of the assertion of royal authority with which he was now obliged to come to terms. That it was not an outright attack on Douglas himself is shown by his inclusion in an embassy, dated 17 April 1451, to be sent to Newcastle to discuss with the English commissioners recent violations of the truce.[81]The Auchinleck Chronicle offers a cryptic entry, possibly referring to the period after Douglas’s return which, although incomplete and undated, appears on the same folio narrating the events of the June parliament in 1451:

thai cryit him luftennent and sone efter this thai worthit als strang as ever thai war / and at this tyme thai gat the erllis sele to consent to the trewis and Incontinent thai send furth Snawdoun the kings herrod to lundone to bynd up the trewis and als fast as sir James of Douglas gat wit hereof he past till londone Incontinent / and quharfor men wist nocht redelye bot he was thar with the kyng of yngland lang tyme and was meikle maid of.[82]

This is a curious entry in that it appears to describe Douglas as lieutenant, but this should not be interpreted as Douglas receiving the commission of lieutenant-general in the form of the office held by Archibald 5th earl of Douglas. Such an office was conferred only during a minority or during a period where an adult monarch was unable personally to exercise royal authority. Neither situation applied in 1451 and there is no reference anywhere in the official records to Douglas exercising such an office. The term ‘luftennent’ does appear in other places in the Auchinleck Chronicle carrying the meaning of the king’s representative, and it is far more likely that this was an acknowledgement of Douglas’s continued position of strength and authority within the Marches. In a supplication to Rome dated 29 January 1450, Douglas was styled ‘William earl of Douglas and Avandale, Great Guardian of the kingdom of Scotland and Prince and Lord of Galloway’, which supports his presentation of the family’s role as defenders of the realm along its southern border.[83] However, the chronicler’s statement that the Douglases were as strong as ever following the earl’s return indicates a rapprochement between Douglas and the king that may have been arrived at in the wake of the attack on Craig Douglas; the king believing that he had made his point, and Douglas believing that he knew the king well enough to be able to manage the situation without compromising Douglas authority.

The involvement of Douglas in providing consent to the Anglo-Scottish truce is attested by his name appearing as a commissioner on the safe-conduct issued on 17 April, but a further warrant to the English chancellor for a safe-conduct dated 23 April was issued for Douglas and 100 persons, to last for one year. The persons specified were close supporters of Douglas and included his brothers, James, Archibald and Hugh, Alexander Hume and James Hamilton.[84] This safe-conduct, requested so soon after Douglas’s return from England was a demonstration of the strength of Douglas’s affinity, including a sizeable number of border men. As Michael Brown has pointed out, this was not indicative of Douglas preparing an escape route, but of a reinforcement of his own relationship with the English crown, particularly in matters of border security.[85] The comment by the Auchinleck chronicler that news of Snowdon Herald having been despatched to London to ‘bynd up the trewis’ prompted James master of Douglas to hurry to London as a consequence, opens further grounds for speculation about the precise nature of the relationship between James II and William earl of Douglas at this point; speculation shared by the chronicler who commented on the possibility that James Douglas was carrying on his own negotiations with Henry VI. On 11 December 1451, £13 was paid to Garter King of Arms ‘lately sent by the king’s command to travel with Sir James Douglas on his coming to the king, to bring the said James to the king’s presence at Winchester, Salisbury and elsewhere, and then back to Scotland’. The role of Snowdon Herald is likewise confirmed by the payment to him on 1 July 1451 of 100s ‘by way of gift for his costs’ in ‘lately arriving with letters from the King of Scots’.[86] An English safe-conduct issued on 6 July 1451 named the Scottish commissioners as William Turnbull, bishop of Glasgow and the earls of Angus, Crawford and Huntly, and although William earl of Douglas is not named, ‘thai gat the erllis sele’ to the agreement for a three-year truce at Newcastle on 14 August.[87]

Certainly, the king cannot have been happy with such interference or the personal contact established at the English court by Douglas and his companions on their journey back to Scotland from the continent in 1451, and it has been suggested that James Douglas may have been initiating negotiations for the release of Malise Graham, earl of Menteith, who had been captive in England for twenty-four years as a hostage for the ransom of James I.[88] As Malise Graham was descended in direct line from the second marriage of Robert II, it has been argued that this placed him in a strong hereditary position in the line of succession, as although Mary of Gueldres gave birth to a daughter, named for her mother, during the spring of 1451, James II had yet to secure a male heir.[89] Suggestions that Douglas was seeking to present a rival candidate for the throne itself have been dismissed by recent scholarship; as Norman Macdougall notes, ‘the thesis that the Stewart kings, all of them descended from Robert II’s first marriage to Elizabeth Mure, were forever threatened by offspring of Euphemia Ross and their ambitious descendants, is quite unsustainable’.[90] Far more likely is that the initiative came from James lord Hamilton, the second husband of Euphemia Graham, sister of Earl Malise and widow of Archibald 5th earl of Douglas. As Hamilton was one of the staunchest supporters of William 8th earl of Douglas, the release from captivity of his wife’s kinsman may have secured Douglas backing, and Graham’s continued captivity was certainly a shameful example of royal inaction which could be used to embarrass the king. If Douglas secured the release of the last hostage held for the ransom of James I, it would underline his power to negotiate with the English independently and to good effect.

If James II, with Bishop Turnbull and the Crichtons, had a plan in 1451 that would bring about the capitulation of Douglas once faced with royal assertion, then it does not appear to have paid off. The problem of launching an attack on his greatest magnate during his absence was that he had his core supporters with him and, as a consequence, they had not been subject to the king’s blandishments.[91] Also, attacking an earl’s possessions when he was not there to defend or speak up for his rights awakened uneasy memories of the arbitrary actions of the king’s father, James I. This was the atmosphere in which the three estates met in parliament on 28 June, when William earl of Douglas surrendered all his possessions into James II’s hands in a ceremony symbolising his recognition of the king’s authority. This ceremonial act, carried out between 6 and 8 July, was greeted by the Auchinleck chronicler with great enthusiasm:

To the quhilk Parliament the forsaid erle William of Douglas come and put him body landis and gudis in the kingis grace and the king resavit him till his grace at the Request of the qwene and the three estatis and grantit him all his lordschippis agane outtane the erldome of wigtoun That is to say galloway fra the watter of Cre west and stewartoun outtane the landis of pedynnane of the quhilk the erllis moder had conjunct feftment and charterit him now of all the laif of his lordschippis and gaf him and all his a fre Remission of all things bygane to the day forsaid. And all gud scottismen war richt blyth of that accordance.[92]

By this symbolic surrendering of all he possessed ‘body, lands and goods’, Douglas was acknowledging James II’s superiority and rights over him, although it should not be assumed that the king would actually have taken the life and possessions offered. The ceremony was one of public reinforcement of lines of authority which James, at least, considered Douglas to have crossed, and the message was that his reprieve was due to the king’s acceptance of the queen’s plea for clemency, in a reprisal of her role as mediator on behalf of the bishops seen in the January parliament of 1450. The sense of satisfaction conveyed by the chronicler that conflict had been avoided and that the king and the earl of Douglas had managed to resolve their differences may have underestimated the tension inherent in this entire scenario. Witnesses to the charters of confirmation given to Douglas include the bishops of Glasgow, Dunkeld, Moray and Galloway, William lord Crichton, George earl of Angus, Alexander earl of Huntly, William lord Hay, constable and William lord Keith, marischal ‘and many others of the three estates’.[93] Although the ‘many others’ may have included Douglas supporters, it is notable that the principal named witnesses were crown supporters and that the Douglas brothers, James, Archibald and Hugh, do not appear to have attended. Roland Tanner has observed that the Black Douglases did not regard parliament or general council as a natural forum for supporting or enhancing their positions, and chose to stay away. They may also have been mindful of the use to which such assemblies had been put by James I, to arrest those who had incurred royal displeasure.[94]

If the king had been compelled into a humiliating climb-down over curbing Douglas power, he was able at least to press his perceived rights to the earldom of Wigtown. Apart from the exclusion of the lands of Pedinane in Lanarkshire from the regrant of Douglas possessions, on the grounds that they were held in ‘conjunct feftment’ by the earl’s mother, Beatrice, the specification that Douglas could exercise authority and possession ‘east of the River Cree’ is clear evidence that James II intended to retain royal rights over Wigtown; the lands of which lay to the west of the Cree. This represented more than a determination on the part of the king that his machinations during the winter progress, including the seizure of Wigtown, should not come to nothing, as the July parliament reissued a charter to the queen which added detail to the lands, castles and customs granted to her in January 1450, with Methven castle returning to the list. By withholding the earldom of Wigtown and the lordship of Stewarton in Ayrshire from the possessions regranted to Douglas, the king would have hoped to augment the queen’s tocher which still fell short of the promised sum of £5,000 per annum. Philip duke of Burgundy was paying for the dowry of his great-niece in instalments, two of which (amounting to the equivalent of £15,000 Scots) had been received by 1 May 1450, and there would have been a sense of urgency in the king’s efforts to fulfil his part of the agreement.[95] The retention of Wigtown may have consoled the king to a certain extent, and he underlined royal rights by confirming Andrew Agnew as sheriff of Wigtown on 25 May, although the matter would not rest there and it is clear that the entire episode had left him bruised.[96]

Another beneficiary of patronage offered in the July parliament was Alexander Lindsay, earl of Crawford, who received a grant on 6 July of the lands of ‘Calyn and Callander’ ‘with the mill and fishing’, forfeited by James Livingston ‘firstborn son of Sir Alexander Livingston’, and who was named on the same day as a commissioner to negotiate the Anglo-Scottish truce at Newcastle.[97] The Lindsay earls of Crawford had a problematic relationship with royal authority, as David 3rd earl of Crawford and his son, Alexander, had been the subject of protests in the exchequer accounts concerning the exaction of illegal and violently extorted payments from the burgh customs of Aberdeen, Montrose and Banff.[98] The battle of Arbroath in January 1446 had arisen out of the aggressive claim of Alexander Lindsay, then master of Crawford, to the office of abbey bailie, and prior to this, the lands of James Kennedy bishop of St Andrews had been attacked, leading him to curse Earl David.[99] Connections with the Douglases had arisen before the Black Dinner, when David earl of Crawford secured the marriage of his daughter, Janet Lindsay, to the young William 6th earl of Douglas. When he was executed, and the Black Douglas inheritance passed to James the Gross, the Lindsays may have felt baulked of their rights, and William 8th earl of Douglas sealed an indenture with Janet Lindsay on 30 October 1445 whereby he promised to assist her to recover her ‘terce of Anandirdale’.[100] Alexander Lindsay, as master of Crawford, had taken part with the Douglases and Livingstons on the raids on Kennedy’s lands in 1445 and, as the 4th earl of Crawford, had witnessed the Douglas indenture, sealed in August 1447, that declared James Douglas the elder to his twin Archibald. A further connection to the Black Douglas affinity came with Crawford’s exchange of lands on 18 June with the brother of James lord Hamilton, in return for his ‘help, counsel and service’.[101] Although Crawford could not be described as being a member of Douglas’s affinity, there were connections forged through their various interests in the north-east and the need for each to accommodate the other in securing those interests. As Michael Brown has argued, the infamous bond between Douglas, Crawford and Ross was probably concluded in 1446 in order to safeguard the vested interests of these three magnates, and its relevance had been heightened not only by tensions between Douglas and the king, but also by the king’s tacit support of Huntly in response to Ross’s aggression after the fall of the Livingstons. Indeed, Crawford’s presence in parliament demonstrates his own misgivings concerning the king’s attitude to the exercise of power in the north-east and he was seeking to strengthen existing ties with William earl of Douglas, including acting as a witness to the retrenchment of the Black Douglases in parliament.

The chagrin felt by John MacDonald, earl of Ross and Lord of the Isles, as he saw the advantages of the Livingston marriage evaporate, led him to fight back in March 1451 by launching an attack on royal possessions in the north. The Auchinleck chronicler recounts the events in the following terms:

The zere of god IM iiijC lj^0 [1451] In the moneth of merche the erll of Ross and lord of the ylis tuke thir castellis of the king viz. Inuerness, our’cvart and rothwane in badyenoch and stuffit the castell of Inuerness and wrquhart and kest downe the castell of rochwan in badyenoch and thai said that he gaf the keping of the castell of wrquhart till his gud fader Iames of levingstoun that was eschapit subtelly fra the king and his counsall out of the abbay of halyrudhous and was cummand to the lord for supple & succour that resauit him richt thank/fully and tuke plane part agane the king for him and said he had the kingis wryt & walx to haf the castell of wrquhart for iij yere and he said that the kingis awne person gart him mary the said Iames douchter and hecht him gud lordschipe the quhilk he had nocht gottin bot ewyn the contrary in all thingis.[102]

This entry in the Auchinleck Chronicle has been subject to differing interpretations, as dating in fifteenth-century sources can be complicated by the fact that the new year was calculated from 25 March rather than the more modern practice of dating from 1 January. Because of this, the date of the revolt by Ross had been assumed to refer to March 1452 and taken as a response to the death of the 8th earl of Douglas. Nevertheless, Alexander Grant has argued convincingly that the chronicler was referring to events in March 1451 and that Ross was responding to the downfall of the Livingstons and the consequent betrayal of his hopes through his marriage to Elizabeth Livingston.[103] It is clear that inducements for John MacDonald to marry Elizabeth must have been made not only by William earl of Douglas (at a time when the Livingstons were working as allies of the Douglases), but also by the king. The chronicler gives the focus of the attack as the royal castles of Inverness, Urquhart and Ruthven in Badenoch, and the keepership of these would have created a strong base for MacDonald lordship in the north of the kingdom. In seeking closer ties to the crown, Alexander earl of Ross had been hoping to consolidate his son’s position on the mainland, and it would appear that the promises made to John when he succeeded to his inheritance in 1449 had been rescinded or at least threatened by the disgrace of his father-in-law. Determined to take by force the benefits of ‘gud lordschipe’ which he felt to be his due, he seized the royal castles in an act of open defiance, but the only response that James II seems to have offered was to send John Schethow to Inverness some time before July ‘ad dominum comitem Rossie in negociis regis’.[104] It may be that the grant on 28 April 1451 to Alexander earl of Huntly of the lordship of Badenoch with Ruthven castle was intended as more than a gesture of patronage, because if the chronicler is correct in stating that the castle of Ruthven had been ‘kest downe’ in March, then the king was giving Huntly a stake in securing Badenoch and restoring Ruthven to the possession of a royalist sympathiser.[105] In view of their mutual antipathy, such a role for Huntly would not have been welcomed by Alexander earl of Crawford, Ross or Douglas.

Although the king’s response to this challenge to royal authority appears comparatively weak, it is indicative of the difficult position in which he found himself in the summer of 1451. A concerted response to MacDonald aggression may have been requested in the parliament that met in July, but the fact that the king had to repair damage done to Black Douglas interests earlier in the year, coupled with the sense that Ross had been reacting to a lack of good lordship, may have tempered any enthusiasm for military action and compelled James II to offer belated recognition of Ross’s actions. This was complicated still further by the evident unwillingness of Douglas to take action against Ross, with whom he had made personal assurances regarding their relative interests in the north of the kingdom. The terms of the bond of mutual assistance may have come into play here, as Douglas’s recent experience of being at the receiving end of the king’s arbitrary actions would have made him reluctant to support him in an attack on a magnate with whom he had almost certainly renewed that bond. Although there is little evidence to suggest that bonds were inherited, the particular circumstances regarding the protection of territorial interests would have supported the inclusion of John earl of Ross in a bond with Douglas and Crawford in 1451. As Michael Brown has argued, ‘The bond may have represented a less confrontational approach to the issues of a border zone,’ and this balance had been disturbed by the king’s actions, not only in threatening MacDonald interests, but also by using Huntly as a royal agent when Douglas, Crawford and Ross had taken such care to exclude him.[106]

Douglas misgivings would not have been restricted to the king, but encompassed his immediate council, particularly Bishop Turnbull and the Crichtons. The previous ability to work together had been irrevocably damaged and an assembly held at Edinburgh on 24 September, which restated the act from January 1450 that gave testamentary rights to churchmen, may have been a continuation of the July parliament; the last occasion on which Hugh earl of Ormond and Archibald earl of Moray attended an assembly of the three estates. They had not been particularly frequent attenders before, but Roland Tanner suggests that discussions over how to respond to Ross’s revolt and the attitude of the king and his council towards the north may have alienated the Douglas affinity suffciently to cause them to ignore such assemblies in the future.[107] Certainly, the parliament that met at Stirling on 25 October 1451 was attended almost entirely by the king’s allies and by few with demonstrably strong Douglas connections, which is slightly surprising given that one element of the business of this parliament was to prise the earldom of Wigtown from the king’s hold and restore it to Douglas. The charter that detailed this was dated 20 October and witnessed by the bishops of Glasgow, Dunkeld and Moray, George earl of Angus, William lord Crichton, chancellor, William lord Hay, constable, William lord Keith, marischal, William lord Somerville, Andrew lord Gray, John Arous, archdeacon of Glasgow and George Shoreswood, parson of Coulter.[108] Six days later, Douglas received a further charter, witnessed by the same men, of the lands of Stewarton and Dunlop in the sheriffdom of Ayr to be held ‘as freely as they were held by William and his predecessors before the resignation [in June]’.[109] These lands had been intended for the queen, and their surrender must have been a source of deep humiliation for the king, and the fact that he and his advisers took this action may reflect their conviction that the problem represented by Ross’s revolt in the north could be resolved only through the support or intervention of his nominal ally, William earl of Douglas, and his brothers. By restoring the possessions withheld in July, they may have believed that they could buy Douglas support, although the need to do this would only have increased James II’s levels of resentment as he found himself unable to assert his authority in a region governed through ‘private alliances which potentially counted for more than obligations to the crown’.[110] The comparative ease with which he had made his entrance onto the political stage at the end of his minority must have seemed a distant memory, with Douglas coming increasingly to represent the personification of the king’s obstructed objectives.

Earl William appears to have done little to mollify the king and may even have added fuel to the fire by the manner in which he pursued the exercise of his own lordship. When seeking to explain the final confrontation between James II and Douglas, later writers, particularly in the sixteenth century, adopted a line designed to convey a moral message concerning abuse of power. Douglas provided a suitable exemplar for the theory that the balance of monarchical power was upset by the unacceptable actions of over-mighty magnates. For the king to have attacked him, so this line of argument continues, he must have done something to deserve it.[111] As an argument, this is far too simplistic, and it glosses over the uncomfortable truth that the available evidence shows James II to have been the aggressor in much of the conflict with the Black Douglases. However, the pendulum should not swing too far in the opposite direction and portray the Douglases as injured innocents, as the lurid and distorted stories of subsequent historiography concerning Douglas’s own actions may have an essential kernel of truth. The king’s controversial action in travelling to the south-west of the kingdom during Douglas’s absence in Rome the previous winter may have had consequences for the earl’s treatment of certain of his tenants who were attracted to the alternative focus of lordship offered by James II. Admittedly, this was not entirely a result of the king’s personal intervention, as there may have been a significant number of families or individuals whose allegiance to William 8th earl of Douglas was lukewarm at best. In the case of Robert Colville, it would have been decidedly chilly. Allegiance could not necessarily be assumed, but had to be built, which goes some way to explain the articulation of arrangements for mutual benefit inherent in the practice of making personal bonds. Such bonds were neither the sinister face of ‘bastard feudalism’ nor a completely new phenomenon, but rather a response to an evolving pattern of relationships that had less to do with grants of land than service and support within the context of regional lordship.[112] The king was not averse to using force in the exercise of royal lordship and Douglas would have had recourse to similar methods against those of his own tenants whose loyalty he suspected. Even if the details of stories told by later writers seem garbled and inconsistent, they name men from Wigtownshire families, such as Herries and Maclellan, who may well have attracted the ire of Douglas following a positive response to royal ambitions in that earldom.[113]

Sir Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, writing in the 1570s, states that Maclellan ‘tutor of Bombie’, nephew of Patrick master of Gray, was captured and imprisoned by William earl of Douglas for failing to join his affinity. Having received news of his nephew’s imprisonment, Patrick Gray secured from the king a letter of supplication ordering Maclellan’s release, which he delivered to Douglas personally. According to Pitscottie’s account, Douglas received Gray and offered him dinner, during which he gave surreptitious orders for Maclellan to be executed. When he asked to see his nephew, Gray was told that he could have him, but ‘he wantis the heid’.[114] The Maclellans were a family from the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright and a reference is made in the exchequer accounts to a John Maclellan who was custumar of the burgh of Kirkcudbright in 1434, and there are further references to Malcolm Maclellan being robbed and captured in 1440 and to the Maclellans handing over the castle of Lochdoon to Alexander Livingston in 1447.[115] These incidents may have fed Pitscottie’s account, and by the time he was writing, the Maclellans were styled lairds of Bombie, and although there can be no certainty about the veracity of the story, it conveys a tradition of harsh Douglas lordship that may have some resonance in this period. A more official insight into Douglas’s attitude is provided by an instrument, dated 7 June 1451, narrating a request by William Douglas of Drumlanrig that William, earl of Douglas, his superior, should execute a brieve of sasine under the white wax [seal]. The earl’s refusal to do so on the grounds that he ‘stood in the king’s respite’ denied Douglas of Drumlanrig his rights in the barony of Hawick, and he wished to have this recorded before witnesses that included Patrick Hepburn of Hailes, George Crichton of Cairns, Robert Crichton of Sanquhar, James Douglas, Gilbert Grierson, Robert Sempill and Thomas Sinclair.[116] The context of all these scraps of evidence is that a number of men living within the bounds of Douglas jurisdiction may have suffered for a lack of convincing loyalty to their lord.

Unlike his brothers, William earl of Douglas did not steer clear of the court following the recovery of his possessions, but this would have had more to do with protecting his interests and guarding against hostility from the council than having a role of influence on that council. He attended court at Stirling in November and was with the king witnessing a royal charter issued under the great seal on 13 January 1452 confirming a grant to the abbey of Paisley. On this charter he is styled William of Douglas, earl of Wigtown and Annandale and lord of Galloway; the first and last time that he used the title, earl of Wigtown, on a royal charter.[117] On 22 January, an English safe-conduct was issued at Westminster for ‘certain bishops and others’ to travel to Canterbury, presumably to visit the shrine of St Thomas Becket. In addition to the bishops of Glasgow, Moray and Dunblane and the abbots of Melrose, Dunfermline and Paisley, William earl of Douglas and his brother James appear on the list, as do Lords Crichton, Montgomery, Hamilton and Gray.[118] The safe conduct was valid for a year from the date of issue, so it need not denote any immediate plan for departure on pilgrimage, but it does indicate Douglas’s intention to return to England relatively soon after his last visit.

However, William Douglas was still in Edinburgh on 26 January on which date he issued a charter to Robert Vaus of the lands of Barglass and Barnbarroch (Rockcliffe), in the sheriffdom of Wigtown. On this charter, he is styled ‘William Earl of Douglas, of Wigton and of Annandale and lord of Galloway’, and his charter is witnessed by Thomas Spens, bishop of Whithorn [Galloway], Masters Thomas Cameron and Adam of Auchinleck, canons of Glasgow, William Lauder of Hatton, James Rutherford of that Ilk, George of Ormiston and Mark of Haliburton.[119] This pointed focus on his interests in Wigtown may have been interpreted by James II as rubbing salt in the wound of having had to surrender it with no apparent gain in terms of Douglas’s co-operation with the king over Ross. The presence of men on the king’s council who had demonstrable connections to Douglas, such as William Cranston, Simon Glendinning and Alexander Hume, may be interpreted in two ways; they were there to protect the interests of their superior lord or they were susceptible to having their loyalties subverted by the king. This may not have been a matter of straightforward choice, as is shown by the position of William Lauder of Hatton. He was a consistent adherent of Douglas who had appeared on Douglas safe-conducts on 23 October and 12 November 1450 and 12 May 1451.[120] Lauder accompanied Douglas to Rome and may have been one of the retainers sent back to Scotland in advance of Douglas’s return in order to assess what was happening. Without evidence, it is possible only to speculate that Lauder may have made his way to Craig Douglas in the Forest and held it in defiance of the king’s officials, which would explain the choice of this relatively obscure Douglas stronghold as the focus for the king’s attack in 1451. By the time that Mary of Gueldres received the lands forfeited by William Lauder of Hatton on 18 April, he was described as deceased, and it is hard to determine when that forfeiture would have taken place as such a sentence required parliamentary authority and no parliament had been held since October 1451. If his forfeiture had been carried out as a face-saving measure in 1451 to resolve the dispute over Craig Douglas (for which no evidence survives), then he was not demonstrably out of favour given his attendance at court in January 1452. It is possible that the king used Lauder’s actions in 1451 as a ‘carrot and stick’ measure to secure his co-operation in lining up a meeting with Douglas in February.

One of the most detailed entries in the Auchinleck Chronicle describes the confrontation between James II and William 8th earl of Douglas in February 1452, and reads:

That samyn zer Erll William of Douglas wes slane in the castell of striuling be king James the secund that had the fyre mark in his face. The forsaid king James send owt of Stirling with William Lawder of haltoun [Hatton] a speciale assouerance and respit under his preve sele and subscrivit with his awn hand and all the lordis that war with the king that tyme gaf bodely aithis to kepe that respit and assouerance and subscrivit Ilk man with thair awn hand and all the lordis that war with the king that tyme war oblist suppos the king wald brek the band forsaid / that thai suld let it at thair power. This beand done the forsaid William of Lawder of haltoun passit to the forsaid erll William of Douglas and brocht him to stirling to the king on the monday before fastrennisevyn [the eve of Lent, or Shrove Tuesday] that was the xxi day of February and this samyn monday he passit to the castell and spak with the king that tuke richt wele with him be apperans and callit him on the morne to the dynere and to the supper / and he come and dynit and sowpit and thair said thair was a band betuix the said erll of Douglas and the erll of Ross and the erll of Crawford and efter supper at sevyne houris the king then beand in the inner chalmer and the said erll he chargit him to breke the forsaid band he said he mycht not nor wald nocht / Than the king said / fals tratour sen thow will nocht I sall / and stert sodanly till him with ane knyf and straik him in at the colere and down in the body and thai sayd that Patrick Gray straik him nixt the king with ane poll ax on the hed and strak out his branes and syne the gentillis that war with the king gaf thaim ilkane a straik or twa with knyffis and thir ar the names that war with the king that strake him for he had xxvi woundis. In the first, Sir Alexander Boyd, the lord Darnley, Sir Andrew Stewart, Sir William of Gremston, Sir Simon of Glendonane and the Lord Gray.[121]

Where the detail of this account may be corroborated, it is impressively accurate. In 1452, the Monday before the beginning of Lent was 21 February, and the manner in which the chronicler records events suggests an eye-witness account. The use of William Lauder of Hatton to convey the invitation to Douglas to come to Stirling for a meeting may have been designed to reassure the earl, but the entry was compiled in full knowledge of what ensued, therefore it lays particular emphasis on the manner of the summons. Given that Douglas had been with the king less than a month previously, the solemn hedging-round of this summons with special assurances written by the king personally and bearing his privy seal does not convey an atmosphere of trust and security. It is unclear whether Douglas himself had insisted on such safeguards before he would agree to come to Stirling castle, held by his old adversary, George Crichton, or that James II had engineered the meeting in such terms as would entice the earl to appear. Either way, this was not a normal arrangement for a king to meet with one of his most powerful magnates and indicates a serious deterioration in the relationship between the two men. James II’s own assurances concerning Douglas’s safety were backed up with similar oaths taken by ‘all the lordis that war with the king that tyme’, which added further weight to the guarantee, or conveys the chronicler’s effort to implicate the king’s companions in what transpired. It is unlikely that Douglas would have ventured to Stirling if he seriously feared for his life, but he may have anticipated arrest and imprisonment in the manner used by James I against magnates who had incurred his displeasure, such as Archibald 5th earl of Douglas in 1430 and Alexander lord of the Isles in 1428.[122]

The chronicler’s account states that meetings between James II and Douglas took place over two days and seemed, initially, to be going well. However, it was after supper on the second day (Tuesday 22 February) that the king made his demand of Douglas that he break the agreement he had made with the earls of Ross and Crawford. It is unlikely that this is the first time the matter had been broached, and rather than a challenge occasioned by the recent discovery of such a bond, this would have been an expression of James II’s increased hostility concerning a private agreement regarding the exercise of power in the north of the kingdom that had no direct reference to the crown (even if it contained the caveat about allegiance to the king). All of the signatories had incurred the king’s suspicion and Ross had been in open revolt, therefore James II’s insistence that Douglas break or renounce the bond had urgency in the context of what had occurred in the previous months. He was offering Douglas a stark choice between demonstrating his loyalty by providing active assistance in moving against the king’s rebels or refusing on the basis of a private agreement made with one of those men. A direct demand may have come as the culmination of a round of discussions which had produced a volatile state of tiredness and frustration in which Douglas’s argument that an agreement between himself, John MacDonald and Alexander Lindsay, designed to ensure stability in exercising their rights within their northern estates, was no overt threat to the king, may have been expressed in terms suffciently unguarded to strike James II as insolent.[123]

However, this was about much more than the particular wording in a bond. James II had formed strong ideas about his role in presenting and exercising the power and authority of the crown, and William earl of Douglas was convinced equally of his role in the presentation and enhancement of Black Douglas power. Although the Auchinleck chronicler places the bond as the central issue in the confrontation between the king and Douglas, it was the culmination of many frictions and frustrations that would have included the projection of Douglas authority in matters such as the appropriation of leadership in chivalric culture, the presentation of Douglas magnificence on the continent during the pilgrimage to and from Rome, private connections with the ducal house of Burgundy and the royal courts of France and England, and independent actions concerning the Anglo-Scottish truce. When the king faced a revolt from John earl of Ross in 1451, notwithstanding the fact that his own actions had precipitated the crisis, the lack of support from the Douglases (and Crawford) and the humiliating retreat from the gains made in the July parliament would have intensified resentment. It may be no accident that the chronicler chose to allude to James II’s appearance as the king ‘that had the fyre mark in his face’ in the same entry that recorded his explosion into fiery violence towards Douglas.

There has been considerable debate over whether or not it is reasonable to describe the attack by James II on William 8th earl of Douglas as murder. In the parliament held in July 1450, a statute was passed which dealt with the requirement that complaints concerning violence lodged with officers of the law should be examined in order to determine whether the offences arose out of ‘forethought felony or through sudden chaudemella’.[124] The latter would obviate a charge of murder as it would be viewed as a sudden loss of emotional control rather than a crime planned in cold blood. Of course, there could be a prosecution in either case, but the basis upon which judgement would be offered would differ; a reasonable distinction based on legal definition and the context of medieval perceptions of such crimes presented convincingly by David Sellar and Alexander Grant.[125] The principal argument against designating the killing of Douglas by the king as murder, which is certainly how it would be interpreted by modern perceptions, is that such an act was defined in the mediaeval period as having been perpetrated in secret ‘without the knowledge of anyone except the assailant and his accomplices’.[126] A secret plot by the king and his confederates to have Douglas killed in a manner that threw no obvious suspicion on the plotters would have been classi-fied as murder (assuming it could be proved), but this is not what happened in 1452, when there was no doubt at all concerning who was responsible. The Auchinleck Chronicle is the principal source for understanding what took place on 22 February 1452, although the account given there throws up its own problems of interpretation. The meeting between the two men had taken place in an atmosphere that, however well it seemed to be going ‘be apperans’, must have crackled with tension and hostility. The relationship between the two men had been deteriorating for the best part of a year and the very fact that Douglas required a letter of safe-conduct indicates the lack of a sense of security and misgivings concerning the king’s intentions towards him.

The trigger for the king’s attack on the second day ‘at sevyn houris’ may well be seen as a sudden loss of control, but if the chronicler’s account is to be taken seriously, then the ensuing scenario is much more troublesome. If the king had struck a single blow and then recovered his senses or been restrained by cooler heads, William Douglas may well still have been dead (a stab wound ‘in at the colere’ would be likely to sever a main artery), but the circumstances would allow a defence of chaudmella. However, the account relates that James II stabbed Douglas a second time ‘down in the body’, suggesting a strong determination to kill, as he would have been experienced in combat training and would know exactly where to land a fatal blow. It is at this point, when there is every likelihood that Douglas was dead or dying, that the account enters into very strange territory indeed with the statement that Patrick Gray followed the stab wounds inflicted by the king with his own attack upon Douglas, striking out his brains with a pole axe. This is an extraordinary statement, as the meeting was taking place in an ‘inner chalmer’, which would have been a small retiring room, where no one would have been permitted to bear arms in the king’s presence and where a battlefield weapon such as a pole axe would have no place, even assuming that there was space to wield it.[127] If the earl’s brains had been ‘strak out’ by Patrick Gray, it is hard to see why the others that were with the king would need to inflict another twenty-three wounds upon the corpse. If these were actions designed to demonstrate loyalty and prevent the blame for the killing of Douglas resting entirely on the king’s shoulders, then that may provide some explanation, but it was not a defence offered in subsequent records, such as the parliamentary record for June 1452 or James II’s letter to Charles VII, and neither was a plea of chaudmella.[128] In fact, the best defence that the king seems to have been able to advance when he submitted himself to the judgement of parliament, however rigged, in June was that Douglas acted in such a manner as to ‘have procured and produced the occasion of his death’.[129]

However, as Alexander Grant points out, it was possible for the king to have engineered a situation with Douglas where a heated argument was provoked, allowing the king to respond with violence against the earl’s ‘shameless obstinance’.[130] By such devious means could James II have killed Douglas in a manner that would absolve him of any charge of murder by stealth, and also offer a strong demonstration of his own power and authority that would have appealed to him within the context of accumulated tension between the two men over just that issue. The bond supplied the excuse for the confrontation, but was not the sole cause, and this certainly goes some way to explain what appears otherwise as an act of madness on the part of a king who showed himself, on other occasions, capable of cold and ruthless calculation.

The Auchinleck chronicler was also concerned to name the men who were with the king at the time that Douglas was killed, and these make for interesting reading. Sir Alexander Boyd of Drumcoll was the second son of Sir Thomas Boyd of Kilmarnock, and had been knighted between the Martinmas terms of 1448 and 1449. Alexander Boyd’s father, Thomas, had slain Sir Alan Stewart of Darnley in 1438, for which his brother, Alexander Stewart, had slain Thomas Boyd. The presence together at court of John Stewart of Darnley (son of Sir Alan Stewart) and Alexander Boyd suggests that the feud between the two families had been resolved and they had both committed themselves to royal service. Sir Andrew Stewart may have been a natural son of Sir Walter Stewart, second son of Murdac duke of Albany and he was to achieve a rapid rise in royal favour over the next few years and into the next reign.[131]

However, it is the naming of William Cranston and Simon Glendinning as participants in the killing of William Douglas that is most surprising as these were both Douglas retainers of long-standing. William Cranston was the son of Thomas Cranston of that Ilk, who had served James the Gross as a member of his Lothian affinity and William had been involved in the arrest of Joan Beaufort and her second husband, James Stewart of Lorne, in 1439. He received confirmation from William 8th earl of Douglas on 20 August 1443 of a charter by Archibald 5th earl of Douglas, dated 29 November 1434, of the lands of Nether Crailing in the sheriffdom of Roxburgh, although his attachment to the Douglas affinity may not have been exclusive, as he served as a frequent charter witness and on embassies to England to negotiate and act as conservator of truces, and he was certainly rewarded in the wake of Douglas’s death in 1452.[132] Sir Simon Glendinning had served in a similar role to Cranston, by acting as a charter witness on both Douglas and royal charters, and by serving as a conservator of the truce with England on 23 October 1450 and 22 July 1451.[133] He held the lands of Glendinning in Westerkirk parish in north-east Dumfriesshire, on the Megget Water, and although it is possible to suggest that he may simply have been too terrified by the events that unfolded during the evening of 22 February 1452 to have been able to do other than acquiesce, it is more likely that he was one of the men lured from Douglas service by the king. An undated royal charter by James II to Simon Glendinning and his heirs of £20 worth of land in the barony of Alde-Roxburgh that appears in the Register of the Great Seal under 1450 may, more logically, belong to 1452 and represent a reward to Glendinning for his role at Stirling.[134]

Andrew lord Gray and his son, Patrick master of Gray, are both named in the Auchinleck chronicler’s account, and they feature prominently in later historiography, particularly in Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie’s story about Patrick Gray setting out to rescue his nephew, Maclellan, tutor of Bombie, from William 8th earl of Douglas. This story seems to provide the only basis for the assertion in the Scots Peerage that Andrew lord Gray had a sister who was married to Maclellan of Bombie, and although the extreme ferocity of Patrick Gray’s use of a pole axe on Douglas may be explained if the Maclellan story were true, this must remain a matter for speculation.[135] Andrew lord Gray became a lord of parliament in 1445 and had attended court fairly regularly, therefore his presence with the king is unsurprising, but his son, Patrick, is a rather more shadowy figure in the records.

Although these men were identified by the Auchinleck chronicler as having participated in the killing of Douglas, it is perhaps those who are not mentioned that provide further interest. Principal among the king’s close counsellors in the early 1450s were William Turnbull, bishop of Glasgow, William lord Crichton, chancellor and Sir George Crichton of Cairns, admiral of Scotland. None of these men is mentioned by the Auchinleck chronicler as having been present on 22 February 1452, even though George Crichton was the keeper of Stirling castle at the time. It seems inconceivable that they would have had no part in what occurred, and although the chronicler may have been selective in choosing to ‘name and shame’ particular lords, his account is very detailed to the extent of giving the time of day (‘sevyne houris’) and providing a unique section of reported speech. None of these men had any cause to think kindly of William 8th earl of Douglas, and it is possible that part of his agreement to attend the meeting under the ‘speciale assouerance and respit’ was an understanding that he met with the king without those counsellors present. If so, the chronicler does not see fit to mention it.

James I had acted aggressively, even arbitrarily, against certain of his magnates, although executions had been secured through due parliamentary process and not in private acts of hostility. Even the deaths of William 6th earl of Douglas and his younger brother David had been clothed in terms of judicial process, however questionable. The killing of William 8th earl of Douglas took place in circumstances that were outside the desired structures of legal process and, whether or not this entire enterprise was a conspiracy calculated to bring about the death of Douglas (a desire imputed to the king and his counsellors by John Law as early as 1451) or an exercise in the assertion of royal authority that went badly wrong, it was an action with repercussions that dominated the next three years of James II’s reign. It also illustrated the limits that could be placed on a king whose actions had upset the ideal balance inherent in ‘gud lordschipe’ and saw an ensuing struggle to impose his personal authority the outcome of which was by no means a foregone conclusion.

NOTES

1.

Chron. Auchinleck, ff. 118v-112r.

2.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 125.

3.

RMS, ii, 242, 266-7; J. Durkan, ‘William Turnbull’, 20-1.

4.

A. I. Cameron, The Apostolic Camera and Scottish Benefices, 1418-1488 (Oxford, 1934), 37. John Ralston, dean of Dunkeld, was elevated to bishop of Dunkeld by April 1448.

5.

HMC, Johnstone, 2.

6.

Fraser, Keir, 28.

7.

Registrum de Dunfermelyn [hereafter Dunf. Reg.] (Bannatyne Club, 1842), 426. NRAS Cal. of Charters, 319; NRAS, Glamis, box 4; CDS, iv, 1220.

8.

Fraser, Douglas, iii, 419.

9.

The king’s itinerary is calculated from the places where charters or official documents were issued.

10.

CDS, iv, no. 1216. Commissioners on a subsequent embassy to extend the truce were named on 3 November as John Cranach, bishop of Brechin, Andrew Hunter, abbot of Melrose (king’s confessor and treasurer), Alexander lord Montgomery, Andrew lord Gray, Sir John Methven and Thomas Cranston, provost of Edinburgh: CDS, iv, no. 1220.

11.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 112r. For Turnbull, see J. Dowden, The Bishops of Scotland (Glasgow, 1912), 322.

12.

A. R. Borthwick, ‘The King, Council and Councillors in Scotland, c.1430-1460’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Edinburgh University, 1989), app. C, 491, 493; app. D, 505.

13.

CSSR, v, no. 349.

14.

St Andrews University Library: Calendar of St Andrews Charters B6/22; 33; NRAS B65/3.

15.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 122-3. Roland Tanner identifies fifty-one people who placed their names/seals on the documents of this assembly, and notes that the total attendance would have been even higher.

16.

Chron. Auchinleck, ff. 122r, v.

17.

Ibid., f. 122r.

18.

R. Nicholson, Scotland: The Later Middle Ages (Edinburgh, 1974), 350; Stewart, ‘Holland’s “Howlat”’, 67-79.

19.

ER, v, 34; A. Grant, ‘The Revolt of the Lord of the Isles and the Death of the Earl of Douglas, 1451-1452’, SHR, lx (1981), 171.

20.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 118v.

21.

ER, v, lxxx, 471.

22.

H. J. Smit, Bronnen Tot de Geschiedenis van den Handel met Ingeland, Schotland en Ierland (The Hague, 1928), ii, no. 1359.

23.

Ibid., ii, no. 1358.

24.

ER, v, 132.

25.

ER, v, 181, 228, 308, 495; Chron. Auchinleck, f. 123v. The chronicler states that this was done on the third day of the parliament, which would have been 22 January; ‘stuffit’ has the meaning of garrisoning and provisioning a castle, usually in expectation of attack.

26.

RPS 1450/1/1-40.

27.

Ibid., 1450/1/2, 7, 9, 12.

28.

Ibid., 1450/1/30, 22, 23, 29, 3.

29.

Ibid., 1450/38. For a full examination of this dispute, see A. R Borthwick, ‘Montrose vs Dundee and the jurisdiction of Parliament and Council over fee and heritage in the mid-fifteenth century’ in C. Jones (ed), The Scots and Parliament (Edinburgh, 1996)

30.

RPS 1450/1/19, 26.

31.

Ibid., 1450/1/24, 13.

32.

Ibid.,1450/1/21.

33.

Ibid., 1450/1/1.

34.

Ibid., 1450/1/35; RMS, ii, 308.

35.

RPS 1450/1/36.

36.

ER, v, 383; RMS, ii, 301, 309, 315.

37.

RMS, ii, 314.

38.

RPS 1450/1/34.

39.

Ibid., 1450/1/32.

40.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 124.

41.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 122v.

42.

Registrum Monasterii de Passelet [hereafter Paisley Reg.] (Maitland Club, 1832), 245.

43.

Registrum Episcopatus Brechinensis [hereafter Brechin Reg.] (Bannatyne Club, 1856), i, 67.

44.

RPS 1450/5/6; Brown, James I, 124; Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 127.

45.

RPS 1450/5/1-4.

46.

Ibid., 1450/1/21.

47.

Stevenson, Wars, i, 299-300.

48.

CDS, iv, 1222, 1224; Rymer, Foedera, xi, 271.

49.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 122v.

50.

ER, v, 393; RMS, ii, 363.

51.

RMS, ii, 357.

52.

See above, p. 69.

53.

CDS, iv, 1229. The terms of the safe-conduct were that these men could pass through England ‘to the Marches of Calais and elsewhere in the King’s dominions, with 80 persons in company.

54.

ER, v, 439.

55.

Stevenson, ‘Contesting Chivalry’, 208, 211.

56.

Vaughan, Philip the Good, 112, citing Inventaire sommaire des archives départementales du Nord. Série B [hereafter IADNB] (Lille, 1863-1906), viii, 23-4.

57.

ER, v, lxxxv. This is an extract from John Law’s chronicle ‘De Cronicis Scotorum brevia’ (Edinburgh University, Ms. DC. 7. 63). Law’s chronicle is discussed more fully below, pages 227–9.

58.

Cold. Corr., 168. Prior William Ebchester of Durham wrote in October 1450 that the bishop of St Andrews had set out for Rome.

59.

CPL, x, 88; A. Theiner (ed.), Vetera Monumenta Hibernorum et Scotorum Historiam Illustrantia (Rome, 1864), 383-5.

60.

Dunlop, Kennedy, 120.

61.

ER, v, 306, 310, 370; Durkan, ‘William Turnbull’, 31.

62.

CPL, x, 494; Durkan, ‘William Turnbull’, 30.

63.

Hume of Godscroft states that Douglas was ‘honourably received by the King of France’, but he was writing in the seventeenth century and gives no source for this. It is equally possible that the visit to the French court occurred on Douglas’s homeward journey in February. Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 128.

64.

Stevenson, Wars, i, 305-6.

65.

Law, ‘De Cronicis’, f. 128v: ‘Quam ob rem a pontifice maximo ultra omnes peregrinos commendatus est’.

66.

CPL, x, 84, 86.

67.

CSSR, v, no. 410.

68.

Law, ‘De Cronicis’, f. 128v. ‘conspirabant et affectabant mortem comitis de Douglass’.

69.

RMS, ii, 404.

70.

There is no certain date for her death, but the focus of royal attention in the south-west during January is certainly suggestive.

71.

RMS, ii, 508.

72.

ER, v, 521; RMS, ii, 412-17; NRAS GD25/1/45.

73.

RMS, ii, 412-16.

74.

Brown, The Black Douglases, 289.

75.

RMS, ii, 417. A reference to Lady Agnes Colville receiving payment in 1453 while in the service of the prince and his sister at Edinburgh castle underlines this royal association with the Colvilles.

76.

RMS, ii, 333.

77.

RMS, ii, 403, 406, 417.

78.

Brown, The Black Douglases, 289.

79.

CDS., iv, 1231. On 27 February 1451, Garter King was paid 66s 8d for expenses while attending on Douglas during his stay in England.

80.

Law, ‘De Cronicis’, f. 128v.

81.

Rot. Scot. ii, 345.

82.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 114r.

83.

CSSR, v, no. 310. Professor Brown suggests that it was Douglas’s own supporters that ‘acclaimed him as lieutenant in challenge to the king’, and the entry could certainly bear this interpretation. Brown, The Black Douglases, 290.

84.

CDS, iv, 1231, 1232.

85.

Brown, The Black Douglases, 290.

86.

CDS, iv, 1236; Pell Records: From the Original Rolls of the Ancient Pell Office (1835-7), 30, Henry VI; Sir J. Ramsay, Lancaster and York (Oxford, 1892), ii, 196.

87.

Rot. Scot., ii, 347, 354. The truce was ratified by James II at Perth on 28 August and by Henry VI at Westminster on 16 September.

88.

Balfour-Melville, James I, 294; C. Macrae, ‘The English Council and Scotland in 1430’, EHR, liv (1939), 419-26; Ramsay, Lancaster and York, ii, 196.

89.

Downie, She is but a Woman, 126. An entry in the Exchequer Rolls for 1451 records a payment to William Craig for bringing the chemise of St Margaret to the queen ‘in suo puerperio’: ER, v, 447. This chemise was used again in 1452 at the birth of James III: ER, v, 512.

90.

Macdougall, James III, 6; G. Donaldson, Scottish Kings (London, 1967), 51, 91.

91.

Brown, The Black Douglases, 289-90.

92.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 114r.

93.

RPS 1451/6/4-11.

94.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 130-1.

95.

Lille, ADN, B 427; RMS, ii, 329. By August 1452, the queen had received the earldom of Wigtown and the earldom of Garioch, but she had to wait until the death of the 8th earl to secure possession: Tytler, ii, 386-7; RMS, ii, 592.

96.

RMS, ii, 447.

97.

RPS 1451/6/4; Rot. Scot., ii, 347.

98.

ER, v, 234, 630, 639, 301, 316, 325, 341.

99.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 111v. And see above, pages 62–5.

100.

NRAS, Calendar of Charters, 321.

101.

Dunlop, Kennedy, 130, n.

102.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 118v–112r.

103.

For a full analysis of this, see A. Grant, ‘The Revolt of the Lord of the Isles and the Death of the Earl of Douglas, 1451-1452’, SHR, lx (1981), 169-74.

104.

ER, v, 465. Accounting period: Michaelmas 1450-July 1451.

105.

RMS, ii, 442.

106.

Brown, ‘The Great Rupture’, 19.

107.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 132.

108.

RPS 1451/10/20.

109.

Ibid., 1451/10/21

110.

Brown, ‘The Great Rupture’, 19-20.

111.

This is discussed more fully in Chapter 9.

112.

For a full discussion of bonds and lordship, see Wormald, Lords and Men.

113.

Brown, The Black Douglases, 292.

114.

Pitscottie, Historie and Cronicles, i, 89-92.

115.

ER, iv, 305, 86, 88, 266-7.

116.

NRAS AD1/53.

117.

RMS, ii, 523.

118.

Rot. Scot., ii, 355.

119.

Wigtownshire Charters, R. C. Reid (ed.), Third Series (SHS, 1960), li, Appendix, no. 136.

120.

Rot. Scot., ii, 340-1, 343, 346.

121.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 114v.

122.

Brown, James I, 97-9.

123.

Such a caveat is not always a feature of documents produced in the lordship of the Isles, so it is not certain.

124.

RPS 1450/1/5.

125.

For a full explanation of the salient arguments, see W. D. H. Sellar, ‘Was it Murder? John Comyn of Badenoch and William, earl of Douglas’, in C. J. Kay and M. Mackay (eds), Perspectives on the Older Scottish Tongue: A Celebration of DOST (Edinburgh, 2005), 132-8; A. Grant, ‘Murder Will Out: Kingship, Kinship and Killing in Medieval Scotland’, in S. Boardman and J. Goodare (eds), Kings, Lords and Men in Scotland and Britain, 1300-1625: Essays in Honour of Jenny Wormald (Edinburgh, 2014), 193-226. In deference to these arguments, I have substituted the less controversial ‘killing’ for the word ‘murder’, used in the 1990 edition of James II!

126.

Regiam Majestatem and Quoniam Attachiamenta, ed. and trans. T.M. Cooper (Stair Society, 1947), 253-4, cited in Grant, ‘Murder Will Out’, 222. Murder is classically defined in modern Scots law as unlawful killing of another with intent to kill, or with wicked recklessness to life.

127.

Although the chamber at Stirling known as the ‘Douglas Room’ is in a part of the castle that was not there in its present form in 1452, the size of the chamber would have been similar.

128.

RPS 1452/6/1; Stevenson, Wars, ii, 315-16.

129.

Ibid., 1452/6/1.

130.

Grant, ‘Murder Will Out’, 220; RPS, 1452/6/1.

131.

The Scots Peerage, ed. Sir J. Balfour Paul (Edinburgh, 1904-14) i, 150.

132.

The Laing Charters, 1400-1720, ed. A. L. Murray (SRS, 1958), 122.

133.

Rot. Scot., ii, 340-1.

134.

RMS, ii, 420.

135.

The Scots Peerage, iv, 273.

CHAPTER 6

Confrontation and Crisis (1453-1455)

he is considered to have procured and produced the occasion of his death.[1]

The immediate response to the events of Tuesday 22 February 1452 reveal the principal concerns of the king and his counsellors in considering how best to survive the crisis which he had precipitated. Rather than remaining in Stirling, frozen in inaction, there must have been a fairly rapid decision made to head into the middle March, as charters were issued just over one week later, on 2 March, from Lochmaben and Jedburgh. At Lochmaben, James II confirmed to Robert Pringle a charter of land in the barony of Smailholm and the tower of the same name, granted in 1408 by Archibald Douglas, lord of Galloway. The Pringles had held their position in the Forest under previous earls of Douglas, and by endorsing a Douglas grant the king was underlining the security of Pringle’s tenure under royal lordship; a message that he sought to convey across the territories that came under traditional (pre-1440) Douglas lordship. A second grant was issued at Lochmaben on the same day, to Thomas Cranston of that Ilk of the lands of Greenlaw in the earldom of March. Thomas was the father of William Cranston, a man from within the 8th earl of Douglas’s affinity who appears, nevertheless, to have taken part in the attack upon the earl and whose family was being rewarded by the king.[2] With James II were his chancellor, William lord Crichton, John lord Lindsay of Byres and Andrew lord Gray, master of the king’s household; another man named by the Auchinleck chronicler as having been a participant in the attack on Douglas. The same men were with the king when he appeared in Jedburgh to issue charters to James Rutherford of that Ilk and William Cranston of Crailing; the latter receiving the office of coroner of Roxburgh ‘pro ejus fideli servitio’.[3] Rutherford’s principal landed interests lay in Teviotdale, but he received a grant of the lands of Lethbert and Lethbertshiels in the sheriffdom of Stirling.

The king headed west to Dumfries on 4 March, where he issued a charter to William Cockburn of lands in the sheriffdoms of Peebles, Lanark and Haddington, following on Cockburn’s resignation. Appearing on the witness list on this occasion were Herbert lord Maxwell (another member of the wider Douglas affinity) and the Lothian knight, Alexander Ramsay of Dalhousie.[4] By the time James II issued a crown charter at George Crichton’s castle of Morton on 8 March, he had been joined by Sir Alexander Hume, Sir David Hume of Wedderburn and Sir Simon Glendinning. Glendinning was another named participant in the attack on William earl of Douglas, and was a leading tenant of the Douglases in Eskdale, therefore his presence with the king would have provided a measure of reassurance for those in the region who feared the consequences of this violent removal of their territorial lord. The charter issued by the king at the castle of Morton was in favour of Alexander Campbell and his wife of lands in the lordship of Galloway and sheriffdom of Wigtown, underlining James II’s pre-occupation with establishing royal authority in the earldom that he had been compelled to relinquish in October 1451.[5]

However, this was not a measured, planned and deliberate royal progress with the king enjoying the unswerving support of his subjects. There was a sense of urgency behind such rapid movement from place to place, and its purpose was not so much the charters issued or confirmed, but the personal assurances of the king to those for whom the removal of William earl of Douglas may have created a sense of insecurity. Not all of the late earl’s tenants may have approved his lordship wholeheartedly, but they needed to know what alternatives faced them in the wake of Douglas’s death, and the king had placed himself in a dubious position through his own headstrong actions. The Black Douglases had been at some pains to establish the succession within the family should William Douglas die childless, and his brother James had been designated master of Douglas and therefore succeeded as 9th earl. He and his brothers, Archibald earl of Moray, Hugh earl of Ormond and John lord Balvenie, would have spent the period following the killing of William in assessing the manner of their response. James II had returned to Stirling by 14 March, where he issued a charter to another borderer, David Scott, son and heir of Walter Scott of Kirkurd, of lands in return for ‘his faithful service, both rendered and to be rendered to his Majesty’.[6]

The king’s return appears to have been prompted by fears for the safety of the queen, who was heavily pregnant and would, in the normal course of events, have remained in Stirling castle until she gave birth. Instead, she was taken on a journey across the country to be placed in the safe-keeping of James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews, and it was in his episcopal castle that she delivered a son, the future James III, in May. This, more than any other action, betrays the precarious nature of the king’s position and the very real fear that he would suffer a Douglas counter-attack. None of the alternative royal residences appears to have been considered secure enough, and to risk the queen and the possible unborn heir so late in the pregnancy smacks of desperation. Although it is not clear exactly when the decision was made to move her, it may have been in response to intelligence brought to the king that James 9th earl of Douglas was gathering a substantial force and was heading for Stirling.[7] This force, stated by the Auchinleck chronicler to number 600 men, reached Stirling on 17 March, possibly within only days (or hours) of the king and queen’s departure. According to the chronicler,

The yere of god IM iiijC lij^0 The xxvij[8] day of merche Sir Iames of douglas erll Iames secund son for the foule slauchter of his brother erll willam of douglas Come on sanct patrikis day in lentryn to striuling & blew out xxiiij hornis attanis apon the king and apon all the lordis that war with him that tyme for the foule slauchter of his brother And schewe all thair seles at the corss on ane letter with thair handis subscriuit and tuke the letter and band it on ane burd and cuplit It till ane hors tale and gart draw It throu the towne spekand richt sclanderfully of the king and all that war with him that tyme & spulyeit all the tovne and brint It And thair was with him his brother the erll of ormond and the lord hammiltoun & na ma lordis and thai excedit nocht of gud men vjc all this tyme the king was into perth passand to the erll of craufurd.[9]

This entry is particularly revealing, as it identifies one of the central elements in contemporary reaction to the killing of William earl of Douglas by the king. The chronicler, who has not been noticeably positive about the Black Douglases elsewhere in the chronicle, is demonstrably negative about the king’s actions in 1452. He uses the expression ‘foule slauchter’ on two occasions when describing the killing of William 8th earl of Douglas, and this entry, in common with the previous description of William’s summons to Stirling, dwells heavily on the matter of the letter of safe conduct:

The forsaid king Iames send owt of striuling with willam lawder of haltoun a speciale assouerans and respit wnder his preve sele and subscriuit with his awne hand and all the lordis that war with the king that tyme war oblist suppos the king wald brek the band forsaid / that thai suld let It at thair powere.[10]

The chronicler is at great pains to stress that Douglas had received special assurances from the king and ‘all the lords that were with him’; an expression repeated when describing the response of James Douglas and his followers. By showing the letter of safe conduct with all the seals attached and names ‘subscriuit’ at the market cross in Stirling and then attaching the letter to a board and having it dragged through the town behind a horse, James Douglas was making a powerful public statement regarding the injustice of what had happened to his brother. Moreover, he spoke ‘richt sclanderfully of the king and all that war with him’, which probably took the form of highlighting their dishonour and lack of integrity in making a solemn promise that had been broken so spectacularly a short time later.

This was no light charge, as the exercise of good lordship needed to be based upon trust and the expectation that the king would keep his word once given. Clearly, this was not the first occasion on which James II had failed to honour promises, but it was particularly serious in the light of the formal written assurance and the violent culmination of a meeting between the king and his most powerful magnate. The impression from surviving records is that contemporaries were less concerned with whether or not James II had killed Douglas than with the violation of the king’s promise of safety; if the king’s own word of honour could not be trusted, the ramifications would be extremely troubling. By placing their focus on this undeniable gap in the king’s defences, the Douglases were able to present their violent attack on the burgh of Stirling, which they plundered and burned, as a justifiable response to an act of injustice. The chronicler states that James Douglas was accompanied by his brother, Hugh earl of Ormond and their stalwart supporter, James lord Hamilton, but even though the king may have suborned some former Douglas adherents, the new earl was able to put a sizeable force in the field and mount an attack upon a royal burgh. Although Stirling castle, the place of the 8th earl’s slaughter, was probably secure enough from such an attack, the inability of the king to defend the burgh would have been a clear indication of his weakness.

The chronicler was aware that the king was not in Stirling at the time of the attack, but states that he was in Perth on his way to the earl of Crawford. As the third member of the tripartite bond which had been a factor in triggering the king’s aggression, it makes sense that James II, having delivered the queen into Kennedy’s care, should have proceeded to neutralise any possible threat from the Lindsays. However, no evidence survives for such a meeting, and the king was back in Edinburgh on 24 March, which he used as a base for his operations during the next few months, not venturing to Stirling, according to his recorded itinerary, until the following November. In April, he took the initiative of laying siege to the tower of Hatton in West Lothian, which may have been used as a rallying point for the Douglases before they launched their attack on Stirling in March.[11] Although William Lauder of Hatton had been used to deliver the letter of safe conduct to his patron, William 8th earl of Douglas, in February, he may have regretted being duped or forced by the king and maintained his allegiance to the Douglases, prompting the king to single out his tower house at Hatton (situated in close proximity to the Lothian stronghold of the Douglases at Abercorn) for a retributive strike which probably took place in early April. Some details of the organisation of the siege may be gleaned from the Exchequer accounts, which record payments for carriages to transport a great bombard, the establishment of a smithy to make weapons and a ‘sow’, and the expenditure of £295 9s 5d for men, horses and equipment used at the siege of Hatton.[12] The siege cannot have lasted for very long, as William Lauder was dead and forfeited by the time that grants of his property were being issued under the great seal from 12 April, and there is reference to a payment of £48 made to the Bishop brothers, servants of the late William Lauder of Hatton.[13] Beneficiaries included William Cranston, who appears to have transferred his allegiance unequivocally to the king after joining him in the attack on Earl William, and John Ainslie of Dolphinston and Andrew Rutherford were also given some of Hatton’s former lands.[14] However, the principal beneficiary of Lauder’s forfeiture was the queen, who received a grant on 18 April of the castle of Hatton and lands including Ratho and Gogar; a further indication that the king was still engaged in augmenting the queen’s tocher whenever the opportunity arose.[15] James 9th earl of Douglas appears to have been at Bothwell in Lanarkshire on 14 April, on which date he issued letters in favour of his ally, James lord Hamilton, and although the king seems to have moved against Lauder too swiftly for Douglas to have intervened on behalf of his retainer, his actions would have added to the new earl’s sense of outrage.[16]

During a time of such political tension, the safe delivery of an heir in May, after one baby born prematurely in 1450 which did not survive, and a daughter born in 1451, must have given James II a welcome sense of relief, and the exchequer accounts record a reward being given to Robert Norry on 1 June for bringing the good tidings of his son’s birth to James II in Edinburgh.[17] His relief was evident also in the language used in the ‘Golden Charter’ conferred on 14 June, ‘on account of the welcome offices rendered to us many times by the reverend father in Christ James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews, our dearest cousin’, which confirmed all grants made to the church of St Andrews and elevated it into a regality ‘because of the birth of our eldest son within the place [. . .] of our same patron [Andrew] [. . .] by the favour of divine clemency [. . .] has also achieved the assured future and lineal succession of our royal majesty’.[18] Such relief reflected not only the birth of an heir, but the king’s survival of a turbulent few months during which he had to fight strenuously to maintain his authority and prepare some justification for his actions. William 8th earl of Douglas had been more than simply a leading Scottish magnate, and his recent pilgrimage to Rome had brought him into direct contact with other rulers and potentates, particularly Charles VII of France to whom James II sent a letter on 12 April explaining the death of the earl of Douglas and seeking the continuance of French support.[19]

At the same time as the queen was undergoing confinement in Bishop Kennedy’s castle in St Andrews, a confrontation took place at Brechin between Alexander earl of Crawford and Alexander earl of Huntly. The timing of this clash and the fact that Crawford was one of the protagonists has tended to encourage perceptions of a strong link with the killing of William 8th earl of Douglas. However, although the Auchinleck chronicler gives a fairly detailed account, the compiler does not place it with entries concerning the death of the earl and its aftermath, but rather it appears as the last, and incomplete, entry and is given a heading (unique in the chronicle) that reads, ‘The battell of arbroth brechyne’. The scoring through of Arbroath may indicate a confusion arising from the fact that Huntly and Crawford were involved in the 1446 encounter at Arbroath, but the rest of the entry reads:

Item about that samyn tyme the xviij day of maij Thar met & faucht in the feld on the mure besyd brechyne The erll of craufurd callit allexander The erll of huntlie callit alexander and thair was with the erll of huntlie fer ma than was with the erll of craufurd becaus he displayit the kingis banere and said It was the kingis actioun and he was his luftennend and schortlie the erll of huntlie wan the feld and slewe the erll of craufurdis brother callit Ihon lyndesay of brechyne & the lard of dundas and vther syndry gentill men wele till iijxx of cotarmouris on that syd and on that vther syd willam of setoun the erllis brother and vthir thre or four of gentill men & v or sex of yemen and the erll of huntlie held the feld and raid in angus with thre or foure thousand with him and the erll of craufurd [. . .][20]

The defeat of Alexander 4th earl of Crawford certainly prevented any action by Crawford on behalf of the Douglases, although it is not certain that that was ever his intention. James II may have met with Crawford in March, as the chronicler suggests, or he may have delegated the task of dealing with Crawford to Alexander earl of Huntly, which would explain the chronicler’s assertion that Huntly displayed the king’s banner (reminiscent of William earl of Douglas’s actions at the siege of Barnton in 1443), in order to present his actions as having royal authority. It is more probable that this was simply a further development in a long-running feud involving Crawford and Huntly, but to separate it entirely from the events of the first few months of 1452 is perhaps going too far. During the encounter, the chronicler states that Crawford’s brother, John Lindsay of Brechin, was killed, in addition to the Livingstons’ erstwhile supporter, James Dundas of that Ilk, who had been forfeited in 1450. Alexander earl of Huntly also lost his brother, William of Seton, although the following of ‘three or four thousand men’ described by the Auchinleck chronicler as accompanying Huntly on his subsequent raid on the Lindsays’ Angus lands may be an exaggeration.

The third member of the infamous bond was John MacDonald, earl of Ross and Lord of the Isles, and it was this alliance with Douglas that, arguably, James II found most alarming. In attacking Douglas, the king had been able to rely on the support of his two principal bishops, William Turnbull of Glasgow and James Kennedy of St Andrews, both of whom made loans to James to finance his campaign against the Douglas family.[21] Turnbull’s substantial loan of 800 merks from the Jubilee indulgence needed to be guaranteed, as the pope had not intended that it be diverted to such purposes, and on 14 April 1452 Turnbull received a royal grant which leased to him the revenues from the crown lands of Arran, Bute and Cowal and allowed him also to collect the customs revenues of Ayr, Irvine and Dumbarton.[22] Although clearly intended to underwrite Turnbull’s loan to the king, the lease may have exacerbated existing tensions over rights and jurisdictions in the region.[23] On 22 May, Alexander lord Montgomery, a loyal crown supporter, was given a grant of lands in northern Arran, including Lochranza, ‘pro ejus fideli servitio’.[24] As Stephen Boardman points out, Montgomery had been constable of Brodick castle on Arran during the 1440s and may have received this grant as part of William Turnbull’s strategy to advance royal claims (and ensure his own revenues) against the traditional lordship of Ranald mac Alexander, representing a junior branch of Clan Donald.[25] It is not clear to what extent John MacDonald, earl of Ross and Lord of the Isles was the driving force behind the hostilities in this region during the 1450s, but he had been suffciently infuriated by his treatment by James II in 1450 to seize the royal castles of Inverness, Urquhart and Ruthven, and it would be surprising if he did not take a direct interest in the events that unfolded following the violent death of his fellow bond signatory. It is within this climate of regional tension that Stephen Boardman has suggested two entries on folio 117 of the Auchinleck Chronicle should be seen. These describe a meeting between James Douglas and John MacDonald, earl of Ross and, secondly, a raid by Donald Balloch in the firth of Clyde. The problem is that there is no specific date for either of these entries, and that has led to some controversy between historians concerning when to place the two events.

The problems presented by the chronology of some of the entries in the Auchinleck Chronicle are discussed at length in a later chapter, but the chronicler’s use of expressions such as ‘that samyn tyme’ or ‘that samyn zeir’ may be misleading when events are demonstrably not of the same time. For this reason, historians need to consider the content and context of some of the events described in order to determine their most likely position in the events of the reign, and the entries that give details of the meeting between Douglas and Ross and Donald Balloch’s raid on Inverkip have been assigned variously to dates between 1451 and 1455, with 1452 and 1454 being the strongest contenders in recent scholarship.[26] The entry which succeeds the one concerning the Balloch raid is a detailed account of an incident dated very clearly as 29 August 1452, concerning tensions between George Lauder, bishop of Argyll and some of the cathedral officials. This was a long-running and fairly well documented dispute which had elements of hostility towards the imposition of non-native authority in Argyll, and the chronicler shows considerable preoccupation with what he regarded as an unwarrantable attack on the bishop and his followers. He may have had other sources concerning events in the west of the kingdom recorded in the entries which found their way into John Asloan’s compilation in the sixteenth century, but doubts have been created by the fact that the section that precedes the account of the harrying of Inverkip concerns the siege of Blackness castle which, although not dated specifically by the chronicler, relates to events in 1454. It seems plausible, at the very least, that James Douglas would have established contact with Ross in the aftermath of his brother’s slaughter, particularly as James II’s objection to the bond between Douglas, Ross and Crawford had been the trigger for the king’s violent reaction, and that the Islesmen would have been extremely wary of royal encroachments into areas where they had their own perceptions of jurisdiction. However, although Turnbull and Montgomery’s intervention may have increased tension, the evidence for Balloch’s raid and James Douglas’s personal negotiations with Ross having taken place in 1452 are not conclusive and may arguably be seen to fit more comfortably into the events which unfolded in 1454. Nevertheless, it should not be assumed that loyalties and aims within the region were solidly behind the MacDonalds, and it is clear that James II was determined to court support from men with vested interests in the region who could be persuaded through the judicious use of patronage to act, at least to some degree, in the interests of the crown.

By the time that parliament assembled at Edinburgh on 12 June, James II was determined to reclaim and proclaim royal authority after the turbulence that followed the killing of Douglas in February. It was important to have this authority endorsed by the three estates in parliament and, although it was a royalist assembly with no significant Douglas representation, the king’s willingness to submit himself to the judgement of parliament gives some indication of the weakness of his position. Although the Auchinleck chronicler states that Alexander earl of Crawford was forfeited in this parliament, no record of this survives, but numerous rewards and grants were made, including the ‘Golden Charter’ issued to James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews. However, the largesse shown by the king betrays more than a hint of desperation, and this was not lost on contemporaries with the Auchinleck chronicler observing that ‘syndry war rewardit be the said secret counsall the quhilk men demyt wald nocht stand’.[27] Among those who were given grants that did not stand the test of time were James Crichton, son of Chancellor Crichton, who was elevated to the earldom of Moray. There had been no formal forfeiture of Archibald Douglas earl of Moray, therefore this was a dubious grant, even though James Crichton was married to the elder of the Dunbar heiresses. Similarly, his uncle, George Crichton of Cairns, became earl of Caithness, although there is no evidence that he actually enjoyed the fruits of this earldom.[28] More successful was the elevation of William lord Hay, hereditary constable, to the earldom of Erroll. James II had made a grant to Hay on 12 May 1450, establishing ties of personal lordship which endured and for which Hay received this mark of royal favour in 1452, despite being married to Beatrix, sister of William 8th earl of Douglas.[29] The creation of lords of parliament as a form of royal patronage continued in this assembly, with John Stewart (named by the Auchinleck chronicler as one of the men present at the killing of Douglas in February) becoming lord Darnley, Patrick Hepburn, lord Hailes, Robert Boyd, lord Boyd, Robert Fleming, lord Fleming, William Borthwick, lord Borthwick, Robert Lyle, lord Lyle of Duchal and Alan Cathcart, lord Cathcart.[30] All of these men had demonstrable links with the Black Douglases, either directly or by holding lands within the sphere of Douglas influence. Cathcart, for example, had been allied with the Douglases and it was on one of his vessels that William earl of Douglas had sailed to the continent on his way to the papal jubilee in 1450, but he had clearly thrown in his lot with the king judging by his reward in the June parliament. Nevertheless, he did not have long to enjoy his new title, as the chronicler remarked that ‘the lord of cathcart deit in the samyn tyme’.[31]

The problem posed by tensions in the west of the kingdom would have been in the king’s mind when he rewarded Duncan Campbell of Loch Awe and Colin Campbell of Glenorchy at the June parliament. Duncan received a grant of one third of the crown lands of Glendaruel as a free barony on 19 June, and Colin Campbell received a crown annuity of 40 merks derived from the crown lands round Loch Tay.[32] John Stewart, lord of Lorne (whose uncle, James, had married the king’s mother, Joan Beaufort) was granted royal permission to entail his lordship and the baronies of Innermeath and Redcastle on his four brothers and their heirs male.[33] The king’s intentions were clear; these men could offer support to the crown through their own regional interests and followings and act as a buffer to the potential and actual threats represented by the MacDonalds, although it required the alienation of crown lands to achieve this.

The king’s patronage was insufficient to conceal the fact that he was on the defensive over his actions in February. Although he secured exoneration from this parliament composed almost entirely of royalist supporters, the declaration that was issued ‘concerning rumours that the king broke a respite and other sureties when he killed the earl of Douglas’ was far from convincing. The three estates were given the remit to examine all the evidence concerning the ‘pretexts, causes and motives of the death of the said earl’. This enquiry was designed to show that the king was prepared to submit to a judgement based on clear and impartial examination of the evidence, including witness statements, so that a final ruling on the matter would be seen as conclusive and carry the weight of a legal decision. The fact that this is hardly an accurate description of either the process or the judgement is probably less important than what it reveals about the king’s need to have such a verdict delivered by the three estates in parliament. The extraordinary declaration that ‘if he [Douglas] had any respites and sureties from the said most excellent king on the day preceding his death, those respites and sureties were expressly renounced before a multitude of barons, magnates, knights and nobles’, seems a weak justification of the violation of the safe conduct, given that Douglas would hardly have renounced his own security in such an emotionally charged situation. The declaration goes on to state that:

after many W attering persuasions made both by the king and by various barons and nobles for agreeing and assisting the king against his rebels to the said Earl William on the day of his death, shameless obstinance of such a degree having been displayed to the serene lord the king and other wicked acts having been also perpetrated by him, he is considered to have procured and produced the occasion of his death.[34]

Unconvincing though such arguments are, they reveal, nevertheless, the serious stumbling block presented by the safe conduct to the recovery of authority by the king. He was compelled to provide some measure of justification because of the serious implications inherent in the violation of his word and he had to reassure his estates concerning his understanding of the exercise of royal lordship. By presenting Douglas as shamelessly obstinate in refusing the king’s legitimate request that he provide assistance against the king’s rebels (a principal duty for any of the king’s subjects), the blame for what had occurred could be shifted on to the earl. Although the declaration appears as a whitewash of the king’s actions, the back-room conversations during this parliament must have been far more revealing of the king’s need to build bridges and offer assurances. There may have been many among the three estates who were uneasy or even appalled at the king’s actions in February, but a major blood-feud with the potential for debilitating civil war would have seemed a disastrous alternative to healing the breach caused by the killing of William Douglas by securing a settlement which had broad approval.

Having proclaimed their disgust at the actions of the king and his confederates by blowing out twenty-four horns against the king and dragging the letter of safe conduct through the streets of Stirling in March, James 9th earl of Douglas chose to give further public expression to his contempt by fixing a letter to the door of the parliament during the night of 12 June under his seal ‘ & the sele of the erll of ormond & Sir Iames hammiltonnis declynand fra the king Sayand that thai held nocht of him nor wald nocht hald with him with mony vther sclanderous wordis calland tham tratouris that war his secret counsall’.[35] This was a direct challenge to the king, which not only renounced Douglas allegiance but threatened to rip apart James II’s carefully constructed version of events. His response was to continue the parliament for fifteen days, summoning the host to appear at Pentland Muir by Edinburgh, ‘baith on fut & horse Ilk man for him self baith in burgh & land vnder the pane of ded & tinsall of thair landis’. The chronicler numbered the force at 30,000 men, and it was the most sizeable army to be assembled since James I had mounted his campaign against English-held Roxburgh in 1436.[36] Apart from the obvious motive of projecting decisive royal authority, James II was forced to react strongly to the real threat of Douglas negotiations with the English crown. Although William 8th earl of Douglas may have over-stated the depth of his own position in the effective exercise of Black Douglas lordship in the west and middle Marches of the kingdom, it was nevertheless a strong and enduring tradition that the family and their wider affinity protected and defended the Anglo-Scottish border. In fulfilment of this role, they had cross-border contacts with their counterparts in the English March-wardenships and William and James Douglas had both established recent connections with Henry VI and his court during their travels in 1450-1. Such connections took on a far more sinister hue once James earl of Douglas had renounced his allegiance to James II, and the Douglases had probably been preparing the ground for seeking English support with the safe conducts secured on 2 June for the dowager Countess Beatrice and Margaret of Galloway, widow of the slaughtered earl William and sister-in-law of the new earl. This safe conduct was issued, ostensibly, for the two Douglas countesses and their adherents to travel to Canterbury, which had more than a hint of irony in that it housed the shrine of Thomas Becket, murdered as a consequence of the serious breakdown of trust and loyalty between another king and his leading archbishop.

On 3 June, Henry earl of Northumberland, Richard earl of Salisbury (English wardens of the Middle and East Marches) and Nicholas, bishop of Carlisle, were commissioned to negotiate with James earl of Douglas concerning his transfer of allegiance to Henry VI; an escalation that turned an act of defiance into potential treason.[37] That James II took such developments seriously is shown in a letter sent ‘before 5 June’ to the English chancellor, John Kemp, archbishop of York, requesting that Alexander Nairn of Sandford, William Murray and others would be permitted to come to the king (Henry VI) and be granted a renewal of the safe conduct for named ambassadors including the bishops of Glasgow, Moray and Galloway and George earl of Angus ‘chargit fra oure soverane lorde to the king in al gudely haste upon the secret matiris the qwylks yhour lordeship knawys’.[38]

James II led the host gathered at Pentland Muir to Peebles and then followed the river Tweed down to Selkirk. An attack on Douglas possessions in the Forest probably preceded the king’s appearance at Corehead in Moffatdale on 18 July, where he was accompanied, among others, by the new Crichton earls of Moray and Caithness.[39] From there, the king appears to have led his army through Annandale to Dumfries in a clear attempt to subdue Douglas support through the Marches. The campaign, which lasted for over two weeks, should have delivered a powerful message of royal authority that dismantled Douglas opposition and drew offpotential support, but if that had been the king’s intention, then he failed to deliver. Instead, the Auchinleck chronicler offers the scathing comment that the king ‘did na gud bot distroyit the cuntre richt fellonly baith of cornes medowis & wittalis and herijt mony bath gentillmen & vtheris that war with him self’.[40] It would appear that the campaign of raiding in the south and west was insuffciently disciplined to penalise the right people, and the level of destruction aO ected those in the region indiscriminately, creating a dearth which did nothing to reassure the king’s subjects about the quality and fairness of royal lordship.

The surviving records for the parliament which met at Edinburgh on 26 August 1452 do not reveal much other than concerns over currency regulations and hoarding food. This may reflect the destruction caused during the campaign in July with its ramifications for the harvest, but there were other weighty issues to be discussed in meetings that sought to resolve the debilitating conflict. James II may have been determined to press for his perceived rights over his Douglas enemies by granting the earldom of Garioch to the queen and possibly also the highly contentious earldom of Wigtown, but the lack of Douglas participation in parliament meant that no resolution could be achieved without direct overtures to the 9th earl and the king was under increasing pressure to bring about this resolution.[41] Those who acted as the king’s closest advisers at this time, such as William Turnbull, bishop of Glasgow, William lord Crichton, chancellor and Lords Somerville and Gray, were not men who viewed the Black Douglases with favour, and Roland Tanner has pointed out that those who attended meetings of the three estates or appeared on charter witness lists had no cause to speak out in support of Douglas. However, this does not preclude at least some of them assessing the relative strengths in the position of both sides and the possible consequences of forcing an encounter that the king may not have been sure to win. If the Douglases were too strong to defeat outright at that time, then a judicious strengthening of the king’s position under the screen of compromise would not have seemed unwise counsel.

Negotiations for some form of settlement were probably fairly well advanced by the time that parliament met on 26 August. However, the grants and concessions made by the crown in order to bolster support continued with the posthumous remission granted on 27 August to Alexander Livingston of Callendar and James Dundas of that Ilk. These men had been forfeited in 1450 as part of the king’s assumption of personal rule and his need to augment the royal finances. Alexander Livingston had W ed from Scotland and his fate is unknown except that he had probably died before 1451. James Dundas is said by the Auchinleck chronicler to have been killed at the battle of Brechin in May 1452, but a remission was granted to his brother, Duncan Dundas, which rescinded his forfeiture. Likewise, James Livingston, the king’s former custodian, had his forfeiture rescinded, which may have been intended as a sop to his father-in-law, John earl of Ross, and prepared the way for his rehabilitation into royal service by 1454. The remission had an impressive list of witnesses, including the bishops of St Andrews, Glasgow, Dunkeld, Moray and Whithorn, Chancellor Crichton, Alexander earl of Huntly and Lords Somerville, Gray and Hailes.[42] This was no spur-of-the-moment gesture, as the way had been cleared for the rehabilitation of the Dundas family with a royal remission issued on 18 August to Archibald Dundas (brother of the forfeited James Dundas) ‘and 72 others’, for plundering the ship and goods of Thomas MacIntyre from the port of Leith ‘and all other depredations’.[43] Although the Livingstons and their allies the Dundas family had been working, ostensibly, with the Black Douglases in the late 1440s, the Douglases had done nothing to protect them or prevent their fall from royal favour in 1450; they had even been direct beneficiaries of their forfeiture. The rehabilitation of Livingston and Dundas could be seen in the context of making overtures to James 9th earl of Douglas, or as part of James II’s concerted efforts to coax men to his side through patronage which took the form of lands, rights, offices and remissions. If negotiations needed to take place with Douglas, the king would seek at the same time to increase his own base of support by whatever means were at his disposal, and the use of men with Douglas connections as intermediaries may have served this purpose.

When terms were agreed between James II and James earl of Douglas, it is revealing that this did not take place in the forum of parliament, but in Douglas castle in Lanarkshire; underlining further the contempt in which James Douglas held parliament as an impartial body. Terms were brokered by representatives of both sides, allowing James Douglas and James Hamilton to return to the king’s peace. In a document known as the ‘Appoyntement’, sealed on 28 August, James Douglas promised to forgive the king for the ‘slaughter’ of his brother, William, and to renounce any bonds that he had made ‘contrar to the king’. This dealt with the matter of William’s death and the contentious bond that was a contributory element, clearing the way for the restoration of Douglas to his duties as warden of the Marches, although his promise to give the king such ‘honour and worship’ as he could render was couched in very guarded terms, ‘havand sic souertie as I can be content of reason for safety of my life’.[44] The events of 1452 up to this point may have been forgiven (at least for public consumption), but not forgotten, and this caveat speaks volumes about the betrayal of trust by the king. That James II was trying to maintain his grasp on Wigtown is suggested by the clause that Douglas would not seek ‘any entrie in the lands of the earldome of Wigtone’ without the queen’s permission, and would not obtain the lordship of Stewarton without leave from the king. The fact that so many writers from the Auchinleck chronicler onwards focus on the bond between Douglas, Crawford and Ross as the central, if not sole, trigger for the king’s slaying of Douglas, has obscured the recurring tensions over possession of Wigtown. To the king, it represented an earldom that would bolster his provision of dower lands to his queen and bring an important territory in the south-west effectively into royal hands. However, his actions in seizing the earldom in 1450-1 were of highly questionable legality given that he had agreed to Douglas possession of the earldom of Wigtown and lordship of Stewarton in Ayrshire in a transumpt of several Douglas charters issued on 20 January 1449 and witnessed by William Turnbull, bishop of Glasgow, Alexander earl of Crawford, Alexander Livingston of Callendar, James Lindsay of Covington, provost of Lincluden and Robert Livingston, comptroller.[45] James I’s grant of the earldom of Wigtown to his sister Margaret, widow of Archibald 4th earl of Douglas, had been on terms of life-rent, therefore there must have been strong fears that the king would reclaim it once his aunt died (which she did in the winter of 1450-1), and this explains the urgency shown by the Douglases in having their acquired rights recognised in advance of this eventuality.

There is little doubt, given subsequent events, that James II regretted having given this recognition, and his determination to bring Wigtown under royal control amounted almost to an obsession. However, it proved also to be a key element in betraying the weakness of his position as both William 8th earl of Douglas and his brother, James 9th earl, were able to make the king back down over possession of Wigtown. That he did not do so willingly is shown by his actions following the return of William earl of Douglas to Scotland in 1451 and his submission in parliament in July. The ceremonial surrendering into the king’s hands of all his possessions was followed by the equally ceremonial regranting of those possessions by the king, although it is significant that Wigtown and Stewarton were excluded. When James II regranted even these possessions to Douglas in October, it was in an atmosphere of tension regarding relations with John earl of Ross and possible pressure from the three estates, some of whom may have found James II’s actions during Douglas’s absence in Rome distinctly unsettling.[46] The ‘Appoyntement’ was a serious attempt to resolve the conflict that had arisen as a result of the king’s actions, not only in killing Earl William, but also in his counter-productive campaign in the south of the kingdom in July. As Michael Brown has argued, the negotiations that brought James II and James 9th earl of Douglas to terms should be seen in the context of conflict resolution involving representatives from both sides, but rather than being conducted in the ‘official’ forum of parliament or general council, the agreement was reached as a private accord which may not have included a face-toface meeting between the two men.[47]

The terms of the ‘Appoyntement’ included the crucial matter of the death of William 8th earl of Douglas at the king’s hands. His brother and successor as earl, James Douglas, undertook to ‘remit and forgive [. . .] all them that has arte or parte of the slauchter or deid of whylum William Earle of Douglas’, and this refers to those who participated in the killing, but does not point the finger explicitly at the king himself. Instead, such forgiveness is offered ‘at the ordinance and advice of our said soverayne lord’, and the depredations caused during the summer campaign are alluded to in Douglas’s avowal that he would not seek restitution from the king, and that he would make good the damage caused by him in Galloway. The issue of the bond was addressed in Douglas’s undertaking to revoke all leagues and bands held to be contrary to the interests of the king, and to exercise his lordship on the borders peaceably and in accordance with agreed truces.[48] However important it was that James II came to terms with James earl of Douglas, it is clear that the grants made to the queen and to Sir Gilbert Kennedy of the earldom of Wigtown and some of the lands of the lordship of Stewarton, respectively, were grants that would not be relinquished gladly by either party, and this may have been recognised by those negotiating on the part of Douglas in the clause stating that he would not attempt to pursue entry into Wigtown of Stewarton without permission from the queen. James II had underlined his continued determination to promote royal lordship in Wigtown by confirming Andrew Agnew (a former adherent of his aunt, Margaret countess of Touraine) as hereditary sheriff of Wigtown on 29 July and, weakened though he may have been, it is possible to detect an attempt to concede as little as possible in this initial compromise.[49] The allusion to damage caused by Douglas in Galloway reveals the aggressive reaction of Douglas to the king’s success, however limited, in courting support from men who may be held to have been in the wider Douglas affinity in the south-west, exposing the weakness in James 9th earl of Douglas’s position over some tenants in territories that formed the core of pre-1440 Black Douglas lordship.

Although there was no wholesale defection to crown lordship in the south-west, the killing of William 8th earl of Douglas may have convinced those who had been less than committed to him in the first place to accept the king’s overtures and offers of patronage, especially as it was far from clear how long the Black Douglases would manage to hold out against the evident determination of James II at least to curtail their influence if not bring about their destruction. It was a gamble for some that may have been predicated less on their desire to win royal favour than to improve their regional positions should Douglas influence be removed permanently. This may have motivated men such as Scott of Buccleuch and Douglas of Cavers, but the new lords of parliament, William lord Somerville and Robert lord Fleming, were also assiduous royal councillors during this period, with William earl of Douglas’s former secretary, James Lindsay of Covington, transferring to royal service as James II’s keeper of the privy seal. The Marcher barons, Pringle and Rutherford, accepted the king’s patronage and offered no demonstrable support to the 9th earl of Douglas, although Andrew Kerr maintained his allegiance, possibly because his lands had suffered in the king’s summer raid. James 9th earl of Douglas’s support was most solid in the Lanarkshire and Lothian heartlands built up by his father, James the Gross, although matters were not entirely clear-cut, with divided support evident within the Haliburton family; John lord Haliburton and Walter of Haliburton received patronage from the king while Mark of Haliburton continued to serve as Douglas’s secretary. Such family allegiances may not have been unequivocal, but rather a matter of hedging bets and protecting personal and regional interests as far as possible until the outcome of the crown-Douglas hostility was resolved.[50] The ‘Appoyntement’ of August 1452 may have done little more than paper over the cracks in the relationship between Douglas and the king, and it was the latter who came under the greatest pressure from the Douglases to concede more in bringing about a resolution of the conflict.

The remission offered to Livingston and Dundas may indicate a role played by these men with links to the 8th earl in acting as mediators in negotiations between the king and the 9th earl, and their close association is demonstrated in the English safe-conduct issued on 3 January 1453 to James lord Hamilton, James Livingston and Archibald and Duncan Dundas. They appear to have availed themselves of this as payment was made to Garter on 19 February ‘lately sent by the King to the Marches of Scotland, there to ask certain appointments with the Earl of Douglas and also attending on the Lord of Hamelton at London and elsewhere for five weeks and more’.[51] These negotiations with England may be seen as part of the rehabilitation of Douglas lordship and the re-establishment of his position within the Scottish polity. However, there was unresolved business from the ‘Appoyntement’ of August 1452 that needed to be addressed in a second personal agreement between the king and Douglas, known as the ‘Lanark Bond’, made on 16 January 1453.

This bond has been substantially re-evaluated by Michael Brown, who has shown that it has been misinterpreted in at least one important respect: the acceptance of consent to a marriage between James 9th earl of Douglas and his widowed sister-in-law, Margaret, forming part of the king’s concessions.[52] Annie Dunlop described the terms of the Lanark bond to be ‘the gauge of his [James II’s] impotence’, particularly because of this assumed concession that the king would assist Douglas in securing papal dispensation for his marriage to his late brother’s widow, Margaret of Galloway.[53] The death of William 8th earl of Douglas without direct heirs meant that his brother, James, would not have inherited the lands that had been brought to the marriage by Margaret as heiress of the unentailed possessions of Galloway. To preserve the inheritance, James would have to marry his sister-inlaw, although this required a papal dispensation because they were within the degrees of consanguinity which forbade marriage under canon law. A petition was sent to Rome in the name of James and Margaret Douglas and of ‘James King of Scots, whose kindred they are’, and dispensation was duly given on 27 February 1453.[54] Michael Brown has shown that such dispensation was the recognition of a fait accompli, as James Douglas had certainly married Margaret earlier than this, evidence for which may be found in the presence of James 9th earl of Douglas at Threave castle on 1 November 1452, styling himself ‘lord of Galloway’.[55] Exactly what Margaret’s feelings about her marriages to the Douglas brothers were is impossible to discern, but neither William nor his brother James were able to secure the Douglas succession through Margaret, as both marriages were childless. It is possible that her loyalty to the branch of the family that had achieved the Douglas earldom only as the result of the execution of her brothers did not run very deep, and although she W ed the kingdom with her mother-in-law, countess Beatrice, in 1455, she returned to Scotland and was accepted into the king’s favour by 1460, securing a third marriage to John Stewart, earl of Atholl, James II’s young half-brother by Joan Beaufort’s marriage to James Stewart ‘Black Knight’ of Lorne. This must have taken place after the divorce or annulment of Margaret’s marriage to James Douglas, because he was still alive at the time, although no record of this survives, and it was a marriage that produced children, therefore the inability to provide heirs for the Douglas brothers was not a matter of Margaret’s infertility. Nevertheless, in 1453 it must have appeared desirable to secure the Douglas patrimony through a marriage between Margaret and James Douglas, in an effort to rebuild the position of the Black Dougases in the wake of earlier royal aggression.

Precisely what James II’s attitude was to this rapid remarriage, designed to maintain the earl’s hold on the lordship of Galloway, is not clear, but it removes a confusing element of earlier interpretations of the bond emphasising the king’s weakness; a view that saw the king, having stabbed William earl of Douglas, ostensibly in an argument over a personal bond made between Douglas, Ross and Crawford, in the position of having to make his own bond with William’s brother and successor. As if that humiliation were not enough, the terms appeared overwhelmingly beneficial to the Douglases rather than the king, who lost the apparent advantages held in August 1452 of retaining control over Wigtown and Stewarton, both of which were to be restored to Douglas under the terms of the bond, along with not only agreement but active assistance in securing a marriage that would keep intact the Douglas patrimony. Possession of Wigtown certainly was a key issue in the negotiations between the king and Earl James from August 1452 to January 1453, but this was a matter of asserting legitimate title and, as Michael Brown argues, it demonstrates not only recognition by Douglas that the king was ‘the source of legal title’, but also highlights the right to challenge or resist the crown’s blatant breach of those rights.[56]

Both the ‘Appoyntement’ and the Lanark bond were private agreements, and Roland Tanner stressed the importance of the fact that they were not produced within the forum of parliament or general council. He saw this as evidence of Douglas contempt for that forum and points out that neither agreement carried the authority of the three estates.[57] However, it is not certain that the wider political community (those who were members of the three estates, or had a stake in the stability of the realm) had no investment in an accord between Douglas and the king, even if the men whose names appear on witness and sederunt lists during 1452-3 had reason to resent the Douglases or had been recipients of patronage from the king that had been rescinded or appeared vulnerable in the light of Douglas rehabilitation. The fact remains that James II had been unable to triumph against the family by force, at least in the short term, and the Auchinleck chronicler’s scathing remarks about the king’s actions in 1452 cannot be discounted entirely as a reflection of wider-held concerns. Whether the king chose independently to recognise the need to seek reconciliation with Earl James for the good of the realm, was counselled to do so, or these were steps in a longer-term strategy of offering concessions while rebuilding a position of strength from which to mount a more successful and decisive attack is, necessarily, a matter for speculation. Michael Brown has argued convincingly that the settlements arrived at between the king and Douglas in 1452 and 1453 were effective and signalled a period of broad co-operation through 1454, witnessed by James II’s appointment of James Livingston as chamberlain and William Sinclair, earl of Orkney as chancellor; placing men with proven Douglas connections at the heart of the royal council.[58] However, the ruthlessness and determination of which the king had shown himself capable may suggest a longer-term strategy that depended upon support from his counsellors and the royalists sitting in parliament. Outright force had proved ineffective, particularly when the legality of his actions was open to challenge, but a steady erosion of Douglas lordship could still bear fruit.

The statement by the Auchinleck chronicler that Alexander earl of Crawford had been forfeited in the June parliament of 1452 has no surviving evidence to support it, but Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, writing in the sixteenth century, states that Crawford submitted to the king at this point and was received back into the king’s peace. Although there is little hard evidence to support this either, some rehabilitation may be assumed if, as Annie Dunlop suggests, a gift to Bishop Kennedy’s college of St Salvator in the university of St Andrews (founded in 1450) by David Dunbar of Cockburn may be linked with a softening of the king’s stance towards Crawford. Dunbar was Lindsay’s father-in-law, and his grant was for masses to be said for the souls of James II and Alexander earl of Crawford. Certainly, the names of the earls of Douglas, Moray and Crawford appear as conservators of an Anglo-Scottish truce in May 1453, so any sentence passed against Crawford in June must have been rescinded by then.[59] The restoration of Douglas to his position of March warden in August 1452 is further evidence of his rehabilitation along the lines expressed in the ‘Appoyntement’, and a new truce with England, agreed at Westminster on 23 May 1453, followed diplomatic negotiations in which Douglas had taken part.[60]

However, Douglas had another item of personal business to conclude at the English court, which may have been the ‘certain appointments’ referred to in Hamilton’s embassy in early January, involving negotiations for the release of Malise Graham, earl of Menteith, who had been held in England as a hostage for the ransom of James I since 1427.[61] Graham was the brother-in-law of James lord Hamilton, who had married Malise’s sister, Euphemia Graham (widow of Archibald 5th earl of Douglas) in 1441, and this shameful neglect by the crown of a Scottish noble who had been left to languish in captivity without having serious efforts made to redeem him was an opportunity for Douglas both to assist his loyal companion, James Hamilton, in securing the release of his kinsman by marriage (and Douglas’s uncle), but also to highlight his own ability to conduct successful negotiations with the English crown to deliver a fellow Scottish noble where the king could not or would not do so.[62] Of more crucial importance in these negotiations was the undeniable fact that James Douglas had a personal relationship with Henry VI and his counsellors that James II did not; a fact that may have done little to allay the king’s anxieties and his hostility towards a presentation of Black Douglas power that appeared to compromise his own.

Nevertheless, the tide of fortune was beginning to turn against the Black Douglases from the summer of 1453, as their English prop was damaged by the deterioration in Henry VI’s mental health which led to Richard duke of York’s appointment as lieutenant by the following February. The exact nature of Henry’s illness is a matter of speculation, but it was suffciently serious to rob him of the ability to function as a ruler, with one contemporary account stating that ‘the king being at Clarendon indisposit sodenly was take and smyten with a O ransy [frenzy] and his wit and reson withdrawen’.[63] The heavy defeat of English forces at Castillon on 17 July lessened the chance that Douglas could rely on practical military aid from his English allies should it come to armed confrontation with James II, and the political in-fighting in England created an atmosphere of uncertainty in Anglo-Scottish relations.[64] In addition, Alexander earl of Crawford, one of the members of the fateful bond, died in September 1453. The Auchinleck chronicler records the event in the following terms:

Item the yere of god IM iiijC liij^0 In the moneth of september deit alexander lyndesay erll of craufurd In fynevyne [Finavon] that was callit a rigorous man and ane felloun and held ane gret rowme [area] in his tyme O or he held all angus in his bandoun & was richt Inobedient to the king’.[65]

This is a negative portrayal of an earl who had distinguished himself by being ‘richt inobedient to the king’, but it altered the political dynamics in Angus as he was succeeded by his son, David, who was only thirteen years old, allowing James II to move swiftly to establish royal rights of wardship.

The king was in Arbroath on 27 July and in Aberdeen from 2 to 10 August, before moving to Kildrummy on 19 August, but this journey to the north-east was planned and took place before Crawford’s death in September, and may have been prompted by the death of Elizabeth Douglas, countess of Orkney, who had held the profits of the lordship of Garioch in life-rent.[66] She obtained these rights through the influence of her brother, Archibald 5th earl of Douglas, who persuaded the general council, held in May 1437, to overturn James I’s ruling on the matter.[67] After his wife’s death, William Sinclair, earl of Orkney forcibly uplifted a debt owing to him from a lease of her terce of the earldom of Mar, but he may have been persuaded to renounce his interests in the estates by the prospect of royal favour and patronage.[68] James II bestowed lands in the earldom of Garioch upon his queen, Mary of Gueldres, on 26 August 1452, which indicates that he was still seeking ways to endow the queen with sufficient resources to encourage further payments of her dowry, and he would need to take any opportunity that arose to compensate her for the withdrawal of her rights in Wigtown under the terms of the Lanark bond.[69] Annie Dunlop speculated that the efforts by the king to have his widowed sister, Isabella duchess of Brittany, returned to Scotland at this time may have been to offer her in marriage to Orkney as recompense for disappointed ambitions in Mar and Garioch, but there is no evidence that Orkney possessed a realistic claim to Mar and Garioch, therefore any plans for a marriage alliance should rather be seen in the wider context of royal patronage.[70]

Francis duke of Brittany died in 1450 and James II opened discussions with Charles VII through William Monypenny concerning the Breton succession, as his sister, Isabella, had borne two daughters but no male heir. Under Brittany’s laws of succession, the duchy had been inherited by Francis’s brother, Peter, but James II sent an embassy on 4 January 1453 under Thomas Spens, keeper of the privy seal, and Thomas Cranston, claiming guardianship of his nieces and protesting that they had been excluded wrongfully from the succession. This dispute rumbled on over the next couple of years, but there is no indication that it was pivotal in the king’s strategies in the north-east.[71] The death of Elizabeth Douglas appears also to have been the occasion for a revival of Robert lord Lyle’s claim to hereditary rights in Garioch, mentioned in a charter to Paisley abbey, dated 15 September 1452, in which Lyle sought the assistance of Thomas Tarvas, abbot of Paisley, in setting forth his case, and Thomas lord Erskine may also have entertained hopes that his claim to Mar would be revisited by the king.[72] Erskine appeared as a witness on royal charters in April, July and November 1452 and he may well have been attending court in order to maintain pressure and build up support for his claims to Mar, presenting a renewed petition for justice to the general council held at Edinburgh on 21 March 1453 at which he received an assurance by Chancellor Crichton that his case would be heard before the king in person on the occasion of his forthcoming visit to the north.[73] This shows that the excursion had been planned with no immediate reference to Crawford but, notwithstanding the fact that Thomas lord Erskine witnessed a charter issued by the king at Aberdeen on 8 August, in company with James 2nd lord Forbes, who had succeeded his father in 1448, the matter of succession to the earldom of Mar remained unresolved.[74] James II stayed at Kildrummy castle, chief messuage for the earldom of Mar, for the first time since 1448 and issued a charter on 19 August in favour of John lord Lindsay of Byres, but Erskine’s name is absent from that witness list.[75]

The actions of James 9th earl of Douglas require some scrutiny in this period as, having reached a tacit agreement with the king in the Lanark bond of January 1453, it would appear that accord was breaking down. An entry in the problematic folio 117 of the Auchinleck Chronicle may be interpreted as describing a meeting held on 12 May 1454 (although the date is not specified). It reads:

Iames the brothire of erll willam of douglas that was slane in the castell of striuling come to knapdale and spak thar with the erll of Ross and lord of Ilis and maid thaim all richt gret rewardis of wyne clathis siluer silk and ynglis clath and thai gaf thaim mantillis agane and quhat was thar amangis thaim wes counsall to commounis and thai demyt Ill all.[76]

Although, as Stephen Boardman has argued, there are strong grounds for this referring to a meeting held in 1452, particularly as the chronicler’s description of James as ‘the brother of the earl that was slain in the castle of Stirling’ implies that his status as earl of Douglas was not as established in the writer’s mind as it would have been by 1454, it seems more likely that it represents a defensive move by Douglas to secure the continued alliance of John MacDonald, earl of Ross, whose support may not have been assured in the aftermath of his brother’s death, and subsequent blandishments offered by the king.[77] Douglas, who had recent experience of the unreliability of James II’s promises, was unlikely to have been convinced that the king’s desire for reconciliation was genuine and would have needed to make sure of his support in an area that was harder for the king to reach and exert royal authority, even had his attention and resources not been focused elsewhere. That this meeting was part of a strategy that resulted in the raid in the firth of Clyde by Donald Balloch, lord of Dunivaig, described above within the same folio, is suggested by the chronicler’s mention of John Douglas, a bastard son of Archibald earl of Douglas, who took part in the raid. The entry reads:

The hereschipe of Inuerkip be donald of the ylis viz. baloch with the powere of the Ilis with him and thai said Ihon of douglas ane bastard sone till archebald erll of douglas was with thaim thai war vxx of galays wele tald & ma and of men v or vj thousand This hereschipe was done the said yeire [next folio]

The x day of Iulij and thair was slane of gud men xv and of wyfis twa or thre and of barnis thre or foure and of hors[es] v or vjc and of oxin and ky xM and ma and of schepe and gait a thousand & ma and thai brynt that tyme certane townis In Inuerkep viz about the kirk

Item this said donald with his ost of the Ilis herijt all arane and wan the castell of braudwik and kest it down to the erd and herijt baith the Ilis of Cerayes the samyn tyme Item thai tuke crauchmet of bute the samyn tyme viz Ic bollis of male Ic bollis of malt Ic martis Ic merkis of siluer.[78]

This demonstrated the scale and effectiveness of the military sea power (stated by the chronicler to number more than 100 galleys, with five or six thousand men) that could be deployed within the lordship of the Isles, and the firth of Clyde represented a putative border between the mainland kingdom of the Scots and the quasi-autonomous lordship to the west, although this was far from clearly defined and proved a contentious matter throughout the Middle Ages.[79] By attacking Inverkip, the Cumbraes and Arran, Donald Balloch was revealing the crown’s inability to defend these areas, and the destruction of the royal castle of Brodick on the east of Arran was a gesture of defiance that underlined that message.[80] However, Balloch’s raid was also about plunder and the forced exaction of tribute (‘crauchmet’), and may not have been entirely at the behest of Ross. The fact that the latter chose to reopen his own negotiations with James II in 1454 may have been assisted by the leverage he could offer against a repeat of such attacks on crown possessions by his cousin in return for patronage and concessions from the king, such as consolidating the rehabilitation of his father-in-law, James Livingston, whose remission in 1452 was to be followed in 1454 by his return to the royal household office of chamberlain.[81]

The king’s own inner council was undergoing some restructuring in 1454 and experiencing tension created by the apparent failure of the king to deliver meaningful rewards to those who had maintained a dogged loyalty to James II in his struggle for authority over the Black Douglases. Roland Tanner points out that the three estates had not met in parliament or general council since March 1453, at which time the king’s young half-brother, John Stewart, was elevated to the earldom of Atholl. However, the estates met again in spring 1454 for the purpose of arranging and financing an embassy to negotiate on the matter of James II’s sisters, Isabella and Annabella.[82] The suggestion that the widowed Isabella Stewart should marry Charles, prince of Navarre, was not approved by her brother who sought to drive a profitable bargain for Scotland through his sister’s possible remarriage, particularly when he discovered that the Breton nobles had offered to finance a remarriage and ‘redeem her dowry’.[83] The long betrothal of his youngest sister, Annabella, to Louis of Savoy, count of Geneva, had never resulted in formal marriage, and the contract was dissolved in the treaty of Gannat in March 1455, allowing Louis to marry Charlotte of Cyprus by 1459. In order to obtain agreement to this severance, the Scots would receive a lucrative windfall amounting to 25,000 crowns; a sum that would have been anticipated eagerly by James II. Notwithstanding this diplomatic business, trouble appears to have broken out within the family of James II’s most assiduous supporters, the Crichtons. William lord Crichton, the king’s chancellor and, apart from finding himself under attack for a brief period in 1445, one of the most prominent and enduring administrators of the reign, witnessed his last charter in the extant records on 16 September 1453.[84] William Sinclair, earl of Orkney does not appear in the records as chancellor until 18 July 1454, but William Crichton was dead before April 1454, and although his cousin continues to appear on royal documents as admiral George Crichton, earl of Caithness, there is evidence that matters were not running smoothly within the house of Crichton.[85]

The failure of James II to enable some of those men to whom he offered patronage in June 1452 to achieve meaningful possession of the rights that went with their titles, may have created mounting resentment. For example, William lord Crichton’s son, James, had been granted the earldom of Moray, but there is no indication that Archibald Douglas was dispossessed or that James Crichton was able to do more than style himself earl of Moray in the records.[86] A fee was paid to James earl of Moray and lord Crichton as keeper of Dunbar castle in the audit of 5 July 1454, but the Auchinleck chronicler records his death in August stating cryptically that ‘Sir Iames lord of crechtoun decessit at dunbar and It was haldin fra the king a litill quhile and syne gevin till him.’[87] This suggests that Crichton and his adherents had fortified themselves in Dunbar in defiance of the king, and there was some delay in surrendering the castle after Crichton’s death. Another James Crichton, the son of Admiral George Crichton, was also in open revolt in 1454, the stimulus for which was his own frustrated ambitions. Although George Crichton was given the title of earl of Caithness in June 1452, there is no evidence that he managed to secure the revenues of that earldom, but on 8 July 1452 a royal charter was granted which incorporated all of George Crichton’s southern lands into the earldom of Caithness to be held ‘in free regality by George and his heirs’.[88]

The problem arose when, in May 1454, George Crichton resigned the lands of Ballencrieff and Gosford in favour of James II, although there is no evidence that this resignation was forced upon George Crichton by the king; a supposition borne out by an entry in the Auchinleck Chronicle which suggests that this was an escalation in an internal family dispute:

Item that samyn moneth and yere Sir george of crechtoun resignit all his conquest landis in the kingis handis and maid him his aire and within vj days Iames of crechtoun sone & aire to the said george of crechtoun tuke the castell of blakness and his fader in contrar of the king and Incontinent the king in proper persoun put ane sege to the blakness and lay at It ix or x dayis and than It was gevin oure be trety and Sir george was out to methfen and gaf him the landis of strathurd for the landis that he had conquest in louthiane.[89]

By taking the castle of Blackness and holding his father captive, James Crichton was presenting James II with a further problem in demonstrating his authority. With George Crichton’s designation of the king as his heir, he stood to gain further lands and resources, but the location of Blackness within a few miles of the great Lothian Douglas stronghold at Abercorn meant that it had a strategic importance that the king would not have wanted to see compromised. Corroborative evidence may be found in the issuing of a royal charter from Blackness on 23 May 1454, and the king received a visit from a herald sent by Emperor Frederick III while he was at Blackness attending the siege.[90] The accounts of the royal exchequer show that ships were used in the siege, as the castle was built out into the river Forth, and payments were made to Robert Poke and his sailors. It would appear also that Mary of Gueldres was present at the siege, as an intriguing payment was made for wine and archers’ bows to be sent to the queen at Blackness. The royal couple appear to have been using Stirling as their base during the siege, as payment was made to John Park for tending to the queen’s horses at Stirling ‘tempore obsidionis castri de Blacnes’, and the king appears to have initiated works at several royal residences during 1454 according to payment made for Prussian timber for Stirling and ‘timber beams for the king’s works at Edinburgh castle, Holyrood, Falkland and Linlithgow’.[91]

The siege was resolved ‘be trety’, which explains the letters of reversion by James Crichton ‘son and apparent heir to George of Creichtoune of the Carnys’ which were issued on 3 June.[92] A formal settlement was negotiated in parliament on 18 July 1454, which allowed the king to retain the Crichton lands of Strathbrock while permitting James Crichton to succeed to his family’s main estates at Cairns in West Lothian. The importance of Strathbrock to the king may have been the acquisition of lands to which the Douglases also laid claim. George Crichton probably acquired Strathbrock through his marriage to a daughter of Sir William Douglas of Strathbrock, and James Crichton was their son.[93] Certainly, one of the charges levelled against James 9th earl of Douglas in 1455 was that he had assisted Robert Douglas in ‘the exheridation of the king [. . .] in the lands of Strathbrock’.[94] As compensation for the loss of these lands, James Crichton was granted the royal lands of Strathord in Perthshire, for which he had to request formal approval from the queen, as she had been granted the barony of Ragortoun, including Strathord, as part of her dower lands.[95] The settlement was witnessed by James Crichton’s father, George, earl of Caithness, and by his cousin James lord Crichton, earl of Moray (who died shortly afterwards). It is also the first occasion of James Livingston’s reappearance in the official records as chamberlain, which may indicate further rapprochement with John earl of Ross or a genuine desire to reinstate his former custodian to his council; a move that may have been opposed by the late William Crichton.

Changes in the king’s council were forced by an unusual mortality rate in 1454, and an entry in the Auchinleck Chronicle reads rather like an obituary column. Following his recording of the death of Alexander Lindsay earl of Crawford in 1453, the chronicler goes on to say:

Item the samyn yere & moneth thair decessit in Edinburgh Sir george of crechtoun and in the samyn moneth and yere Sir Iames lord of crechtoun decessit at dunbar [. . .] and in the samyn moneth and yere decessit Ihon hammiltoun that was callit quhissilbery [. . .] Item in the samyn yere & moneth decessit in sterling androw cunnynghame sone & air till willam of cunynghame of glengarnok [. . .]

and in the samyn moneth and yere decessit Sir alexr Ramsay lord of dalhousy and in the samyn moneth and yere decessit Ihon of park lard of that Ilk Item that samyn yere & moneth decessit Sir willam keith that was callit ane gentill knycht & a wertuos [. . .][96]

This series of entries demonstrates the problems inherent in interpreting the Auchinleck Chronicle, as the expression ‘the samyn year and month’ cannot be seen as accurate if linked with the only firm date offered, ‘Item the yere of god IM iiijC liij^0’, describing Crawford’s death. Sir George Crichton died in 1454, as did James lord Crichton. Andrew Cunningham’s death does not appear to be recorded in any other source, but Sir Alexander Ramsay of Dalhousie was still alive in 1465. There may have been a gentle and virtuous knight called Sir William Keith, but it was not the William Keith who served as royal marischal, as he died in 1483. One name missing from Auchinleck’s 1454 list is that of James II’s stalwart adviser during the years of his personal rule, William Turnbull, bishop of Glasgow. However, he does record his death in an entry that follows one with the date 1456: ‘(at samyn yere the thrid day of decembere thair decessit in glasqw master willam turnbull bischope of glascow That brocht haim the pardoun of it.’[97] Andrew Durisdeer was provided to the bishopric on 7 May 1455, therefore the entry should be dated to 1454 and the chronicler may have confused September with December, as an entry in the Glasgow Register states that Turnbull died on 3 September 1454. He was certainly present in the July parliament, but his name is not recorded on any subsequent documents, possibly because he had contracted the illness that was to lead to his death in September; removing yet another of the king’s strongest supporters during his struggle against the Douglases.[98] The death of William Turnbull and the succession of Andrew Durisdeer to the bishopric of Glasgow does not appear to have been one of smooth transition, as Durisdeer was permitted by the pope to hold his former benefices until such time as he could gain ‘peaceful possession of the temporalities [of Glasgow] [. . .] or of the greatest part thereof’. Once Durisdeer obtained possession, his former benefices, including the prebendary of the collegiate church of Lincluden ‘which is in the patronage of the earl of Douglas’, were to be given to Andrew Stewart, the twelve-year-old half brother of the king.[99] Further insight is offered in the supplication to Rome dated 4 May 1456, which states that ‘in the time of the late William, bishop of Glasgow, and also after his death, some avaricious people have not feared [. . .] to take away many goods, even precious moveables pertaining to the bishop’.[100] This paints a picture of depredation and plunder against William Turnbull and his possessions even after his death, which may reflect hostility from the Douglas party towards the bishop who had supported the king’s attacks upon them.

The high mortality rate among the king’s closest supporters may suggest an outbreak of plague, although this is not stated expressly in the records, but on a more positive note, the queen had delivered a second son during 1454, strengthening the line of male succession.[101] The removal of George Crichton’s lordship may have triggered the seizure of Lochmaben castle in 1454, described in the Auchinleck Chronicle:

Item the samyn yere and moneth the lard of Ihonstonis twa sonis tuk the castall of lochmabane apon the lard of movswald callit carudderis & his ij sonis & other twa or thre men / & all throu tressoun of the portar.

The entry appears to continue on the next folio with the sentence ‘And syne the king gaf tham the keping of the hous to his prophet and how that was men ferleit.’[102] If taken together, this may shed some light on the king’s difficulties as Michael Brown has seen this as a reaction by local men, possibly encouraged by Douglas, to seize the initiative following the deaths of James and George Crichton by rejecting Crichton’s adherents.[103] There are echoes of the seizure of Dumbarton in 1443 in the ‘tressoun of the portar’, but the king’s painstaking efforts to build up his support-base in the south? west meant that he had to react decisively to this challenge to his authority in Annandale. The matter was not easily resolved, as the despatch of Laurence lord Abernethy in his capacity as justiciar seems to have merited a substantial campaign for which Abernethy later received a payment of £1100 in the exchequer accounts of 1458, ‘propter disturbium patrie’, and possibly also for the hardships suffered by him when James Douglas plundered his lands.[104] The wonder and surprise with which, according to the chronicler, the news was received that the king had allowed the Johnstones to retain control of Lochmaben, may be a further reflection of the king’s weakness against Douglasinspired aggression, but he needed to react according to the resources available to him at that time. It was necessary on occasion to secure settlements, however temporary, that would allow him to prioritise his actions; a strategy that he had followed with John MacDonald earl of Ross’s seizure of Inverness, Urquhart and Ruthven in 1451. Although the Johnstones were minor tenants of the Douglases for the lands of Drumgrey in Dumfriesshire and the laird of Johnstone had participated with Hugh earl of Ormond’s force in 1448 to repulse the English invasion at Lochmaben Stone, it is by no means certain that the Johnstones were acting at the behest of Douglas in 1454. They may have been engaged in a personal dispute with Carruthers, laird of Mouswald, although the death of George Crichton could have provided the stimulus. By condoning the Johnstones’ actions, James II may have encouraged them to look for royal rather than Douglas patronage, which is borne out by the part taken by the family in defeating their former Douglas patrons at Arkinholm in 1455, with the laird of Johnstone also taking part in the siege of Threave for which he received lands in Galloway.[105] It would be misleading to present this as James II following a carefully devised ‘master plan’, and there is more than a hint of fire-fighting in the actions taken by him in 1454, but if he was not yet strong enough to risk an all-out assault on the Douglases and their allies, he was able to keep picking at the edges of their interests.

One such area of contention was the lordship of Dalkeith, control over which had been contested during the king’s minority between James 7th earl of Douglas and George Crichton.[106] Henry Douglas of Borgue (married to the sister of James 9th earl of Douglas) had been left in control of the barony of Dalkeith on behalf of his brother, James, lord of Dalkeith, whose mental incapacity had rendered him unfit to manage the barony in person. However, the lord of Dalkeith had a son, also James, whose rights the king chose to protect personally by taking him into direct royal wardship. In a later charter, dated 7 November 1459, George Crichton’s widow, Janet Borthwick, claimed that she had surrendered all rights to Morton and had been compelled against her will to marry Crichton, thus facilitating the king’s intervention.[107] The implications of this were that Henry Douglas was deprived of his role in administering Dalkeith and the king was able to interfere directly in the lands of the lordship of Dalkeith, including estates in Eskdale, Nithsdale and Galloway. This carried a clear threat to the interests of James earl of Douglas, and he responded aggressively by burning Dalkeith and attacking and plundering lands in Lothian including the grange belonging to the royal justiciar, Laurence lord Saltoun of Abernethy.[108] Any pretence that James II and Douglas were maintaining an amicable understanding was destroyed in this escalation into outright hostility, and the king countered Douglas’s depredations with his own armed response against the Douglas castle of Inveravon, near Linlithgow.

The Auchinleck chronicler describes the opening moves in this phase of the campaign against the Douglases in the following terms:

The yere of god IM iiijC lv^0 In the begynnyng of merche Iames the secund kest dovne the castell of Inuerawyne and syne Incontinent past till glasqw and gaderit the westland men with part of the ereschery and passit to lanerik and to douglas & syne brynt all douglasdale and all awendale and all the lord hammiltonnis landis & herijt thaim clerlye and syne passit till Edinburgh & fra thin till the forest with ane ost of lawland men and all that wald nocht cum till him furthwith he tuke thair gudis and brynt thair placis and tuke faith of all the gentillis clerlie.[109]

This rather breathless itinerary may be borne out through reference to other records and the campaign’s complexity explored. It is clear that this was no skirmish between the two sides, but a calculated fight for survival and, on the king’s side, the need to deliver a decisive demonstration of royal authority. The chronicler’s statement that the king attacked Inveravon at the beginning of March is certainly plausible, as James II’s itinerary shows him in Edinburgh on 20 February and in Lanark on 8 March. The destruction of Inveravon may not have taken long, as it would not have been one of the more heavily garrisoned and fortified of the Douglas strongholds, and the timescale would allow for the king travelling west to Glasgow in order to gather an army and lead them back through Clydesdale to Lanark.[110] The chronicler’s reference to the composition of this host is revealing, as he describes them as ‘the westland men with part of the Ereschery’, which Michael Brown has identified as coming from Ayrshire, probably under the leadership of Gilbert Kennedy of Dunure, although the king had issued a charter at Glasgow on 15 November 1454 to John Kennedy, son and heir of Gilbert, of the office of baillie of Carrick ‘and of Chief of his name and the command of the men of Carrick’.[111] In addition, the ‘ereschery’ referred to would have been the armed Gaelic retinues of lords from Argyll such as Duncan lord Campbell and John Stewart of Lorne, both of whom had received patronage from the king in 1452 and who may have been determined to oppose the kind of Douglas intervention in the west that inspired Donald Balloch’s destructive raid.[112] Nowhere is it stated that the Douglas castle of Bothwell was threatened, but there was clearly considerable destruction of Douglas lands and possessions in Douglasdale, possibly including the Lanarkshire tower of Douglas. As the principal supporter of James 9th earl of Douglas, James lord Hamilton’s possessions were also attacked. Douglas had prepared for the expected royal attack by ensuring that his castles were provisioned and garrisoned, and one of the charges levelled against him in June 1455 was that he undertook ‘treasonous munitions and fortifications of the towers and fortalices of Threave, Douglas, Strathaven and Abercorn’.[113]

James lord Hamilton was despatched to England to ask for help, but the timing for such assistance for the Douglases could hardly have been worse. The imprisonment of the king’s uncle, Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, by Richard duke of York had prompted James II to send his step-father, James Stewart of Lorne, to England with an offer of help in 1454, although it is not entirely clear what form that help would have taken.[114] Henry VI’s recovery late in 1454 allowed for Somerset’s release from the Tower of London, but the political situation in England was worsening with the tensions between the houses of York and Lancaster, and an army was raised by Richard duke of York in May 1455 which encountered the Lancastrian army led by Somerset at what became known as the first battle of St Albans, fought on 22 May. During the battle, Henry VI was captured, Somerset was killed and his son, Henry Beaufort, was wounded. This meant that the English government had weightier matters to concern them than the plight of the Douglases and the actions of James II, and the Auchinleck chronicler summed up the position when he stated: ‘and all this tyme the lord hammiltoun was in yngland till haue gottyn suple and couth get nane / bot gif the douglas and he wald haue bene ynglis men and maid the aith’.[115] This claims that the only option given to Hamilton and Douglas was to swear oaths of fealty to the English crown, which would have forced them into exile from Scotland. The failure of his mission to secure practical support may have occasioned some hard thinking on the part of Hamilton.

The renewal of open conflict with the Douglases prompted James II to send Thomas Spens, bishop of Galloway, on a diplomatic mission to Charles VII with letters of recommendation in order to explain his position regarding the Douglases to the French king.[116] This is a reminder of the extent to which external powers were concerned about events unfolding in Scotland and the need to keep open diplomatic channels of communication. Douglas and his brothers had made their own counter-strikes during this period, ‘with a multitude of armed men in a hostile manner and by way of war near the burgh of Lanark’, and it may have been during hostile actions undertaken by Douglas supporters in Galloway in the early part of the year that Andrew Agnew, sheriff of Wigtown, was killed. Certainly, a precept was given on 16 May 1455 following an inquest at Glenluce which served Andrew Agnew ‘as nearest lawful heir to the deceased Andrew Agnew his father sheriff of Wigton’.[117] Nevertheless, James lord Hamilton was not the only member of the Douglas affinity who was having to rethink his position now that the king had moved so decisively against the 9th earl. Andrew Kerr of Altonburn had been a steady supporter of his Black Douglas lords, but he may have followed James Tweedie of Drumelzier in accepting overtures from the king in preparation for the royal onslaught against the Douglases.[118] The making of bonds to formalise relationships of mutual support existed between lords and men during this period as part of an evolving process of lordship which had less to do with grants of land than clarifying areas of influence and mutual expectations. Bonds such as the one between Douglas, Crawford and Ross may have been unusual within this practice and could precipitate a violent reaction when they were perceived by the king as existing in a context which posed a threat to royal authority, but that does not mean that James II was hostile to the making of bonds per se, as shown by his entering into a personal bond with James 9th earl of Douglas in January 1453, and he entered into another personal bond with James Tweedie on 8 March 1455. This was issued under the privy seal and contained the promise on the king’s part that he would

mainteine, supple and defend him [Tweedie] and his said house [Drumelzier] as we wald do oure castellis and housis, and supple and defend him in all his actionis, causes and querellis lauchful, leiful ande honest as oure avun speciale familier ande kyn.[119]

On his part, Tweedie put his house of Drumelzier Throughly between Peebles and Biggar) at the disposal of the king or his nominated lieutenant, and offered ‘speciale manrent ande service for al the dayis of his lyve’. As Jenny Wormald has pointed out, the survival of this bond should not suggest that it was unique, and may have been part of a much wider strategy used by James II at this time to build up a base of support and undermine the Black Douglases ahead of, and during, his campaign in 1455.[120] It served also as a means whereby the king could make personal assurances of protection to those who may have suffered in the indiscriminate raids carried out in 1452 and were seeking guarantees of safety in future campaigns. James II was having to take care to rebuild trust in royal promises.

It is clear that the king’s confidence was increasing as the campaign progressed, and he may be seen to have learned valuable lessons in the period since his intemperate attack on William earl of Douglas in February 1452. The Auchinleck chronicler describes the next phase in the king’s operations when he states that he ‘passit till Edinburgh & fra thin till the forest with ane ost of lawland men and all that wald nocht cum till him furthwith he tuke thair gudis and brynt thair placis and tuke faith of all the gentillis clerlie’.[121] By reconstituting his army at Edinburgh with men from the lowlands, having presumably disbanded his gathering of ‘west-land’ men, he was able to lead his forces into the middle March and through the Forest in what was, presumably, a more carefully targeted campaign against those who stood out against him. By May, the king was back in Edinburgh and preparing to besiege the great Douglas stronghold of Abercorn on the shores of the firth of Forth. The Auchinleck chronicler appears to connect this with Hamilton’s failed mission to England, stating that:

Incontinent efter the king passit in proper persoun and put ane sege till abercorn and within vij days lord hammiltoun come till him till abercorne and put him lyf landis and gudis in the kingis will purelie and sempillye throw the menys of his Eme Iames of levingstoun That tyme chalmerlane of scotland and the king Resauit him till grace and send him on Incontinent with the erll of orknay that tyme chancellar of scotland till remane in warde In the castell of Roslyne at the kingis will.[122]

Hamilton’s decision to place himself at the king’s mercy reflects his conviction that it would be perverse to continue supporting the cause of the Black Douglases any longer. The role of James Livingston in mediating this submission to the king indicates how strongly the chamberlain had established himself in the king’s council, and William lord Crichton’s successor as chancellor, William Sinclair, earl of Orkney, was instructed to place Hamilton in ward within his castle at Roslin, south of Edinburgh. Hamilton’s defection ‘left the erll of douglas all begylit as men said / and men wist nocht grathlie quhar the douglas was all this tyme’. This is the first hint that Douglas himself may have decided against a personal defence of Abercorn, trusting his garrison to put up as good a fight as possible while he regrouped his forces further south. The full force of the king’s artillery was brought to bear on Abercorn in a siege that was both highly symbolic, being the focus of Black Douglas lordship exercised by the family of James the Gross, and also important for the king to win in order to demonstrate the strength of royal power. As Michael Brown has pointed out, Abercorn held out for a month, therefore this was far from being a showcase siege, and James II took the opportunity to press into service the pieces of Burgundian artillery that had been given to him by Philip duke of Burgundy. The account by the Auchinleck chronicler highlights the dangers inherent in the use of such weapons, and also the expertise provided by the king’s employment of gunners from the continent.

the king remanit still at the sege and thair was mony hurt and nane slane till sanct georgis daye outtane allane pantour that was that tyme the mast Ingenious man pat was in scotland & mast subtell in mony diuers thingis and was slane with ane ganye throu misgouernyng of him self and was richt mekle menyt be the king & mony vther lordis Thus the king remanit still at the sege and gart strek mony of the towris dovn with the gret gwn the quhilk a franche man schot richt wele and falyeit na schot within a faldome quhar it was chargit him to hit and.[123]

Although the entry is incomplete, it offers the information that Abercorn suffered a sustained and accurate bombardment thanks to the skill of the ‘Frenchman’ operating the great bombard, although the ingenious Allan Pantour fared less well, being slain on 23 April. Artillery weapons in this period were inclined to misfire or burst apart on occasion, and Pantour’s death carried an eerie presentiment of events at the siege of Roxburgh in 1460.

The utter destruction of Abercorn, representing as it did the focus of power for the branch of the Black Douglas family that had succeeded to the earldom of Douglas in 1440, was of great importance to James II and explains his aggressive treatment of those of the garrison who had held out against him. In a letter sent to Charles VII following the siege, the king explains that he had hanged the officers of the garrison, although he may have been more merciful to the rank and file.[124] James 9th earl of Douglas was not a man with a reputation for pusillanimity, and had presented the martial aspect of Black Douglas lordship in his chivalric pursuits and his armed response to his brother’s killing. However, although he had managed to withstand the king’s hostility in 1452-3 and had even mustered sufficient support to reclaim a considerable degree of Douglas authority, James II’s steady erosion of Douglas support and his use of the three estates as a platform from which to mount his own pressures on the family came to tip the balance.

The problem for Douglas was that, by renouncing his homage and taking arms against the king, whatever the provocation, he was forced to consider the deposition of the king and its consequences. By seeking assistance from England under terms which included swearing homage and fealty to Henry VI, opposition became treason, and the implications of that were too much for many of his erstwhile supporters, giving the king legitimate grounds to proceed against the family. Once Abercorn was taken, James II wasted no time in issuing a summons on 24 April for Douglas and his adherents to appear before him to answer charges of treason. The Douglases may have hoped to hold out in the south against royal aggression, falling back on the family’s traditional role in the Marches, and the records certainly allude to the strengthening of the tower house at Threave in Galloway, constructed by Archibald ‘the Grim’ in the late fourteenth century. It would appear that Douglas had gone south to England with his mother, Countess Beatrice, and his wife, Margaret of Galloway; possibly to plead for practical military assistance from the English crown. The three remaining Douglas brothers, Archibald earl of Moray, Hugh earl of Ormond and John lord Balvenie may have concentrated on gathering what support they could still muster and mounting raids on lands in the middle March. In his short chronicle, John Law states that, in 1455, ‘The earl of Moray, brother of the earl of Douglas with the earl of Ormond and John Douglas (of Balvenie) entered Annandale and pillaged it, taking the spoils back to their mother in Carlisle.’[125] As Michael Brown points out, it was no accident that the lands attacked belonged to their enemies and some former allies, including William Cranston, George earl of Angus and Walter Scott of Kirkurd and his son, David.[126] However, it was a force composed of local southern lairds, including the Scotts, Johnstones and Maxwells, that engaged the Douglases on 1 May 1455 at Arkinholm, by Langholm and defeated them. Moray was killed and his brother, Hugh earl of Ormond was wounded and captured, although the youngest brother, John of Balvenie, managed to escape and W ee over the border, probably to join his mother in Carlisle.[127] The coup de grace had been administered to the Douglases not by the king, but by men who had been persuaded of the benefits of the removal of the family from the Marches and the elevation of their own positions, recognised by a grateful crown.

The captured Hugh earl of Ormond survived only for the time it took to recover from wounds sustained in the battle suffciently to stand trial and be sentenced to death. James II summoned parliament for the formal process of passing sentence against the Black Douglases and to present his own position in the light of justifiable response to treasonable provocation. The three estates met in Edinburgh on 9 June and judgement of forfeiture was passed over the next three days on James earl of Douglas, Beatrice countess of Douglas, Archibald earl of Moray and John of Balvenie. In addition, John St Michael of Whitchester, John Shaw of Henryston and Walter Sinclair were Douglas servants singled out for forfeiture, although others would later share their fate.[128] Those who attended parliament and served as witnesses to the forfeiture included the king’s half-brother, John earl of Atholl, and George earl of Angus, who was to benefit considerably from the fall of his rivals in the south. The king’s constable, William Hay earl of Erroll, was also a witness, as was Malise Graham earl of Menteith, newly released from English captivity, who accompanied his brother-in-law James lord Hamilton, reconciled with the king just in time to avoid sharing in his former patron’s disgrace. The lords of parliament were there in significant numbers, including John Stewart lord Lorne, Thomas lord Erskine (no doubt still entertaining hopes of securing his claims to the earldom of Mar), Colin lord Campbell, Patrick lord Graham, William lord Somerville, Alexander lord Montgomery, Robert lord Maxwell, George lord Leslie, Patrick lord Glamis, Andrew lord Gray, Robert lord Boyd and William lord Borthwick. Procurators were present representing John earl of Ross and Lord of the Isles and Alexander earl of Huntly, and the seals of James Kennedy bishop of St Andrews, Thomas Livingston, bishop of Dunkeld, John Winchester, bishop of Moray, George Shoreswood, bishop of Brechin, Thomas Tulloch, bishop of Ross, Robert Lauder, bishop of Dunblane and George Lauder, bishop of Argyll were given for the first estate. There is also mention of the presence of William Bonar, prior of St Andrews and ‘the many abbots being present’.

James Livingston, acting as sheriff of Lanark, attested that letters of summons to Douglas and his confederates had been made on 24 April at Douglas, Strathaven and the burgh cross of Lanark for them to appear at parliament on 10 June to answer charges including ‘the treasonous munitions and fortifications of the towers and fortalices of Threave, Douglas, Strathaven and Abercorn, and for the treasonous bonds and confederations also made by this James with the English, to the harm of the royal crown’. Other detailed charges included acts of rebellion, plundering and insurrection, upheld by frequent reference to transgressions against ‘acts and statutes of parliemant and common laws, both canon and civil’, which served further to underline the legality and justification of the king’s actions against them. In proceeding against Beatrice ‘formerly countess of Douglas’, she was considered to have had ‘art and part’ in the plundering and depredations committed by her sons and to have given ‘treasonable counsels, help and support’. This offers a fascinating insight into perceptions of the character and actions of Countess Beatrice, who appears to have taken an active role in opposition to the king. Although a Sinclair, and sister of William earl of Orkney, Beatrice’s marriage to James Douglas of Balvenie in 1423 was to prove very significant in terms of her allegiance. James Douglas was a childless widower of around fifty at the time of his second marriage to the much younger Beatrice, whose mother, Egidia, was the daughter of James Douglas’s illegitimate brother, William Douglas of Nithsdale. The rapid succession in which she bore her husband (and great-uncle) six sons and four daughters secured the dynastic ambitions of James the Gross, and there is every indication that she was fiercely and actively partisan in her support for her sons after her husband’s death in 1443. The appearance of her name on English safe-conducts during the 1450s and the close hold that she appears to have kept on her daughter-inlaw Margaret (and her inheritance) during her marriages to two of Beatrice’s sons indicate a determined and active participant in the conflicts that followed James II’s fatal clash with William 8th earl of Douglas in 1452.[129] Archibald Douglas ‘pretended earl of Moray’ was accused of fortifying the castles of Lochindorb and Darnaway in Moray, while his younger brother John was ‘culpable and guilty in certain criminal actions mentioned before’.[130]Having laid out these charges against the Douglases, parliament was continued to 4 August, probably because James II wished to consolidate his military victory against the Black Douglases by taking the last of their fortifications to be holding out against the crown; Threave in Galloway.

Although there is little evidence that the Douglas earls from 1440 made much use of Threave, it was the focal point of Douglas lordship in Galloway, built by Archibald 3rd earl of Douglas on an island in the river Dee. This was the principal residence of Margaret Stewart, duchess of Touraine and countess of Douglas, who was the widow of Archibald 4th earl of Douglas and aunt to James II. James earl of Douglas made a last-ditch effort to resist the king by fortifying Threave and offering it to Henry VI who made a payment to Douglas of 400 marks on 15 July ‘for succour, victualling, relief and rescue of the castle of Treve’.[131] Dating of the artillery defences at Threave has been the subject of some debate. It is possible that the ‘treasonous munitions and fortifications’ with which James Douglas was charged included construction of an artillery wall with drum towers at Threave, necessitating the demolition of an earlier hall and domestic blocks. If these additions to Threave’s defences are dated to 1455, then the Black Douglases may have been drawing upon features noted during their exploits on the continent and, as one of the wealthiest of fifteenth-century magnate families, they would be able to afford such innovation. The need to have significant defences against imminent royal attack and the value of such a fortified castle to the English may be demonstrated in negotiations between James Douglas and Henry VI’s representatives in 1455. However, Geoffrey Stell and Richard Oram have been less convinced on the grounds of inconclusive archaeological and architectural evidence, and the fact that this would have made the artillery fortifications at Threave the earliest of their kind in the British Isles.[132] Nevertheless, within the wider historical context of the evidence for the events of 1455, it is impossible to dismiss the possibility that these defences do reflect consolidation from this time, particularly with contemporary evidence in the charges levelled at Douglas regarding the strengthening of Threave and the king’s determined artillery assault on the castle in July 1455. In the exchequer accounts of 1458, payment of £4 13s 5d was made to William Edmonstone, to whom custodianship of Threave had been given, ‘pro reparacione domus artilarie in dicto castro’, and the agreement of terms for surrender may have prevented the full and sustained weight of bombardment from the royal artillery train being brought to bear on the tower and its defences.[133] One of the Threave garrison was John Dunbar, a squire in the service of James earl of Douglas from the manor of Duchrae, a few miles north of Threave and, despite having held the tower against the king, James II made Dunbar a generous payment and took him into his own service as master gunsmith, almost certainly because of his expertise with artillery demonstrated at the siege.[134] Michael Brown suggests that it was knowledge of the fate of the defenders of Abercorn that led to the capitulation of the Threave garrison but, whatever lay behind it, in the last symbolic roll of the dice for the Douglases it was the king who prevailed.[135]

Despite his preoccupation with crushing the last vestiges of Black Douglas resistance, James II also had an eye on the turmoil in England in the wake of the first battle of St Albans in May. With James Douglas seeking English help, the king must have planned a swift strike against Berwick ‘our town long wrongfully detained by the English’. Calculating that there would be great propaganda value in recovering Berwick, which could only bolster his presentation of effective royal power, he diverted some of his forces from the siege of Threave in July, although they were unable to take Berwick.[136] Nevertheless, James II had registered his intention to recover Roxburgh and Berwick once he could muster sufficient might to do so, and seems to have been determined to capitalise on his emerging victory over the Douglases to demonstrate a stronger, more effective execution of royal policy. Having taken Threave and handed it into the keeping first of Sir Alexander Boyd and then of William Edmonston of Culloden, he proceeded to Edinburgh for the continuation of parliament on 4 August and the next phase of his personal rule.[137]

NOTES

1.

RPS 1452/6/1.

2.

RMS, ii, 529, 530; NRAS GD157/75.

3.

RMS, ii, 530.

4.

NRAS GD89/10.

5.

NRAS GD89/10; Wigt. Chrs, li, 138.

6.

Fraser, Buccleuch, ii, 49.

7.

Expenses recorded in the exchequer accounts for the queen’s time at St Andrews give the dates 26 May to 20 August 1452, but she must have been in St Andrews before this, as there is a record of expenses for her infant daughter, Mary, being at Falkland on 19 May, having been brought from Stirling to join her mother at St Andrews: ER, v, 685, 537.

8.

Although the chronicle entry reads ‘xxvii day of merche’, he goes on to state that it was St Patrick’s day, which is 17 March. An extra ‘x’ may have been transcribed mistakenly.

9.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 115r.

10.

Ibid., f. 114v.

11.

Brown, Black Douglases, 296.

12.

ER, v, 605. A sow was an apex-shaped wooden structure on wheels, used to protect those manoeuvring a battering ram up to a castle gate.

13.

Ibid.

14.

RMS, ii, 534, 536, 538.

15.

Ibid., ii, 544.

16.

NRAS GD10/14

17.

Macdougall, James III, 1 and n.1; W. Angus and A. I. Dunlop, ‘The Date of the Birth of James III’, SHR, xxx (October, 1951), 199-204; Dunlop, Kennedy, 420; ER, v, 685, 447, 512.

18.

RPS 1452/6/2. The details are known from a confirmation granted in 1479, the record of which may be found in RPS 1479/10/12. RMS, ii, 1444.

19.

Stevenson, Wars, ii, 315.

20.

Chron. Auchinleck, ff. 123r.-123v.

21.

RMS, ii, 542; ER, v, 604. Turnbull diverted 800 marks from his papal jubilee offerings at Glasgow cathedral, and Kennedy made a loan of £50 to the king.

22.

RMS, ii, 542.

23.

Boardman, The Campbells, 152.

24.

RMS, ii, 563.

25.

Boardman, The Campbells, 153-4.

26.

Brown, Black Douglases, 303-4; Macdougall, James III, 10-11; Boardman, The Campbells, 153-4; McGladdery, James II, 80. Stephen Boardman makes a persuasive case for dating these events to 1452 which cannot be discounted, but I consider the evidence for 1454 to be slightly more compelling.

27.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 116r. The forfeiture of Crawford is mentioned also in John Law, ‘De Cronicis’, f. 129v.

28.

RPS 1452/6/3.

29.

Ibid. 1450/5/6.

30.

Chron. Auchinleck, ff. 115v-116r.

31.

Ibid., f. 116r.

32.

RMS, ii, 571, 573; Boardman, The Campbells, 156.

33.

RMS, ii, 574; Boardman, The Campbells, 156. John Stewart had three daughters, but clearly wished to ensure the male succession to Lorne.

34.

RPS 1452/6/1.

35.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 115v.

36.

Ibid., f. 115v; Brown, Black Douglases, 298.

37.

Rot. Scot., ii, 357, 358; Rymer, Foedera, xi, 310-11. An ambassador sent by Douglas to England received a gift by royal grant of £40, which may have been connected with the offer of homage: CDS, iv, 1245.

38.

CDS, iv, 1243, Appendix 22, 407. The other names on this authorisation were the abbots of Melrose, Dunfermline and Paisley, the lords Montgomery, Somerville, Lindsay of Byres and Gray, and masters Andrew of Durisdeer, Patrick Young, John of Methven and John Arous.

39.

The Laing Charters, 134.

40.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 115v.

41.

RMS, ii, 592; Tytler, History, ii, 386-7; Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 138.

42.

NLS Adv..MSS B 1316/1317.

43.

NRAS GD75/339.

44.

Tytler, History, ii, 386-7.

45.

Wigtown Charter Chest, 30.

46.

RMS, ii, 503-4.

47.

M. Brown, ‘The Lanark Bond’, in S. Boardman and J. Goodare (eds), Kings, Lords and Men in Scotland and Britain, 1300-1625: Essays in Honour of Jenny Wormald (Edinburgh, 2014), 236-41.

48.

Tytler, History, ii, 386-7.

49.

Wigt. Chrs, no. 139 [Lochnaw Charters]. This was witnessed at Edinburgh by the bishops of St Andrews, Glasgow, Moray and Whithorn, George earl of Angus and Lords Crichton, Graham, Erskine, Somerville, Lindsay of Byres and Gray.

50.

Brown, Black Douglases, 300-30; NRAS GD236/2/27, GD25/1/55.

51.

CDS, iv, 1266.

52.

Brown, ‘The Lanark Bond’, 237-8. This is a mistake that formed part of my own analysis in James II (1990), 82-3. In fact, it makes no mention of this marriage, and the full text of the bond from a seventeenth-century transcript (NLS, Adv. MS 22.1.14) is given as an appendix to Brown’s chapter, p. 245.

53.

Fraser, Douglas Book, i, 483-4; Dunlop, Kennedy, 142; Brown, Black Douglases, 299; McGladdery, James II, 82-3.

54.

CPR, x, 130-1.

55.

HMC, 11th report, Appendix 6, Hamilton, no. 14.

56.

Brown, ‘The Lanark Bond’, 240.

57.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 140.

58.

Brown, ‘The Lanark Bond’, 242.

59.

Rymer, Foedera, xi, 334; Rot. Scot., ii, 367 – the latter gives the date as 30 May.

60.

Rot. Scot., ii, 368.

61.

CDS, iv, 1266; Brown, Black Douglases, 302.

62.

Papal dispensation for this marriage was given on 26 February 1441: CSSR, iv, 745; Rot. Scot., ii, 368.

63.

R. Flenley (ed.), Six Town Chronicles of England, edited from manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, the Library of St John’s College, Oxford, the Library of Trinity College Dublin and the Library of the Marquis of Bath at Longleat (Oxford, 1911), 140.

64.

Brown, Black Douglases, 302-3.

65.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 112r.-v.

66.

The Laing Charters, 138; Brechin Registrum, ii, 49; NRAS GD25/1/56; NRAS, Arbuthnot, 40, 41; NRAS GD1/220/66.

67.

This was confirmed in a letter issued under the privy seal. NRAS GD350/1/948, Borthwick of Borthwick; Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 86.

68.

ER, vi, 267-8; AB Ill., iv, 205-13.

69.

RMS, ii, 592.

70.

Dunlop, Kennedy, 185, n.3; B. E. Crawford, ‘The Earls of Orkney-Caithness and their relations with Norway and Scotland: 1158-1470” (unpublished PhD thesis, University of St Andrews, 1971), 297.

71.

Dunlop, Kennedy, 147. Monypenny was being held captive by the English at this point.

72.

Paisley Reg., 250-2.

73.

RPS, 1453/1; APS, ii, 75.

74.

NRAS, Arbuthnott, 40. The other witnesses were; James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews, William lord Crichton, chancellor, William lord Keith, marischal, Patrick lord Glamis, Andrew lord Gray, master of the king’s household, James Lindsay, provost of Lincluden and keeper of the privy seal and George Shoreswood, secretary.

75.

NRAS, GD1/220/66. In fact, apart from Lindsay and Shoreswood, acting in an administrative capacity, only Crichton and Glamis appear on both the Aberdeen and Kildrummy charters. William Turnbull, bishop of Glasgow, replaces Kennedy, and the other witnesses are Alexander lord Montgomery, Robert lord Boyd and Gilbert Kennedy of Dunure.

76.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 117r.

77.

Boardman, The Campbells, 153-5.

78.

Chron. Auchinleck, ff. 117r–117v.

79.

This is based on ‘vxx’ being interpreted as five-score, but Brown reads this as 25. Assuming that the galleys were the principal means of transporting the war band, that would provide little room for five or six thousand men: Brown, Black Douglases, 304.

80.

The capture of Brodick castle took place between 10 July 1451 and 4 June 1453: ER, v, 571, 577-8.

81.

James Livingston appears as a witness in the Register of the Great Seal under various titles, but the earliest reference to his reinstatement as chamberlain is on 18 July 1454: RPS, A1454/4.

82.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 141-2.

83.

Dunlop, Kennedy, 180. A letter dated 1 April 1454 expressed James II’s objection to the Spanish marriage, while it was on 21 May 1455 that he mentions the Breton offer.

84.

W. Fraser, Memorials of the Montgomeries Earls of Eglinton (Edinburgh, 1859), 42.

85.

RPS, A1454/4. Orkney is named as chancellor in this parliament.

86.

ER, v, 645; RPS, A1454/4.

87.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 112v.

88.

RMS, ii, 487; RPS, 1452/6/3.

89.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 117r. The dating of this to May 1454 relies on interpreting ‘that samyn moneth and yere’ as following the previous entry’s dating of ‘the xij day of maij’ and placing that previous entry in 1454 on the strength of the evidence for the siege of Blackness having occurred in that year.

90.

W. Fraser, Memoirs of the Maxwells of Pollok (Edinburgh, 1863), i, 44; ER, v, 645.

91.

ER, v, 674, 610, 616, 347, 346.

92.

NRAS GD32/20/2.

93.

Strathbrock (meaning valley of the badger) is the modern Broxburn. Crichton married for a second time in 1450 to Janet Borthwick, daughter of Sir William Borthwick and widow of Sir James Douglas of Dalkeith. James Crichton, Lord of Cairns, is named on an English safe conduct issued on 27 March 1459. Rymer, Foedera, xi, 420.

94.

RPS, 1455/6/6. Robert Douglas was, presumably, a kinsman of George Crichton’s first wife.

95.

RPS, A1454/4; HMC, vii, Atholl, 40.

96.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 112v.

97.

Ibid., f. 113v.

98.

Registrum Episcopatus Glasguensis (Bannatyne and Maitland Clubs, 1843), ii, 616. John Law’s chronicle also dates Turnbull’s death to 1456, but he may have been following the same source later incorporated into the Auchinleck Chronicle. John Law, ‘De Cronicis’, f. 130v.; Durkan, ‘William Turnbull’, 51.

99.

CSSR, v, 566.

100.

Ibid., 606.

101.

Macdougall, James III, 19.

102.

Chron. Auchinleck, ff. 112v-113r. Further entries on this folio are dated 1448, apart from an undated description of a November W ood in Govan.

103.

Brown, Black Douglases, 305.

104.

ER, vi, 447; RPS, 1455/6/6.

105.

Fraser, Douglas, ii, 353.

106.

See above, pages 38–9.

107.

Morton Register, ii, 333: ‘dicta Joneta compulsa et coacta fuit per quondam Georgeum comitem de Cathnes suum maritum’.

108.

Brown, Black Douglases, 305-6. One of the charges levelled against Douglas in the parliament held in June 1455 was that he had burned Dalkeith and plundered the goods of its inhabitants: RPS, 1455/6/6. Abernethy’s name is given as Henry, but elsewhere in the records he is Laurence or Lancelot.

109.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 116r. Roland Tanner states that this blow fell in 1454, but although ‘the beginning of March’ may be held to imply that 1454 is meant because dating of years changed on 25 March, this is not consistent in the Auchinleck Chronicle and the attack on Inveravon is far more likely to have taken place in March 1455.

110.

NRAS, RH 2/1/13; HMC, Various Collections, v, Tweedy, 14.

111.

NRAS GD25/1/60.

112.

Brown, Black Douglases, 306.

113.

RPS, 1455/6/6.

114.

Proceedings of the Privy Council, ed. H. Nicolas, Records Commission (London, 1837), vol. vi, lxiii-lxiv.

115.

Chron. Auchinleck, ff. 116r–116v.

116.

Dunlop, Kennedy, 154 and n.3; Pinkerton, History, i, 486; ER, vi, 385.

117.

RPS, 1455/6/6; Wigtownshire Charters, 165, no. 142.

118.

HMC, Various Collections, Roxburghe, 37.

119.

Ibid., v, Tweedy, 14.

120.

Wormald, Lords and Men, 152.

121.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 116r.

122.

Ibid., f. 116v.

123.

Ibid.

124.

Pinkerton, History, i, 486-8.

125.

Law, ‘De Cronicis’, f. 130r.

126.

Brown, Black Douglases, 307; Fraser, Scotts of Buccleuch, ii, 57-8; ER, vi, 557.

127.

RMS, ii, 772; CDS, iv, 1323.

128.

RPS, 1455/6/1-4.

129.

Brown, Black Douglases, 238-45.

130.

RPS, 1455/6/6.

131.

CDS, iv, 1272.

132.

C. J. Tabraham, ‘The Artillery Fortification at Threave Castle, Galloway’, in D. Caldwell (ed.), Scottish Weapons and Fortifications, 1100-1800 (Edinburgh, 1981); C. J. Tabraham, ‘The Scottish Medieval Towerhouse as Lordly Residence in the Light of Recent Excavations’, PSAS, 118 (1988), 267-76; G. Stell, ‘Late Medieval Defences in Scotland’, in Caldwell, Scottish Weapons and Fortifications, 47-8; C. McGladdery, ‘The Black Douglases, 1369-1455’, in R. Oram and G. Stell (eds), Lordship and Architecture in Medieval and Renaissance Scotland (Edinburgh, 2005), 167.

133.

ER, vi, 456.

134.

ER, vi, 199, 293, 308-9, 316, 385.

135.

Brown, Black Douglases, 308.

136.

Dunlop, Kennedy, 157; Nicolas, Proceedings of the Privy Council, vi, 247-8. 137. ER, vi, 203, 209.

137.

ER, vi, 203, 209.

CHAPTER 7

Recovery and Compromise (1455-1456)

the poverty of the crown is often the cause of the poverty of the realm and many other inconveniences.[1]

The conflict with the Black Douglases dominated the first half of the king’s personal rule and highlighted a number of issues concerning the presentation and exercise of power and lordship. The apparent resolution of such a prolonged struggle in which the king’s own imprudent actions had played a major part, must have occasioned a collective sigh of relief, but also determination to reclaim the authority and broad representation of the three estates in assisting the king to govern in accordance with the principles of law and justice. Whilst supporting the king through the long and debilitating conflict, some members of the three estates may have had misgivings about the manner in which he pursued his ends, but now that the great magnate family of Black Douglas had been forfeited and the king had prevailed, there was an opportunity to reassert the power of the three estates in managing royal actions.

For a period at least, those who attended parliament and had shown support for the crown could count upon a measure of royal gratitude and the king’s acquiescence in establishing some financial ground rules. The Act of Annexation, passed in the parliament that reconvened at Edinburgh on 4 August, may be seen as a firm statement of parliamentary idealism that recognised the crown’s requirement of a generous income to finance the court and project a certain style of kingship, while pointedly exhorting the king and his successors to live within that income and not to place onerous and unpopular burdens of taxation on their subjects.[2] Such financial impositions had been a serious source of friction during the reign of James I, and the massive windfall of landed estates, castles, titles and offices that came into royal hands through the forfeiture of the Black Douglases presented a unique opportunity to seek to obviate such tensions in the future. These intentions were not to be a matter of informal agreement, but were to be enacted in full parliament by the sworn oath of James II and enshrined in the coronation oaths to be taken by his successors, indicating how seriously the three estates regarded both the principle and the opportunity. This was no new concern, as the parliament that met on 27 September 1367 asserted that ‘the king [David II] should and ought to be able to live without oppressing the people’, and exhorted him to seek the advice of the three estates before alienating crown property, although the circumstances in 1455 were more favourable to realising such a settlement than those in the fourteenth century, and the act could be viewed as mutually beneficial to both crown and parliament.[3] However, Roland Tanner has shown that, far from being a generous concession from a grateful king, or even an acquisitive hoarding by him of the windfall of Douglas possessions, the driving principle behind this act was the long-term limitation of the crown’s freedom of action in the matter of patronage; a central element of royal authority.[4] Although the bulk of the lands annexed to the crown had been acquired through the forfeiture of the Black Douglases, they included also the customs of Scotland (a source of plunder and exploitation during the minority) and the principal royal castles of Edinburgh, Stirling and Dumbarton. Royal castles were expensive in terms of outlay on maintenance, manpower and provision, but their strategic and symbolic value was essential in consolidating crown authority. The earldoms of Fife and Strathearn, forfeited in 1425 and 1437 respectively, were annexed to the crown with various lordships and castles across Scotland, including the Lothian lands of Ballencrieff and Gifford, lands in Dumbartonshire, Falkland palace, the lordship of Brechin, the castles and lordships of Inverness and Urquhart, the lordship of Abernethy and other northern baronies with Redcastle and its lordships in Ross.[5] Ranald Nicholson calculated that the possessions listed in the Act of Annexation that had been already in crown hands amounted to approximately £1600 in gross annual rents (with additional payments in kind), and former Black Douglas possessions added around £1450. With the addition of the customs, this would have given the crown an endowment in 1455 of roughly £6050, and the king was able also to draw on his unannexed possessions, which did not come under parliamentary restrictions, calculated by Nicholson to be valued in excess of £3500.[6]

Forfeited Douglas possessions included the lordship of Ettrick forest, the lordship of Galloway and Threave castle, and the management of the lands of Galloway was entrusted to William, abbot of Dundrennan, serving the crown as chamberlain of Galloway. From his returns and other information from the Exchequer Rolls, George Burnett calculated that the gross money revenue generated from the farmed lands of east and west Galloway was £751 3s 4d, with former Douglas tenants now holding their lands directly of the crown, with the regality burghs of Wigtown and Kirkcudbright becoming royal burghs.[7] The Forest consisted of the three wards of Ettrick, Tweed and Yarrow, administered by the crown for a gross money rent of £519 13s 4d, with the queen benefiting from this acquisition with two holdings in Yarrow. Euphemia Graham, wife of the recently rehabilitated James lord Hamilton, collected a terce from Ettrick forest, the principal messuage of which was the tower of Newark, and there are references to Forest courts being held there by James lord Hamilton and Ninian Spot, and to a visit by the king, recorded in the accounts submitted on 13 September 1456.[8]

The statute which limited the power and authority of March wardens was directed undoubtedly at the office which had been exploited so successfully by the Black Douglases to the detriment (as James II came to regard it) of crown authority, and the king’s decision to confer the wardenry of the March on his second son, Alexander, earl of March and lord of Annandale, ensured its effective retention in royal hands, as Alexander was only an infant at the time.[9] Similarly, there was a tightening of legislation regarding regalities, in a pointed reaction to the power of the Black Douglases who had held many of their offices heritably and much of their land in regality. It was decreed that all heritable offices made since the death of James I were to be revoked and not granted ‘in time to come [. . .] without deliverance of the parliament’, and regalities then in crown hands were to be merged with the sheriffdoms in order to avoid another source of tension between the crown and its regional magnates.[10] This must have alarmed those who saw the enjoyment of rights acquired through patronage being stripped from them, and the statute declared that ‘any person who has made cost at the king’s hand for it, shall be recompensed to them, the profits taken up therefrom in the mean time being considered’.[11] Such woolly promises may not have offered much reassurance and there is little evidence to indicate how effectively these assurances were carried out.

The principles behind much of the legislation enacted in the August parliament of 1455 were a reflection of long-standing concerns about the imposition of onerous levels of taxation and financial exactions by the crown on its subjects, although these were not a specific reaction to James II’s own policies. He had been driven to attack the Livingston family in 1450, certainly, by motives that were largely financial and had relied on gifts and loans from supporters such as Bishop Turnbull and Chancellor Crichton, but he had not resorted to regular, heavy taxation prior to 1455, and the legislation reflects a deeper concern prompted by the memory of James I’s avaricious and arbitrary style of government. The Act of Annexation was driven not so much by what James II had done as by what he or his successors might do in the future if not contained by the authority of the three estates to monitor actions and limit grounds for tension. The extent to which James II observed these restrictions has been the subject of some debate, but such grants as were made tended to be within the immediate royal family or on terms of liferent which would allow them to revert to the crown. For example, in addition to the grant of the earldom of March for the king’s second son, Alexander, the earldom of Moray was bestowed on his third son, David, in 1456, although he died young and the earldom reverted to the king. James II’s youngest son, John, became earl of Mar in 1459, underlining the failure of the Erskine family to realise their long-standing claim for inheritance, and the queen was certainly a beneficiary of the Douglas forfeiture, receiving the annexed lands of Brechin and Cortachy (near Kirriemuir, Forfarshire) in security of her dower and holding the earldoms of Fife and Garioch and the palace of Falkland until her death in 1463 when they reverted to the crown. Even the grant of the earldom of Atholl in 1453 to the king’s half-brother, John Stewart, may technically be seen as within the royal family, although as a hereditary endowment it was placed outwith direct crown control. The royal lands of BallincrieO (north of Bathgate, Linlithgowshire) and Gosford (near Haddington), which had been held in 1454 by James Kennedy bishop of St Andrews, were annexed to the crown.[12]

Nevertheless, the grants made to John MacDonald, earl of Ross of the liferent of Urquhart and Glenmoriston by September 1456 did appear to contravene the Act of Annexation, although this was a strategy born of realpolitik in that contesting Ross’s seizure of these possessions in 1451 would have occasioned James II more trouble than they were worth in the short-term, and was a small price to pay for Ross’s broad co-operation for the remainder of the reign, and the grant in life-rent would at least ensure that the possessions returned to the crown.[13] This may also have been the logic behind the acquisition by Ross’s half-brother, Gillespic (or Celestine) of the keepership of Redcastle, including the effective ability to draw the revenues from Eddirdale; both possessions annexed to the crown in 1455. Also, members of the MacIntosh family were in rent-free occupation of the annexed lands of Petty and Brachlie in 1456, probably through Ross’s patronage.[14] However, the only permanent alienation was a royal charter by James II on 10 October 1457 endowing a chaplaincy in the parish church of Tain ‘for the salvation of the souls of James I, his father, Joan, Queen of Scots, his mother, and Mary, Queen of Scots, his consort, and also of his own soul and the souls of his children and all his predecessors and successors’. This endowment was to be paid for from the lands of Dunskeath ‘with pertinents lying in the lordship of Ardmanach and sheriffdom of Inverness [. . .] together with an annual-rent of two merks Scots from the freight and profits of the port and ferry of Cromarty’.[15]

The lordship of Ardmanach, which lay between the Moray and Cromarty firths, included lands forfeited by Hugh Douglas earl of Ormond and his younger brother, John of Balvenie. Ormond had derived his title from the castle of Avoch which stood on the ancient moot hill of Ormond overlooking the bay of Munlochy, and the gross rents from these lands, including the Eddirdale fortress of Redcastle, was calculated at £172 15s 8d in 1460. Also forfeited by Ormond was one third of Duffus in the sheriffdom of Elgin, and John of Balvenie forfeited Petty and Brachlie, south of the Beauly Firth and Strathdearn (upper Findhorn). As Ardmanach had been named in the Act of Annexation, the king’s grant to Tain appears to be in contravention of the statute, but Roland Tanner points out that this need not necessarily be viewed as the king acting in deliberate opposition to the stipulation that such grants be made only with the consent of the three estates, as it is possible that approval had been given but the record lost.[16] Indeed, it may be argued that the exceptions to strict observance of the Act of Annexation during the reign of James II serve to highlight the far more comprehensive compliance with its strictures.

There were two further acts passed against the Black Douglases, forbidding any support or supply to be given to ‘James once earl of Douglas, his brother, accomplices or his party [. . .] and that no person begotten of those who are forfeited in this parliament succeed to any heritage in this realm in time to come’.[17] The ‘begotten’ was quite a limited field, as the Douglas brothers did not provide legitimate heirs apart from Hugh Douglas, earl of Ormond, whose son, also Hugh, became dean of Brechin and had no apparent interest in his Douglas heritage, resigning all claims to the earldoms of Douglas, Avondale and Ormond to Archibald earl of Angus in 1496.[18] Pronouncement of forfeiture had allowed the king to move forward from the contest with the family in one sense, but the continued existence of their surviving members in exile in England would have cast some shadow across that triumph. The battle of Arkinholm on 1 May 1455 had disposed of Archibald Douglas, earl of Moray, and led to the capture and subsequent execution of Hugh earl of Ormond, but the exiled James 9th earl of Douglas and his youngest brother, John of Balvenie, were still at large, in addition to various other members of the family such as the countesses Beatrice and Margaret and adherents to the Douglas party who had W ed with them. The fact that the Douglases were being maintained by the English crown placed Anglo-Scottish relations under considerable strain and was to have significant ramifications in the coming months.

The king recognised the need to reward loyalty and service, even if, in the case of James Hamilton, this had been offered at the eleventh hour. Hamilton benefited from the disgrace of his erstwhile patron and ally with the forfeited lands of the barony of Drumsergert (Cambuslang) and Carmunnock in the sheriffdom of Lanark, Finnart in the sheriffdom of Renfrew, and the office of sheriff of Lanark.[19] Walter and David Scott of Strathord, whose support had been courted by the king as early as 14 March 1452, were rewarded for their role in the battle of Arkinholm with a royal charter on 10 September 1455 ‘for the faithful service rendered to His Majesty [. . .] in the victory obtained by them against the traitors Archibald, sometime earl of Moray and Hugh Douglas his brother, sometime earl of Ormond’ of lands lying in the barony of Hawick, with the annualrents of the town of Hawick ‘forfeited to the king by John of St. Michael, traitor’.[20] John Winchester, bishop of Moray, who had offered consistent support to the king throughout the conflict, was permitted to retain grants of land in the sheriffdom of Inverness and Banff which had been made to him by Hugh earl of Ormond and John of Balvenie.[21] In the longer term, George earl of Angus benefited from his support for the king, receiving a grant of the lands of Ewesdale in Roxburgh on 7 December 1456 and some of the lands of the lordship of Douglas on 8 April 1457, with a grant of Eskdale and its chief messuage of Dalblane following on 28 January 1459.[22]

However, other business conducted at the August assembly of the three estates suggests a settling back into the normal business of parliament and its domestic and diplomatic concerns, which included passing a statute against those guilty of forging money, as this carried obvious implications for currency regulation. Also, the problem of controlling those who lived outside the boundaries of conventional society by moving frequently and sustaining themselves through begging was an issue that appears sporadically in the records and reflects a deep unease about their potential for criminal or disruptive behaviour, which was to be addressed in an act enabling ‘sorners’ to be delivered to the king’s sheriffs ‘to do law upon them as upon a thief or reiver’.[23] The succession of a new pope, Calixtus III, occasioned the despatch of an embassy to Rome to make ‘the obedience required, and for certain privileges to be purchased for the common good of the realm’.[24]

Another piece of legislation indicates the importance placed on distinguishing those who attended parliament as part of the second and third estates, expanded by virtue of the elevation of men to the status of lord of parliament or representatives of the burgess community during the course of James II’s reign. Sumptuary legislation was enacted with the express intention of prescribing the dress that was to be worn when attending parliament in order to differentiate rank and status. Earls were to wear ‘mantles of grained brown, open at the front, furred with white and lined at the front outside a hand broad to the best place with the same furring with a little hood of the same cloth, and to be used on their shoulders’. Lords of parliament were to wear red gowns lined with silk or furred with grey, also with a hood, whereas burgh commissioners were to have ‘a pair of cloaks of blue furred to the foot side, open on the right shoulder, furred as appropriate and with hoods of the same’. Green tunics with open sleeves was the correct attire for lawyers attending parliament, and they would incur a £5 fine if they failed to observe this, rising to £10 for everyone else. A fine was also to be levied on any burgh where parliament or general council was held if suitable rows of raked benches were not provided.[25] Legislation that sought to define social standing was not new, but these statutes may be viewed within the context of a determined assertion of authority by the three estates in 1455 with a visible underlining of the importance of each individual’s role in their assemblies. Whatever the principle behind this statute, it may not have been popular with all of those required to go to the expense of having such ‘habits’ made, as a further act was passed in the parliament held in March 1458 appointing specific ‘patrons’ of each group’s prescribed dress in order to ensure compliance and, presumably, impose the sanctions outlined in the 1455 statute; indicative of a more cynical financial purpose.[26]

Parliament was continued to meet again in Stirling on 12 October, probably to provide authority for another auspicious date in the political calendar; the king’s attainment of his perfect majority of twenty-five on 16 October. This marked the recognition of the king’s full authority, although it would have made little difference in practical terms to the authority with which he had been ruling since 1450. What it did signify was the right to issue an act of revocation of all grants made during his minority. Although, as Roland Tanner points out, parliament is not mentioned in the two surviving acts from that date, it is highly unlikely that they would have been produced without the authority of the three estates. The first act, issued at Stirling on 16 October 1455, revoked ‘all grants, infeftments and alienations [. . .] prejudicial and injurious to himself [James II] or to Alexander earl of March’. This included ‘all lands, tenements, possessions, rents and customs lying in or payable from the Earldom of March and the lordship of Annandale’. The second is an instrument setting forth the terms of the revocation, excluding grants made to the queen and ‘the gifts and investitures made in favour of his second son Alexander Stewart, Earl of March, of the earldom of March and lordships of Annandale and Mann’, and has an expanded witness list.[27] From these acts, the preoccupation with establishing authority in the Marches within the direct remit of the crown is clearly indicative of the king’s increasing determination to adopt a more aggressive stance in Anglo-Scottish relations and to underline the replacement of Douglas lordship as ‘Guardians of the Realm’ with direct royal lordship. The timing for this was chosen undoubtedly to exploit the problems in England occasioned by the conflict between the houses of Lancaster and York, known later as the Wars of the Roses. Henry VI was an increasingly unpopular and ineffective king whose indecisive nature was seen to have accelerated the loss of Normandy and whose bouts of mental incapacity were becoming more pronounced. The appointment of Richard duke of York (a man with his own claim to the English throne) as protector occurred in November 1455, but the Scottish parliament, meeting in October, was already making preparations for open conflict on the border and enacting legislation which included detailed arrangements for warning beacons to be lit at specified points, including Hume, Eggerston and Soutra, to send advanced warning of threatened or actual invasion through the ‘east passage between Roxburgh and Berwick’.[28]

This process of mobilisation included the enactment of prohibitions and penalties against those found guilty of supplying the English garrisons in Roxburgh and Berwick or travelling into England without permission from the king or his March warden. The statute that dealt with those who warned of ‘the riding of a host’ into England may well be a reflection of earlier failed operations, such as the abortive attempt at a surprise attack on Berwick in June. A letter sent by James II to Charles VII on 8 July 1455 suggests that the attack on Berwick was abandoned as the result of an English trick, and Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, writing in the sixteenth century, relates a story of the interception of the Scottish army by Englishmen pretending to be papal nuncios, who persuaded the king to abandon his attack.[29] In line with these tightened restrictions, no English man was to come, or be brought, into Scotland without official permission and there were to be no special assurances made between individuals on either side. Cross-border raiding was to be regulated in accordance with these statutes and controlled by the warden ‘or any other chieftain’, in order to avoid the undisciplined free-for-all that could result in ‘an affray in the host’.[30] However, the statute that placed the greatest strain on the king’s subjects was that which stipulated the size of the three garrisons to be established in the east, middle and west Marches, ‘that is to say 300 spears and 200 bows upon the east and middle Marches, and upon the west Marches to be laid 100 spears and 100 bows’. This was a significant undertaking and the necessary manpower and provisions were to be provided by means of a thorough investigation by the king’s sheriffs into the value of lands, rents, possessions and moveable goods. The result of these reports was to form the basis of an assessment of the number of men to be provided by each lord and freeholder.[31] Although not an overt financial subsidy, this was a costly exercise that would have placed a burden on those chosen to provide the means of establishing these garrisons, particularly if the campaign lasted for any significant length of time.

Border warfare was not the king’s only preoccupation at this time, as he set out on a justice ayre to the north-east of the kingdom in February and March 1456, visiting Inverness, Elgin, Spynie (the seat of John Winchester, bishop of Moray), the monastery of Kinloss and the burgh of Aberdeen, before returning south in April.[32] The purpose of this progress through the north was to underline royal presence and authority in an area that had been under dubious royal control because of the vested interests of the Black Douglases, John earl of Ross and the earls of Crawford and Huntly. Extensive repairs were carried out at Inverness castle (which had been seized by the earl of Ross in 1451) under the direction of the bishop of Moray, and the king sanctioned the continuation of building work initiated by Archibald Douglas, earl of Moray at his former castle of Darnaway. The island fortalice of Lochindorb, which was one of the strongholds named as having been fortified against the king in 1455, fared less well, as a royal warrant ordering its demolition was issued at Aberdeen on 5 March to William, thane of Cawdor, although he was granted permission to remove the iron yett from Lochindorb for incorporation into his own castle at Cawdor.[33] Cawdor, described as the king’s ‘beloved squire’, had been granted a licence on 6 August 1454 to build a castle at Cawdor ‘and to fortify it with walls, moats and iron portcullis and to furnish it with turrets and other defensive ornaments and apparatus; to appoint constables, janitors and jailers to the castle; provided always that the King and his successors shall have free entry and exit to and from the castle’.[34] Such licences should be seen in the context of patronage, which underlined the recipient’s standing with the king and placed a gratifying stamp of approval on the castle-owner’s projection of his status within his own locality. It was one of the methods by which a seal was placed upon a new or renewed personal relationship and this was the crucial element behind this licence. Cawdor could build a castle with as many decorative W ourishes, crenellations, ironwork and turrets as he desired, but the principal purpose was status rather than defence, and the ‘free entry and exit to and from the castle’ for the king and his successors was hardly worth stressing when that would have been the king’s right in any case. It should be viewed rather as emphasising the foundation of personal lordship implicit in the grant, particularly at a time when the king was seeking to build up his base of support in the north of the kingdom through men such as Cawdor, whose subsequent actions against the interests of Archibald Douglas, earl of Moray, appear to have vindicated that approach. The licence to build a tower at Drumminor, issued by James II to James lord Forbes at Brechin on 4 May 1456, was couched in similar terms to the Cawdor licence, with provision for ‘ornamentum defensives’.[35] This became the chief residence of the Forbes family but, as H. Gordon Slade has argued, the building of Drumminor was under way from 1440, therefore the licence given by James II in 1456 must have been retrospective rather than a permission to proceed, and was in accordance with the links being forged with northern allies rather than concerns over the particular features displayed on Forbes’s castle.[36] Patronage took many forms, and James II embraced the use of strategies that recognised and enhanced the status of individual lords within their own localities in gestures of personal favour that cost little and went far deeper than the stated terms of the grant.

However, the status of the earldom of Moray itself was a contentious one. Following the death and forfeiture of Archibald Douglas, the earldom reverted to the crown, although there were those who had been casting covetous eyes in that direction. James Crichton had been ‘beltit erll’ in 1452, by virtue of his marriage to Janet Dunbar, the elder heiress of Moray, but he died in 1454, leaving Archibald Douglas’s widow, Elizabeth, as the recognised Dunbar heiress. The mother of Janet and Elizabeth Dunbar was Margaret Seton, who may have been the sister of Alexander earl of Huntly, thus increasing his stake in the possessions of his nieces.[37] Huntly’s son, George, lost no time in entering into a contract to marry Countess Elizabeth, drawing up an indenture to that effect at Forres on 20 May 1455, less than a month after Earl Archibald’s death at the battle of Arkinholm.[38] Huntly was married to Elizabeth Crichton, sister of the late ‘beltit erll’, James Crichton, therefore the Gordons may have felt that the acquisition of the earldom of Moray would be a suitable and merited reward for their loyal services to the crown.

Although James II was aware of the value and necessity of encouraging and rewarding loyalty through patronage, he was notably capricious in its dispensation. His attitude to the Gordons of Huntly was decidedly ambivalent, as although he recognised the assistance they had offered in the contest with the Black Douglases, he was aware of their expansionist pretensions in the north-east and, having just fought a long and difficult campaign to eradicate the most territorially powerful magnate family in Scotland, had no wish to encourage the development of another great territorial magnate house. The speed with which George, master of Huntly, had moved to secure a marriage agreement with the countess of Moray would have increased the king’s suspicions concerning Gordon ambition, possibly founded in Huntly’s appropriation of the device of royal authority during his dispute with Alexander earl of Crawford at Brechin in May 1452, when he ‘displayit the kingis banere and said it was the kingis actioun and he was his luftennend’.[39] As the clashes between Huntly and Crawford had far more to do with a struggle for regional dominance than advancing royal interests, the king may have been less than impressed by Huntly’s claim to be acting on behalf of the crown. The Gordons found their ambitions blocked in no uncertain terms by James II when he settled the earldom of Moray on his newly-born third son, David, on 12 February 1456, and although the infant prince died before 18 July 1457 the king retained firm hold on Moray.[40] His intention to increase the profits of the earldom is shown by the lease of some of the lands of Darnaway and the appointment in 1456 of four commissioners to revise the rentals; John Winchester, bishop of Moray, William, thane of Cawdor, Thomas Carmichael, canon of Moray and Patrick lord Glamis.[41] Lochindorb castle was specified in the marriage indenture between George Gordon, master of Huntly and Elizabeth, countess of Moray as a fortress to be delivered to Gordon once the marriage took place, therefore the order for its destruction in March 1456 must be regarded as a pointed reminder by the king about who exercised control in Moray.

That this message was to be extended to the earldom of Mar was underlined in the replacement of Alexander earl of Huntly with Patrick lord Glamis as keeper of Kildrummy castle; a decision that may have been taken during this northern progress.[42] Although the loyalty of Patrick lord Glamis was recognised and rewarded by the crown, the Gordons were being put firmly in their place, and their frustration and resentment at what they must have perceived as royal ingratitude for past loyalty led them to launch a devastating raid on lands in Mar, including ‘robbery of the goods of Thomas lord Erskine’. However, the king may have planned to assuage Gordon resentment during his northern progress by granting a remission to Huntly (detailing offences of destruction, burning and killing) at Aberdeen on 7 March.[43]

Another northern earldom receiving attention from James II in 1456 was the earldom of Sutherland. John earl of Sutherland had been sent to England as a hostage for James I’s ransom in 1427, probably very soon after the death of his father, and he remained there until at least May 1448, when he is recorded as being back at his castle of Dunrobin, presenting a chaplain to the chapel of St Andrew at Golspie. On 29 April 1451 Sutherland and his wife, Margaret Baillie, received a crown charter of lands in the parish of Loth, Sutherland, the rents from which were reserved for their use during their lifetimes. However, Sutherland resigned his earldom into the hands of James II in favour of his son, John, at Inverness on 22 February 1456, and John was infeft in the lands of the earldom during his father’s lifetime, by precept of sasine given by James II at Inverness three days later. The reason for this move is unclear, but it may have been prompted by the earl’s ill health, as he was dead by 1460, and was buried in the chapel of St Andrew at Golspie.[44] His heir and successor had a reputation for cruelty and may have suffered from some form of mental illness, as a brieve of idiotry was issued against him by James IV in 1494, although it is not clear if this offers any explanation for the outbreak of violence against the lands of the earldom for which William Urquhart was granted a remission in 1458.[45]

Further to the south and west, the terms of the Act of Revocation issued on 16 October 1455 show that James II had decided to confer the title, ‘lord of Man’ on his second son, Alexander, thus reviving claims to suzerainty which, if not abandoned, had certainly lapsed in terms of enforcement. The Isle of Man was among those territories on the western seaboard ceded to Alexander III by Magnus of Norway in the treaty of Perth (1266), but Tim (ornton has demonstrated that the subsequent exercise of lordship in Man was bound up with complex regional politics rather than falling under the clear authority of either the Scottish or English crown, although both laid sporadic claim to it as circumstances dictated.[46] Robert Bruce attacked the island on 17 May 1313, landing a naval force at Ramsay and besieging the castle of Rushen for five weeks until its surrender in June; one element of his strategic objective to expand Bruce power into Ireland, and he sought to consolidate his hold by conferring Man in free regality on his faithful ally, (omas Randolph earl of Moray, on 20 December. By February 1315, Man had been recaptured by the English and Scottish efforts to assert dominance lapsed, although contemporary records suggest a continuing association of the Isle of Man with Scottish sovereignty, even when Scottish kings were unable to exercise direct control.[47] Henry IV, following his deposition of Richard II in 1399 and usurpation of the English throne, considered a number of options for the Isle of Man, but settled upon confirming John Stanley in the lordship in 1406, and there was an unsuccessful attempt made to sever Scottish connections by ordering the expulsion of Scots from the island in 1422. The situation was complicated still further by the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction claimed severally by Trondheim, Sodor and Man, and York; the last asserting its rights to Man in 1433 and again through a papal bull in 1459.[48]

Although James II issued charters of confirmation under the great seal on 30 June and 1 July 1451 in favour of the Premonstratensian priory of Whithorn in Galloway, which included the church of St Bridget in Man and lands ‘infra insulam Manne’, this should be seen in the context of Whithorn seeking recognition and confirmation of its rights upon the king’s assumption of personal rule rather than presaging any carefully conceived strategy regarding the Isle of Man.[49] However, following the forfeiture of the Black Douglases in 1455, it is clear that James II was keen to revive and pursue traditional Scottish claims to the island as part of his purpose to reassert the rights of the Scottish crown and take a far more aggressive attitude to Anglo-Scottish relations. In part, this was bound up with the Douglas exiles, whom he would have regarded as unfinished business, and their traditional connections to Galloway and the relative vulnerability of the western seaboard would have made renewed assertions over Man desirable within a broader strategy of expanding direct royal authority in the south-west. The pointed exemption from the Act of Revocation of possessions settled on the king’s second son, Alexander earl of March, included the Isle of Man and underlined still further James II’s determination that lordship should be exercised within the king’s immediate family over specific areas of previous Douglas domination or where practical authority had been doubtful. This extended to pockets of English occupation, such as Berwick and Roxburgh, and the diversion of troops from the siege of Threave in 1455 in order to spring a surprise attack on Berwick was an early indication of this focus. Although unsuccessful on that occasion, James II was encouraged by the internal dissensions in England, caused by the struggle between the houses of York and Lancaster, to pursue his aims with relentless purpose.

The provision by the archbishop of York of Thomas Burton to the bishopric on 25 September 1455 may have given James II the pretext to launch his attack on Man, claiming that ecclesiastical jurisdiction belonged rightfully to John Hector Macgilleon, the Scottish bishop of Sodor or the Isles, who had held office since 2 October 1441, although this may have provided simply another strand in his arguments for sovereignty.[50] An expeditionary force was sent from Kirkcudbright, probably during the early months of 1456, and it is possible to piece together from the records some evidence for the ensuing attack on Man. The Exchequer accounts from Galloway in 1456 record the disbursement of 36s for a ship sent to the Isle of Man to explore at the time when the king’s army was there, and the accounts of 1457 record a payment of £5 to Patrick Callander in compensation for the wreck of his ship while ‘in servicio regis ad insulam de Man’. In addition, a courier received five shillings for carrying letters from Dundrennan to the king at Falkland ‘with news of the ships’. The king was at Falkland on 22 April 1456, which seems to narrow down the period of the venture to the early part of that year.[51] It is also possible that the construction of a curtain wall at Peel castle formed part of the defensive measures undertaken by the Stanleys in response to the bellicose attitude of James II, but any objective to secure possession of Man remained unrealised.[52] Indeed, it could be argued that the venture achieved little other than antagonising the Stanleys suffciently to prompt them to launch a counter-attack on Kirkcudbright in 1457. The exiled James earl of Douglas (although no longer recognised by that title in Scotland) seized the opportunity provided by this clash between James II and the Stanleys to join with Thomas Stanley (heir to the lordship) in his raid against Kirkcudbright; an attack carried out by sea which resulted in the burning of the burgh and subsequent raiding in the Marches. This was an area of Scotland that had come under Douglas lordship and such an attack was unlikely to encourage former adherents to join forces with their erstwhile lord. However, the purpose from Douglas’s perspective was to convey a reminder of his presence and ability to inflict injury with the backing of his English allies (however temporary this collaboration with the Stanleys may have been), and to undermine the authority of James II in an area where he had been keen to exert influence. The symbolic importance of Kirkcudbright was that it had been the point of embarkation for the attack on Man and had been elevated only recently into a royal burgh by James II, who had offered patronage also to the Franciscan friars of Kirkcudbright by erecting their house into a conventual friary. Although its fate is not recorded, the burning of the town may well have included this new royal foundation.[53]

Another dimension to the aggressive reassertion of royal authority was the king’s relationship with William Sinclair, earl of Orkney. On 29 April 1455, Orkney received a royal charter of the earldom of Caithness, which was a significant grant in that it returned title to the earldom of Caithness to the holder of the earldom of Orkney; a title lost since 1375 when Alexander of Ard, eldest grandson of Malise, earl of Orkney and Caithness, who died c.1350, resigned it to the Scottish crown. A power struggle over the Norse earldom of Orkney had taken place in the years following the death of Earl Malise, but this was resolved by the eventual investiture on 2 August 1379 of Henry Sinclair, grandson of Malise through the eldest daughter of his second marriage.[54] When he died in 1400 his son, also Henry, does not appear to have sought installation as earl of Orkney from King Erik, and Barbara Crawford argues that his grandmother, Isabella, exercised authority in the earldom, while Henry simply used the title until his death in 1420.[55] It was not until 9 August 1434 that Earl Henry’s son, William Sinclair, secured recognition of his rights in the earldom of Orkney through his installation in Copenhagen; a delay that may reflect Erik’s dissatisfaction with the divided allegiance owed by William Sinclair and his father’s failure to offer homage in order to secure official recognition of his claim.

The position of William Sinclair, earl of Orkney, was an ambiguous one. The earldom of Orkney was held under the sovereignty of the Norwegian crown, whereas the mainland earldom of Caithness was held under the Scottish crown, and this divided allegiance had the potential to create tension, particularly in the mind of a king as concerned with the exertion of his personal rights and authority as was James II and, subsequently, his son. Orkney had achieved a significant position at court under James I, serving as admiral and being chosen to accompany Princess Margaret on her journey to Tours for her marriage to the Dauphin Louis in 1436. His marriage to Elizabeth Douglas, sister of Archibald 5th earl of Douglas and lieutenant-general during the first two years of James II’s minority, increased Orkney’s standing as an active member of the royal council and, in addition to his northern territories and titles, William Sinclair held estates in Lothian, focused on Roslin where he built his principal castle and founded the architecturally impressive collegiate church of St Matthew.[56] Following the death of William lord Crichton in 1454, Orkney’s experience and standing led to his elevation to chancellor, the principal office of state. His evident record of loyal crown service included supporting the king through the struggle against the Black Douglases and overseeing the transport of James II’s great bombard to the siege of Threave in 1455, and royal favour was shown in the erection of Roslin into a burgh of barony in 1456 and in the grant of the earldom of Caithness.

However, when Alexander of Ard resigned the earldom of Caithness into the hands of Robert II in 1375, to be conferred on the king’s son, David Stewart, the status of the earldom had changed considerably since the time of Earl Malise. The original lands of the earldom had been dispersed, with its southern possessions having been annexed to create the new earldom of Sutherland around 1230, and the rest divided among various claimants, so whilst acquisition of the earldom of Caithness was hardly lucrative in itself, it may have been regarded as a useful extension of crown authority in the northernmost parts of the kingdom. By the 1450s, James II was willing to bestow the title of earl of Caithness on his ally George Crichton of Cairns, admiral of Scotland, in the parliament held in June 1452 as part of the patronage described by the Auchinleck chronicler as being such that ‘wald nocht stand’, but it is unlikely that Crichton enjoyed more than the title, which was resigned to the crown in 1454. However, when James II conferred the earldom of Caithness on William Sinclair earl of Orkney, he reunited once more the two earldoms under one lord, and the lack of significant estates inherent in this grant was addressed by the incorporation into this new title to Caithness of Orkney’s own lands. These were to be erected into a free barony and conjoined with the earldom, in addition to the lands and pertinences of Carnoch and Dunnivair within the sheriffdom of Inverness, to be held heritably. He was to receive also an annual payment of £40. However, rather than being a sign of James II’s largesse, this grant was made to compensate Orkney for the removal of his rights to the lordship of Nithsdale (acquired through his mother, Egidia Douglas) and its offices of justiciar and chamberlain, the office of sheriff of Dumfries and the right to a pension of £300 from the great customs of certain burghs.[57] The grant of Caithness must have been regarded by Orkney as little more than a sop offered by James II as he proceeded to diminish Earl William’s position in the south-west and in Orkney, and this explains the undoubted alteration in the relationship between the two men from 1456.

Initially, the phase of Scoto-Danish diplomacy that was reopened in 1456 arose from Christian I’s attempt to reassert his perceived rights regarding the payment of 100 marks (the ‘annual’) by the Scots; a sum agreed in the 1266 treaty of Perth, under which the Norwegian king, Magnus, ceded the western Isles and Man to the Scottish king, Alexander III. The Scots had defaulted almost immediately on these promised payments, and it was this ongoing complaint voiced by subsequent Norse and Danish kings which Christian I had decided to pursue. James I had made tacit acknowledgement to Erik of Norway in 1426 of the Scots’ obligation to make payments; a recognition of Norway’s legal position that was intended to produce much needed revenue for the Norwegian king’s coffers in payment in arrears of the annual.[58] Michael Brown suggests that James I’s negotiations with King Erik’s ambassadors had more to do with establishing Scottish crown rights to overlordship of the Hebrides within the context of his imposition of royal authority over Alexander MacDonald, lord of the Isles than a serious intention to deliver on those payments.[59] By acknowledging that payment was due, Scottish crown authority in the region was endorsed in theory, although the failure actually to make any payments must have incensed the Norwegians. The revival of this issue under Christian I of Denmark and (from 1450) Norway, was driven once more by a pressing need for money to finance Christian’s efforts to reunite the three Scandinavian kingdoms of Norway, Denmark and Sweden, and he appealed for assistance to Charles VII of France, with whom he had made a treaty in May 1456, to put pressure on the Scots to fulfil their obligations under the treaty of Perth. The matter was to be discussed in a meeting between ambassadors representing the Scots and the Danes in Paris at Whitsun (5 June) 1457, but the determination of James II to frustrate Christian’s claims and pursue his own ambitions in the north of his kingdom had boiled over during the winter of 1456 in an act of aggression that drew a furious response from the Danish king and raised questions concerning the relationship between James II and his chancellor.

Details of this incident survive in a letter written by Christian I to Charles VII on 10 May 1457, in which he complains of the outrage perpetrated on Bjarn Thorleiffson, governor of Iceland, when he and his wife and attendants were in Orkney taking shelter from a storm.[60] Thorleiffson’s presence in Orkney is explained as carrying out his official duties by conveying ecclesiastical rents from Iceland to Denmark; duties which placed him in sovereign Danish territory at all times. Not only was he imprisoned, but his personal goods were taken in addition to the more serious theft of the rents and tributes collected for Christian I. Such actions were in direct violation of Danish sovereignty and can only have heaped further humiliation on Christian’s efforts to assert his authority and claim his rights. William Sinclair, earl of Orkney, is not mentioned specifically in this stiff diplomatic complaint, with Christian I placing the blame for the incident squarely on the shoulders of James II, and although there is no evidence to point to Sinclair’s presence in Orkney at that time, Barbara Crawford argues that such an action can hardly have been undertaken within his earldom without his awareness and consent.[61] If so, the question appears to be whether the action was taken by Orkney and James II working together to put pressure on Christian I or whether it represents an attempt by Orkney to sabotage a potential resolution of claims to the Orkney and Shetland Isles due to be discussed in Paris the following June. The attack must have occurred shortly before Christian I and Charles VII concluded their truce in May 1456 and before the date for the meeting in Paris had been set, therefore it may be seen in the light of James II’s aggressive assertion of his intention to take the islands of Orkney under the sovereignty of the Scottish crown. This would place William Sinclair in a difficult position, and although his men undoubtedly carried out the attack on Thorleiffson, the king’s involvement seems clear. Christian I’s letter states that the captured prisoners had been taken ‘ad interiora Scotiae et praesentiam regiam adeo notorie produxere’ and he pointed out that James II would be unable to plead ignorance of the attack on that account.[62] This must have been obvious also to James II, who, although a great proponent of stout denial, does not appear to have used it in this case.

Although it may have been in the interests of both the king and Orkney to place pressure on the Danish king, they would have had different perspectives and objectives in mind, and this would explain the definite cooling in the relationship between Orkney and James II that occurred in 1456. The king’s aspirations regarding the earldom of Orkney, whether stated or implied, prompted Earl William to pursue a long-term strategy of purchasing odal lands in Orkney as an insurance against more aggressive royal encroachment, and it was the essential divergence of interests in this, as in other matters such as Orkney’s attitude towards the earldom of Mar, that prompted readjustments at the heart of the king’s council.[63] Orkney appeared on an official document as chancellor for the last time on 20 October 1456, and had been replaced in that office by George Shoreswood, bishop of Brechin, before 6 December. This did not denote a complete severance, as Orkney does appear subsequently on official documents, including as an envoy on an English safe-conduct issued on 13 July 1459, ‘to treat for the preservation of the truce’, but the king was seeking clearly to ensure that his chancellor was a man whose ambitions did not diverge from his own.[64]

Yet again, loyal support for the crown had not reaped the expected rewards and an important magnate had found himself disadvantaged by the king’s determination to pursue his own policy of aggrandisement. The conspicuous loyalty shown by William Sinclair to his Scottish sovereign did not prevent James II pursuing a policy intended to bring the Norwegian/Danish islands of Orkney and Shetland under Scottish sovereignty; not simply by converting Earl William’s allegiance solely to the Scottish crown, but by acquiring direct royal control of the territories, revenue and authority in those islands. The means by which the king hoped to achieve this may already have been formulated if he had received word of the birth of a daughter, Margaret, to Christian I and his queen, Dorothea of Brandenburg, in 1456. However, even if Margaret’s birth occurred later than this, the possibility of a marriage alliance certainly was the focus of James II’s plans before long. By the time that negotiations with Christian I took place, Orkney would have been fully aware of the Scottish king’s intentions regarding the islands and the implications for his position in the earldom, and may have sympathised with the sentiments expressed in the Auchinleck Chronicle with regard to John MacDonald in 1450 that, ‘he had not gottin [good lordship] bot ewyn the contrary in all thingis’.[65]

James II’s aggressive attitude to foreign diplomacy is evident also in exchanges that took place in 1456. Charles VII had responded unenthusiastically to James II’s appeals for assistance against the English, exhorting his ally rather to seek peace, and although a Scottish embassy under the leadership of James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews and George Shoreswood, bishop of Brechin was despatched in April, the ground was cut from under their feet by a letter sent to Henry VI on 10 May in which James II renounced the Anglo-Scottish truce of 1453 on the grounds that it had ‘proved an occasion of suffering for his people which he felt bound to redress’.[66] Cross-border raiding had undoubtedly occurred to devastating effect, particularly in the east March, as demonstrated in the account rendered on 4 October 1456 by Patrick lord Hailes, sheriff of Berwick. In his account, it is stated that the fermes of Longformacus and Rachburn (Lammermuir, north Berwickshire) were remitted ‘propter vastitatem earundem tempore guerre’. Similarly, Sir Archibald Douglas of Cavers, sheriff of Roxburgh, found nothing to distrain on the castle wards of Roxburgh and the fermes of Fallinche and Stitchell ‘propter guerras Anglicorum’, and in the accounts of the earldom of March (now assigned to Alexander Stewart, duke of Albany), the fermes of Cockburnspath and Graden in Berwickshire were remitted due to pillaging by the English.[67] The effect of James II’s letter was to elicit an excoriating response on 26 July in the name of Henry VI, in which the opinion of Richard duke of York is evident. Although his protectorate had ended on 25 February 1456, he maintained his role in government and took the opportunity to revive the thorny issue of English overlordship in response to James II’s ‘overweening and insensate epistle’. Addressed to ‘James, calling himself King of Scotland’, the document is a diatribe against his failure to pay due homage to the English king.[68]

While this response was being drafted, James II had fired off another letter to Charles VII, dated 28 June, in which he sought to dissuade him from entering into any peace treaty with England, ‘the hereditary enemy of France and Scotland’. Instead, he suggests that the English were weakened by York’s pretensions to the throne, offering an opportunity for united aggression against their mutual enemy.[69] Although Charles VII declined to be lured, James had already planned a campaign across the border into Northumberland where he launched a series of raids during August. The Auchinleck chronicler records that:

Item the xvj day of august king Iames the secund maid his first wayage in yngland with vjC thousand men and brynt and herijt xx mylis within the land and wan and distroyit xvij towris & fortaliceis and remanit on the ground of yngland vj days and vj nychtis and thair persewit thaim neuer ynglisman with Ill nother be day nor nycht and come hame with gret worschip / & tynt nocht a man of valour.[70]

This was a royal show of strength intended to demonstrate to the English government that he could inflict substantial damage by destroying seventeen towers and fortalices and remain in England for a week without hindrance or pursuit. However, although such raids were undoubtedly irritating to the government (and rather more than that for those on the receiving end), no significant gains were accomplished, such as the reclamation of Berwick or Roxburgh. Richard duke of York sent his complaint about the Scottish king’s ‘dayly foreis’ into England, conveyed to James II by Garter King on 24 August, but far from being deflected, the king ordered that the lands of Greenside in Edinburgh be set aside as a space for martial training, and he appears to have been happy enough with the results of his ‘first wayage in yngland’ to go hunting at Loch Freuchie and Halymill (in Strathbraan, Perthshire) from 26 September to 1 October.[71]

Prior to General Council assembling at Edinburgh on 19 October 1456, James II despatched two more letters to Charles VII, dated 9 and 13 October. In the first, he urged Charles VII and the Dauphin Louis to reconcile with one another, even offering to act as mediator in their dispute, apparently viewing this as an outcome that would facilitate the French king’s active participation in confronting the English whose aggressions, as stated in the second letter, were increasing.[72] Charles VII’s response to these letters is not recorded, but the adjective ‘overweening’ may have been one that struck a chord, and a further letter issued by the three estates on 20 October adding their pleas for assistance fared no better in achieving their objective.[73] This letter bears the seals of James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews, representing the first estate, William Sinclair earl of Orkney, chancellor, for the nobles, and the common seal of Edinburgh for the burghs, although it is the last occasion during the reign of James II on which Orkney is styled chancellor. Nevertheless, this intervention by the three estates and the subject of many statutes issued in the October parliament argues that the king’s bellicose attitude towards England was one that attracted considerable support. Warfare was a costly pursuit, and the king was undoubtedly seeking taxation, targeting on this occasion the burgesses rather than the prelates and lords. It is likely that the strain of providing the garrisons stipulated in 1455 had fallen most heavily on the second estate, therefore he was hoping to spread the burden. There appears to have been a successful response to the levy and the tax from the burghs and loans from burgesses were rendered on 25 July 1457 by Andrew Crawford, who had been sent to Flanders to raise money for the tax on the security of the Scottish burghs and individual burgesses for the loan.[74] Roland Tanner’s assessment that the sum raised was spent ‘almost exclusively on its intended purposes’ is borne out by records of immediate purchase of materials for war, including 800lbs of saltpetre and 1500 arrows and arrow heads; munitions intended for the sieges of Roxburgh and Berwick. These materials were delivered to John Dunbar, who had held the Douglas castle of Threave against the king’s besieging forces in 1455, but had been received into royal favour once the castle was surrendered in order that his skills with artillery weaponry could be put to good use in the king’s service.[75] On 1 December 1456, Dunbar received lands in the sheriffdom of Aberdeen, forfeited by Hugh Douglas earl of Ormond; a further underlining of royal patronage afforded to one whose skill with artillery was crucial to the king in his preparations for war.[76]

However, although there is a sense of broad co-operation with royal objectives, advice was offered also in line with arguments that existing supplies to those defending the borders were sufficient for their present requirements and need not be increased; a subtle reminder to the king that he should not push too hard in his financial demands on his subjects. Local truces were seen as providing a much needed respite from warfare, although the likelihood of further outbreaks of hostility is recognised in the statutes that ordered weapon showings and commanded that ‘all manner of men between 60 and 16 be ready on the best wise to come to the borders on their best manner for the defence of the land when any writing comes of the coming of the great English host’.[77] Carts were to be provided for the purpose of transporting guns, ‘with cunning men to shoot them. And if they have no craft in shooting them, as now, they may learn before the time comes that it will be needful to have them’. This is a salutary reminder of the skill required to operate the great artillery weapons of the period, and there are references in the records to gunners (often from the continent), such as the Frenchman who ‘schot richt wele and falyeit na schot within a faldome quhar it was chargit him to hit’.[78]

Another important element of the October parliament was the extent to which there was such a high level of engagement by the three estates in forming the policies which were to be formalised and passed as statutes, and Roland Tanner discerns the first indication of the full establishment of the committee known as the lords of the articles, which had the responsibility of ‘undertaking the administrative spade-work of drafting legislation’. The men who served on this committee were experienced in the business of parliament and could speed up the process of drafting legislation agreed upon by the three estates in order to have it passed (or rejected) with optimum efficiency.[79] Regardless of the preoccupation with matters of war, the running thread of concern over the exercise of justice occurs again in this parliament, and arrangements were made for designated representatives of the three estates (three from each) to sit ‘in some clean town’ operating a three month rota starting on Monday 8 November, in order to judge complaints brought before them. The article concerning justice is said to be ‘well made in itself’ and the estates beseeched ‘our sovereign lord to cause it to be continued and executed’.[80]

It is possible to view within the broad support and co-operation offered to the king in this parliament, a wary concern for what was ‘needfull’, and a polite but firm determination not only to monitor the king’s actions but to suggest what they should be. In this, the period of recovery from the debilitating conflict with the Black Douglases may be seen to have made considerable progress, although the king had been held to account for his actions and had required the support and co-operation of the three estates. An opportunity had presented itself in 1455 for parliament to impose some restraint on the king, although his apparent acquiescence with the broad elements of that restraint may not have convinced some of his subjects that this Stewart monarch had been tamed effectively, or that his determination to pursue his objectives in the future would not transgress the boundaries of ‘gud lordschip’.

NOTES

1.

Act of Annexation: RPS 1455/8/2.

2.

Ibid.

3.

RPS 1367/9/2.

4.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 151.

5.

RPS 1455/8/2.

6.

Nicholson, The Later Middle Ages, 379.

7.

ER, vi, cix-cxvii.

8.

Ibid., 226.

9.

RPS 1455/8/4; 6.

10.

RPS 1455/8/5.

11.

RPS 1455/8/7.

12.

ER, vi, cxl-cxlii, 265, 360, 514, 217, 221, 376.

13.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 152; ER, vi, 221, 376.

14.

ER, vi, li-lii; 222.

15.

NRAS GD86/21.

16.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 153.

17.

RPS 1455/8/3. This act was reiterated and strengthened in RPS 1455/8/15.

18.

Brown, Black Douglases, 320.

19.

Fraser, Douglas, iii, 429, 430; HMC., 11th report, Hamilton, 17 (1 July 1455), Hamilton, 18 (6 August 1457).

20.

Fraser, Buccleuch, ii, 49 (14 March 1452), 57 (10 September 1455).

21.

Dunlop, Kennedy, 161, n.

22.

Fraser, Douglas, iii, 88, 90; RMS, v, 54; ER, vi, 556.

23.

RPS 1455/8/9.

24.

RPS 1455/8/11.

25.

RPS 1455/8/12; 13.

26.

RPS 1458/3/12.

27.

NRAS GD25/1/65; NRAS RH6/342. Witnesses on the first are: Thomas Lauder, bishop of Dunkeld, John Winchester, bishop of Moray, Thomas lord Erskine, Andrew lord Avondale, James Livingston, chamberlain, master Richard Forbes, comptroller, master Nicholas Otterburn, clerk register. On the second: Thomas Lauder, bishop of Dunkeld, John Winchester, bishop of Moray, George Shoreswood, bishop of Brechin, William earl of Orkney, lord Sinclair, chancellor, James Livingston, chamberlain, Patrick lord Glamis, Sir Andrew Stewart, lord Avondale, master Nicholas Otterburn, clerk register, Richard Forbes, archdeacon of Ross, comptroller, Sir Ninian de Spot, canon of Dunkeld, William thane of Cawdor, master Thomas Carmichael, chaplain and notary public, master Gavin Brady, chaplain and notary public.

28.

RPS 1455/10/2a.

29.

Pinkerton, The History of Scotland, 487-8.

30.

RPS 1455/10/3-13.

31.

RPS 1455/10/15.

32.

A. F. Saltoun, The Frasers of Philorth (Edinburgh, 1879), ii, 3; AB Ill., ii, 135, iii, 577, iv, 203; W. Fraser, The Sutherland Book (Edinburgh, 1892), iii, 32, 33, 34; The Book of the Thanes of Cawdor; a series of papers selected from the Charter Room at Cawdor, 1236-1742 [hereafter Cawdor Book], ed. C. Innes (Spalding Club, 1859), 21-2; Registrum Episcopatus Aberdonensis, ed. C. Innes (Edinburgh, 1845), i, 280.

33.

ER, vi, 380, 468, 475-6, 221, 469, 482, 521, 220, 380, 486; Cawdor Book, 21-2.

34.

Cawdor Book, 20-1. Cawdor castle is surrounded by a deep ditch and is reached by way of a drawbridge, across which the entrance is defended by this massive iron yett.

35.

AB Ill., iv, 400.

36.

H. Gordon-Slade, ‘Drumminor, formerly Castle Forbes: an Investigation into the Original Building of a Mid-Fifteenth-Century Palace House’, PSAS, xcix (1966-7), 150.

37.

Brown, ‘The Great Rupture’, 12.

38.

Miscellany of the Spalding Club (Spalding Club, 1841-52), iv, 128-30.

39.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 123v.

40.

ER, vi, cxxvi, 116, 280, 291, 355. David Stewart was styled earl of Moray in the accounts rendered in October 1456, and payments were made to his servants until he is styled ‘quondam domini David comitis Moravie’ on 18 July 1457.

41.

Cawdor Book, 19; Dowden, Bishops, 159-60.

42.

ER, vi, cxxvii, 269. Huntly was paid in the accounts rendered in 1456 ‘pro custodia castri de Kyndromy de termino Sancti Martini’. The feast of St Martin was on 11 November.

43.

AB Ill., iv, 203. No date is given for the raids, but it seems reasonable to suppose that they had occurred fairly recently and certainly after the crown had assumed de facto possession of the earldom.

44.

Fraser, Sutherland, iii, 32.

45.

Ibid., 33-4.

46.

T. Thornton, ‘Scotland and the Isle of Man, c.1400-1625’, SHR, lxxvii, no. 203, part 1 (April, 1998), 1-30

47.

C. McNamee, The Wars of the Bruces: Scotland, England and Ireland 1306-1328 (Edinburgh, 2006), 58, 169.

48.

Ibid., 9-15.

49.

RMS, ii, 459, 460, 461.

50.

A. W. Moore, ‘The Connexion between Scotland and Man’, SHR, iii (1905-6), 405.

51.

ER, vi, 204, 349: ‘cum novis navium’; NRAS GD25/1/69.

52.

Dunlop, Kennedy, 176, n.

53.

CSSR, 663; Dunlop, Kennedy, 176.

54.

B. E. Crawford, The Northern Earldoms: Orkney and Caithness from AD 870 to 1470 (Edinburgh, 2013), 320-8.

55.

Ibid., 348-9.

56.

Barbara E. Crawford, ‘Sinclair family (per. 1280–c.1500)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

57.

Fraser, Douglas, iii, no. 85. The grant was witnessed at Perth by James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews, Thomas Lauder, bishop of Dunkeld, George Shoreswood, bishop of Brechin, William Hay earl of Erroll, Thomas lord Erskine, Alexander lord Montgomery, Patrick lord Glamis, George lord Leslie, James lord Hamilton, William Murray of Tullibardine; B. E. Crawford, ‘William Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, and his Family: A Study in the Politics of Survival’, in K. J. Stringer (ed.), Essays on the Nobility of Medieval Scotland (Edinburgh, 1985), 234.

58.

B. E. Crawford, ‘Scotland’s Foreign Relations: Scandinavia’, in J. M. Brown (ed.), Scottish Society in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1977), 87.

59.

Brown, James I, 93-5.

60.

Norges Gamle Love. Anden Raekke 1388-1604 (Oslo, 1934), ii, 129-31. I am indebted to Barbara Crawford for this reference.

61.

Crawford, ‘William Sinclair’, 235.

62.

Norges Gamle Love, ii, 130; Crawford, ‘The Earls of Orkney-Caithness’, 299-300.

63.

RMS, ii, 604. Odal lands were those held independently of any superior lord, and the shrewdness of this strategy meant that the Sinclairs retained landholdings in Orkney and Shetland even after their deprivation of the earldom of Orkney by 1470. Crawford, ‘William Sinclair’, 240.

64.

CDS, iv, 1301.

65.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 112r.

66.

Stevenson, Wars, i, 323; Official Correspondence of Thomas Beckynton [hereafter Beckynton Corr.], ed. G. Williams, (Rolls Series, 1872), ii, 255.

67.

ER, vi, 184, 187, 261.

68.

Rot. Scot., ii, 375-6; Rymer, Foedera, xi, 383.

69.

Stevenson, Wars, i, 323-6.

70.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 119r.

71.

Beckynton Corr., ii, 142-4; Charters and other Documents relating to the City of Edinburgh [hereafter Edin. Chrs] (Scottish Burgh Records Society, 1871), no. 36; ER, vi, 243.

72.

Stevenson, Wars, i, 326-7, 328-9.

73.

Ibid., 330-1.

74.

ER, vi, xlv-xlvi, 305.

75.

Ibid., 308-10.

76.

NRAS, GD 124/1/161.

77.

RPS 1456/4.

78.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 116v.

79.

Ibid.,158; Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 157-8.

80.

RPS 1456/9. There is some evidence for this having been carried out, although the personnel differed from those named in October, and representation was not spread as evenly as intended. Dunlop, Kennedy, 320.

CHAPTER 8

Consolidation and the Road to War (1457-1460)

give hearty thanks to God that sent them such a prince to be their governor and defender.[1]

As James II celebrated the Christmas festivities of 1456 at Kennedy’s episcopal castle at St Andrews, he would have been considering the possibilities for renewing his strategies on the Anglo-Scottish border in the light of Richard duke of York’s removal from the protectorate and the reassertion, however nominal, of Henry VI’s authority.[2] The guarded message that the king may have taken from the three estates at his most recent parliament was that enthusiasm for the prosecution of war on the borders was waning, with a more cautious and less costly approach being favoured. The number of letters exchanged between the Scottish and French courts during this period testify to the almost desperate hopes for assistance from the French king, but a lengthy letter from Charles VII was delivered to the Scottish court in January 1457, in which he excused himself from sending aid on the grounds that his resources were engaged fully in protecting his lands reclaimed from the English, as the coastline remained vulnerable to attack ‘because only six hours of a favourable wind suffice to pass from England into the said country of Normandy’.[3] Shorn of its diplomatic verbiage, this was an emphatic nolle prosequi and, with this failure of hopes that Charles VII would offer the requested assistance, the Scottish campaign lost some of its impetus, although the king’s restless desire to consolidate his position and demonstrate his authority was unabated.

James II visited the south-west in the early months of 1457, issuing charters in Wigtown on 24 February and Kirkcudbright on 8 and 9 March, before moving on to Dumfries on 20 March.[4] His progress through the south-west was intended to serve as a reminder of his presence and to consolidate his hold on an area that had been a long-standing focal point of Black Douglas power, and part of the business conducted during this visit was concerned with the position of former Douglas adherents, such as Mark of Haliburton. On 23 May 1455, James II confirmed a charter of the lands of Glengennet and Bennan in the earldom of Carrick, given by James earl of Douglas at Douglas castle on 28 March 1453, to his secretary, Mark of Haliburton. Less than six months later, on 3 October 1455, the king was at Tongland priory when he granted the same lands to Mark Haliburton. Between March and October, the Black Douglases had been forfeited in parliament and James II had travelled to the south-west to underline his victory, on which occasion it is hardly surprising to find an important former retainer of James 9th earl of Douglas seeking royal approval for a land grant that had been given by his erstwhile lord. The presence of Sir Simon Glendinning is significant as he also had strong links with the Black Douglases, and may have been serving the crown as an intermediary with former Douglas men. Another witness to this charter was John lord Darnley who, with Glendinning, is one of the men named by the Auchinleck chronicler as having joined in the king’s attack on William 8th earl of Douglas in February 1452.[5] However, any impression that there was a smooth and universal transfer of allegiance to royal lordship in the aftermath of the Douglas forfeiture is undermined by the grant issued by the king on 31 March 1457 to his half-brother James Stewart of the lands of Bedshiel ‘in the king’s hands by the forfeiture of the late Mark Haliburton’, followed on 19 April by another grant to James Stewart of ‘the half of the barony of Trabeth, alias Glengennet, formerly belonging to Mark de Haliburton’.[6] The forfeiture and death of Haliburton must have occurred before the king’s visit to the south-west in early 1457, and although there is no reference in the parliamentary records to proceedings having been taken against him, it is possible that he had been in contact with his former patron and had not transferred his loyalty wholeheartedly to the king.

This may also have been the case with James Douglas of Ralston (also styled of Lochleven, or Lugton), who was the brother of Henry Douglas of Lochleven and had taken part in the tournament held at Stirling in February 1449 where he jousted with Burgundian knights alongside James master of Douglas (later 9th earl).[7] Douglas of Ralston was an adherent of the Black Douglases and his name appears on an English safe-conduct issued to William 8th earl of Douglas on 12 May 1451, although in view of the fact that he was sent by James II on an embassy to France in 1456, he did not share in the disgrace of the Douglases the previous year.[8] However, Douglas of Ralston was suspected of having used his position on this embassy to communicate with the exiled James earl of Douglas, as he was forced to W ee with his wife to England and they had sentence of forfeiture passed against them by 1458 for complicity in the treason of the Black Douglases, bringing the lands of Drumblade (north-west Aberdeenshire) and Towie (near Kildrummy) into crown hands ‘through the forfeiture of the wife of Sir James Douglas of Ralston’.[9]

James II was keen to offer former Douglas men the opportunity to rescind their existing ties of allegiance and accept royal lordship in addition to the natural duty of allegiance due to him as their sovereign. Although his hostility to those whose intentions he had reason to suspect could be implacable, he does not appear to have pursued an unbridled vendetta against former Douglas associates, although one man who escaped only narrowly the worst consequences of such an association was James Lindsay of Covington. Lindsay’s name may be found on a number of Douglas charters during the 1440s and, in a supplication to the pope for dispensation to hold two parish churches, dated 3 October 1444, he is styled ‘first secretary and counsellor of the earl of Douglas’ and, from 1448, he was serving as provost of the collegiate church of Lincluden.[10] Lindsay of Covington acted as a witness on several royal charters in 1449, but his transition from Douglas to royal service does not appear to have taken place until 12 January 1453, when he is first recorded holding the office of keeper of the privy seal, although he ceases to appear in official records after 14 April 1454.[11] Lindsay of Covington’s brief and patchy appearances in royal service require some explanation, and this may be found in his personal connections. He was a kinsman of the Lindsay earls of Crawford and, on 18 June 1449, he witnessed a charter by Alexander 4th earl of Crawford to John, ‘brother-german’ of James lord Hamilton.[12] Lindsay received grants from Earl Alexander of the keepership of Crawford castle in Lanarkshire, the bailiary of Crawford-Lindsay and a tenancy in the same lordship; a grant made in the early 1450s when Crawford-Douglas co-operation was well-established.[13] Lindsay of Covington’s evident connection to two of the principal members of the infamous bond which may have precipitated the king’s violent attack on William 8th earl of Douglas in 1452 would have placed him in a precarious position in the ensuing period of tense stand-off between James II and James 9th earl of Douglas, and one interpretation of his advancement to the position as keeper of the privy seal in 1453 was that it represented part of the compromise sought in the context of the Lanark bond, and rapprochement with Alexander earl of Crawford.[14]

Given that the keeper of the privy seal had a role in administering royal patronage, this was an important and sensitive office, held until February 1449 by William Turnbull, bishop of Glasgow, but it does not appear to have been held between that date and Lindsay of Covington’s appointment on 12 January 1453, and when Lindsay disappeared from the office in April 1454, it remained vacant until the appointment of Thomas Spens, bishop of Aberdeen, in January 1458.[15] Although the end of James Lindsay of Covington’s brief spell in active royal service has been interpreted as part of the final collapse of the Douglas faction in 1455, Norman MacDougall has advanced the convincing argument that, rather than Lindsay maintaining a sense of loyalty to his former Douglas patrons, his elevation to royal favour may have owed much to the queen’s particular pleading, causing Lindsay to transfer his loyalty to her, and when the Lanark bond of 16 January 1453 looked set to deprive the queen of the earldom of Wigtown, settled on her as a substantial part of her dower lands, he may have challenged the king’s actions.[16] He appears to have retired to Lincluden to live down this fall from grace, but that he was not entirely cut off from royal favour may be indicated by the issue of a crown charter to ‘Master James Lindsay, provost of the collegiate church of Lincluden’, on 3 June 1456.[17] However, the most intriguing dimension of Lindsay’s strained relationship with the king is suggested by an entry in the Auchinleck Chronicle. This refers to actions taken by Mary of Gueldres following the death of James II in 1460 and reads:

Item the said quene efter the deid of king Iames the secund tuke master Iames lyndesay for principale counsalour and gart him kepe the preve sele nochtwithstanding that the said master Iames was excludit fra the counsall of the forsaid king & fra the court & for his werray helynes and had bene slane for his demeritis had nocht bene he was redemit with gold.[18]

Lindsay of Covington’s reinstatement to the office of keeper of the privy seal (an office he held at least by February 1461) and the role of ‘principal counsellor’ during Queen Mary’s regency is an initiative that does not appear to have met with the chronicler’s approval.[19] The exact meaning of ‘helynes’ in this context is not entirely clear, but it has been suggested that it had its roots in the teutonic ‘hael’ and conveys a meaning of subtlety or duplicity, although it should be noted that the chronicler is no dispassionate recorder of events, and shows a fairly hostile attitude to the queen in remarks such as ‘thai war litill gud worth bath spirituale & temporall That gaf the keping of the kinrik till a woman’.[20] The reference to Lindsay’s demerits having brought him close to being slain may be interpreted in the light of an injudicious challenge to the king on behalf of the queen or a duplicitous continuation with his former connections, but given his subsequent reintroduction to the queen’s council, the former appears more likely. When the chronicler refers to Lindsay having been ‘redemit with gold’, this suggests that he was able to buy his way out of trouble or rely on a patron prepared to pay on his behalf, but it would take the death of the king before Lindsay of Covington was able to return to royal service.

In the justice ayre carried out during the early months of 1457, James II was undoubtedly seeking to make his presence felt in the south-west, and it is significant that he was accompanied by men such as Robert lord Boyd, John lord Darnley and Andrew Stewart lord Avandale; all participants in the killing of William earl of Douglas. Avandale experienced a particularly rapid elevation through royal favour, securing the keepership of Lochmaben castle in 1456, acquiring his title of Avondale from forfeited Douglas estates, and securing office as warden of the West March by February 1457. Also, he was styled ‘King’s Guardian’ on 20 March and 28 April, which implies a role of personal bodyguard and may have a parallel in the office held by David Guthrie in the following reign of captain of the royal guard.[21] As part of this assertion of royal authority, the king visited Kirkcudbright, which had been reclassified from a Douglas burgh of regality to a royal burgh. It is not clear exactly when in 1457 the Stanley/Douglas attack on Kirkcudbright occurred, but it may have taken place shortly after the visit in March in order to achieve maximum impact in undermining the king’s recent presentation of royal authority.[22]

However bellicose York’s response to James II’s renunciation of the truce appeared, recent changes at the English court may have prompted overtures from the Lancastrians with a view to negotiating a settlement with the Scots. D’Escouchy states that Henry VI’s queen, Margaret of Anjou, proposed a marriage alliance between the two sons of the duke of Somerset (presumably Henry Beaufort, who succeeded his father when the latter was killed at the first battle of St Albans in 1455, and his younger brother, Edmund) and James II’s sisters, Joanna and Annabella.[23] Whether or not this suggestion was ever entertained seriously, there ensued a period of negotiations that concluded in the agreement of a very detailed Anglo-Scottish truce on 20 June.[24]

Resolution of hostilities on the border allowed James II to concentrate on pursuit of his domestic objectives, and he set out on a justice ayre to the north and north-east of his kingdom in early autumn 1457, one of the principal purposes of which appears to have been the establishment of royal authority through a combination of strong assertion and judicious compromise. An example of assertion may be found in the eventual resolution of the long-running dispute over the earldom of Mar, where the dogged determination of Thomas lord Erskine to press his claim to at least half of the earldom of Mar had been pursued through assiduous service at court; his presence being recorded in attendance on the king at Spynie, Falkland, Perth, Stirling, Edinburgh and Linlithgow during 1456 and the spring and summer of 1457.[25] Erskine’s hopes may have been raised when the king visited Moray in February 1456, but it was not until he visited the north-east in October and November 1457 that the matter of Mar was eventually addressed. The removal of William earl of Orkney from the office of chancellor after October 1456 and his replacement with George Shoreswood, bishop of Brechin, had been motivated by the clash of interests between Orkney and the king, one strand of which may have been Orkney’s involvement in claims regarding the lordship of Garioch. James II may have felt that his determination to retain and confirm royal control in Mar was a matter better accomplished under the chancellorship of the bishop of Brechin than the earl of Orkney. However, even at this late stage the nature of the legal arguments seemed less than clear-cut, relying on the rather dubious withdrawal of testimony from some of those who witnessed the original grant to Erskine in 1438 and the blatant attempt to throw doubt on the motives and self-interest of Alexander Forbes and others who backed the Erskines. It was Shoreswood who, in the presence of the king, acted as royal advocate on 5 November 1457 in the tolbooth of Aberdeen, when an assize of error rejected Erskine’s claim and found that the lands of Mar were rightfully vested in the crown. Testimonials were taken to the effect that certain jurors had given erroneous evidence in 1438 in favour of the right of Robert lord Erskine to half the lands of the earldom of Mar. The claim based on genealogy was countered by the deponents’ statement that ‘they had no knowledge of the degree of kindred in which Robert lord Erskine stood to Isabel, countess of Mar’, and doubt was cast even on the motives of Sir Alexander Forbes who had been rewarded by Erskine with the lands of Strathdee, ‘as the public voice said, for his help in serving the brieve’. The witnesses claimed to have been ‘seduced by the smooth words and feigned falsehoods of John of Haddington and the other prolocutors of Lord Erskine and that they now see that they erred in serving the said brieve and humbly ask the king’s forgiveness’.[26]

One of the supporters of the crown at this assize was George lord Leslie, a portion of whose lands was in the earldom of Mar, and it was no more than three months later that he was elevated to the earldom of Rothes and had his lands of Ballinbreich erected into a barony, with his burgh of Leslie Green becoming a burgh of barony.[27] Despite Erskine’s best efforts, the king took advantage of his possession immediately, granting lands in the earldom of Mar and sheriffdom of Aberdeen to Edmund Mortimer, although he consolidated royal possession by settling the earldom of Mar and Garioch upon his youngest son, John, by 23 June 1459; a title he held until his death in 1480.[28]

Disappointing though this judgement may have been for Erskine, the king’s other business conducted during this northern justice ayre was far more controversial and alarming for the three estates. Having recognised the undercurrent of resistance in the parliament of October 1456 to any form of regular taxation, James II had turned his mind to alternative methods of raising revenue and offering a form of patronage that did not require any substantial disbursement from the crown, leading to a concerted policy in 1457 and 1458 of offering remissions. This was a lucrative but widely unpopular practice as it effectively waived the pursuit of rights or legal prosecution in return for the payment of a fee or as a form of buying support. Such a practice was not new, but James II seems to have embraced it with an enthusiasm that raised concerns due to its scale. During the royal justice ayre of 1457, a total of 378 remissions are recorded as having been given at Inverness, Elgin, Banff and Aberdeen, of which 229 appear to have been offered at Inverness and Elgin for a token payment of £1.[29] These had a purpose that went beyond the purely financial, as many of the men receiving remissions were connected with John MacDonald, earl of Ross; a man whom James II sought to propitiate in return for his support and co-operation. For example, Ross’s half-brother, Gillespic (or Celestine), who had been presented with a silver collar and chain worth £20 in 1456, now received the keepership of Redcastle, while Ross’s ally, Malcolm MacIntosh, was one of those to receive a remission in 1458.[30] William Urquhart, sheriff of Cromarty, was offered remissions on 4 and 5 October 1457 ‘for depredations committed by him upon the lands of the earldom of Sutherland, in the company of the late Earl of Ross’, and this may refer to violent exploitation of the weakened authority within the Sutherland earldom during the young earl’s period as a hostage for James I’s ransom. Certainly, it would explain the allusion to the ‘late’ earl of Ross, as John earl of Sutherland was back at Dunrobin by May 1448, and John MacDonald succeeded his father, Alexander, as earl of Ross and Lord of the Isles in 1449. The focus of the lordship had shifted eastwards under Earl Alexander, who moved his administrative centre to Dingwall, and this would have facilitated intervention in the neighbouring earldom of Sutherland.[31]

It may be argued that there was a measure of political astuteness in granting such concessions to MacDonald and his allies, as they were designed to placate a magnate operating in a region that was hard to bring under meaningful royal control without such delegation of authority or official recognition of the fait accompli. However, it was a very different approach to royal lordship from that offered to other northern lords, also looking to James II to have their loyalty and service recognised. To many, it must have appeared that the greatest rewards were being reaped by those who had rebelled against the crown’s authority, whereas the efforts of those who had laboured in support of the king were attracting little or no significant recognition, but simply being taken for granted.

It is clear that the practice of giving remissions in such quantities was deeply unpopular, and the parliament which sat at Edinburgh on 6 March 1458 produced a substantial body of legislation and other business, including a thinly-veiled rebuke concerning ‘the pleading of parties of diverse persons who have remission from the king’.[32] Although James II had proved an enthusiastic supporter of parliament’s exhortation to hold regular justice ayres, the three estates were less than happy with his use of these occasions to generate income for the crown. Criticism of the king was comparatively mild and the statute sought to ensure a measure of damage-limitation in that those in receipt of remissions should compensate or pledge restitution to the victims of their crime within forty days, after which their remission would expire. Also, plaintiffs could take their cases before the lords of session, who would hear and judge those cases regardless of whether or not the perpetrator had a remission.[33] However, this was not a question only of the king abusing his personal grants of remissions, but extended to his encouragement of all chamberlain ayres to exploit to the hilt all available sources of revenue. As Roland Tanner has pointed out, the surge in the number of occasions that chamberlain ayres were held in twenty-three burghs between 1455 and 1460 ‘would seem unlikely to be simply the result of the poorer survival rate of the exchequer rolls in the earlier period’.[34] Such ruthless financial exploitation by a king who had received a massive windfall in the Douglas forfeiture of 1455 – one which had been safeguarded to the best of parliament’s ability in the Act of Annexation – was creating some misgivings within the ranks of the three estates. The extortion of money through exploitation of legal or ancient rights and customs would have been unpopular enough, but the central problem was the perversion of equitable justice, with greater emphasis being placed on the letter rather than the spirit of the law; a policy that could, in some cases, lead to the effective subversion of due process.[35]

The emphasis which successive assemblies of the three estates, whether in parliament or general council, had placed on good administration of justice throughout the reign of James II may explain why this was such a central focus of the 1458 parliament. However, this was more than a simple reiteration of long-running concerns and rather reflects the denting of hopes, raised in the 1455 parliament that the king would strive for peace and stability within the kingdom. Instead, he had displayed a hostile attitude in foreign diplomacy which was yet to show any significant benefit to outweigh the costs, and parliament’s final act in the records of the 1458 assembly, although couched in reasonably guarded language, hammered home a message to the king about where his duty lay:

since God of his grace has sent our sovereign lord such progress and prosperity that all his rebels and breakers of his justice are removed from his realm, and no masterful men nor party remain that may cause the breaking of his realm, so that his highness be inclined in himself and his ministers to the quiet and common profit of his realm and the keeping of justice among his lieges, his three estates with all humility exhort and require his highness to be inclined with such diligence to the execution of these statutes and acts written above, so that God may be pleased by him and all his lieges, spiritual and temporal, may be so content of him that they have cause to pray to almighty God for his prosperity, and give hearty thanks to God that sent them such a prince to be their governor and defender.[36]

The ‘statutes and acts written above’ were detailed and wide-ranging, with attention being given to agricultural husbandry, particularly the planting of woods and hedges and the sowing of wheat, peas and beans, further sumptuary legislation regulating clothing, and the now famous statute that sought to discourage the playing of football and golf. The last appears within the context of establishing quarterly weapon showings and ensuring that archery practice was to take place each Sunday at the parish church, where bow marks and butts were to be provided with the payment of 2d for drink being a further incentive. There is a highly practical element in seeking to train those who would be required to turn out in the common army to be skilled with arrow and bow, but the principal point of social interest in this statute is that it is the first reference in medieval Scottish records to the playing of golf. The fact that the king was seeking to have it ‘utirly cryit doune and nocht wsyt’ means that it must have been played (along with football) to an extent that was having an impact on honing the more practical skills of archery.[37]

Financial matters were also a concern of this parliament, with the ‘matter of the money for the profit of the realm’ leading to a decision that no further coins should be minted until a nominated committee of the estates had considered the problem of reduced silver bullion content in coins, which Ranald Nicholson calculated as having fallen from 64 pennies coined from an ounce of silver in 1440 to 96 in 1451.[38] Such devaluation may explain the lack of enthusiasm for James II’s promotion of feu-ferme tenure, by which property was held on a perpetual lease for a fixed rent. This practice was associated in the fourteenth century primarily, although not exclusively, with burghs, but had become more widely applied to crown lands. Those granted feu charters would pay a fairly substantial entry fee (grassum) and a fixed sum thereafter, the rate of which would often be higher than the rent paid previously. Taken together with concerns over coinage values, this practice, lucrative though it may have been for the crown, could place serious burdens upon the tenants of crown lands and led to the three estates offering the cautious advice to the king that he ‘begin and give example to the rest’ and ensure that the rent be set ‘to a competent value’.[39] James II appears to have taken the three estates at their word, and in 1459 he offered twenty-three feu-charters to those living at Falkland in the settlement that had grown up around the ancient castle favoured as a hunting lodge and residence by the king and his queen, Mary of Gueldres. The queen had received the earldom of Fife and the manor of Falkland as part of her marriage settlement, and a new gatehouse range was added to the castle in the 1450s, with James II raising the town to the status of the royal burgh of Falkland in 1458.[40] However, the practice of feu-ferme tenure was generally unpopular because of the costs involved and suspicion over the long-term alienation of land, and it was not to be exploited fully until the reign of the king’s grandson, James IV.[41]

The parliament held in March 1458 was the last in the reign of James II for which such detailed records survive, although other documents allude to meetings of the three estates in parliament in October 1459 and July 1460, and Roland Tanner argues that the commission that sat at Edinburgh on 12 October 1458 had been authorised by the March parliament to adjudicate in the dispute between the burghs of Dundee and Montrose, and probably also to arrange the terms of diplomatic embassies.[42] At Perth on 6 November, James II issued a letter appointing ambassadors to travel to the king of Castile to conclude an alliance, although he is styled mistakenly John, rather than Henry. The preamble to the terms of the letter, even allowing for the hyperbole used in diplomatic exchanges, sheds light on James II’s attitude to international diplomacy at this time. He states: ‘Since the renowned highness of kings and the favour of kingdoms is increased by bonds and alliances, being joined as unbreakable walls against the incursion of enemies as if one body [. . .] we wish to conclude friendships and perpetual bonds with the most serene and powerful prince John [sic] of Castile, and the invincible army of that kingdom.’[43] Those appointed were William Monypenny of Concressault, John Kennedy, provost of St Andrews, Patrick Fochart, captain of Charles VII of France’s Garde Ecossaises, and Robert Patillo of Claremont. They were empowered to ‘agree perpetual or temporary friendships, leagues and bonds between the king and the Prince of Castile’ with the intriguingly loose instruction to do so in terms that seem best to them ‘promising to hold whatever they agree as acceptable’.[44] Annie Dunlop pointed out that it would have been in the interests of Charles VII to promote a league between Scotland and Castile, as both James II and Henry IV had made intercessions on behalf of the dauphin Louis, whose strained relationship with his father had caused him to seek refuge with Philip duke of Burgundy since August 1456.

Maritime considerations may have been a strong factor in these negotiations, as attacks by English pirates and privateers were complained of by both the Scots and the Castilians, and if Charles VII could achieve a maritime alliance, this would help promote trade and protect his coastline.[45] One example of the perils faced by merchant vessels is the fate that befell the Marie of St Andrews, in which James II and James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews may have had a financial interest. Having received an English safe-conduct in February 1453 covering the ship, crew and cargo, the Marie was captured on its way back to Scotland by English pirates who took it to Devon, where it was renamed the Antony of Dartmouth by February 1456.[46] Diplomacy and litigation failed to secure restitution, and it was incidents such as this that prompted calls for united action.

The timing of these overtures to Henry IV of Castile is suggestive if a connection may be made with the visit to the Scottish court of Georg von Ehingen in 1458. He was an Austrian nobleman and former servant of James II’s sister, Eleanor, who had married Sigismund of Austria, but his ambition and adventurous spirit had taken him on travels described in his diary, although the chronology is often hard to reconcile. Nevertheless, he describes an extended visit to the court of Henry IV of Castile, who conferred generous gifts upon von Ehingen when he left in 1457. Henry’s gifts included the Spanish order of the Escama, described as a broad collar overlapping ‘like large fish scales’, the Order of Castile (a scarlet cloak with gold bands) and the Order of Granada (a granite apple with leaf, set on a club). In addition to these prestigious orders, Georg was given 300 ducats and each member of his party received a jennet (small Spanish horse). Henry IV of Castile was not the only monarch to confer largesse upon Georg von Ehingen, as Alfonso V of Portugal, gifted cloth of gold worth 22 ducats, crimson satin and 100 ells of black satin. Members of his party each received a Portuguese stallion, plus 300 ducats for the expenses of the journey. It is clear that such gifts could be used as currency, as Georg’s own account relates that, after leaving Alfonso’s court, he and his companions sold the gold cloth and satin at Saragossa and realised 500 ducats. They also sold their ‘heavy’ horses on the way through Spain and France.

Georg von Ehingen’s journey took him through France and England before he arrived in Scotland in 1458, where he was received at the court of James II and recorded that ‘much honour was shown me in hunting, feasting and dancing’. Coupled with the generous and expensive gifts conferred by the king and queen, itemised as two tents and a cloth of black satin from the king, with a sum of ten ducats for each of Georg’s four pages, and from the queen, ‘a fine jewel worth 30 ducats and a stallion worth quite 100 gulden’, there is every indication that Georg von Ehingen’s status as an honoured visitor may have included delivery of information which led to the despatch of a Scottish embassy to Castile.[47]

The same men named as being charged with the embassy to Castile were instructed to represent James II at the court of Charles VII in negotiations with Christian I of Denmark, while Monypenny and Kennedy received instructions on 8 November to advance the Scottish king’s claims to Saintonge.[48] This claim rested upon the offer of Saintonge and its port of La Rochelle made to James I in 1428 as part of the negotiations that led to the marriage of Margaret Stewart, eldest daughter of James I, and the Dauphin Louis in 1436. However, the Scots had promised for their part to supply Charles VII with 6,000 Scottish troops, and their failure to honour this part of the agreement led to Charles VII withdrawing the offer of Saintonge.[49] The resurrection of Scottish claims in the face of this evidence has been interpreted as demonstrating James II’s inflated sense of his own importance, but it may have been a pretext for negotiations bound up with wider but unspecified diplomatic business. These diplomatic despatches concluded with an embassy to offer the king’s dutiful obedience to the new pope, Aeneas Sylvius Bartholomeus Piccolomini, who took the name Pius II. He had been elected after the death of Calixtus III on 6 August and had, unusually, visited Scotland as a papal envoy to James I in 1435, although this had not left a good impression upon him.[50] The envoys chosen to travel to Rome were William Monypenny and his kinsman, George Monypenny, Hugh Douglas, archdeacon of St Andrews, John Kennedy, provost of St Andrews and Robert Patillo, although only George Monypenny is recorded as being at the papal court in Siena in August 1460.[51]

Another aspect of foreign diplomacy during this time is its failure to produce marriage alliances for the king’s sisters, Joanna and Annabella. Joanna was James II’s third sister, probably born in 1427, who had been betrothed, briefly, to James 3rd earl of Angus in 1440.[52] She had been sent to France in 1445 with her sister, Eleanor, in what appears to have been a speculative venture, and she remained there, apparently at Charles VII’s expense, in the hope that a suitable match would be found for her. As Joanna is said to have been unable to hear or speak, she would have been at a disadvantage both socially and in the high-aristocratic medieval marriage market, where listening and observing, establishing networks and acting as a mediator were important functions. Annabella, James II’s youngest sister who had been born in 1434, was betrothed at Stirling on 14 December 1444 to Count Louis of Geneva, second son of the duke of Savoy, and as she was little more than ten years old when she arrived at the court of Savoy the betrothal was necessarily a lengthy one. However, a shift in the foreign policy ambitions of Charles VII led to the treaty of Gannat in March 1456, which saw Thomas Spens, bishop of Aberdeen, agree to the formal dissolution of the Savoy marriage contract, with 25,000 crowns to be paid in damages.[53] Any suggestion that Annabella and her sister, Joanna, should be married to the sons of the duke of Somerset, if that had indeed been considered in 1457, was never acted upon, and both Stewart princesses were in Harfleur in November 1457 preparing to board a ship to take them back to Scotland. Bad weather prevented them from sailing according to a letter sent by Thomas Spens, bishop of Galloway, on 8 November which stated the reasons why it was not considered safe for the princesses to continue their journey to Scotland.[54] They remained in France until the following spring, when it was deemed safe enough to attempt the voyage, and their ship arrived in Kirkcudbright where they were met by James II and Mary of Gueldres.[55] They soon discovered that their brother had made plans for their marriages to suit his own domestic alliances, and Joanna was married to James Douglas of Dalkeith, earl of Morton, and Annabella to George Gordon, master of Huntly. It is not clear exactly when these marriages took place, but it is likely to have been at some point in late 1458, when Joanna would have been thirty and Annabella twenty-four.[56]

The marriages of his two sisters were arranged in the context of bestowing patronage and royal favour which may have been intended to heal division or assuage disappointment. George master of Huntly had tried to secure a marriage alliance with Elizabeth Dunbar, widowed countess of Moray, shortly after the death of her husband, Archibald Douglas, at Arkinholm in May 1455. However, James II had moved speedily to block this ambition, as he was determined that the Gordons of Huntly would not replace the Black Douglases as a magnate family who would have a significant territorial power base in the north-east. That they were seeking to make connections with other north-eastern magnates is demonstrated in an obligation dated 9 October 1457, in which Alexander earl of Huntly offered payment by instalment of £1000 Scots to William Hay, earl of Erroll ‘because of a marriage to be completed betwixt Nichol son and apparent heir to the earl of Erroll and Margaret daughter of the granter’. Hay was the royal constable and had been elevated to the earldom of Erroll in 1452, therefore a marriage alliance between the two families would have consolidated further Huntly’s position in the region.[57] Marriage to the king’s youngest sister, Annabella, may have been intended to compensate George Gordon, master of Huntly for the curtailing of his wider ambitions, but it is unlikely that it was seen as much more than a sop when he had hoped for more from a grateful monarch, and they were divorced in 1471.[58]

The alliance between Joanna and James Douglas of Dalkeith, earl of Morton, appears to have been more successful and accorded with James II’s replenishment of the ranks of the higher nobility by rewarding those whose loyalty he was prepared to recognise in a manner that offered no threat to crown interests. However, this patronage came after a tense dispute brought about by James II’s insensitivity and somewhat cavalier attitude to due legal process in elevating James Douglas of Dalkeith as earl of Morton on 10 March 1458. The lordship of Dalkeith had been the focus of a long-running dispute dating from the minority of James II when, after the death in 1440 of James Douglas of Dalkeith, his son, also James, was declared incapable of exercising lordship due to mental incapacity. Henry Douglas of Borgue was the younger brother of the incapacitated James Douglas and managed to secure recognition to exercise power in the lordship on behalf of his brother in 1445, with the backing of William 8th earl of Douglas.[59] Dalkeith was an extensive and lucrative regality, and James Douglas of Dalkeith resigned it in favour of his son, James, in July 1456, although the latter was still a minor. The death of the elder James before 11 October 1457 brought full inheritance to the younger James Douglas, for whom the earldom of Morton was created in March 1458, although this led to an immediate protest lodged by William lord Borthwick on behalf of his sister, Janet. She had been the second wife of James Douglas of Dalkeith (d. 1440) whose son had been regarded as unfit to administer the lordship, although he had been able to marry and provide an heir. Nevertheless, Janet’s complaint rested on her claim that the barony of Morton in Nithsdale had been alienated from the possessions of the lordship of Dalkeith as part of her jointure when she had married the new earl’s grandfather. The title of Morton, Borthwick protested, was one that should be held by Janet’s son, William Douglas, ‘therefore he humbly implored the said king that nothing be done in prejudice of his sister or her son concerning the lands of Morton pertaining to them by hereditary right’. George Shoreswood, bishop of Brechin and chancellor, made the somewhat mendacious reply that the name of the earldom was taken from Morton in Calderclere (a village in the sheriffdom of Edinburgh) rather than Morton in Nithsdale.[60] The marriage of James earl of Morton to Joanna Stewart had taken place by 15 May 1459, but the falsity of claims that the title of Morton did not refer to the barony of Morton in Dumfriesshire was shown by the appearance in parliament on 9 October 1459 of Janet Borthwick to complain that she had been ‘unjustly ejected from the lands of the barony of Morton, with the pertinents, in the sheriffdom of Dumfries, and she asked remedy of law’. Such sharp practice may suggest connivance between Morton and the king, but it is revealing that parliament’s adjudication found in favour of Janet Borthwick, ordering that she ‘ought to be restored to her possessions of the lands of the barony of Morton, with the pertinents, in the same state as she had held them before her ejection’.[61] If this was a rebuttal of the actions taken by Morton, it may be seen also as a veiled rebuke to the king.

Less controversial was the creation by James II of the earldom of Marischal for William lord Keith by 4 July 1458.[62] Since the twelfth century, the Keith family had held the hereditary office of marischal of Scotland, which entailed arrangements for the service and provision of the king’s apartments. The office came to include a judicial function in dispensing justice at times of war, and there were some shared ceremonial duties with the constable, including the arrangements for tournaments and judicial combat. The principal seat of the Keiths was the castle of Dunottar in Kincardineshire, and William Keith had been made a lord of parliament by 6 July 1451, when he is styled William, lord Keith in charters granted by James II, and he served as a guarantor of the truce with England in 1457. His promotion to the earldom of Marischal derived from his hereditary judicial office rather than his estates, and followed the practice of elevating loyal men who held hereditary household offices, such as the constable, William Hay, whose earldom title of Erroll was derived from his existing estates. By conferring titles, including the creation of more lords of parliament, James II was providing increased status to men upon whose loyalty he relied without entailing any significant alienation of crown resources or encouraging potentially problematic territorial power blocs.[63]

The only creation which may be seen as stepping slightly away from that policy is the creation of the earldom of Argyll for Colin Campbell. Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochawe had become a lord of parliament as Lord Campbell in 1445; among the first to secure this recognition during the minority of James II. When Duncan died in 1453, his grandson, Colin, succeeded him as second Lord Campbell, and his elevation to the newly created earldom of Argyll before 24 October 1458 was recognition of a loyal and increasingly powerful supporter of the king with estates and connections in the west of the kingdom that served to make him the ideal crown agent in a region close to the Lordship of the Isles. Stephen Boardman has suggested that the death in July 1457 of Ranald mac Alexander, who had occupied crown lands in the north of Arran since the 1430s and refused to pay rents to crown officials, prompted James II to seek the reassertion of crown rights, and a measure of success appears to have ensued in the re-establishment of Alexander lord Montgomery and Fergus Foullarton as crown officials on Arran.[64] If, as seems likely, Colin Campbell provided practical support for the king during his expedition to the firth of Clyde in 1457, this would certainly have encouraged his elevation to an earldom.[65] A guarded peace had been made between the king and John Macdonald earl of Ross and lord of the Isles, but this had involved considerable compromise and James II would have been keen to establish a loyal and increasingly influential supporter in Argyll to act in the interests of the crown and form a buffer against any future trouble from the lordship.

Having replenished the ranks of the nobility in a manner acceptable to his own interests, James II turned his attention to the further pursuit of his diplomatic objectives. The Anglo-Scottish truce of 10 June 1457 had been disrupted continually by border raids and acts of piracy, such as the seizure of a vessel owned by Thomas Spens, bishop of Galloway, with a cargo of wine and iron, subsequently delivered to Richard Neville, earl of Warwick in Calais.[66] The normal manner in which breaches of a truce were settled was by commissions of representatives appointed by the respective governments to consider circumstances and agree terms, and one such commission signed an indenture at Reddenburn (by Sprouston, Roxburghshire) on 29 September 1458. Among the border lords named in this commission were Alexander Home of Dunglass and Andrew Kerr of Altonburn, with Sir Simon Glendinning, George earl of Angus and George Shoreswood, bishop of Brechin and chancellor also present, giving some indication of the seriousness of this meeting. The English commissioners, who included Henry Percy, 3rd earl of Northumberland and warden of the East March, William abbot of Alnwick, Ralph Percy, lieutenant of the East March and Ralph Grey, undertook to return an answer by 15 January 1459 to the Scots’ demand for the extradition of all of the king’s rebels who had not renounced their fealty and taken their oaths as Englishmen. The forfeited James 9th earl of Douglas had renounced his fealty to James II, therefore this may have been an attempt to persuade those members of the Douglas affinity who had W ed over the border with their lord to return, thus weakening the Douglas party in exile.[67]

That such a policy may have borne fruit is suggested by the return to Scotland of Margaret Douglas, styled by later writers, ‘fair maid of Galloway’. She was the daughter of Archibald 5th earl of Douglas and had been used in the aggrandisement of James ‘the Gross’, 7th earl of Douglas, following the execution in 1440 of Margaret’s brothers, William 6th earl of Douglas and David. Her subsequent marriage to James the Gross’s son, William 8th earl of Douglas, had been designed to keep the Douglas estates together, and this policy lay behind her second marriage to her brother-in-law, James, following the slaying of William by James II in 1452. Margaret had shared in the exile of the Black Douglases to England in 1455, and she appears to have been part of the household of her formidable mother-in-law, Countess Beatrice. However, she reappeared in Scotland by 1459, apparently on her own initiative, and was received back into favour by the king, who promptly married her to his eldest half-brother, John Stewart, earl of Atholl (whose elevation to the earldom occurred before 20 June 1457). The marriage had taken place by 25 March 1460, on which date Atholl and his wife, Margaret, received a charter of the lordship of Balvenie and other lands in the sheriffdom of Banff.[68] No record survives of Margaret seeking dispensation for this, although her marriage to James 9th earl of Douglas was said to have taken place in 1453, and he was alive until 1491. A divorce or annulment must have been obtained, and although Margaret’s two marriages to her Douglas cousins had failed to produce any recorded offspring, she proceeded to have two daughters by Atholl.

Although the English commissioners had promised a reply to the king’s demands by 15 January, Andrew Hunter, abbot of Melrose, and Rothesay Herald were sent to England on 23 February 1459 to seek redress for violations of the truce and for the restitution of £1000 stolen during the talks at Reddenburn.[69] This was one incident in an ongoing programme of running repairs to the truce carried out over the following year, with a treaty, signed at Newcastle on 12 September 1459 and ratified at Westminster on 20 February 1460, extending by five years a truce already prolonged until 1463, and it is hard not to see such measures as cynical stalling devices while both sides prepared for conflict. On 15 March 1459, George Shoreswood, bishop of Brechin and chancellor, received a safe-conduct to go on pilgrimage to the shrine of St Cuthbert at Durham, but this pious purpose would have provided also the opportunity to meet with Lawrence Booth, bishop of Durham and Lancastrian keeper of the privy seal, and a gathering at Leicester in May of supporters of Henry VI coincided with a visit to England by the abbot of Melrose and Rothesay Herald on ‘secret matiris’on behalf of James II. On 13 July, a safe-conduct was given for an embassy to travel to England for the preservation of the truce, including Andrew Durisdeer, bishop of Glasgow, Ninian Spot, bishop of Galloway, William Sinclair earl of Orkney (no longer chancellor) and Andrew Hunter, abbot of Melrose; the last appears to have been particularly active on the king’s business during this time.[70]

However, any impression that James II was following a purely pro-Lancastrian agenda is challenged by the evidence that he was in communication also with the Yorkist faction. Richard, duke of York was serving as lieutenant in Ireland in 1459, but he sent an envoy to the Scottish court in response to which James II despatched Archibald Whitelaw, tutor to his eldest son, James duke of Rothesay, to conclude a treaty with York.[71] The king was able also to make use of his second half-brother, James Stewart, who can have been little older than seventeen when he was sent to the continent to conduct negotiations with allies of Philip duke of Burgundy; a supporter of Richard duke of York at this time. Stewart and his companions received a safe-conduct on 27 March 1459 allowing them to pass through England to Calais, and they were to be found in November being entertained by Henric count of Veere, an ally of Burgundy and the father-in-law of Mary Stewart, lady of Buchan; also half-sister to the young James Stewart.[72] The gathering impetus behind the Yorkist campaign appears to have persuaded James II to back it, and a rumour spread through Bruges just before the Yorkist invasion of England from Calais in July 1460 that the Scottish king intended to make a simultaneous attack across the border with an army numbering 30,000, and that one of his daughters had been married to one of York’s sons.[73] No other evidence exists for such an agreement, but preparations for war were well-advanced and the king was able to utilise his great artillery weapons such as Mons Meg, one of a pair of great bombards brought over from Burgundy in 1457. Although not mentioned specifically in the Scottish records as Mons Meg until used in the siege train against Dunbar in 1489, there is good provenance for this bombard, made in 1449 at Mons by Jean Cambier, master gunner for Philip, duke of Burgundy. In 1453, it was moved from Mons to the ducal palace at Lille, where sixty-one stone balls were ordered to fit the barrel and, in 1457, Duke Philip sent a pair of guns, one of which was Mons Meg, to James II; shipped from Sluys with powder and balls.[74]

The acceleration towards war was evident in July 1460, with the replacement in the office of chancellor of George Shoreswood, bishop of Brechin by Andrew Stewart, lord Avandale. Shoreswood had been one of James II’s principal contacts with the Lancastrians in negotiations conducted in 1459, but the weakness of Henry VI’s position was ripe for exploitation, and the Scottish king’s quest for Yorkist allies extended to the despatch of Andrew Agnew, sheriff of Wigtown, as an envoy to the chieftain O’Neill in Ulster.[75] The overthrow of the Lancastrian dynasty occurred at Northampton on 10 July, and James II took immediate advantage of the resulting turmoil to launch an attack. An English report stated that the king of Scots ‘with all his power is expected to lay siege to the town and castle of Berwick-on-Tweed’, although his target was actually the castle of Roxburgh, where he had laid his siege by the end of the month.[76] On 6 July, in one of the last royal charters of confirmation issued by James II, Alexander Benniston’s grant of the lands of Upsettlington in the sheriffdom of Berwick to the collegiate church of Dunglass on 8 June was endorsed. In return for the grant, the canons of Dunglass were to say prayers for the welfare of the souls of James II, Mary of Gueldres and the granter and his family, although they could not have known how soon those prayers would be required.[77]

Roxburgh held a commanding position between the river Teviot to the south and the river Tweed to the north, with the castle occupying a long, oblong mound rising above the surrounding countryside to the height of approximately seventy feet, making it an important strategic stronghold. To the English, their possession of Roxburgh castle was a tremendous psychological advantage, held as it was within the Scottish border, explaining the substantial English expenditure of £1000 per annum to maintain its garrison in time of truce, rising to double that amount during periods of warfare.[78] To the Scots, it was an intolerable symbol of English occupation, coupled with the memory of James I’s ignominious failure to recapture it in the disastrous campaign of 1436, shortly before his assassination the following year. For his son, this was an opportunity to eradicate that humiliation and to demonstrate his strength and determination in projecting royal authority on the Anglo-Scottish border. There is every indication that this was a campaign that secured popular backing from the king’s nobles and a good response in summoning the host. Strategies for preparing the subjects of the Scottish king for war may be found in parliamentary statutes passed in the preceding few years, and James II’s collection of artillery weapons and trained personnel to operate them would have been pressed into service on a massive scale.[79]

However, it was this very passion for artillery and fascination with its practical operation that led to James II’s untimely death; an event described in the Auchinleck Chronicle in the following terms:

The yere of god IM iiijC lx the thrid sonday of august king Iames the secund with ane gret ost was At the sege of Roxburgh and wnhappely was slane with ane gwn the quhilk brak in the fyring / for the quhilk was gret dolour throu all scotland and neuertheless all the lordis that war thar remanit still with the oist and on the fryday efter richt wysly & manfully wan the forsaid castell and tynt nocht a man may In the wynning of It.[80]

Mediaeval ordnance was notoriously prone to breaking under pressure of the gunpowder charge, particularly the cast iron bombards where sections of the barrel were forged together with iron bands. The Auchinleck Chronicle refers to Allan Pantour’s death on 24 April 1455 ‘with ane ganye throu misgouernyng of him self’, which may suggest he was a victim of the kind of artillery accident that killed James II just over five years later.[81] The occasion of the king’s death became a subject for embellishment and some confusion in accounts written in the sixteenth century, in which the role of the queen, Mary of Gueldres, features largely. The impression given by the Auchinleck chronicler is that the news of the king’s death on 3 August 1460 prompted the queen to travel from Edinburgh with her son, the eight-year-old prince James, to Kelso ‘on the fryday efter the deid of the king and remanit thar quhill he was crovnit and quhill the forsaid castell was wastit and distroyit and on the sonday efter he was crovnit in to kelso’.[82] From this account, James II died on Sunday 3 August, the castle of Roxburgh was taken on Friday 8 August, on the same day as the queen and her son arrived at the siege, and the coronation of James III took place on Sunday 10 August in neighbouring Kelso; undoubtedly at the Tironensian abbey. The chronicler’s account of the incident concludes with the statement that ‘the forsaid lordis passit to the castell of werk & sone thai wan that castell and Incontinent kest It dovne to the erd and distroyit It for euer’. The English border castle of Wark stood on the banks of the river Tweed, a few miles north-east of Roxburgh, and its destruction would have removed an important English stronghold, although hardly for ever, as John duke of Albany laid siege to it in 1523.[83]

The account of the circumstances of the king’s death was soon modified, with the Extracta (written in the early 1520s) stating that the fatal salvo was fired in honour of the queen’s arrival at the siege, whereupon a mass of metal broke from the gun’s chamber, severing the king’s thigh and wounding the earl of Angus, who was standing by the king. This account gives the first hint of a prophecy that the castle of Marchmont (Roxburgh) would not be won by a man, and may explain the subsequent association of the queen having taken the castle after her husband’s death. By the time Adam Abell was writing, also in the early sixteenth century, he was explicit that ‘the quene gart stufe the siege sayand “quhem want we bot ane man-” Sche passit nocht awa quhill the castell wes wan and syne gart cast it downe’.[84] This impression of the queen’s role in taking the castle of Roxburgh became embedded in subsequent historiography, but it is far more likely that she and Prince James were summoned ‘by the lordis’ as soon as the king was killed in order to maintain the siege under nominal royal leadership and to confirm the succession by coronation as early as possible.

Even with the tragic death of James II just over two months before his thirtieth birthday, the campaign at Roxburgh succeeded in laying the ghost of the ignominious 1436 venture by James I. Those unnamed lords who were with James II at the siege did not allow the king’s death to deflect them from their purpose, and the castle was duly won from the English garrison. This success inspired the additional attack on Wark, possibly to make a point to the English government about the strength of Scottish resolve in order to offset the news of the king’s death, but any intention to consolidate their gains by attacking Berwick – that other potent symbol of border power – had to await the more pressing business of crowning the new king and establishing a minority government to assist the eight-year-old James III until he was able to assume personal authority. Those men who formed the three estates may have hoped that their struggle to establish an enhanced consultative role during the reign of James II and the mechanisms for oversight that they had put in place to safeguard the exercise of justice and royal finance would be respected and observed by his son. However, the Stewart passion for strong and often ruthless pursuit of personal ambition, manifest in James I and James II, was to emerge as strongly as ever in James III.[85]

NOTES

1.

RPS 1458/3/41.

2.

ER, vi, 295. Henry VI’s recovery in 1456 did not lead to the banishment of York from English politics, but he had to tread more warily in the light of Margaret of Anjou’s suspicions towards him. G. Harriss, Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461 (Oxford, 2005), 634-5.

3.

Stevenson, Wars, i, 332-51.

4.

Wigtownshire Charters, 143, 144; W. Fraser, The Book of Caerlaverock (Edinburgh, 1873), ii, 42.

5.

NRAS GD25/1/62, 64.

6.

HMC, Home, 64; NRAS GD25/1/72.

7.

Hume Brown (ed.), Early Travellers, 33.

8.

Stevenson, Wars, i, 243.

9.

ER, vi, 435, 514.

10.

Lord Lindsay, Lives of the Lindsays, i, , 152, 452; CSSR, iv, 1071.

11.

Wigtown Charter Chest, 30; NRAS B65/33; HMC, Johnstone, 2; RMS, ii, 594 (12 January 1453); Liber Sancte Marie de Melrose [hereafter Melrose Liber] (Bannatyne Club, 1837), ii, 571 (14 April 1454).

12.

Lindsay, Lives of the Lindsays, 452; ‘brother-german’ has the meaning of full-blood brother by the same parents, and although James lord Hamilton had four brothers and three sisters, the only recorded marriage for their father, James Hamilton of Cadzow, was to Janet Livingston (b. c.1395), the daughter of Alexander Livingston of Callendar. Even allowing for the marriage having taken place when Janet was fourteen (James lord Hamilton was born c.1410), her death in 1422 would mean that she bore eight children in little more than twelve years (probably accounting for her early death) or that Hamilton of Cadzow had children (at least the eldest son and a brother) by a former, unrecorded marriage. Alan R. Borthwick, ‘Hamilton family (per. 1295–1479)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004.

13.

NLS, Acc. 5474, bundle 58.

14.

McGladdery, James II (1990), 107. However, Alexander earl of Crawford died in September 1453.

15.

NRAS RH 6/349. Spens continued to hold the office until April 1459, even after his translation to the bishopric of Aberdeen on 15 December 1458. CPL, xii, 15.

16.

Macdougall, James III, 42.

17.

NLS, Acc. 5976, box 6, 14.

18.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 120v.

19.

R. J. Tanner, ‘The Political Role of the (ree Estates in Parliament and General Council in Scotland, 1424-1488’ (unpublished PhD thesis, St Andrews University, 1999), 411.

20.

Ibid.

21.

Wigt. Chrs, 143, 89; Fraser, Caerlaverock, ii, 42. He was to achieve the highest government office of chancellor on 6 July 1460. HMC, Home, 278.

22.

See above, page 175.

23.

M. D’Escouchy, Chronique, ed. G. du Fresne Beaucourt (Paris, 1863-4), ii, 352.

24.

Rot. Scot., ii, 378-83.

25.

Saltoun, Frasers of Philorth, ii, 3; AB Ill., iii, 577; NRAS GD25/1/69; Fraser, Douglas, iii, 85; Charters and other Documents relating to the Royal Burgh of Stirling [hereafter Stirling Chrs], ed. R. Renwick (Glasgow, 1884), 23; NRAS GD25/1/70; Edin. Chrs, 36; Morton Register, i, xlii-xlv; Fraser, Douglas, iii, 90; Wigt. Chrs, 145.

26.

The original witnesses on 22 April 1438 were: Alexander Irvine, John Forbes, William Forbes and Gilbert Hay, knights, Andrew Keith, John Ogston, John (ain, Alexander Meldrum of Fyvie, Walter Barclay, Gilbert Menzies, John Vaus, William Cadzow, Andrew Buchan, (omas Allardyce, (omas Turing, William Reid, James Skene, James Cumming, Gilbert Sanquhar and John Mowat. Of these, five (Skene, Mowat, Buchan, Allardyce and Barclay) retracted their evidence in the assize of 1457 and two (Menzies and Vaus) dissented from the verdict: AB Ill., iv, 205-13. Of course, some of the original witnesses may have been dead by 1457.

27.

HMC, Fourth Report, 495-503; SP, vii, 274.

28.

Collections for a History of the Shires of Aberdeen and Banff [hereafter A.B. Coll.] (Spalding Club, 1843), 606. The exact identity of this Edmund Mortimer is not known, but he may have been a connection of the English earls of March. John earl of Mar was born in July 1457 and was forfeited by his brother, James III, shortly before his death in suspicious circumstances, by 1480. Macdougall, James III, 150-1.

29.

ER, vi, 485-6; NRAS RH6/348; Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 159-60.

30.

Macfarlane, Genealogical Collection, ii, 358-9; RH 6, 347; ER, vi, li-lii; 124, 158, 222, 484, 486.

31.

See above, page 173.

32.

RPS 1458/3/20.

33.

Ibid.

34.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 162.

35.

Ibid.

36.

RPS 1458/3/41.

37.

Ibid., 1458/3/7. Legislation under James I tackled the issue of archery practice, ordaining in 1424 that ‘all men prepare themselves to be archers from when they are twelve years of age. And that in each £10 worth of land there be made bowmarks, and especially beside parish churches, where men on holy days may come and shoot at least three times and have practice of archery’: RPS 1424/20. The previous statute stated that ‘the king forbids that any man play football under the pain of 4 d. to the lord of the land as often as he is convicted (by the sheriff of the land or his ministers, if the lords will not punish such trespassers)’, therefore the promotion of archery and suppression of alternative sporting pasttimes are similarly connected: RPS 1424/19.

38.

RPS 1458/3/8; Nicholson, Later Middle Ages, 382.

39.

Ibid., 1458/3/16.

40.

RMS, ii, 706-28.

41.

N. Macdougall, James IV (East Linton, 1997), 158-60.

42.

RPS 1458/3/42. See also A. R. Borthwick, ‘Montrose vs Dundee and the Jurisdiction of Parliament and Council over Fee and Heritage in the Mid-Fifteenth Century’, in C. Jones (ed.), The Scots and Parliament (Edinburgh, 1996), 33-53.

43.

RPS 1458/11/1.

44.

Ibid. RMS, ii, 641 repeats the names, but the editors have identified the king of Castile in square brackets as Henry IV.

45.

Dunlop, Kennedy, 195-6.

46.

Ibid., 248; CDS, iv, 1287; ER, vi, 498; Rot. Scot., ii, 360; Nicholson, Later Middle Ages, 392.

47.

M. Letts, The Diary of Georg von Ehingen, 39-40. See below, page 222.

48.

RMS, ii, 643, 647.

49.

Miscellany of the Spalding Club, ii, 181-6.

50.

RMS, ii, 653; Brown, James I, 1-2.

51.

Dunlop, Kennedy, 195, n.

52.

Fraser, Douglas, ii, 42.

53.

Dunlop, Kennedy, 181. The experiences of Annabella Stewart are extremely well-analysed in F. A. Downie, “’La voie quelle menace tenir”: Annabella Stewart, Scotland and the European Marriage Market, 1444-56’, SHR, lxxviii (1999), 170-91.

54.

Stevenson, Wars, i, 354-7.

55.

The king’s itinerary places him in Wigtown in May 1458, therefore this could coincide with the reception for his sisters in Kirkcudbright around that time.

56.

ER, vi, lviii; RMS, ii, 745; The Records of Aboyne, 1223-1681, ed. Charles, 9th marquis of Huntly, earl of Aboyne (New Spalding Club, 1894), 3-4. Of all James II’s sisters, Margaret and Eleanor had no children, Isabella had two daughters, Mary had a son who died before he could succeed his father, Annabella had two daughters and a son, while Joanna had two surviving sons and two daughters.

57.

NRAS RH1/6/74. However, that this arrangement had not been straightforward is suggested in the indenture agreed between Huntly and Erroll on 15 November 1461, in which both parties remitted ‘the rancour of ther hartis’ and reiterated the terms by which Nichol, son of the earl of Erroll and Elizabeth (rather than Margaret), daughter of the earl of Huntly, should marry. Alexander earl of Huntly and his son, George, undertook to ‘maintain and defend Errole and Nichol his son in all causes touching their heritage’: RH1/6/80. In 1471, George Gordon became earl of Huntly on the death of his father in 1470, and married Elizabeth Hay, sister of Nicholas 2nd earl of Erroll in 1471, shortly after his divorce from Annabella Stewart: Norman Macdougall, ‘Gordon, George, second earl of Huntly (1440/41–1501)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004.

58.

Annabella and George had a daughter and a son, but were divorced in 1471, although Annabella may have been pregnant at the time because she is recorded as having had another daughter in 1472.

59.

Brown, The Black Douglases, 274. See above, page 59.

60.

RPS 1458/3/43; NRAS GD 150.

61.

RPS 1459/10/1. Contained also in RMS, ii, 993; Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 166

62.

RMS, ii, 625 (witness 174).

63.

For example, Robert Boyd became Lord Boyd and John Stewart became Lord Darnley in 1452, while Andrew Stewart became Lord Avandale in 1457, having received the former Douglas barony of Avandale the previous year.

64.

Boardman, The Campbells, 152, 169.

65.

ER, vi, xlix, 420, 422.

66.

James II despatched Rothesay Herald to the English court in October 1457 to demand redress; CDS, iv, 1257.

67.

Dunlop, Kennedy, 203, n., citing NRAS, SP6, 20. The commissioners are named as Ninian Spot, bishop of Galloway and keeper of the privy seal, the abbots of Holyrood and Melrose, Lords Hailes and Borthwick, Patrick Young, Nicholas Otterburn, Sir Alexander Hume of Dunglass and Andrew Kerr of Altonburn.

68.

HMC, Seventh report, 708. By the time this marriage took place, the queen had delivered a second daughter, Margaret, in early 1460, SP, i, 20.

69.

RMS, ii, 677. At the same time, Marchmont Herald was despatched to the earl of Northumberland ‘about the truce and his answer respecting the security of ships and merchants’: ER, vi, 498.

70.

CDS, iv, 1301; Rot. Scot., ii, 390-1; Ramsay, Lancaster and York, ii, 213. Ninian Spot appears in the records as clerk register during the personal rule of James II, and a long career in royal administrative service was rewarded in 1458 with his promotion to the bishopric of Galloway following (omas Spens’s translation to Aberdeen.

71.

ER, vii, 33; Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, ed. J. Gairdner (London, 1861-3), i, 63.

72.

Rymer, Foedera, xi, 420; Dunlop, Kennedy, 206, citing Manuscript Accounts of Veere, 213-17. The title of Buchan had been conferred on Princess Mary on her marriage to Wolfaert van Borsselen, but James Stewart was created earl of Buchan in 1469 after the death of his half-sister. SP, ii, 266.

73.

Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts existing in the archives and collections of Milan [hereafter Milan Papers], ed. Allen Banks Hinds (London, 1912), i, 27.

74.

C. Gaier, ‘The Origins of Mons Meg’, Journal of the Arms and Armour Society, v (1967), 425-31; R. G. Smith and K. De Vries, The Artillery of the Dukes of Burgundy, 1363-1477 (Woodbridge, 2005), 120-1; R. Smith, ‘HM Tower Armouries: Wrought Iron Cannon Project’, The Journal of the Historical Metallurgy Society, xix, no. 2 (1985), 193-4.

75.

HMC, Home, 278 (6 July 1460); ER, vi, 488, 617; vii, 9. Shoreswood’s last appearance as chancellor is on 4 April 1460: RMS, ii, 754; Sir A. Agnew, The Hereditary Sheriffs of Galloway, 2nd edn (Edinburgh, 1893), 276-7.

76.

CDS, iv, 1307.

77.

HMC, Home, 278.

78.

Rot. Scot., ii, 360-1.

79.

C. Gaier, ‘The Origins of Mons Meg’, Journal of the Arms and Armour Society, v (1967), 425-7; Robert B. K. Stevenson, ‘The Return of Mons Meg from London, 1828-1829’, in D. Caldwell (ed.), Scottish Weapons and Fortifications, 1100-1800 (Edinburgh, 1981), 419. The gun’s provenance is sufficient to contradict the dubious tradition in Galloway that Mons Meg was forged by a local blacksmith for the siege of Threave in 1455. The exchequer accounts show numerous entries concerning expenditure on the transportation and repair of bombards, with payments for brass, copper and iron, waxed canvas for drying powder, canvas for the king’s tents and money for arrows and lances made at Edinburgh castle: ER, vi, 385-6, 456, 495-9.

80.

Chron. Auchinleck, ff. 119r-119v.

81.

Ibid., f. 116v.

82.

Ibid., f. 119v.

83.

G. Donaldson, Scotland, James V-James VII (Edinburgh, 1965), 21.

84.

Adam Abell, ‘The Roit or Quheill of Tyme’, National Library of Scotland, Ms. 1746, f. 108v. 85. See Macdougall, James III.

85.

See Macdougall, James III.

CHAPTER 9

Profile of a King – the Sources

Semblament, le roy Scotiste

Qui demy face ot, ce dit on,

Vermeille comme une amatiste

Depuis le front jusqu’au manton?[1]

Some understanding of the reign of James II may be gleaned through examination of various sources, which range from official documents produced during the period to chronicle sources and histories written by contemporaries and those in subsequent generations. Although it may now be argued that the view of Professor Donaldson, expressed half a century ago, that studying the reign of James II was akin to ‘watching a play in an unknown language, and watching it, too, by a rather fitful light’, is overly negative, it is the case that official documentation for the mid-fifteenth century in Scotland is patchy in places and relies on careful collation of evidence from a wide range of sources. Recent scholarship, particularly on the records of the mediaeval Scottish parliament, has shed considerable light on this important resource and prompted a significant re-evaluation of the available evidence. Information from official records such as the Register of the Great Seal may be augmented by the collation of unregistered charters in collections of family papers and archive collections, and insights are provided into the more prosaic elements of life during this period by papal records, exchequer accounts and diplomatic letters and transactions. To this extent, the period may be studied with greater confidence now than ever before, and the considerable amount of academic research that has been carried out into various aspects of life in mid-fifteenth-century Scotland since James II was published in 1990 has informed a shift in emphasis, interpretation and the inclusion of new material in this edition.

In the late fourteenth century, John of Fordun, possibly a chantry priest in the cathedral church of Aberdeen, established a historiographical tradition in Scotland which had an intense patriotic bias, emphasising the independence and antiquity of the Scottish nation based on a long and largely mythical pedigree of Scottish kings; a response to the British historiographical tradition based on the legend of Brutus espoused in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain.[2] Fordun’s great compilation of chronicle sources and interpretation of the origins of the Scottish nation was completed by the early 1360s and was the inspiration for Walter Bower, abbot of Inchcolm, to seek to incorporate and continue Fordun’s work in his own great undertaking, the Scotichronicon, written in the 1440s.[3] Bower had a ring-side seat for the minority of James II, and although there are only a small number of occasions when his presence at court is confirmed by his name on official records, news would have reached him in his island abbey of Inchcolm in the river Forth, of events unfolding elsewhere in the kingdom. Bower proclaimed himself to be an ardent supporter of James I, applauding his attention to justice and the exercise of strong and authoritative kingship, and he laments the death of the king and the circumstances that had brought it about. Although frustratingly silent as far as recording the details of James II’s minority is concerned, it is possible to discern in the last book of the Scotichronicon his perception of those in power during the minority and his misgivings about the less attractive of James I’s character traits that contributed to his assassination. As Michael Brown has argued, Bower’s attitude to kingship and the exercise of power, expressed in the Scotichronicon, rests on his personal experiences during the minority, including his association with a rump of close adherents of the late king, such as his patron, Sir David Stewart of Rosyth, who formed the queen’s affinity up to her death in 1445. Bower may have experienced at first hand the depredations committed during the mid-1440s, which would have coloured his attitude to those he saw as rapacious and self-serving nobles, even though he may have been persuaded to come to terms with the victorious Douglas party in 1445. The message contained in book 16 of the Scotichronicon may therefore be interpreted as a reflection of Bower’s own views on the merits of strong and effective kingship, wisely executed, which he hoped would be followed by the young James II once he was able to direct his own actions.[4] The Scotichronicon is much more than a chronicle in the strict sense of a continuous register of events in order of time, as it deals with religion and philosophy in addition to history, with frequent homiletic digressions, and it set a trend which spawned copies and abridgements, with many subsequent histories deriving much of their content and interpretation from Bower.

When it comes to an examination of the reign of James II, Bower’s lack of significant comment leaves the source known as the Auchinleck Chronicle as the only substantial contemporary chronicle source for the reign of James II, although it is one fraught with difficulties. The very name ‘Auchinleck Chronicle’ is less than helpful because it was given to the document only in 1877 by the antiquarian T. G. Stevenson, simply by virtue of the fact that the Asloan manuscript, of which this section forms a part, came from the library of Alexander Boswell of Auchinleck, who appears to have acquired it in 1730, as his signature appears with that date on the W yleaf of the manuscript.[5] The entries are not in strict chronological order, therefore its description as a chronicle is technically inaccurate, but for the sake of convenience and clarity, the familiar designation of this source as ‘the Auchinleck Chronicle’ is used throughout this book. The context in which the chronicle appears is as a section within the Asloan manuscript; a large folio volume written on paper and consisting of miscellaneous verse and prose collections, transcribed from various sources in the early sixteenth century (probably shortly before 1514) by the Edinburgh notary John Asloan.[6] The Auchinleck Chronicle forms a part of this manuscript, occupying fourteen folios from f. 109 to 123, and one of the first problems facing the historian when using it is the incorrect ordering of the folios, which occurred early in the nineteenth century when the Asloan manuscript was bound at Register House in Edinburgh under the supervision of (omas (omson. In 1818, (omson had the section known as the Auchinleck Chronicle edited and printed for private circulation, although his intention to add notes and illustrations remained unfulfilled at his death and very few copies were issued.[7] (ose that survive contain the Auchinleck Chronicle in two forms: first, with the entries arranged in the order of the original manuscript and secondly, with the entries rearranged in what (omson believed to be chronological order, with the title A Short Chronicle of James the Second, King of Scots. (is created further confusion, as the chronicle is not exclusively or even primarily a record of events of national importance, with large sections dealing with matters of local significance. Also, it contains a number of entries concerning events during the minority of James III.

Because it is a collection of short chronicle entries from various sources, it is not susceptible to chronological ordering (as shown in table 1), and the only adjustment for clarity used in the appendix has been to reunite folios with content that is clearly continuous. Confusion inherent in the source is heightened by the fact that the manuscript appears to have been imperfect even before it was bound, and the extent to which content has been lost at the obvious breaks in continuity is a matter of speculation, as it is difficult to judge the number of folios or amount of original source content that may be missing. Also, the chronicle contains breaks in the narrative, sometimes in the middle of a sentence or phrase, leaving an incomplete fragment. As this is unlikely to indicate absent-mindedness on the part of John Asloan when he was transcribing the entries, it may be assumed to be a physical loss of sections of these chronicles before they came into his possession; further indicated by the fact that some of the incomplete entries occur in the middle of certain folios rather than the end.

John Asloan’s motives for compiling this collection of chronicle entries in the first place is given in the introductory line to this section of his manuscript: ‘Heir followis ane schort memoriale of the Scottis corniklis for addicoun.’ The ‘addition’ referred to was almost certainly a continuation of Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon which, although written in the 1440s, is infuriatingly silent on the very period through which Bower was living. The fact that there is no repetition of events or information implies that Asloan may have edited to the extent of not including entries dealt with more fully elsewhere, and this approach seems valid were he seeking to add to Bower’s work. However, he has not attempted to complete fragments or finish sentences in an effort to make sense of the narrative, but seems faithfully to have transcribed his sources, complete with W aws. For example, a truncated entry on folio 121r reads, ‘Iames of douglas sone to the said erll Sir walter of bekirtoune Sir willam of Setoun Sir richert of bekirtoun Schir henry bekirtoune gouernor to the scottis archeris & alexr bikirtoun with mony vtheris gud knychtis and sqwyeris.’ No context is given for this, and it appears to have been a fragment copied by Asloan with no effort made to elucidate further. Shortcomings notwithstanding, it needs to be stressed that the Auchinleck Chronicle remains an extremely important source for the study of this period of Scottish history and gives details and references to events that are, in many cases, found nowhere else in extant records.

The Auchinleck Chronicle (Appendix) has been reproduced as it appears in the Asloan Manuscript, with limited editing to the extent that ‘p’ has been rendered as ‘th’, ‘3’ as ‘y’ and ‘ß’ as ‘s’ (singular or plural). Also, folios which have an obviously continuous narrative have been placed together rather than broken to fit the binding of the Asloan MS, and an indication of the logic behind this limited restructuring is given in the appendix and outlined in table 1, which divides the chronicle into separate sections (A-D) demonstrating where narrative continuity is lost or continued on a completely different folio. It shows also that events in certain years are covered in more than one section. For example, events from 1452 are covered in sections B, C and D, but these entries deal with different events and are not linked obviously to one another and may be drawn from different sources.

Table 1. The Auchinleck Chronicle (Asloan MS. ff. 109-23)

Section

Folio numbers (recto and verso) (Asloan)

Years covered in each section

A

109

110

111

1438, 1439, 1443, 1445, 1446

x – break in continuity

B

114

115

116

1451, 1452, 1455

x – break in continuity

C

117

118

112 (continued from 118v)

113

119 (continued from 113v)

120

1448, 1451, 1452, 1453, 1454, 1456, 1459, 1460

x – break in continuity

D

121

122

123

1424, 1437, 1439, 1440, 1449, 1450, 1452

The value of the Auchinleck Chronicle lies in the fact that it appears to be a collection of contemporary sources that may be shown to be remarkably accurate on points where dating and content may be cross-checked with other sources. For example, the battle of Arbroath is said by the chronicler to have been fought on 23 January 1446, late on a Sunday; in 1446, 23 January did fall on a Sunday. Where the chronicler states that the battle of Brechin was fought on 18 May [1452] and a later writer states that it was fought on Ascension Day, it may be shown that Ascension Day 1452 did fall on 18 May. The arrival of William 8th earl of Douglas at Stirling in answer to a summons from the king is given as 21 February, the Monday before Lent; Ash Wednesday in 1452 was 23 February.[8] Such corroborative details are encouraging, but do not mean that this is a wholly reliable and accurate primary source. There are a number of occasions where the entries are considerably more vague, and the chronicler has a fondness for prefacing certain entries with the words ‘that samyn zeir’ or, even less helpfully, ‘that samyn tyme’. (is is all very well when the entries clearly succeed each other, but all too often they can be shown to have no relation whatever to surrounding entries and may be indicative of the writer’s own uncertainty. (is vagueness in dating has presented particular problems for historians trying to interpret events such as Donald Balloch’s raid in the firth of Clyde.[9] One of the most striking examples of the patchy nature of the chronicle is the final entry in the manuscript, describing the battle of Brechin, which ends in the middle of a sentence leaving half of the folio blank. It is the only entry to be given a heading, which reads ‘The battell of arbroth brechyne’, and the scoring through of Arbroath may be indicative of some confusion in the mind of the writer about the conflicts at Arbroath in 1446 and Brechin in 1452, as the earls of Huntly and Crawford were involved in both encounters. The entry preceding this one concerns border skirmishes in May and June 1449, therefore the account of the battle of Brechin in 1452 is unconnected, despite the chronicler commencing the entry with the wording ‘about that samyn tyme’.[10]

It is not possible, from current evidence, to establish the authorship of these entries, but the chronicle itself offers some clues. As noted above, the entries contained in the Auchinleck Chronicle are principally concerned with recording events of local significance ranging from short annalistic entries: ‘Item that samyn yere & moneth thare was drownit in the watter of crawmond Sir Ihon logane of lestalrig knycht of the age of xxij yeris’, to long, detailed accounts of events with no direct bearing on national politics, but for which the writer clearly had access to first-hand information.[11] Internal evidence seems to suggest a strong west-coast bias, with eleven out of seventeen entries dealing with local feuds and disorder relating to the west. A blood feud between the Stewarts of Darnley and the Boyds is described, including a fight between them at Polmaise near Stirling, and other entries record the slaying of John Colquhoun of Luss at Inchmurrin on loch Lomond, a detailed account of conflict in the castle of Dumbarton and the seizure of Lochmaben castle by the Johnstones.[12] However, the chronicler is concerned not only with recording acts of conflict and violence, but also demonstrates his familiarity with other matters of interest in the west, such as the proclamation of the privileges of Glasgow university and a papal indulgence in 1451, the first mass said by William Turnbull as bishop of Glasgow, the outbreak of plague at Dumfries in 1439, and the entry which describes in considerable detail a W ood in Govan on 25 and 26 November 1454: ‘Thar was ane richt gret spait in clyde the xxv day and xxvj day of nouember The quhilk brocht dovn haile hous[es] bernis and millis and put all the town of gowane in ane W ote quhill thai sat on the hous[es].’[13]

The longest single entry in the chronicle, occupying almost two complete folios, offers a detailed account of an attack made upon George Lauder, bishop of Argyll and his companions, which took place on 29 August 1452. In brief, the chronicler relates that the bishop was travelling from his castle at Achadun, at the south end of the Isle of Lismore, to the cathedral church, accompanied by Hercules Scrimegeour, his brother Alexander and certain others. The purpose of their journey was to deliver a summons to Gilbert McLauchlan, chancellor of the cathedral, and Maurice McFadzen, treasurer. Having received word of the bishop’s approach and fearing that his purpose was to remove them from their benefices in order to replace them with Hercules Scrimegeour, they gathered local support and challenged bishop Lauder’s party as it approached the cathedral church. A violent scuffle ensued, the bishop was threatened and detained, and his release secured only after guarantees were made that there would be no reprisals against the perpetrators.[14]

Some corroborative evidence for this incident, or at least the context within which it took place, is offered in the papal archives. A mandate was issued to the chancellor, treasurer and official of Argyll on 23 January 1451, instructing them to hold an enquiry arising from a complaint against Hercules Scrimegeour by Godfrey McForsan, vicar of St Ferchinus’s in Argyll. Should Godfrey’s charges be substantiated, the officials of Argyll were empowered to deprive Hercules Scrimegeour and to collate his canonry prebend of St Columba in Glassary to Godfrey.[15] According to the Auchinleck chronicler, Scrimegeour ‘had no thing bot a summondis apon Sir gilbert and apon Sir moryss mcfadyn for a sentence diffinitive (at thai gaf aganis him of his benefice that he had Ioysit peceably xv yere with Sir gotheray mcforsan’, and the account forms part of a long-running dispute with which the chronicler was involved, either as a direct participant or through information transmitted by a witness to the events. Another petition to the pope survives, dated 3 April 1454, in which Alexander Scrimegour (a relative of Hercules) asks that Godfrey McForsan be summoned and censured for unjustly opposing and hindering Scrimegour from holding his possessions peaceably.[16] Indeed, George Lauder, bishop of Argyll was supplicating the pope as late as 29 April 1462 for permission to live outside his diocese, alleging that he could not conveniently visit in person to carry out his pastoral duties ‘on account of strife raging between temporal lords and other magnates [. . .] and the tumults of wars and dangers arising therefrom’.[17]

This lengthy entry is interesting, not only for the additional light it sheds on a problem alluded to elsewhere in contemporary sources, but for the chronicler’s own attitude to what had taken place. (is is clearly no unbiased account, as the chronicler is wholeheartedly in support of the bishop’s party, regarding the actions of the chancellor and treasurer of the cathedral church as outrageous, compounding their offences by speaking to Bishop Lauder ‘richt dispituoslie with felloun wordis and scorne and for dispyte halsit him in errische sayand bannachadee’.[18] (is highlights another dimension to the problem of the exercise of ecclesiastical authority in the diocese of Argyll, as the appointment of a non-Gaelic speaking bishop to a diocese where Gaelic was the dominant language would have been a point of friction and a hindrance to communication. The chronicler certainly implies that the incident occurred through a misunderstanding of the bishop’s purpose in coming to the cathedral, but his allusion to the hurling of abuse at the bishop in the Gaelic tongue places his own allegiance in little doubt.[19] Nevertheless, there is no evidence to suggest the involvement of Donald Balloch in the attack on Lauder, and the detail provided is indicative of the chronicler’s personal experience or close source for the events described rather than having any demonstrable and direct link to the aftermath of James II’s killing of William 8th earl of Douglas earlier in the same year.[20]

Although necessarily speculative, a clue to the identity of at least one of the writers responsible for sections of the Auchinleck Chronicle may be found in the passage in which the death of (omas Tarvas, abbot of Paisley is described:

The yere of god IM iiijC lix the penult day of Iunij decessit at paslay thomas carvas [Tarvas] abbot of paslay the quhilk was ane richt gud man and helplyk to the place of ony that euer was O or he did mony notable thingis and held ane noble hous and was ay wele purvait he fand the place all out of gud rewle and destitut of leving and all the kirkis in lordis handis And the kirk vnbiggit / The body of the kirk fra the bricht stair wp and put on the ruf he biggit and thekit It with sclait and riggit it with stane and [f. 119r] biggit ane gret porcioun of the steple and ane staitlie yethous and brocht hame mony gud Iowelis and clathis of gold siluer & silk & mony gud bukis and maid staitlie stallis and glasynnit mekle of all the kirk and brocht hame the staitliest tabernakle that was in all scotland and the maist costlie And schortlie he brocht all the place to fredome and fra nocht till ane mychti place and left It out of all kynd of det and at all fredome till dispone as thaim lykit and left ane of the best myteris that was in scotland and chandillaris of siluer and ane lettren of brass with mony vther gud Iowellis.[21]

This offers an example of the problems created by the binding of the manuscript, as the glowing obituary of (omas Tarvas, abbot of Paisley commences on f. 113v, but rather than continuing across the page on f. 114r, the narrative actually continues at f. 119r (and is therefore reunited in the version given in the appendix) with much unrelated material in between. The chronicler is clearly a great admirer of abbot Tarvas, and describes how, on his appointment to the abbacy in 1446, he ‘fand the place all out of gud rewle and destitut of leving and all the kirkis in lordis handis And the kirk vnbiggit’. Tarvas proceeded to renovate the buildings and increase the wealth and reputation of the abbey, bringing it by the time of his death in 1459 ‘fra nocht till ane mychti place and left It out of all kynd of det and at all fredome’. Again, it is possible to provide some corroborative evidence for the chronicler’s assertions, as there is an excoriating attack on Tarvas’s predecessor, (omas Morow, in a supplication to the pope in the name of James II, dated 3 March 1441. (is forms part of the attack launched against John Cameron, bishop of Glasgow, and should be viewed in the context of the assertion of James 7th earl of Douglas’s authority in the wake of the ‘Black Dinner’ in November 1440. Within this supplication, (omas Morow abbot of Paisley is described as having:

stirred up many rapes, seditions, wars, homicides and other scandals [. . .] Also, acting unfaithfully in the administration committed to him contrary to his oath taken upon his promotion to the monastery and unaware to the Roman Pontiff, he alienated, sold, dilapidated and distrained many of the movable and immovable goods of the monastery. In addition, by his negligence he allowed regular observance and divine worship to be despised and diminished, the fabric to fall into ruin and the monastery to be utterly devastated.[22]

The pope was petitioned to allow for the removal of Morow and the provision, in his place, of Richard Bothwell, monk of Dunfermline. Bothwell appears to have taken temporary office as abbot, but he may have had little opportunity to address the problems, as he became abbot of Dunfermline by 1445 and it appears from a petition to the pope dated 1 August 1444 that the monastery was in a serious state, ‘so collapsed in its buildings and structures that it is truly feared that it cannot be restored in the life of man’.[23] (is supplication alludes to the problems created by John of Lithcow (Linlithgow?), monk of Paisley, who held commends and had annexed ‘the richest revenues of the monastery [. . .] free from all jurisdiction of the bishop, as well as of the said abbot’. An investigation was to be undertaken by ‘some good man’ into the ‘necessity and quality of John’s person, to modify the commend in such a way that the monastery may receive some help, because it is not just or equitable that it should be so greatly burdened on account of commends’.[24]

These sources support the picture of dilapidation and abuse painted by the Auchinleck chronicler, and it was not until Tarvas was appointed abbot of Paisley in 1446 that improvements were made, although it was an appointment that appears to have been a bold departure from tradition, as Tarvas came from the Tironensian abbey of St (omas the Martyr of Arbroath, whereas Paisley was a Cluniac foundation. Arbroath had petitioned the pope on 21 October 1441 for licence to excommunicate spoilers of the monastery, therefore Tarvas came from a house with a robust tradition of reform and ecclesiastical authority, and this may have encouraged his appointment.[25] However, when Richard Bothwell was promoted to the abbacy at Dunfermline, (omas Tarvas had to supplicate for dispensation for provision to Paisley as ‘it is asserted to be forbidden for any monk of the order of St Benedict or of any other order to be set over the abbacy of Paisley’, and he requested that all documents relevant to his provision be explicit in their validity ‘as if (omas had been professed of the Cluniac order in the said monastery’.[26] Having established his authority, Tarvas appears to have set to work to address the moral backsliding of his W ock, petitioning the pope on 3 and 17 April 1445 for the investigation of the very John of Lithcow complained of in 1444. On this occasion, charges against him included keeping a concubine and being ‘a public fornicator or a common player at games and dice’, and if such accusations were found to be true, Tarvas proposed to deprive John of his commend of the church of Dundonald.[27] (is ‘new broom’ approach adopted by Tarvas appears to have provoked a backlash from local barons whose vested interests were being challenged, and a letter from James II was issued under the privy seal on 24 April 1450 to Robert Boyd of Tinwald, ordering him not to go to the kirk of Largs on the following Friday with a host of followers ‘against the abbot and convent of Paisley’.[28]

Despite these early difficulties, Tarvas appears to have achieved an impressive measure of success in setting the abbey of Paisley back on its feet as, on 30 May 1453, he obtained a safe-conduct to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and it is during his travels that he may have acquired some of the possessions enumerated by the Auchinleck chronicler in his detailed account of Tarvas’s achievements and acquisitions, including jewels, fine books, silver chandeliers, a brass lectern and the best mitre and tabernacle in all Scotland. Certainly, his building programme restored the nave of the abbey church, built the triforium and base of the clerestory and added a slate roof. The walkway at Paisley abbey is unique within a British context as it pierces alternate pillars and skirts round others supported on corbels; a feature found at Rouen cathedral in Normandy, which may have been Tarvas’s inspiration during his travels.[29]

The fullness of detail provided by the Auchinleck chronicler in this entry concerning Paisley and Abbot Tarvas, when coupled with the evident west-coast bias elsewhere in the chronicle, particularly concerning events in and around Glasgow and Dumbarton, leads to reasonable speculation that a cleric of Paisley was responsible for at least some of the sections included in the Auchinleck Chronicle. Internal evidence gives a strong impression that there were several contributors to what became known as the Auchinleck Chronicle because, although local events form the bulk of the narrative, detailed accounts also appear of the proceedings of parliaments and general councils. (is may indicate that a cleric in administrative service at court was responsible for recording these events in chronicle form, which need not rule out a monk from Paisley, as government administrators were drawn from the pool of literate and educated churchmen. However, the character of some of the shorter entries with their vagueness and occasional factual errors differ from the more detailed and confident portrayal of events elsewhere and imply a more cursory recording of events.

Although it is hard to determine where the original sources came from, it is clear that the Auchinleck Chronicle is not an exhaustive view of contemporary politics. Foreign diplomacy, for example, is almost completely ignored, beyond an allusion to the marriage of James I’s eldest daughter Margaret to the Dauphin Louis of France, including the gratuitous but conventional information that she was both wise and virtuous.[30] By contrast, there is a very detailed account of the journey of Mary of Gueldres to Scotland for her marriage to James II in 1449, and this entry was made by someone who had access to information which may be shown from other sources to be substantially correct.[31] The chronicler is mistaken, however, when he states that the second sister Eleanor was married to the duke of Brittany – it was Isabella who made that alliance and Eleanor (James I’s fourth daughter) married Archduke Sigismund of Austria, although these entries may have been transcribed from a less well-informed source.[32] Although such details may not seem particularly crucial, they are grounds for proceeding cautiously when evaluating the factual accuracy of the Auchinleck Chronicle.

One of the more fascinating aspects of information given in chronicles is that, because they were not official records of events, there is far more scope for discerning personal opinion and detecting praise and censure of people and actions. An exceptionally detailed account is given of the killing of William 8th earl of Douglas by James II, suggesting that the chronicler was either present in Stirling at the royal court or receiving eye-witness reports. (is entry runs from folio 114 to folio 116 and offers an extraordinarily detailed contemporary account of the crisis precipitated by the confrontation between the king and Douglas in February 1452. (is is the only entry in the entire chronicle to record the time of day (the fateful encounter between the king and Douglas being said to have taken place on the second day of Douglas’s visit at ‘sevyn houris’) and contains the only example of reported speech in the chronicle (‘“fals tratour, sen thow will nocht, I sall”’).[33] It also supplies a motive for the king’s action; namely James II’s objection to a bond which had been made between the earls of Douglas, Crawford and Ross. Douglas had been summoned to Stirling and engaged in two days of talks with the king, culminating in the meeting at 7 p.m. on 22 February during which the king insisted that Douglas break the bond and received the answer that ‘he mycht nocht/nor wald nocht/’. The magnitude of this event had struck an obvious chord with the chronicler, who was suffciently moved by the whole incident to attribute words to the king. Not only that, but the chronicler also names the men who were with the king at the time and who rushed forward to join in the attack on Douglas, to the extent that the earl’s body had suffered twenty-six wounds by the end of the attack. These men were Sir Alexander Boyd, John Stewart lord Darnley, Sir Andrew Stewart, Simon Glendinning, Andrew lord Gray, Patrick Gray and William Cranston.

The chronicler does not hesitate to register his own attitude and appears highly censorious of the king and those around him, placing great emphasis on the safe-conduct issued to Douglas to come to the king at Stirling, which should have guaranteed his safety. Indeed, this forms a crucial element in his attitude to the perpetrators and indicates the value of such a document in the eyes of contemporaries. Another censorious note is struck in the entry concerning the response of the Douglases, where the chronicler uses the expression ‘foule slauchter’ twice in one sentence to describe the actions of the king and those involved in the killing of earl William. The events described clearly struck the chronicler as extremely unusual and deeply shocking, and he goes on to describe the hasty peerage creations in the June 1452 parliament, where James II received official exoneration for his actions, with the disparaging remark that they were such that ‘men demyt wald nocht stand’.[34] In the cases of James and George Crichton, made earls of Moray and Caithness respectively, this was true; neither may be shown to have exercised rights to those earldoms or passed the titles to their sons. Similarly, when the king led an army into the south of Scotland in July 1452 in order to quell the Douglas rebellion, the chronicler states that he ‘did na gud bot distroyit the cuntre richt fellonly baith of cornes medowis & wittalis and herijt mony bath gentillmen & vtheris that war with him self’.[35] However, this is not an indication that the chronicler was demonstrably pro-Douglas, and he expresses his opinion of James 9th earl of Douglas in somewhat scathing terms when he failed to appear to defend his castle of Abercorn under royal siege in 1455, stating that ‘men wist nocht grathlie quhar the douglas was all this tyme’.[36]

Although some stress has been laid on the general accuracy of the Auchinleck Chronicle and its usefulness as a contemporary source for the reign of James II, it is the case that some of the details are quite clearly wrong. For example, in the entry describing the downfall of the Livingston family, the chronicler names those who were arrested and the action taken against them in the parliament held in January 1450, stating that ‘Iames of levingstoun sone & air to the said alexander was put to deid and Robyne of levingstoun of lithqw that tyme comptrollar was put to deid baith togidder on castellhill thair heidis strikin of/’.[37] Robert Livingston of Linlithgow, comptroller and cousin of Sir Alexander Livingston of Callendar, was indeed executed, but James Livingston was not; it was his younger brother, Alexander of Filde, who shared that fate. However, if the chronicler had received news that the son of Alexander Livingston of Callendar had been executed, he may have assumed that it was his eldest son, James. (is account appears on folio 122, yet on folio 116, the chronicler mentions James Livingston, chamberlain of Scotland, in an entry concerning events in 1455, therefore it is unlikely that both entries were written by the same man from the same original source.

Similarly, the chronicler is incorrect when he records the death of James Stewart of Lorne, the second husband of Queen Joan Beaufort, in the entry that reads:

‘That samyn yere in the moneth of may Sir Iames stewart the qwenes knycht was tane apon the se be the W emyngis befor the son & thair was put to deid & of thaim that come with him viijxx of ynglismen.’[38] The previous entry is dated April 1449, therefore ‘that samyn yere’ would appear to refer to 1449 although James Stewart was alive after this date, as he received safe-conducts in company with his sons and he was serving James II as an ambassador as late as 1454.[39] The account appears to be fairly detailed, and this may be an instance of error or misdating within the chronicle, or it may record the fate suffered by James Stewart at a later date.

In addition to the Auchinleck Chronicle’s factual inaccuracies, problems have arisen from a lack of consistent dating conventions. In the fifteenth century, the new year began on 25 March rather than 1 January, therefore when the chronicler wrote ‘the yere of god 1445 the xxiii day of January’, the year was actually 1446 by modern calculation. However, this rule cannot be applied to all entries in the chronicle, as the chronicler writes ‘The yeire of god IM iiijC xliij the x day of marche erll Iames douglas deit at the castell of abercorn’, which would suggest that he meant 1444 as 10 March would be dated to the following year, although this is not the case; James Douglas did indeed die in 1443.[40] Alexander Grant argues that this very inconsistency led to a mistaken interpretation of the date when John earl of Ross and lord of the Isles initiated a revolt in the north of the kingdom, seizing the castles of Inverness and Urquhart and casting down the castle of Ruthven. According to the chronicler, this action took place at the beginning of March 1451, which had been interpreted as 1452 and analysed within the aftermath of the killing of William 8th earl of Douglas rather than within its correct context of the fall of the Livingstons in 1451.[41] (is demonstrates that the Auchinleck Chronicle is a source that must be used very carefully and not assumed to follow set patterns or rules.

Another example of the confusion that has arisen as a result of misinterpretation is the entry that used to be seen as a reference to Mary of Gueldres at the beginning of the minority of her son, James III. The entry appears at the beginning of folio 121r, with the preceding entry on folio 120v dealing with events from 1461. It reads:

of the law and the kingis proffetis and of all the Realme and that the king suld cum be him selfe & his and the qwene be hir self & hirris / bot the king suld ay remane with the qwene Bot scho suld nocht Intromet with his proffettis bot allanerlie with his person.[42]

The two folios are not continuous, and Norman Macdougall has shown that the entry is far more likely to refer to Joan Beaufort than Mary of Gueldres, as she had been forced to submit to an agreement known as the ‘Appoyntement’ in 1439 consequent on her marriage to James Stewart of Lorne, in which she was to abdicate political responsibility and concern herself only with the care of her children.[43] (is entry may also mark the end of a particular source, as the next item is the laconic recording of the death of Archibald 4th earl of Douglas, duke of Touraine, in 1420; another mistake, as he died in 1424. The following entries on this folio are short and almost exclusively obituaries. Nevertheless, despite the demonstrable shortcomings of the Auchinleck Chronicle, it is an essential source for this period if used carefully and analysed within the context of other available primary sources, and elements from it may be traced within the developing historiography of the reign of James II.

Although not strictly part of the historiographical development of James II’s reputation, it is worth considering the value of another piece of contemporary evidence which provides a unique insight into the physical appearance of the king, contained in the diary of Georg von Ehingen (1428-1508), the son of Rudolf von Ehingen of Kilchberg who had served as a young man in the court of Duke Sigismund of Tyrol. Georg was appointed cup-bearer to Sigismund’s Scottish wife, Eleanor Stewart, whom the duke married in 1449, although his determination to expand his horizons led Georg to transfer his service to Albrecht, duke of Austria and brother of Emperor Frederick III, and he was in Prague in 1453 for the coronation of Ladislaus king of Bohemia, on which occasion he was knighted.[44] Georg von Ehingen’s reputation endures because of the diary he kept on his travels, particularly in view of the portraits he commissioned once he returned to Austria from contemporary sketches made of the magnates he had visited. (at these were informal portraits executed privately rather than commissioned by their subjects is indicated by their lack of formal ceremonial dress and the effort to convey character and expression; a very unusual approach in contemporary portraiture, where the aim was to W atter. The individual portraits incorporate shields of arms with supporters, and short descriptions of the subject. James II is styled ‘Jacob, von gots genaden König von Schottland’, and appears in a front-facing, confident stance with feet apart, wearing red or deep pink hose, a black padded tunic and a wide-brimmed black hat. His hair is short, and the most compelling aspect of the portrait is that the whole of the left side of the king’s face is a deep red, from brow to chin, confirming the contemporary physical descriptions of the king as having a birthmark which gave him a ‘fiery face’. The portrait shows the king’s hands resting before him on the hilt of his dagger, and it is tempting to read some sub-text into this portrayal, as Georg von Ehingen would have known about the king’s reputation for ferocity and his personal attack on William earl of Douglas in 1452. However, the extracts from von Ehingen’s diary that deal with his background and visit to Scotland convey a fairly prosaic record of the context of the visit and the gifts received:

I, Georg von Ehingen, knight, was sent in my youth as page to the Court at Innsbrück. At that time a young Prince of Austria, Duke Sigismund, held his court there. He had married a Queen of Scotland, and I was ordered to serve her. After a time I became carver and server of the dishes to this Queen. But when I grew older and came to man’s estate, and began to be conscious of my strength, I thought myself too lowly employed, and proposed to attach myself to some active prince, so that I might exercise myself in knightly matters and learn all the practices of knighthood, rather than remain in peace and pleasure at Innsbrück

[. . .]

In France we took ship and travelled to the King of England. The King gave us his Order. My companion then left me, and I travelled to Scotland. The King was my gracious lady’s brother, and he received me graciously and well. The Queen was a Duchess of Gueldres and a Low German.

Item. The King presented me with two tents and a cloth of black satin, and to each of my pages he gave ten ducats, there being four pages.

Item. The Queen gave me a fine jewel worth 30 ducats, and a stallion worth quite 100 gulden, and much honour was shown me in hunting, dancing and feasting.[45]

Although no name is given, there is a reference in the Exchequer accounts for the period between June 1458 and July 1459 to an Austrian pursuivant (‘signiferi’) entertained in the house of Andrew Crawford in Edinburgh for eleven weeks at a cost of £7 14s, and the timing would accord with von Ehingen’s visit.[46] Viewed as a whole, the diary of von Ehingen’s travels conveys the impression of an ambitious adventurer, but the manner in which he was travelling when he arrived at the Scottish court, with four pages in attendance, and the gifts he received from the king and queen, is indicative of a visitor of some status rather than a speculative encounter with a former servant of Eleanor Stewart. As the heir to Rudolf von Ehingen of Kilchberg, Georg was a knight of noble status and it is hard to see why he would have been admitted to the courts of so many potentates if that were not the case, therefore it is worth speculating about his possible (though unstated) role in conducting diplomatic business during his travels. As Lorna Barrow has pointed out, the gifts that he received from James II and Mary of Gueldres were expensive and honourable, therefore his role, beyond supplying the only contemporary portrait of James II, needs to be considered more seriously. Georg von Ehingen had been particularly lavishly rewarded with gifts from Henry IV of Castile in 1457 as he left to continue on his journey, and his arrival in Scotland in 1458 and the despatch of a Scottish embassy to Henry IV of Castile in November of that year may not be coincidental.[47]

Apart from the visual contribution offered by the portrait of James II in Georg von Ehingen’s diary, it had been thought that a further insight was offered through the anonymous poem known as ‘The Harp’, which is included at the end of certain manuscripts of the Liber Pluscardensis; an abridgement of Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon in Latin and Scots English by an anonymous chronicler.[48] The writer states that he compiled the book in 1461, at the request of Richard Bothwell, abbot of Dunfermline, and although some details of the provenance of the chronicle come from the author’s prologue and internal evidence, details of authorship promised at the end of book 6 are missing. In the version edited by Skene, he speculated that the writer may have been Maurice Buchanan on the grounds that he was a Scottish cleric whose experience in France and knowledge of Highland culture accorded with the writer’s account, but as Buchanan was dead by 1438 the work is now considered anonymous. Although the Book of Pluscarden stops, effectively, with the death of James I in 1437, it does contain occasional brief references to events up to 1453 and mentions the death of James II in 1460. The poem known as ‘The Harp’ (‘A morality representing the state of a kingdom by the figure of a harp’), which comes at the end of book 11, has been the subject of some debate regarding its likely date of composition and its intended subject.[49] Sally Mapstone has argued that the poem was written by the chronicler rather than added in the 1460s as a distinct and separate entity and should be seen as a pointed criticism levelled at James II for his inadequate attention to justice; specifically, his use of remissions for serious crimes. As described above, these were cases where a crime had been committed for which the law demanded rigorous punishment, but the king granted a remission (usually in return for payment).[50] The poem offers advice in the following terms:

My soverane Lord, sen thow hes gevin me leif
to fynd faltis that forfaltis to thy crown,

Quhilkis to thi majestie may gane stand or greve,

Thow mak thairfoir gude reformatioun;

Heir I protest be my salvatioun,

It that I say tuichand thy majestie

Is for the proffitt of thy realme and thee.[51]

Literary sources were used as a conventional device to criticise shortcomings in royal government and alert kings to the problems inherent in taking unwise counsel or paying insufficient attention to the misgovernance of royal officials, but the view that these criticisms were targeted specifically and deliberately against James II requires some examination. Although offering remissions was not a practice exclusive to James II, there is evidence from the late 1450s to show that it was an issue causing some misgivings, and this may appear to fit with the poet’s criticism that the king was offending against both God and his royal office:

Bot of a thing all gud men mervallis mare:

Quhen gret consale, with thin awyn consent

Has ordand strayt Justice, na man to spare

Within schort tym thou changis thin entent

Sendand a contre letter in continent,

Chargeand that of that mater mare be nocht:

Than all the warld murmuris that thou art bocht.[52]

That discontent over the matter of remissions was a source of ‘murmurings’ may be suggested in the act passed in the parliament held in March 1458, ‘concerning the pleading of parties of diverse persons who have remission from the king’, and the Exchequer accounts of 19 June 1458 offer some indication of the scale of this practice during James II’s visit to the north in 1457.[53]

However, such evidence is not entirely conclusive, as this criticism was comparatively mild compared to the robust sentiments expressed in ‘The Harp’, which seem to reflect the more negative contemporary attitude towards James III’s practice of granting remissions for serious crimes in the 1470s.[54] In July 1473, parliament exhorted and prayed that James III ‘would close his hands for all remissions and respites for slaughter in time to come’ and the issue was raised again in 1477, when the three estates expressed themselves in even stronger terms, stating that

because slaughter and other trespasses such as treason, robbery and common theft is and has been so commonplace throughout the whole realm, and it is supposed that the greatest reason for it is the easy granting of the king’s grace in pardons and forgiveness to those who commit the same, our sovereign lord, at the great present request of the lords of the three estates of his realm, and in order to avoid the said trespasses and extreme wickedness, and for the safety of his lieges and the common profit of his realm, of his special favour and grace, granted to close his hands and cease giving forgiveness and pardons to any persons for any kind of slaughter committed since he attained the age of 25 or that will be committed in the next three years.[55]

Although this was a temporary measure imposed on James III that may be seen to have addressed the problem only so far, the language condemning the practice was much stronger than that used in 1458, and may be seen to accord far more with the stern tone of ‘The Harp’. Claire Hawes argues convincingly that ‘The Harp’ belongs in the context of political satire intended to entertain a courtly audience early in the reign of James IV by referencing events and perceptions from the reign of James III. Although scholars of medieval Scottish literature have largely distrusted the view that such works contained topical allusions, preferring to see them as advancing universal themes within a broad ‘advice to princes’ genre, internal and contextual analysis leads away from the view that ‘The Harp’ should be considered as a condemnation of James II. Its appearance in extant manuscripts of Liber Pluscardensis occur no earlier than 1489/90, therefore the fierce condemnation voiced against the practice of remissions in the 1470s and the establishment of a new ruling regime after the death of the king in 1488, suggest James III as a far more likely target for satirical rebuke on this subject.[56]

Gradual additions to the information concerning events during the reign of James II may be found in other sources seeking to build on Bower’s own abridgement of the Scotichronicon, one of which is the Extracta e Variis Cronicis Scocie.[57] The authorship of the Extracta is uncertain, but it may have been written by Alexander Mylne, who graduated from the university of St Andrews in 1494, going on to become a prebendary of the cathedral of Dunkeld. After the division of the diocese into four deaneries (Atholl, Angus, Fife and Strathearn), Mylne was appointed dean of Angus. In 1516, he became abbot of Cambuskenneth, and it may have been from local sources that he derived information included in the Extracta. His authorship is credible because of these elements of independent information and because of the similarities between the Extracta and Mylne’s most significant work, Vitae Dunkeldensis Ecclesiae Episcoporum.[58] (is Latin history of the lives of the bishops of Dunkeld from 1127 to 1515 was dedicated to Gavin Douglas, who had been provided to the bishopric of Dunkeld in 1515 and the book ends with a short narrative of his life. Mylne wrote of him in the present tense, and as Douglas died in September 1522, it seems likely that his Vitae was written before Mylne’s appointment to Cambuskenneth. Mylne’s obvious interest in literature and the furtherance of learning led to him petitioning James V for a warrant to transcribe the records and charters of Cambuskenneth, having found the muniments of the abbey in a state of decay. The Register of the Abbey of Cambuskenneth was duly produced in 1535, although there appears to have been one previous register which contained various extracts and transumpts recorded elsewhere as having been taken ‘de libris Registri Cambuskenneth’ but which are not found in the 1535 version. Certain records may have been overlooked in the transcribed register, and it is likely that some material was lost in 1559 when a large part of the abbey was destroyed.[59] The Extracta was almost certainly written at Cambuskenneth as, apart from the material derived from Bower, it contains entries concerning events of church and state during the reign of James II and Mylne’s authorship is suggested strongly by the inclusion of substantial material relating to the bishopric of Dunkeld and to events in Angus. For example, the section in the Extracta that relates to James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews, who was translated to St Andrews from Dunkeld, follows exactly the text of the Vitae.[60]

The bulk of the section covering the years of James II’s reign includes ecclesiastical matters and entries concerning political events are largely brief and annalistic in character. However, the value of the Extracta lies in the short sections of original material not to be found elsewhere, which may record local traditions. For example, it is in the Extracta that the motive for the battle of Arbroath is first explained in terms of a dispute over the bailiary of the abbey of Arbroath between Alexander Lindsay, master of Crawford, and Walter Ogilvy. The date given does not agree with the Auchinleck Chronicle, which states that the battle took place late on Sunday 23 January 1446, whereas the Extracta gives the date as 20 January 1447. The battle resulted in the death of David, 3rd earl of Crawford, who had tried to mediate between the two sides, and the Extracta is the first source to relate the story (probably following a local Angus tradition) of the severely wounded Ogilvy being taken to Crawford’s castle of Finavon, where Ogilvy’s cousin Marjory, distraught at hearing of the death of her husband, David earl of Crawford, smothered him to death.[61] Similarly, there are some original elements in the Extracta’s account of the fall of the Black Douglases, as the writer states that when William earl of Douglas appeared in Stirling before the king, during Lent, he was charged with having assisted Alexander earl of Crawford in his rebellion and urged to break the bond that he had made with Crawford. No mention is made of John earl of Ross, and it is not entirely clear to what rebellion of Crawford’s the writer is referring. In common with the Auchinleck chronicler’s account, the Extracta names Patrick master of Gray and William Cranston as two of the men who participated in the killing of Douglas, although the writer does not name any others. Where the Extracta does depart radically from all other accounts of Douglas’s death is in a curious story concerning its aftermath:

et post cistam projectus spiritum emitter nequiuit, donec domicella quedam siu cognomis per eum instructa crucem a collo eius sustulit, et tunc statim spiritum emisit et in loco fratrum Predicatorum de Striveling sepultus est quiete.[62]

This states that the fatally wounded earl, having been laid in a coffin, could not give up his spirit until a cross was removed from around his neck by a serving girl following his instructions, whereupon his spirit was able to depart and he was laid quietly to rest in the Dominican friary in Stirling. As this account appears nowhere else, it seems that the writer was recording what may have been a local oral tradition not widely known, or ignored, by other writers.

The Extracta also has the story that James II found himself in such a weak position following the killing of Douglas that he considered W eeing to France, but was dissuaded from this course by the wise counsel of James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews. (is became a popular theme, and is repeated in most of the later chronicles, with Lesley, Pitscottie and Chalmers of Ormond all ascribing a major counselling role to Kennedy in the immediate aftermath of the violent events of February 1452. Of the sixteenth-century writers, only George Buchanan omits the suggestion that the king considered W eeing to France, and it may be the fact that James II moved the pregnant Queen Mary to St Andrews where she gave birth to the future James III in May that placed Kennedy in a central role as a counsellor of the king; at least in the interpretations of later writers.[63]

There are a number of errors to be found in the Extracta, such as the entry recording that John of Balvenie, youngest brother of William 8th earl of Douglas, was put to death, whereas he managed to escape and W ed to England, and it was his older brothers, Ormond and Moray, who died in 1455; Moray during the battle at Arkinholm and Ormond by execution shortly afterwards.[64] Confusion is evident between two of James II’s campaigns into England, with the Extracta stating that the king was at the river Kale in 1456 with a great host, making for the north of England, when he was intercepted by a false English legate who persuaded him, through W attery, to turn back. When James II discovered the deception, he invaded Northumberland ‘igne ferroque’. However, this seems to be a confused account of the 1455 campaign, which was thwarted by a false English legate, whereas it was in early July 1456 that the Scottish army was at Kale (near Moffat in Teviotdale) preparatory to raiding in England; the two campaigns have been conW ated.[65] The king’s death at the siege of Roxburgh castle in 1460 is described in an entry that notes the firing of a salvo to celebrate the arrival of the queen at the siege, during which a piece of metal broke from one of the guns and wounded both George earl of Angus and the king; the latter fatally. The winning and subsequent destruction of the castle of Roxburgh is recorded, and although the entry in the Extracta contains additional details, the account is substantially the same as that in the Auchinleck Chronicle. However, another curious side-note in a vein similar to the story attached to the death of Douglas is provided in the final and incomplete entry in the Extracta which translates:

the misfortune of the king’s death, if it may be told, was long before, as is said, foreshown to the king by the late John Templeman who was the father of lord William Templeman, superior of the monastery of Cambuskenneth. Who, whilst [tending?] his W ock in the Ochil hills.[66]

This appears to be the addition of a local Cambuskenneth tradition, possibly of oral transmission, although the fact that it is incomplete raises its own questions. If it was a copy of a chronicle fragment, one might expect Mylne, or a monk compiling the Extracta under his direction, to have completed it from their own knowledge of the local tradition. Alternatively, the manuscript from which the story was taken may have been damaged and the rest of the entry lost. The Extracta was not circulated or used to any traceable extent in the sixteenth century, as the original elements are not repeated by later writers, and the manuscript has, even up to this century, been seen simply as an abridgement of the Scotichronicon.[67]

Another chronicle derived largely from Bower’s Scotichronicon is ‘De Cronicis Scotorum brevia’, written by John Law before 1521.[68] John Law was a canon of St Andrews and was incorporated later into the university, which accounts for the attention given in his chronicle to the history of ecclesiastical figures associated with the (arch)diocese.[69] For the section of his chronicle that deals with the reign of James II, Law made use of a number of short chronicle sources, and although he wrote in Latin, it is clear that some of the entries derive from the fragmentary sources brought together by John Asloan in the section of the Asloan manuscript that became known as the Auchinleck Chronicle. For example, Law describes the dearth and pestilence that ravaged Scotland in 1439 in exactly the same terms as the Auchinleck Chronicle, including the detail that the plague was so virulent that those who contracted it died within twenty-four hours. Figures given for the prices of wheat and meal are the same in both sources, and even stronger evidence for Law’s familiarity with at least some of the sources incorporated into the Auchinleck Chronicle is his reproduction of mistakes and inaccuracies; for example, the entry stating that Gilbert Hay earl of Errol died in 1454, when the earl of Errol was called William and did not die in that year. Judging by the selective nature of the entries in Law’s chronicle that may be compared with those in the Auchinleck Chronicle, Law had access to some but not all of the common source material; for example, he confuses the fall of the Livingstons with the fall of the Boyds in 1469, which is a mistake not made in the Auchinleck Chronicle.[70] Law’s use of other sources led him into long digressions into papal and European history, although his chronicle does contain some interesting details that do not appear in the earlier extant sources. For example, his statement that William 8th earl of Douglas returned to Scotland from his journey to Rome for the papal jubilee on 7 April 1451 is the first reference to such a precise date. He offers also the information that Douglas’s appearance in Rome led to him being commended ‘by the supreme Pontiff above all other pilgrims’, and the intriguing statement that there was a conspiracy during Douglas’s absence from Scotland between William Turnbull, bishop of Glasgow, William Crichton and George Crichton to ‘bring about the death of Douglas’.[71] It was by their counsel, according to Law, that James II attacked Douglas lands and castles during his absence, but his account of the confrontation that took place between Douglas and the king on 21 February 1452 is far less comprehensive than that found in the Auchinleck Chronicle, although the details (such as the number of wounds inflicted on Douglas being twenty-six) are substantially the same. Law and Auchinleck both record the response of the Douglases in the same terms; arriving in Stirling on St Patrick’s day, proclaiming the king’s counsellors to be traitors and sounding twenty-four horns. Law mentions the June parliament of 1452, but breaks his narration of events in Scotland to describe the sack of Constantinople in 1453.[72]

When Law returns to his account of Scottish matters he records the death of Alexander 4th earl of Crawford in 1453 and is the first writer to attach the epithet, ‘Tiger Earl’ before echoing the Auchinleck chronicler’s statement that Crawford held the whole of Angus in subjection and was disobedient to the king. However, Law did more than simply add details to Auchinleck’s account and recorded some events for which there is no reference in Auchinleck, such as his account of the battle of Arkinholm in 1455 in which Law states that ‘the earl of Moray, brother of the earl of Douglas with the earl of Ormond and John Douglas (of Balvenie) entered Annandale and pillaged it, taking the spoils back to their mother in Carlisle’. He noted the presence of the Johnston family in the ensuing battle against the Douglases in which Moray was killed ‘and his head brought to the king’, and although he states that Ormond was killed, he was actually wounded, captured and subsequently executed. Law makes a brief reference to the Act of Annexation passed in the July parliament of 1455, although none of these details appears in the Auchinleck Chronicle.

Thereafter, there is some confusion with Law describing the battle of Lochmaben under the year 1458, although it appears that he realised his mistake and corrected the date to 1448 with the note ‘bellum de Lochmaben’ under the correction.[73] After further excursions into papal, European and English history, Law returns to Scotland with an entry recording the king’s death:

1460. (is year king James the second of Scotland died at Roxburgh on 2 August. He left three sons and two daughters – James III, Alexander duke of Albany, John earl of Mar. One of his daughters married lord Hamilton from whom is descended the present lord Hamilton, earl of Arran, regent of Scotland [1520s]. The queen did not adhere to her chastity but took up with Adam Hepburn of Hailes shortly after the burial of her husband at Holyrood.[74]

Law is adrift by one day in giving the date of the king’s death, which was 3 August 1460; his reference to the queen arises from confusion with Joan Beaufort’s death in Dunbar castle while it was in the keepership of Adam Hepburn of Hailes, and there is no evidence for any irregular liaison. Some suspicion was implied in the Auchinleck chronicler’s reference to Mary of Gueldres’s use of James Lindsay of Covington as counsellor after the death of James II ‘nochtwithstanding that the said master Iames was excludit fra the counsall of the forsaid king & fra the court & for his werray helynes and had bene slane for his demeritis had nocht bene he was redemit with gold’, and Law may have been relating a garbled version of this gossip.[75]

Other brief chronicle sources which deal with the reign of James II, but do not add a great deal that is new or illuminating, are the short chronicle appended to Andrew Wyntoun’s ‘Orygynale Cronykyl of Scotland’, and ‘The Roit and Quheill of Tyme’ by Adam Abell.[76] The short chronicle, which is anonymous, is appended to Wyntoun’s chronicle and contains only five entries, which deal with the reign of James II, and its abrupt end in 1482 suggests that it may have been written at that time. The first entry concerning James II refers to the coronation in 1437 ‘of king James the second with rede scheik, callit James with the fyr in the face, he beand bot sax yer ald and ane half, in the abbay of Halyrudhouse, quhar now his banys lyis’. The dearth of 1439 is mentioned, although the figures quoted of ‘xxiiis’ for oatmeal and ‘xxxs’ for wheat differ from those given in the Auchinleck Chronicle and John Law: ‘xxxs’ for oatmeal and ‘xls’ for wheat. The third entry concerns the Black Dinner of 1440 with the laconic information that ‘Was hedyt erle Wilyem of Dowglace, and David his brother, and Malcolm Flemyng lord of Cummernald, James the second beand Justice’. Under 1451, the chronicler focuses on Glasgow, with the following information: ‘Began the universite in Glasgw, purchest be bischoip Turnbull. And that ilk year was the first pardon of Glasgow, of full remissioun, as in the yer of grace, and lestyt four moneths, purchest be the samyn bischoip Androw Durrisdur.’ Andrew Durisdeer succeeded William Turnbull in the bishopric of Glasgow after the latter’s death in 1454, and the indulgences secured for Glasgow by Turnbull are recorded elsewhere. The final entry under 1460 states that

the third day of August, deit king James the second at Roxburgh, be the brekyn of on his awyn gunnis, at straik him to deid, at the second sege of Roxburgh; and he was erddit in Halyrudhouse. On the sanct Laurence day, nixt followand the deces of James the second, was king James the (ride his sone crownyt in Kelso, he beand acht yeris of eld and ane half.

By calling this the second siege of Roxburgh the chronicler is alluding to James I’s failed attempt in 1436, and the coronation of James III on the feast of St Laurence accords with the known date of 10 August.

The second brief source is taken from a short history of Scotland from its legendary beginnings down to the year 1537, dedicated to St Francis of Assisi and written by Adam Abell, an Observantine friar at Jedburgh in 1533, with a continuation by him to 1537. The section concerning the reign of James II is as follows:

Scottis king 103 wes James Secund, sone of forsaid James. (ocht he had adversite in his begynnyng, nevirtheless he prevalit eftir. He was terribill to his enemyes of Ingland, for the wiffis of Ingland in the mornyng wald save thame and tharis fra the king with [There is a note inserted here in another hand which reads: ‘Secund zeir of King James the gra Freris of Observance com in Scotland’] the fire in his face. He had ane rednes in his face. It wes als ane prowerb of him he kepit iustice sa strait aganis thewis and reweris at he gart the reche buse keip the pure wiffis kow. O or he zeid nocht to the pedderell thewis hes thai do now, bot ay to the chiftanis he tuke done and the fosteraris of thewis. In his tyme the erll of Dauglase birnt Striviling and maid ane lig with the herll of Craufurd. Quharfore eftirwert he wes slane (the onder trowis) in the castell of the sam. Eftirwert segeand Roxburgh with the mowin of ane gwn King James wes slane with gret mornyng and dolour of all his legis the 24 yere of his ring of God 1460. Nochtwithstanding his deid, the quene gart stufe the siege sayand ‘quhem want we bot ane man?’. Sche passit nocht awa quhill the castell wes wan and syne gart cast it downe. Sche was the duke of Gilliris douchtir. Sche mareit eftir ane knycht of the kingis surname and to him had James erll of Buchquhan and othir barnis.[77]

Abell’s reference to James II’s attention to justice does not appear to resonate with the complaints voiced in the parliamentary records, and there is some conW ation of events and a garbled rendering of facts. Such confusion suggests that Abell did not have a reliable source to hand when writing his account, although he echoes the Extracta in mentioning only the earl of Crawford as having made a bond with Douglas. Confusion between the queens, Mary of Gueldres and Joan Beaufort, occurs as it did in Law’s account, as Abell states that ‘the duke of Gilliris douchtir’ married a Stewart and had children including the future earl of Buchan, whereas this alludes to Joan Beaufort’s marriage to James Stewart of Lorne. However, Abell is the first writer to ascribe a central role to Mary of Gueldres at the siege of Roxburgh, stating that she took the initiative in the continuation and successful conclusion of the siege following the death of the king, declaring ‘“quhem want we bot ane man?”’[78]

These contemporary, or near-contemporary, sources provide fascinating but often problematic insights into the reign of James II, and although they may sometimes have the character of an incomplete jigsaw they are, nevertheless, important sources that augment information gleaned from other, more official, records. However, it was the development of particular views regarding the reign of James II articulated by writers in the sixteenth century that became embedded in subsequent perceptions.

NOTES

1.

François Villon, Le Testament Villon, ed. J. Rychner and A. Henry (Geneva, 1974), i: ‘The appearance of the Scottish king, it is said, showed half of his face as vermillion as an amethyst, from his forehead to his chin.’

2.

R. A. Mason, ‘Scotching the Brut’, History Today, xxxv, no. 1 (January, 1985), 26-31.

3.

Johannis de Fordun, Chronica Gentis Scotorum / John of Fordun’s Chronicle of the Scottish Nation, ed. W. F. Skene, trans. F. J. H. Skene, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1871–2).

4.

For a detailed interpretation of book 16 of the Scotichronicon, see M. H. Brown, “’Vile Times’: Walter Bower’s Last Book and the Minority of James II’, SHR, lxxix:2: no. 208 (October 2000), 165-88.

5.

T. G. Stevenson, The Auchinleck Chronicle (1877); Christine McGladdery, ‘Auchinleck Chronicle’, in R. G. Dunphy (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Medieval Chronicle (Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2010), 124–5

6.

NLS, Ms. Acc. 4233; C. Van Buuren, ‘John Asloan and his Manuscript: An Edinburgh Notary and Scribe in the Days of James III, IV and V (c.1470-c.1530), in Janet Hadley Williams (ed.), Stewart Style, 1513-1542: Essays on the Court of James V (East Linton, 1998), 15-51.

7.

T. (omson, A Short Chronicle of James II King of Scots (Edinburgh, 1819).

8.

Handbook of British Chronology, ed. F. M. Powicke and E. B. Fryde (London, 1961)

9.

See pages 131–2, 145.

10.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 123v.

11.

Ibid., f. 112r.

12.

Ibid., ff. 109, 110, 112.

13.

Ibid., ff. 112, 122, 109, 113.

14.

Ibid., ff. 117v-118v.

15.

CPL, x, 470.

16.

Ibid., 692.

17.

CSSR, v, 903.

18.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 118r.

19.

The original meaning of ‘bannachadee’ was ‘God’s blessing’, but had come to acquire an offensive meaning approximating to ‘wily, fox-like, or crafty’. I am indebted to Anne Johnston for this explanation.

20.

Nicholson, Later Middle Ages, 362.

21.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 113v continued on f. 119r.

22.

CSSR, iv, 748.

23.

Ibid.,1049.

24.

Ibid.

25.

Ibid., 827.

26.

Ibid., 1170.

27.

Ibid., 1184, 1193.

28.

Paisley Reg., 245. The abbey at Brechin experienced similar problems, according to Brechin Reg., i, 67: 12 May 1450 - letter from James II in Perth to the mayor of Brechin instructing him to command John Cullace of Balnamone to stop disturbing the community of Brechin; 79: 30 June 1451 - precept from James II in Edinburgh to the sheriff of Forfar ordering him to compel John Cullace to stop wrongfully occupying lands belonging to the bishop and chapter of Brechin; 88: 6 September 1457 - letter from James II in Stirling to the sheriff of Forfar ordering him to prevent (omas Cullace [son of John?] from interfering with land belonging to the church of Brechin.

29.

Rymer, Foedera, ii, 1377-654. As such a journey would have taken some years to accomplish, it indicates that Tarvas had achieved a level of stability and sound financial management that allowed for his absence: R. Fawcett, Scottish Abbeys and Priories (London, 1994), 85.

30.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 111r.

31.

Ibid., f. 121v.

32.

Ibid., f. 111v.

33.

Ibid., ff. 114v-115r.

34.

Ibid., f. 116r.

35.

Ibid., f. 115v.

36.

Ibid., f. 116v.

37.

Ibid., f. 122v.

38.

Ibid., f. 121v.

39.

Rot. Scot., 347; Nicolas, Privy Council, vi, 63-4.

40.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 109v.

41.

A. Grant, ‘The Revolt of the Lord of the Isles and the Death of the Earl of Douglas, 1451-1452’, SHR, lx (1981), 169-74.

42.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 121r.

43.

N. Macdougall, ‘Bishop James Kennedy of St Andrews: A Reassessment of his Political Career’, in N. Macdougall (ed.), Church, Politics and Society: Scotland 1408-1929 (Edinburgh, 1983), 18-19.

44.

Lothar Merkelbach, Burg und Schloß Kilchberg. Baugeschichte, Ursprung, Kunsthistorische Einordnung (Stuttgart, 1965), 11, 55, 58.

45.

Malcolm Letts (ed. and trans.), The Diary of Georg von Ehingen (London, 1929), 40.

46.

ER, vi, 499: ‘Et per solucionem factam dicto Andree (Craufurde) pro expensis cuiusdam signiferi Austrie factis in dicta domo per undecim ebdomidas, de eodem mandato et sub eodem testimonio, viił xiiii-.’

47.

I am indebted to Lorna Barrow for these insights, based on her extensive research into late mediaeval and early modern gift exchange, which she has been generous enough to share with me. For the embassy to Castile, see RPS 1458/11/1, and above, page 194.

48.

Liber Pluscardensis [Book of Pluscarden], ii, 392-400.

49.

J. MacQueen, ‘The Literature of Fifteenth-Century Scotland’, in J. M. Brown (ed.) Scottish Society in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1977), 184-208, at 203; A. Grant, ‘Murder Will Out’, 193-226 and 214, n. 131. The Fairfax/Marchmont manuscript, dating 1490-1500, contains an illustration of a harp to symbolise the ‘voicing’ of concerns to the king regarding the administration of justice in the realm: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Fairfax 8.

50.

Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 162-3; Macdougall, James III, 22.

51.

Liber Pluscardensis, 10, 400; S. Mapstone, ‘Was there a Court Literature in Fifteenth-Century Scotland?’, SSL, xxvi, no. 1 (1991), 410-22; Lyall, ‘Politics and Poetry’, 5–29; C. McGladdery, ‘Liber Pluscardensis’, in R. G. Dunphy (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, (Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2010), 1027–8. I have revised the views expressed there in the light of research by Claire Hawes.

52.

Liber Pluscardensis, 10, 400.

53.

See above, pages 191–2.

54.

RPS 1458/3/20; ER, vi, 383. Claire Hawes, ‘“Peruerst Counsale”? Rebellion, Satire and the Politics of Advice in Fifteenth-Century Scotland’: I am indebted to Claire Hawes for allowing me to read this paper prior to publication in the forthcoming volume, J. Rose (ed.), The Politics of Counsel in England and Scotland, 1286-1707, and for sharing her research into the poem and its context.

55.

RPS 1473/7/10; 1478/6/80 – this particular piece of legislation is believed to date to August 1477, although it appears in the records under 1478. Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 215.

56.

Hawes, ‘Peruerst Counsale’.

57.

Extracta, 237-44.

58.

J. A. Gould, ‘Mylne, Alexander (c.1470–1548)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; A. Mylne, Vitae Dunkeldensis Ecclesiae Episcoporum (Bannatyne Club, 1831).

59.

Cartulary of Cambuskenneth, 1147-1585 (Grampian Club, 1872).

60.

Extracta, 238-9; Myln, Vitae, 18-24.

61.

Walter Ogilvy of Inverarity was the eldest son of John Ogilvy of Inverarity, son of Sir Walter Ogilvy of Auchterhouse, hereditary sheriff of Forfar. Ogilvy’s uncle, Sir Walter Ogilvy of Lintrathen, served James I as master of the king’s household and treasurer, and his cousin Marjory, daughter of Alexander Ogilvy of Auchterhouse, sheriff of Forfar, married David Lindsay, 3rd earl of Crawford. The extended Ogilvy family fulfilled an important role as royal agents in Forfarshire and Walter Ogilvy held the offices of bailie of Panmure and keeper of Methven castle.

62.

Extracta, 242, f. 287.

63.

Ibid., 243; Lesley, History, 23; Pitscottie, Historie, 116; G. Chalmers of Ormond, NLS Adv. MS. 16/2/20; Buchanan, History, f. xl.

64.

Extracta, 243. See above, pages 155–6.

65.

NRAS RH6/344.

66.

Extracta, 244: ‘Casus iste de morte regis, si dici potest, longo ante, ut fertur, preostensa est regi per quondam Johannem Tempilmane, qui fuit pater domini Willelmi Tempilmane, supprioris monasterii de Cambuskynneth. Cui dum gregem in montibus Ochillis.’

67.

M. Drexler, ‘The Extant Abridgements of Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon’, SHR, lxi (1982), 62-74.

68.

Law, ‘De Cronicis’.

69.

J. Durkan, ‘St Andrews in the John Law Chronicle’, IR, xxv, no. 1 (June 1974), 49-72.

70.

Chron Auchinleck, ff. 109, 112; Law, ‘Cronicis’, O . 128, 130, 132, 129.

71.

Law, ‘Cronicis’, f. 128v.

72.

Ibid., f. 130r.

73.

Ibid., f. 130v.

74.

Ibid., f. 131v.

75.

Chron. Auchinleck, f. 120v; Macdougall, James III, 42.

76.

Andrew of Wyntoun, The Original Chronicle of Andrew of Wyntoun, ed. F. J. Amours (Scottish Text Society, 1903-14); NLS, Ms. 1746 (Adam Abell, ‘The Roit or Quheill of Tyme’), ff. 109-10.

77.

The section dealing with the reign of James II is found in ff. 108v-109r, and the version used is from S. M. (orson’s ‘Adam Abell’s “The Roit or Quheill of Tyme”: An Edition’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of St Andrews, 1998).

78.

Ibid.

CHAPTER 10

Establishing Perceptions

This king propynes [presents] the gude and obedient with ryche rewardes, bot the disobedient and proud, rebellious, he punissed seueirlie.[1]

The Scottish historiographical tradition promoted by Fordun and Bower was developed further by Hector Boece who, in the early 1520s, composed a general history of Scotland entitled Scotorum Historiae, a prima gentis origine, cum aliarum et rerum et gentium, illustratione non vulgari.[2] (is work was published in Paris in 1527 and dealt with Scotland’s past from its legendary origins to the death of James I in 1437. Hector Boece was born in Dundee around 1465 and has been identified by Nicola Royan as the probable son of the Dundee burgess, Alexander Boyis.[3] After studying at Dundee grammar school, Boece went to the university of Paris to take his masters degree in 1492, proceeding to study theology at the Collège de Montaigu. William Elphinstone, bishop of Aberdeen, founded King’s College and the university of Aberdeen, and once his foundation charter had been granted on 17 September 1505, he appointed Hector Boece as the first principal of the new college. Boece’s intellectual endeavours extended to the study of medicine, philosophy and history, and his Episcoporum Muthlacensium et Aberdonensium Vitae was published in Paris in 1522. It was subsequent to this that Boece undertook his great work, the Scotorum Historia, which was in keeping with established tradition in that it portrayed Scotland as an ancient kingdom that had never been subdued by invasion and had been ruled by its own independent kings since the mid-fourth century BC. Boece added a further embellishment to Fordun’s ancient (but largely mythical) king list by naming the first forty kings and describing in detail their deeds and reigns.

Factual accuracy was not Boece’s aim, and his approach was far more in keeping with the essentially rhetorical aims of humanist historiography and the nationalistic spirit of the Scottish mediaeval chronicle tradition, and considerable doubt has been cast on the existence of some of the sources he claims to have used.[4] However, the purpose behind his embellishments is revealed in the fact that many of these kings suffered punishment, deposition and even death at the hands of their subjects, and he was articulating a moral principle rather than embracing the kind of sophisticated constitutional theory advocated by his contemporary, John Mair, whose work, although Boece may have been familiar with it, does not appear to have influenced his approach to writing the Scotorum Historia. In the examples offered by Boece, tyrannical rule could provoke a reaction of resistance, but rather than suggesting that he was a serious advocate of tyrannicide, this should be seen as his articulation of a ‘polity of manners’ which emphasised the king’s own example for the freedom and good governance of the country and the satisfactory administration of justice; a more conventional and conservative theory that would have posed no threat to the crown or the nobility.[5] (at it was not viewed as subversive is shown by the grant of an annual pension to Boece by James V shortly after the Scotorum Historia was published, and in 1530-1 the king commissioned John Bellenden to translate it from Latin into the vernacular. Having completed this commission for the king, Bellenden had a second version published in Edinburgh before 1540.[6]

Although Boece’s Scotorum Historia and Bellenden’s translation of it end with the death of James I in 1437, a second Latin edition with a continuation to 1488 was printed in Paris in 1574, edited by Giovanni Ferreri, a Piedmontese monk who had arrived in Scotland in 1528 and had spent time at the court of the young James V.[7] Ferrerri taught at the monastery of Kinloss between 1531 and 1537, where he may have become familiar with Boece’s work, and his 1574 edition extends the seventeen books of the earlier editions by two further books; the eighteenth book dealing with the reign of James II. (is was translated, for the most part very closely, by Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie in his The Historie and Cronicles of Scotland, written in the late 1570s.[8] The eighteenth book is written in a style similar to the seventeen books of the earlier edition and contains a number of passages of set speech and homiletic digressions, whereas the nineteenth book, which deals with the reign of James III, is shorter and more annalistic in form.

Nicola Royan believes that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that these additional books were composed by Boece, with a brief addition to the nineteenth book by Ferreri, but had not involved the extensive research apparent in his original work. The eighteenth book espouses the instructive purpose of Boece’s Scotorum Historia, and many of the stories used by later writers were invented or embellished to fit these rhetorical aims. The theme of the over-mighty magnate may be seen in the eighteenth book, with the Black Douglases portrayed in a negative light for failing to keep in check large numbers of thieves and murderers who lived within the bounds of Douglas territory. The problems of James II’s minority are explained solely in terms of the conflict between Sir Alexander Livingston (styled ‘governor’ throughout the text) and Chancellor Crichton. Arising from this assumed conflict appear a number of stories such as the one describing the queen smuggling her young son out of Edinburgh castle (in the keepership of William Crichton) in a bundle of clothes and escaping with him to Stirling castle (held by Livingston). (is move was countered subsequently by the abduction of the young king while hunting in Torwood near Stirling by Crichton and his men, who took him back to Edinburgh. Such stories embedded the perception of deep mutual hostility between Crichton and Livingston in views of the minority of James II and, although there were occasions when their ambitions diverged, this view has been shown to be significantly distorted.

The first writer who broke effectively from the dominance of the Scottish historiographical tradition reflected in Bower’s Scotichronicon (and, subsequently, Boece’s Scotorum Historia) was John Mair, who wrote his Historia Majoris Brittaniae tam Angliae quam Scotia, an independent Latin history published in Paris in 1521. Mair was born near Haddington around 1467 and studied at Cambridge before moving to Paris and achieving his master’s degree in 1494. He was at the Collège de Navarre when he took his doctorate in theology in 1506, and taught at the Collège de Sorbonne, to great critical acclaim, until his return to Scotland in 1518 to take up the post of principal of the university of Glasgow. Although a theologian rather than a historian, Mair’s History of Greater Britain was written during his time at Glasgow and may have been directed at the young James V as a plea for greater unity between Scotland and England achieved peaceably through marriage, which he hoped would heal the belligerent ideologies of the rival historiographical traditions in England and Scotland.[9] To achieve this, in writing his History he recounted the actions of the past without the ‘highly coloured language’ that served only to obscure the truth, although he is quite clear that his aim was didactic and he wished to show ‘not only the thing that was done, but also how it ought to have been done’.[10] (is was a pivotal point in the development of historiographical perceptions not only of the reign of James II, but also of the late mediaeval period in Scotland, as Mair was concerned about the balance of power between crown and nobility and draws much of his perspective of how things ‘ought to have been done’ by criticising the over-mighty magnate who was driven by self-interest to instigate feuds which were magnified by the participation of large bands of retainers. Ideally, the monarch ought to rule strongly and effectively, but such strength should be exercised within constitutional bounds by taking counsel from the prominent members of the community in parliament; the body which should advise and, if necessary, restrain the king. Such views would have found resonance with the three estates who sat in parliament in March 1458, therefore Mair was not advocating an ideal that was particularly radical, but one that he felt had failed to be observed suffciently in the past.

These principles underpinned Mair’s History and when he wrote the section dealing with the reign of James II he found ready illustrations in the actions of the nobility. The first significant event mentioned by Mair is the ‘Black Dinner’ of 1440, when William 6th earl of Douglas, his brother David and Malcolm Fleming of Cumbernauld were entertained in Edinburgh castle by James II who, according to Mair, ‘laid hands’ on them and ‘caused them to be beheaded’. James II was only ten years old at the time, and Mair seemed prepared to temper his statement by adding that he had read in the chronicles that the instigation for the deed came from William Crichton. In fact, it is more likely to have originated with the ambitious schemes of James the Gross, but the Crichton/Livington villainy was already being taken for granted and Crichton’s role as keeper of Edinburgh castle would certainly have placed him at the scene. Mair is aware that Crichton was besieged in Edinburgh castle in 1445, but offers no analysis of this, and his narrative jumps to the year 1450 where he describes William 8th earl of Douglas’s pilgrimage to Rome ‘with a large number of noble lords’.[11] It is not until the account of James II’s attack on Douglas that Mair really enters his didactic stride, describing the meeting with the king at Stirling during which Douglas was urged to ‘abandon the league and party which he had made with the earl of Craufurd’; the earl of Ross is not mentioned. Mair is the first writer to state that ‘A rumour went abroad among many that Douglas was aiming to usurp the royal crown; for he had two brothers that were earls, Archibald, to wit, earl of Moray, and Hugh Ormond; and besides, the earl of Angus bore the same surname and was his kinsman, and the earl of Morton likewise’.[12] He is confused in this interpretation, as George Douglas earl of Angus was hardly a supporter of the Black Douglases and James Douglas of Dalkeith did not become earl of Morton until 1458, therefore it is clear that Mair does not distinguish between Black and Red branches of the Douglas family. However, the point of this episode for Mair was the threat to the king posed by the wealth and following of the Douglases and ‘that these earls were men of a high spirit and ambitious, and warriors from their youth up’, thus serving as an example of the dangerous power imbalance created by such magnates.

Mair explains the slaying of Douglas by the king and those who were with him by the earl’s ‘ill-considered answer to the king’, although he portrays the position of the king as precarious in the extreme, and is the first to mention that James II was so oppressed by the Douglases that he considered W eeing from the country and was prevented from doing so only by the wise counsel of James Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews. Having warmed to his theme, the reign is presented in stark terms highlighting the problems for a realm’s stability inherent in the actions of over-mighty magnates and their followings:

For Scotland, as I see, the earl of Douglas was too powerful: he had thirty or forty thousand fighting men ever ready to answer to his call. The kings of Scotland found their occupation in the chase and in the administration of justice and the earl of Douglas had time for the things of war; and for this reason a swarm of men ever ready for a fray attached themselves to him.[13]

A lengthy homiletic digression into the dangers of exalting great magnate houses follows, with examples from recent history and the continent, including Mair’s remark that ‘In my own day did James the (ird deprive the earl of the Isles and Ross of his territory for his scorn of the king.’[14] As well as highlighting the problem, Mair suggests that a solution would be to reduce power given to the Marcher lords; a policy attempted in the 1455 Act of Annexation. The resolution of the conflict between James II and the Black Douglases is explained by Mair as having come about ‘For God willed not that it should come to fighting, to the end that the Scots should ever enjoy their rightful kings.’ (is implies that the two sides were matched so evenly that, without suing for peace, a fearful civil war would have resulted in which ‘they would have been fighting for kingship’.[15]

Mair returns to his account of the reign by describing the diplomacy leading to the Roxburgh campaign in 1460, and he departs slightly from earlier accounts of the king’s death by stating that James II

was over-curious in the matter of engines of war. For a wooden ball which formed the charge of a large engine of this sort, when it was shot forth, struck the king and killed him, and wounded the earl of Angus – a lesson to future kings that they should not stand too close to instruments of this sort when they are in the act of being discharged.[16]

Rather than attributing the king’s death to the gun breaking apart, Mair claims that he was hit by the cannon ball itself, and he does not lose the opportunity to cloak this tragedy in a moral message, which, with hindsight, appears as an unhelpful statement of the obvious! Although Mair does not mention the queen’s arrival at the siege, he does allude to the besiegers’ successful taking of the castle and the king’s burial at Holyrood.

It is in Mair’s History that one of the first character sketches of the king is provided, but whether he is drawing his information from perceptions based on oral evidence or simply wishful thinking is not clear. Although commending James II for ‘vigorous kingship’, giving himself ‘with all zeal to the things of war, and to naught else’ and showing himself ‘fellow to every private soldier’ in time of war, Mair states his preference for James I ‘for his natural endowment and his fortitude in the field’. However, he adds the less conventional observation that

the second James would ride among his soldiers as one of themselves; and in food or drink the soldiers would offer him of their own provision. He called on no man to taste before him what he would eat and drink, for he had that trust in his soldiers that not one would try to poison him.

In this may be detected Mair’s knowledge of Livy and Tacitus and their presentation of a classical form of ‘ideal’ military leadership, and there are echoes of the ‘common touch’ with soldiers on campaign attributed by Plutarch to Julius Caesar. Perhaps aware that he was W ying too high, Mair tempers this portrayal with the observation: ‘And his confidence was justified; yet in this matter I will not say that I deem him prudent.’[17]

When John Lesley, bishop of Ross embarked on his vernacular history of Scotland in the late 1560s, he was seeking to continue Boece’s Scotorum Historia at the point where Bellenden’s edition ended (Ferreri had not yet produced his edition with the eighteenth and nineteenth books). Lesley was a staunch supporter of Mary, Queen of Scots and was living abroad as a Marian exile following the queen’s deposition when he wrote his History of Scotland from the Death of James I in the Year 1436 to the Year 1561.[18] Given Lesley’s recent experience, it is understandable that his royalist sentiments should be evident in his writing. He had worked as one of the editors of the first edition of the parliamentary records of Scotland, published in 1566, and these form the framework of his narrative. It is clear that he had access to a copy of John Mair’s History, as there are a number of similarities between the two accounts. For example, Lesley follows Mair’s line in his approach to the conflict between James II and the Black Douglases, stressing the evils of too much power vested in great magnates, who could raise armies of friends and retainers of sufficient size to challenge the crown’s own forces. Although Lesley may be seen to have had good cause to portray James II in a favourable light, the Douglases are not shown as the lawless opponents of royal authority described in the eighteenth book of Boece, but rather as co-operating with the king until they were attacked in 1450-1.

However, once they rose in opposition to the king following the slaying of William 8th earl of Douglas at Stirling in 1452, Lesley’s line is clear and he follows Mair’s assertion that the king was threatened by the Douglases, including the earls of Angus and Morton, who, ‘with divers uthers gret barronis and landed men; the same apperit verray suspicious unto him, and gaif him caus to fear’.[19] He repeats the story of the king’s plan to W ee to France, dissuaded only by the wise pleading of bishop Kennedy, who had persuaded the earl of Huntly to convene an army in the north to come south to the king’s relief. (is was a somewhat reinvented version of the events that led to the battle of Brechin, but it formed the context of Lesley’s explanation of the king’s ability to reassert his authority and inflated still further the role played by Kennedy in this period. Much of Lesley’s account of the conflict is a repetition of the line taken by Mair, and he stresses also the importance of the outcome being the preservation of the true line of the kings of Scotland.

Although Lesley relied heavily on Mair’s History and the records of parliament, he clearly had access to other recognisable sources. For example, when praising James II for his efficient administration of justice, he echoes Adam Abell when he writes, ‘he causit the rashe bushe kepit the cow’.[20] A similar remark was made by Walter Bower in the Scotichronicon when describing the virtues of James I, therefore it may have been a well-known saying which both Abell and Lesley ascribed to James II, although it has little resonance with the guarded criticism levelled in the 1458 parliament. Lesley is aware of the general remissions issued by the king on his progress, ‘speciallie to the Earle of Crawford and utheris quha tuik parte with the Erle of Douglas’, but presents this as a statesmanlike resolution of conflict rather than an undermining of justice.[21]

Lesley’s History has a number of similarities with entries found in the Auchinleck Chronicle, and although John Asloan compiled his ‘schort memoriale’ in the early sixteenth century, Lesley does not appear to have had access to that version, but to some of the sources used by Asloan. For example, the details of the feud between the Stewarts of Darnley and the Boyds, and the slaying of John Colquhoun of Luss are given in almost exactly the same terms as those entries in the Auchinleck Chronicle, and Lesley repeats the chronicler’s error in stating that James Livingston was executed in the family’s downfall. However, he misdates the Livingston forfeitures to 1448 instead of 1450 and does not include material from elsewhere in the chronicle.[22]

Lesley gives some attention to Anglo-Scottish affairs, based upon his access to official documents, and portrays the diplomacy of the period as stalwart support by James II of Henry VI and the Lancastrian cause. In the course of this, Lesley states that Henry promised to restore to the king of Scotland the lands of Northumberland, Cumberland, Durham; ‘and uther shireffdomes quhilk the king of Scotland had of before’, and when Edward earl of March (later Edward IV) raised an army against King Henry, the latter asked James II to win the castles of Roxburgh and Wark, which were held by Edward’s supporters. James II responded, ‘partlie moved at King Henries desire, partlie also because the said twa castells were lyand with the landis and shires promeisit him be King Henry’.[23] No record of such a promise survives, although it may have been a reflection of verbal promises made during negotiations referred to only as ‘secret matiris’, and could explain the attack on Wark following the capture of Roxburgh. Nevertheless, this is a heavily distorted view of James II’s actual, and far less principled, foreign policy objectives during this period.

Lesley provides his own character sketch of James II at the end of the section on his reign, stating that

of harte he was couragious, politique in councell, in adversite nothing abashed, in prosperitie rather joyful nor proude in peace just and mercyfull, in warre sharpe and feirce, in the fielde bolde and hardie [. . .] he had greit trubles in civil and instestine warres in his youthedde; bot in the tyme of his later daies, his realme was in quiet prosperous estaite.[24]

Again, this is a portrait of a king who had triumphed over adversity and had displayed the conventional attributes of good kingship. There is little recognition of the extent to which James II may himself have contributed to his ‘greit trubles’ and the positive virtues of a king who faced down the negative power wielded by the over-mighty magnate house of Douglas was becoming embedded firmly in the historiography of the reign.

David Chalmers of Ormond (c.1533-1592) was a historian and judge from Aberdeenshire, whose title of Ormond derived from his acquisition of that estate (held previously by Hugh Douglas, earl of Ormond) on the Black Isle.[25] His contribution to the developing perceptions of the reign of James II is provided in Ane Cronikill of the Kingis of Scotland, which is a translation from the original French of his Histoire abbregée, written in 1572 when he was living abroad as a Marian exile; an experience shared with Bishop Lesley, whose History was used by Chalmers as one of his sources. The Cronikill is, substantially, an abridgement of Boece’s Scotorum Historia, although he does incorporate some new material in addition to that shared with Lesley.[26] For example, Chalmers describes the ‘Black Dinner’ of 1440 by stating that William 6th earl of Douglas and his brother ‘war tane be the commandment of Lewingstoune and Crichtoune, and thair heidis strukine off thame, and puneissit for their insolence, and for suppyssing of the Kingis authoritie’. Although the charge of insolence against the young Douglas earl was not new, the suggestion that the two surpassed the king’s authority deepens perceptions of their offences, and the role of their great-uncle, James the Gross is not even hinted at. In fact, Chalmers describes him as ‘James lord Abercorne, ane peciable man’, who ‘succeidit to this Williame that was heidit, deitt within thrie zeiris efter, leafing behind him Williame his eldest sone, quha wes mareitt to the fair Maidene of Galloway, sister to the foirsaid Williame beheiditt’.[27]

Apart from the rather astonishing claim that James Douglas of Abercorn was a peaceable man, Chalmers is the first to style Margaret Douglas, ‘Fair Maid of Galloway’; an epithet used by later writers, including Sir Walter Scott. However, Chalmers is mistaken and confused when he records Douglas’s visit to France in 1450 stating that ‘At this tyme Williame Erlle of Douglas resaiffit the Dukrie of Turrane in France as heretour to the said Archibald, and also be moyane he gart adwance twa of his freindis, the ane to the Erlledome of Angus, and the uther to the Erlledome of Mortoune’.[28] The confusion about the earls of Angus and Morton occurred in earlier accounts, but the claim that Douglas was restored to the dukedom of Touraine is false. Nevertheless, Chalmers alludes to the bond made between Douglas, Crawford and Ross, stating that it was agreed before Douglas set out to travel to Rome for the papal jubilee, and claims that Douglas ‘being suittit and callit for in his absence be the King and Counsel, wes condamnit in his absence as to haue deprywit the King and usurpitt the croune’. Again, the perception of the Black Douglases as aiming for the crown itself had become so embedded in received views of the reign that it was not questioned, and Chalmers claims that James II killed Douglas because, ‘giffing the King so proud and arrogant ansuer, quhilk he docht not induir, he gartt apprehend him and justifie him’. He is the only writer to take the claim that James II considered W eeing to France after killing the earl of Douglas beyond that point to stating that he actually went there, but rather than associating this directly with the king’s fears for his own safety, Chalmers places it in the context of a personal renewal of alliance: ‘This King willing to do plesour to France, and also to assist Henry the sext to be King of Ingland, he returnit frome France, quhair he had beine renewand the auld Lig and Band’.[29] No later writer repeats this, and Chalmers appears to have been indulging in some creative assumptions.

Another sixteenth-century source describing the reign of James II was written in the late 1570s by Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, a cousin of Patrick lord Lindsay of the Byres. His designation links him to Pitscottie, near Cupar in Fife, and his Historie and Cronicles of Scotland forms a continuation of John Bellenden’s vernacular adaptation of Hector Boece’s Scotorum Historia.[30] Pitscottie’s account of the reign of James II follows closely the text of the 1574 edition of the eighteenth book of the Scotorum Historia, but there are elements where he diverges from it and one passage certainly derives from another source.[31] The passage of interest in the eighteenth book of Pitscottie’s Historie, which is not found in Boece or any earlier source, concerns the execution by William 8th earl of Douglas of Maclellan, tutor of Bombie. Briefly, the story is that Maclellan, who was the nephew of Patrick, master of Gray, refused to give his assistance to the earl of Douglas when called upon to do so for the purposes of ravaging the countryside and opposing the king’s authority. Douglas, furious at Maclellan’s refusal to ride with him, took him from his house and held him as a prisoner in the castle of Douglas. On hearing news of this, Patrick Gray obtained a written supplication from the king ordering that Maclellan be released, and Gray delivered this supplication to Douglas personally. The account relates that Douglas received Gray hospitably and offered him dinner, after which he would attend to the king’s letter, but he issued orders in the meantime for Maclellan to be beheaded in another part of the castle. When Patrick Gray enquired in due course after his nephew, he was met with the callous retort, ‘Schir patrick ye ar come a litill to leit bot yonder in your sistir sone lyand bot he wantis the heid, tak his body and do with it quhat ye will.’ Gray, fearful for his own life, waited until he had mounted his horse and was outside the castle wall before he rebuked Douglas, setting spurs to his horse and only just outrunning his Douglas pursuers to reach Edinburgh and the king in safety.[32]

It is this story that provides the principal motive in Pitscottie’s Historie for the summons by James II of Douglas to Stirling in 1452. However, there are a number of problems inherent in the account, not least of which is the authorship of the story. The oldest manuscript of Pitscottie’s Historie used by Mackay (MS. A) does not contain the story of the tutor of Bombie, which comes from MS 1, a later version with a number of additions which may have been incorporated by a writer other than Pitscottie. (is story is the only digression of any appreciable length from the edition of Boece used by Pitscottie, and had he wished to insert additional stories into the eighteenth book, it is curious that he did not do so on more than one occasion. Such contemporary evidence as exists for Maclellans of Bombie is discussed in chapter 5, but there is some additional information concerning a respite for nineteen years, issued under the privy seal on 25 June 1526 to Douglas of Drumlanrig, Gordon of Lochinvar and others, for assistance given by them to Alexander Forrester and his accomplices, and for the slaughter of Maclellan of Bombie in Edinburgh.[33] It is possible that the slaying of a Maclellan of Bombie by a Douglas was a fresher tradition known to Pitscottie or, as seems more likely, a transcriber of his work, which was applied to an earlier Douglas and Maclellan. The incident is mentioned neither in the contemporary Auchinleck Chronicle nor any subsequent accounts.

Apart from John Mair, the first writer to supersede Boece’s Scotorum Historia rather than simply attempt a continuation or abridgement, was George Buchanan, whose Rerum Scoticarum Historia was published in 1582.[34] Buchanan was born in 1506 and spent most of his life prior to 1561 on the continent. He had studied under John Mair, but had abandoned ‘the theologian’s arid scholasticism in favour of the Erasmian brand of evangelical humanism current in Paris in the 1520s’.[35] Sometime around 1560, Buchanan rejected Catholicism and the French alliance and returned to Scotland, where he became involved in a lay capacity with the Reformation Kirk’s General Assembly. His views by this time were staunchly Calvinist and humanist, and he was placed in charge of the formal schooling of the young James VI between 1570 and 1582, to whom he would have presented his Historia as an instructive manual of political guidance. The work was intended primarily as a justification of the deposition of Mary Stuart in 1567 and focused on the moral influence that monarchs could wield over their subjects. To this end, he used the history of good and bad kings to illustrate the merits of virtue over tyranny and the thrust of his argument was that a king was accountable for his actions to the nobility of his realm, who had the right to restrain or even depose him if he behaved in a tyrannical manner. Given this point of view, one might expect to find a different picture of the reign of James II emerging from Buchanan’s account from that found in the pro-royalist history of Bishop Lesley. The actions of a king who had stuck a knife in his most powerful subject while the latter was under his personal guarantee of safety might be held to provide the very material for Buchanan’s anti-tyrannical views. However, in his assessment of the character of James II, Buchanan writes that the king

engaged almost from infancy in foreign or domestic war [. . .] had displayed such self-command in adversity and in prosperity, such bravery against his enemies and such mercy towards his suppliants, that his death was universally lamented by all ranks; and it appeared the more severe because, after having overcome so many misfortunes and raised expectation to the highest pitch by his virtue, he was suddenly cut off.[36]

This appraisal describes James II in terms very similar to those used by Lesley, and it is probable that Buchanan had seen the bishop’s work. However, if the king was presented on the side of virtue rather than tyranny, Buchanan’s assessment of the Douglases is less than positive. As chief representatives of the nobility during the reign of James II, Buchanan deals with each of the five earls of Douglas active between 1437 and 1460 in turn. Archibald 5th earl of Douglas is censured immediately on the grounds that he failed to restrain the men of Annandale, who ravaged and wasted all the neighbouring counties, and his son, William 6th earl, attracts criticism along the same lines, and is held to be at the root of the disorder and breakdown of justice in the localities; thus providing justification for his execution at the ‘Black Dinner’. By comparison, James 7th earl of Douglas escapes very lightly as Buchanan, while admitting that he did not actually retain the robbers of Annandale supported by the preceding earls, criticises him only for failing to suppress them with sufficient energy.

Having constructed this view of the Black Douglases, the accession of William 8th earl of Douglas provided Buchanan with the opportunity to present Douglas lordship in the light of all that was wrong in the abuse of wealth and power. Oppressions under the Douglases and their adherents increased as, according to Buchanan, they

indulged in every species of licentiousness, respecting nothing either sacred or profane, murdering whoever was obnoxious to them, and sometimes, with wanton and gratuitous cruelty, torturing those who had never offended them, lest their souls, softened by the disuse of crime, should become humanized.[37]

Such exaggerated language, although hardly providing an objective assessment of Douglas lordship, demonstrates Buchanan’s purpose in drawing instructive examples of power used judiciously or tyrannically, and although the portraits of virtuous kings and vicious tyrants in the Historia were intended to demonstrate the moral influence of kings over their subjects, magnates who behaved badly were also to be censured. Buchanan’s advocation of popular sovereignty is not as radical as it may appear, as his proposal that checks and limitations be placed on the power and action of the king by his subjects alluded not to the people as a whole, but to the nobility; the king’s ‘natural counsellors’.[38] In view of this, Buchanan looked for the same standards of virtue in a nobleman as he did in a king. A magnate who rose to a position of power and subsequently abused that power was as guilty as a tyrannous king and worthy, equally, of condemnation. In the pre-eminently powerful William 8th earl of Douglas, Buchanan must have thought to have found a superb illustration of that point.

Buchanan was not the first writer to condemn the Douglases for supporting large retinues of lawless men in the territories under their control, as the same accusation appears in the eighteenth book of Boece, but Buchanan expands and embellishes these accusations. Some errors in detail may be found in both Buchanan and the eighteenth book of Boece, such as the mediation offered between Livingston and Crichton by John Innes, bishop of Moray and Henry Lichton, bishop of Aberdeen.[39] However, John Innes never held the bishopric of Moray, therefore this may be a confused rendering of John Winchester. A number of incidents described in the Auchinleck Chronicle appear also in Buchanan’s Historia, such as the Boyd-Darnley blood feud and the fight at St Johnston on midsummer day between Sir William Ruthven and John Gorme Stewart of Atholl; the latter described only in Buchanan and the Auchinleck Chronicle. Again, this is a tantalising glimpse of a chronicle source incorporated into the ‘schort memoriale’ but subsequently lost. Many other stories common to the Auchinleck Chronicle and Buchanan appear also in the eighteenth book of Boece and Lesley’s History, but there are some original entries in Buchanan’s Historia which do not appear in previous accounts of the period. For example, Buchanan writes that John Lyon was put to death in the market place of Dundee by Alexander earl of Crawford, an incident that is not dated but appears immediately after the recording of the death of Joan Beaufort in Dunbar; her death occurred in 1445. Buchanan makes some consistent mistakes with proper names, such as George, instead of Hugh, earl of Ormond, and Beatrix instead of Margaret of Galloway, although this may be a confusion with Margaret’s redoubtable mother-in-law, Beatrice Douglas. The accuracy of such details would hardly have been considered important by Buchanan, and the major effect of his Historia for perceptions of the reign of James II was an entrenchment of the view of Douglas insolence and disregard of the law, to such an extent that later writers had little option but to be influenced by it, even when it conflicted with their personal inclinations.

This must have been the dilemma facing David Hume of Godscroft (1558-1629x31) when he wrote his History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus, published in Edinburgh in 1644.[40] Hume had studied under George Buchanan at the university of St Andrews in the early 1570s and later became secretary to Archibald Douglas, 8th earl of Angus. During his time in exile on the continent in the early 1580s, Hume collected documents that would form the basis of his vernacular History, even if this would not see publication until after his death.[41] In his assessment of the reign of James II, Hume’s account is far more favourable to the Douglases than that found in the works of previous writers, and he portrays Archibald 5th earl of Douglas as having despised Crichton and Livingston as ‘new’ men, but choosing to retire to his own lands rather than oppose them forcibly for fear of causing civil war. Hume explains that Douglas was concerned that his own privileges and liberties, conferred upon him by royal grants, should not be infringed, therefore the men of Annandale, so roundly condemned by Buchanan, were free to spurn the Crichton and Livingston upstarts and answer only in the regality court of their Douglas lord. (is rather neat justification of the depredations caused by Douglas men was tempered by Hume’s observation that Douglas should have taken firmer measures to restrain his men, but he is clearly on the defensive when he describes the repeated complaints lodged at court about the ravages committed by adherents of William 6th earl of Douglas as biased and exaggerated. He questioned why the spoliations of the Islesmen and other episodes of violence and bloodshed should not have attracted equal condemnation, and suggests that the Douglases had been singled out unfairly. Unsurprisingly, Hume made no connection between the execution of the 6th earl and his brother and the succession of their great-uncle James as 7th earl of Douglas, confining himself instead to a description of the earl’s family. It is in Hume of Godscroft’s account of the reign that the rhyme concerning the Black Dinner is found for the first time in print, although it is not necessarily his own composition:

Edinburgh castle, towne and tower,

God grant thou sinke for sinne;

And that even for the black dinner

Earle Douglas got therein.

This is repeated later by Sir Walter Scott and led to the description of the event as the ‘Black Dinner’ becoming widely used.

A fuller account of William 8th earl of Douglas is provided, although much of Hume’s detail is taken from Buchanan’s Historia. He presents the death of Douglas as premeditated murder at the hands of the king, at the instigation of Douglas’s enemies, especially Patrick Gray who was seeking revenge for the execution of his nephew. Although he does not elaborate on this, Hume shows his familiarity with the story of Maclellan of Bombie, and he supplies further reasons for the murder of Douglas in 1452, including the private conference held by Douglas on his journey back from Rome with the king and queen of England, and his vehemence in revenge for the murder of his cousins and his servant, John Auchinleck. Also, James II held against Douglas his execution of lord Herries and the tutor of Bombie and his support for thieves and robbers. Hume does not dwell on the bond made with the earls of Crawford and Ross, although he mentions it in his account of the confrontation between Douglas and the king when Douglas expresses surprise that the bond should give offence. The view of the scheming brutality of William 8th earl of Douglas had been established so well that even Hume’s inclination to portray the Douglases in as positive a light as possible was obliged to accept the general construct. The consequent rebellion by the Douglases was in response to a murder that ‘incensed the whole common people’, which is as far as Hume allows himself to go in condemnation of the king, and he repeats the story of Bishop Kennedy dissuading James II from W eeing to France; a solid element of the received view of the reign by this time. Of James 9th earl of Douglas, Hume states that, had he been ‘as politicke as hee was powerfull, the King might have beene set beside his (rone’.[42]

A contemporary of David Hume of Godscroft was William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649), known principally for his poetry, but who wrote his History of Scotland from the Year 1423 until the Year 1542, usually referred to as the History of the Five Jameses.[43] He embarked on this, the longest of all his works, in 1633 and completed it around 1644, when Hume of Godscroft’s History appeared in print, although Drummond’s work would not be printed until after his death, through the efforts of his brother-in-law, Sir John Scott of Scotstarvit.[44] Drummond’s History of the Five Jameses has the character of a collection of biographies divided into five sections, one for each king; and he was summoned to defend it before the Circular Tables of the Covenanters, possibly because a copy was among the papers he proposed to send for publication as royalist propaganda to the marquis of Montrose in 1645. Drummond may have been made to answer for his views in the charged political atmosphere of the 1640s, and Michael Spiller describes his political philosophy as one of ‘passive obedience to the king tempered by hostility to any kind of compulsion of belief, whether from kings, bishops, or presbyteries’.[45] The structure of each of the biographical sections on the Jameses follows a fairly uniform pattern, describing each king’s accession, domestic and foreign policies, miscellaneous events of interest and circumstances of the king’s death, followed by a short assessment of character. Drummond clearly had access to the works of Lesley, Buchanan and Ferreri’s edition of Boece, and his manuscripts have many margin notes, corrections and additions, but for the reign of James II, there is little that is new, and he does not appear to have drawn on any independent sources.

A further addition to the seventeenth-century contribution to the historiography of James II’s reign is Sir James Balfour of Kinnaird’s Annales of Scotland in Historical Works.[46] Balfour (c.1600-1657) was an antiquary and herald at the court of Charles I, being created Lyon King at Arms in 1630, although he held aloof from the civil war of the 1640s.[47] As the title of his historical work suggests, it follows a chronological format which records certain events but has no sustained narrative. Balfour used the printed Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland as his framework, although he appears also to have read Lesley and Buchanan’s histories. Professor Donaldson described Balfour as ‘a student of antiquities and heraldry [. . .] best known as a collector – and forger – of mediaeval charters’; a view that may be based on the erratic dating of events in Balfour’s work.[48] Certainly, Balfour’s dating is less than reliable as he describes some events under the wrong year, while giving very precise dates elsewhere which have no obvious evidence to support them. In this sense, his approach can appear to be the antithesis of the Auchinleck chronicler’s vague, ‘at this samyn tyme’. For example, Balfour dates the execution of William 6th earl of Douglas and his brother at Edinburgh castle (the ‘Black Dinner’) as having occurred on 17 July 1439, whereas all earlier references that date this event place it in November 1440. The arrest and imprisonment of the Livingstons, which occurred in the autumn and winter of 1449-50, is dated 8 December 1448 by Balfour, who misdates the marriage of James II to Mary of Gueldres to the same year, even though the records he claimed to be using would have shown this to have happened in 1449. It is likely that he had read the histories of Lesley and Buchanan, but if he had copies to hand when he was writing his own Annales, it is extraordinary that he should make so many errors, such as stating that William 8th earl of Douglas was killed by the king in Edinburgh rather than Stirling castle; the only writer to make this error. Any gaps in his information are glossed over in rather dismissive and unhelpful entries such as, ‘This year, 1447, produced no matter worthy of commemoration but only consultations anent the king’s marriage, and framing of traps to catch the governor.’

Balfour is the only writer to put a date on the bond made between the earls of Douglas, Crawford and Ross; a document held to be the principal reason for the confrontation between James II and William 8th earl of Douglas in February 1452, which led to the fatal stabbing of the earl by the king. He writes:

This year, 1445, the earl of Douglas lays the certain foundation of his own destruction; which was in solemnly swearing an offensive and defensive league and combination against all, none excepted (not the king himself) with the earl of Crawford and Donald lord of the Isles; which was mutually sealed and subscribed by them three, the 7th day of March.[49]

The earls of Ross and Crawford were not the same men in 1445 as they were in 1452, with both David Lindsay earl of Crawford and Alexander (not Donald) MacDonald earl of Ross having been succeeded by their sons, Alexander and John, respectively. Within the wider context of making bonds in the fifteenth century, these tended to be personal rather than inherited, and although this must be a matter for speculation in the absence of the actual bond, Balfour’s claim that this one did not have the conventional caveat ‘excepting allegiance to the king’ seems unlikely, although some bonds made in the lordship of the Isles follow the Irish practice of making no allusion to the king. In March 1445, James II was still a minor and the Black Douglases would not establish their control of the royal council until the summer, and this would appear to be another example of Balfour’s creative dating.[50] However, such an outright dismissal has been called into question by Michael Brown, who has argued that an agreement between the holders of these three earldoms may indeed have its origins during this period, although the bond was likely to have been sealed in 1446, for reasons discussed above.[51]

During the period known as the Scottish Enlightenment, David Hume, William Robertson and Adam Ferguson wrote histories that tended to dismiss the mediaeval period in Scotland as violent and lacking in the virtues necessary for civilised society; a view that would have been reinforced by the received version of events developed in previous works. Partly as a reaction to this, Sir Walter Scott created a more romanticised view of Scottish history that endured into the twentieth century. Although a writer and lawyer rather than a historian, it was his Tales of a Grandfather, intended as a history book for children, that condensed Scottish history into a short volume which was used subsequently as a convenient overview of Scotland’s past.[52] Although countering, to some extent, the dismissive and disparaging attitude to Scotland’s mediaeval past held during the Scottish Enlightenment, his Tales espouse many of the moralistic and didactic views of previous writers, such as Buchanan and Pitscottie. For the reign of James II, much of Scott’s material is derivative and consolidates the view of the Douglases as over-mighty magnates, stating that ‘in personal wealth and power, the earl of Douglas not only approached to, but greatly exceeded the King himself’. Scott was impressed by the chivalric image of the middle ages, and the reputation of the Douglases as adept in military pursuits presented Scott with the dilemma of struggling between the view that the Douglases were ‘always gallant defenders of the liberties of Scotland during the time of war’, and the problem of their hostility to the king, the rule of law and their eventual refuge in England.[53] He recounts the tournament fought by James Douglas against Burgundian champions, and concludes, ‘Thus you see how gallantly the Douglases behaved themselves, both in war and in the military exercises of the time. It was unhappy for the country and themselves, that their ambition and insubordination were at least equal to their courage and talents.’[54]

For his character assessment of James II, Scott describes his appearance, stating that ‘he was a handsome man, but his countenance was marked on one side with a broad red spot, which gained him the surname of James with the Fiery Face’. He goes on to develop this theme by considering that ‘They might have called him James with the fiery temper, in like manner; for, with many good qualities, he had a hot and impetuous disposition’, and he concludes the chapter in which he recounts the details of the king’s death by stating: ‘The King did not possess the elegant accomplishments of his father; and the manner in which he slew the Earl of Douglas must be admitted as a stain upon his reputation. Yet he was, upon the whole, a good prince, and was greatly lamented by his subjects.’[55]

The serious academic study of Scottish history experienced a fresh revival in the 1960s, and although challenges to acceptance of the over-mighty magnate theme took some time to develop, there has been an exceptional body of writing produced through informed research in the half-century and more since that time. For late mediaeval Scotland, the work of Annie Dunlop, Gordon Donaldson and Ranald Nicholson sparked further elucidation by Norman Macdougall, Jenny Wormald and Alexander Grant who have, in turn, inspired others to continue research in this and wider related fields; many of whose names appear repeatedly in the notes for this book, and a great debt of gratitude is owed for the material and ideas analysed here.

Perceptions of the reign of James II rely, as they have always done, on interpretation of the available sources. It is the work of the historian to evaluate evidence critically and to analyse it in order to arrive at a conclusion that may be defended in the light of the evidence, although this will always be susceptible to alternative interpretations or modifications occasioned by the discovery of additional information. A certain degree of speculation may be inevitable, although it is generally held not to be the historian’s place to indulge in imaginative interpretation unsupported by relevant evidence. However, literature and drama have a profound impact on popular perceptions, and stories from the past have provided material that has captured the imagination of writers whose work has contributed to a wider engagement with historical characters and events. Broadly speaking, the fifteenth century in Scotland has been overlooked within this literary genre, but the 2014 production of The James Plays - a dramatic trilogy by Rona Munro dealing with aspects of the reigns of James I, II and III – has brought this period to the attention of a wide theatre-going audience.[56] For James II: Day of the Innocents, Rona Munro’s interpretation is a dark psychological drama focused on the impact that his troubled minority may have had on his attitude to the exercise of kingship once he was able to direct policy on his own account. The dramatic potential of this period of Scottish history was provided by ‘big events being played out in the lives of a small group of individuals; kings wrestling with what kingship means; enough historical record to create a framework but still leave room for the imagination’.[57] Such interpretations may clash with evidence in places, but plays are intended to deliver more than a documentary of events, and any stimulus to engagement with this period and its sources through a compelling and thought-provoking portrayal of events must be welcomed. As has been shown, reliance on chronicle accounts that may themselves be subjective and interpretative does not necessarily bring us any closer to the elusive concept of historical ‘truth’.

NOTES

1.

Lesley, The History of Scotland, 77.

2.

Hector Boece, The Chronicles of Scotland, compiled by Hector Boece, translated into Scots by John Bellenden, 1531 (Edinburgh, 1821).

3.

Nicola Royan, ‘Boece, Hector (c.1465–1536)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004.

4.

Ibid.

5.

R. A. Mason, ‘Kingship and Commonweal: Political (ought and Ideology in Reformation Scotland’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1983), 102-6.

6.

Royan, ‘Boece’.

7.

Hector Boethius, Scotorum Historiae, 2nd edn (Paris, 1574).

8.

Lindsay of Pitscottie, The Historie and Cronicles, i.

9.

Major [Mair], John, A History of Greater Britain (Scottish History Society, 1892), 381-6; Alexander Broadie, ‘Mair, John (c.1467–1550)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004

10.

R. A. Mason, ‘Scotching the Brut’, History Today, xxxv, no.1 (January, 1985), 29; Mair, History, cxxxiv.

11.

Mair, History, 382.

12.

Ibid.

13.

Ibid., 383.

14.

Ibid., 384.

15.

Ibid., 385.

16.

Ibid., 386.

17.

Ibid.

18.

Lesley, History of Scotland, book 8, 56-82.

19.

Ibid., 22.

20.

Ibid., 27.

21.

Ibid.

22.

The version of the parliamentary records with which Lesley would have been familiar does not mention the Livingstons by name in 1450, although much of the legislation enacted at that parliament was particularly pointed in light of the Livingston disgrace, such as the statute ‘of rebellione ageynis the kingis persone or his autorite’ and ‘the punicione of officaris that wilfully trespassis the ministracion of thar office’: RPS 1450/1/24.

23.

Lesley, History of Scotland, book 8, 29-31.

24.

Ibid., 32.

25.

Julian Goodare, ‘Chalmers, David, of Ormond (c.1533–1592)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004.

26.

Chalmers of Ormond, Ane Cronikill.

27.

Ibid., 75.

28.

Ibid., 76.

29.

Ibid., 76-7.

30.

Ibid., 75.

31.

The Scottish Text Society edition of Pitscottie’s Historie, edited by Aeneas Mackay in 1899, made use of a number of different manuscripts, none of which was Pitscottie’s original. The oldest was designated MS. A by Mackay and provides the bulk of the text for the STS edition, but MS. A contained a number of gaps and was supplemented by the much fuller, but later, MS. 1. See preface to the STS edition and also W. W. Scott, ‘Lindsay, Robert, of Pitscottie (c.1532–c.1586)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004.

32.

Pitscottie, Historie, 92. Patrick master of Gray had two sisters, Margaret and Christian, who were married respectively to Robert 1st lord Lyle and James Crichton of Strathurd, therefore neither could have been the mother of Maclellan of Bombie.

33.

R. Pitcairn (ed.), Criminal Trials in Scotland from 1488 to 1624 (Edinburgh, 1833), i, appendix. I am indebted to Dr Ken Emond for this reference.

34.

Buchanan, Rerum Scoticarum Historia, ii, book 11, chapter 3, ff. 1-50.

35.

Mason, ‘Kingship and Commonweal’, 365.

36.

Buchanan, Historia, f. 1.

37.

Ibid., O . ff, ix, xviii, xxvii.

38.

Mason, ‘Kingship and Commonweal’, 393.

39.

Buchanan, Historia, f. 13.

40.

Hume of Godscroft, The History, 139-209.

41.

Paul J. McGinnis and Arthur H. Williamson, ‘Hume, David, of Godscroft (1558–1629x31)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

42.

Hume of Godscroft, History, 148.

43.

William Drummond of Hawthornden, History of Scotland from the Year 1423 until the Year 1542 (London, 1681).

44.

Michael R. G. Spiller, ‘Drummond, William, of Hawthornden (1585–1649)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

45.

Ibid.; T. I. Rae, ‘Historical Writings of Drummond of Hawthornden’, SHR, liv (1975), 22-62.

46.

Balfour of Kinnaird, Annales of Scotland, i, 166-89.

47.

Alexander Du Toit, ‘Balfour, Sir James, of Denmiln and Kinnaird, first baronet (1600– 1657)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. For the reign of James II, at least, I have diverged from Alexander Du Toit’s assertion that Balfour showed ‘a painstaking consideration for the accuracy of dates’.

48.

Donaldson, Scotland, James V-James VII, 262.

49.

Balfour, Annales, 170.

50.

McGladdery, James II, 143.

51.

See pages 64–5, 110.

52.

Sir Walter Scott, Tales of a Grandfather (Cambridge, 1926).

53.

Ibid., 225.

54.

Ibid., 228.

55.

Ibid., 224, 244.

56.

The plays, written by Rona Munro and directed by Laurie Sansom, were premiered at the National Theatre of Scotland during the 2014 Edinburgh International Festival, and then taken to the National Theatre in London. The production coincided with the lead-up to the Scottish referendum on independence, held on 18 September, and won the NOOK award for best play on 30 November 2014.

57.

Rona Munro, quoted by Susan Mansfield: http://www.eif.co.uk/blog/2014/three-kingsscotland#.VHxYWGpyZ1s

Conclusion

James II was a Scottish king who inherited the crown when he was only six years old through the difficult and disturbing circumstances of his father’s assassination at Perth in 1437. However, the Scots had a long and varied experience in maintaining and administering a realm in the absence of strong and effective kingship and, from 1286, had been forced to develop mechanisms for dealing with such periods. They had developed also a concept of the office of the crown and what it represented in terms of preserving an argument for autonomous and independent rule separate from any claims of superiority advanced by the English crown. With these arguments came perceptions of power and authority within the kingdom as exercised by those who felt, through social position and experience, they had a stake in political decision-making and the manner in which the realm should be governed. Although there is clear evidence of a broad acceptance that the rights and customs of the crown were to be respected and safeguarded, it is also the case that perceptions of personal, more localised authority remained upon which royal encroachment was unwelcome. The Stewart dynasty had got off to a shaky start in 1371 with Robert II finding it hard to establish his new regal authority in the face of ambitious members of the nobility, including his own family, and Robert III was similarly impeded to the extent that his son and heir died at the hands of his own uncle and his surviving son had to W ee the realm to seek safety, only to be captured and held as a hostage in England for eighteen years.[1] The return of that king, James I, to Scotland in 1424 witnessed a sea-change in the exercise of royal Stewart power and perceptions, and James II may be seen to have succeeded to his father’s more robust attitudes to kingship.[2]

Although the portrait of brutal faction fighting and near-chaos during the minority of James II, depicted by writers in the sixteenth century, may be shown to be a significant distortion, certain events, such as the ‘Black Dinner’, must have had an unsettling impact on the boy-king as he found himself used by those wishing to control his minority council and advance their own political and regional interests. Nevertheless, royal apprenticeship could be and was harsh at times, and it was expected that a king would use the training, instruction, observations and experience of his minority to grasp the realities of wielding power and making hard decisions once he made the transition to personal rule; concerns about the psychological sensibilities of a child would not have had much contemporary resonance. It is revealing how extensively meetings of the three estates, in parliament or general council, were used during the reign of James II in a manner that suggests not only the value of having decisions justified and approved, but also the willing engagement of a considerable section of what is termed loosely, ‘the political community’; meaning those of rank from the church, nobility and burghs who regarded themselves as having a role in the effective government of the realm. By 1437, Scots had experienced, with some exceptions, laissez faire kingship and governorship, followed by a contrasting display of ruthless, authoritarian and sometimes arbitrary exercise of royal power. Although James I had been assassinated by a comparatively small group of conspirators, misgivings about his style of kingship and his willingness to dismiss perceived claims and rights to regional authority if they did not accord with his own wishes, had created a far more widespread dissatisfaction with the king, however deeply those people disapproved of the means by which he had been removed.

The concept of a mutual contract (even if not defined in such terms) of loyalty and support for a king who administered the realm in a manner that ensured the safeguarding of justice and the rule of law, and rewarded service with patronage, was a basic expectation. When the king failed to deliver, or challenged loyalties by disregarding personal rights and expectations, dangerous undercurrents could develop within the political cohort. (at violence was very much a last resort is shown in the determination to seek redress for grievances through parliament and council, as the desire to offer counsel and have it regarded was undoubtedly preferable to overt hostility with all its attendant instability and damaging consequences. The experience of James I’s rule and eventual assassination determined attitudes during the early part of his son’s minority, and the administrative continuity demonstrated by Roland Tanner’s investigation of the parliamentary records highlights the desire to use this period of royal minority to settle and articulate some of the requirements of royal government and the balance of power that would ensure peace, stability and the upholding of justice. The latter concern was suffciently compelling to be raised repeatedly in the parliamentary statutes of this period, showing that law and order was an ideal that was failing to be delivered to those who complained of ‘spoliation’ and the aggressive and acquisitive actions of certain lords and their retinues. In this may be reflected concerns being voiced throughout the late fifteenth century, not only in Scotland, about the power of regional magnates and their armed followers. Personal security and the exercise of regional authority was one thing, but when the equitable exercise of justice was perceived as a casualty of this manifestation of noble power, the records give ample testimony of concern.

Scottish kings during the mediaeval period relied on their principal subjects and crown officers to execute royal policies in the localities, and it was this that prompted the articulation of mutual expectations in parliament on occasions such as 1445, when the ascendancy of the Black Douglases on the royal council was given official recognition in terms (known, erroneously, as the ‘coronation oaths’) that stated a much broader principle of rights to be recognised and safeguarded by both James II and his successors, and the three estates as a consultative body. In 1455, the three estates were emboldened suffciently by their role in assisting the king to forfeit the Black Douglases to impose restrictions on the king’s right to grant certain crown lands out as patronage. The purpose behind this was to prevent the dangerous tensions inherent in frequent and onerous levies of taxation and to allow James II and his successors to maintain the dignity of the court and the presentation of their power in a manner that did not burden their subjects.

If James II appears to have accepted, broadly, the role of the three estates in the government of the kingdom, it was because he recognised the importance of having his actions presented in the light of an acquiescent body politic, even if this was hardly reflective of reality. James II proved to be as ready to behave arbitrarily as his father had been, and many of the crises faced by him in the course of his personal rule may be shown to have been of his own making. However, he was, arguably, more adept at learning from his mistakes and seeking to recover from them. If this was undertaken not in a spirit of contrition but rather as a means to secure his objectives by another and more successful route, it was at least recognition of the need to court support. (is may be seen in the willingness of the king to submit his highly questiffnable slaying of William 8th earl of Douglas to the investigation and judgement of the three estates in parliament in June 1452; however packed with crown supporters, this made a very powerful statement about the king’s need for public exoneration through some semblance of judicial process.

The exercise of power through private and personal agreements was an increasing element in the effective management of regional authority in the late fifteenth century, and although the implications of one particular bond intended to articulate such regional jurisdictions in the north-east between the earls of Douglas, Crawford and Ross, contributed to the fateful clash between James II and William earl of Douglas, the king was willing, on other occasions, to enter into such personal bonds himself when they appeared to serve his ends.

Although James II did not express royal power through heavy expenditure on royal residences, in the manner of James I’s remodelling of Linlithgow palace or James IV’s extensive work on Linlithgow and Stirling, he had a strong and determined attitude to the projection and presentation of his own position and it was this that lay at the root of his struggle against the Black Douglases. Distrust at the manner in which the Black Douglases had acquired their position as pre-eminent Scottish magnates with vast estates throughout Scotland was compounded by the manner in which they presented their own lordship. Although it can hardly be demonstrated from the evidence that the Black Douglases posed any overt threat to the crown, they represented a powerful image of border lordship responsible for the protection of the realm itself, and had personal connections with England, France, Burgundy and the papacy which were not mirrored by any other Scottish magnate house and may be seen to have exceeded the diplomatic connections enjoyed by the king. The role of the Douglases within international chivalric circles also would have grated on James II who, if there is little firm evidence for his having taken part personally as a combatant in tournaments, would have wished to be regarded as the leader of chivalric culture within his own realm.

The clash between James II and the Black Douglases rested on conflicting perceptions of acceptable presentation of power and authority within the kingdom. James I had been unable to tolerate the Albany Stewarts as an alternative focus of power, and James II was unwilling to abandon his intention to eradicate the power of the Black Douglases, however long that took and notwithstanding the setbacks and compromises that he had to make in the process. Having achieved this, he sought to present himself in a manner that demonstrated the crown’s direct role in guarding the border and conducting warfare in the Marches. Similarly, he sought to prevent the establishment of any territorial expansion within other magnate houses that could approach the level acquired by the Black Douglases, and the manner in which he did this undoubtedly created a measure of discontent and crushed expectations among those, such as the Gordons of Huntly and William Sinclair, earl of Orkney, who had hoped to be rewarded more lavishly for their loyalty and assistance to the crown.

At times, James II could behave arbitrarily and inconsistently, but he was able also to use patronage in a manner that bound individuals to him by ties of personal loyalty that augmented the natural loyalty demanded of a subject to their king. He used methods such as acknowledging the use of titles assumed during the minority and even made additional creations of lords of parliament in gestures of patronage that cost him little or nothing in terms of resources. His creation of earldoms in the late 1450s reflect a similar form of recognition that enhanced the individual’s authority within his own locality, but seldom included an extension to his existing estates. The single exception was the regional authority that accrued to the Campbells as earls of Argyll, but this reflected James II’s attempt to offer a longerterm strategy for containment of the lordship of the Isles despite the immediate concessions he needed to grant to John earl of Ross in the 1450s. James II could prioritise his actions, and he may have regarded Ross as unfinished business to which he could return in due course.

Concentration on the political events and developments during a reign can often present a rather two-dimensional view of a king as he struggled with affairs of state and engaged in power-politics, but some records provide brief and often quirky insights into other aspects of James II’s character and experience. For example, at exactly the same period as the king was embarking on his challenge to the power of William 8th earl of Douglas, a payment was made to the Edinburgh burgess, Andrew Crawford, in recompense for expenses incurred when a camel was brought to the king.[3] James I had a menagerie at Linlithgow that included a lion, so this may be a brief and W eeting indication that his son was interested also in exotic fauna. A payment was made for the costumes of players appearing before the king during the Christmas celebrations at Stirling in 1446, and a feather bed was provided for James II in 1448.[4] Almonds were sent to the king from Perth in 1450 and a silver bridle was purchased, possibly for use on one of the horses being bred for the king in Mar.[5] Payments were made to the king’s bakers, tailors and the prosaically-named Michael Dogman, keeper of the royal dogs, and fees paid to the king’s cook, William Kemp, were followed with expenses for treatment during his illness and a payment made for his funeral in 1454.[6] It is through sources such as these that glimpses of life at court may be discerned.

James II’s pursuit of the enhancement and projection of his own concept of Stewart kingship had undoubtedly upset the balance of power within the kingdom, tipping it at times to almost disastrous effect. His survival of the crises of his reign may be regarded as the result of luck rather than judgement, although he seems to have possessed a deeper understanding of the need to court support and compromise when circumstances dictated than either his father or his son. It is not possible to say how successfully he would have managed to rule in the longer term after the downfall of the Black Douglases in 1455, as the last five years of his reign were taken up with his diplomatic ambitions and prosecution of war on the borders. Some discontent was being expressed concerning remissions and feuing, but this hardly went beyond ‘murmurings’ and the swelling of resentment on these matters to significant proportions did not occur until the reigns of his son and grandson.

By the time James II embarked on what was to be his final campaign against the English-occupied castle of Roxburgh, he had re-established the authority of the crown, secured the succession with three surviving sons and two daughters, and was at the head of a sizeable and well-equipped army undertaking a popular action designed to restore national pride and demonstrate the kind of strong and focused military leadership desired by his subjects. (at he died in the attempt as the result of an unfortunate accident when one of his own guns broke apart, plunging the Scots into yet another lengthy royal minority, was an unforeseen consequence that could have been avoided only if Mair’s advice ‘not to stand too close to instruments of this sort when they are in the act of being discharged’ had come sooner.[7]

NOTES

1.

For a far more comprehensive analysis of this period, see Boardman, The Early Stewart Kings.

2.

Again, these are discussed fully in Brown, James I.

3.

ER, v, 436.

4.

Ibid., 118, 309.

5.

Ibid., 378, 687, 518, 600.

6.

Ibid., 495, 273, 310, 347, 385, 438, 499, 678, 688, 686.

7.

Mair, History, 386.

Glossary

Alienation

Transfer of property or rights to another person. The king could revoke such alienations if they were made, for example, during his minority, or if deemed detrimental to his rights.

Barratry

The purchase of benefices, or pensions from benefices, at the papal curia.

Blench ferme

Form of landholding under Scots Law by a nominal payment, such as one penny or a red rose, to be rendered on a specific date (such as the Feast of St John) and place. In most circumstances, demand for payment was theoretical rather than enforced.

Brieve

Writ ordering judicial investigation to be made of certain points stated in that brieve.

Custumar

Customs official.

Excambion

Exchange of lands (Scots Law).

Infeftment

The symbolic act of giving legal possession.

Instrument of sasine

Legal record of the transfer of ownership of land or property.

‘of that Ilk’

The head of a family associated with a place/estates bearing that name.

Retour

Return to the royal chancery of a jury’s findings concerning rights of inheritance.

Revocation

The reversal or cancellation of existing grants or privileges.

Sasine

Legal document recording transfer of ownership (sale or inheritance).

Sorners

Itinerant beggars.

Sow

An apex-shaped wooden structure on wheels, used to protect those manoeuvring a battering ram up to a castle gate.

Tack

Lease of land.

Transumpt

Copy or exemplification of a legal record.

Appendix: The Auchinleck Chronicle

This appendix provides the collection of chronicle fragments contained in the Asloan Manuscript (NLS MS. Acc. 4233) and known as the Auchinleck Chronicle. The source is discussed at length in Chapter 9, but has been reproduced below with explanatory notes regarding editing. Certain words/expressions have been translated within square brackets, and the original script edited only insofar as symbols have been replaced: ‘p’ with ‘th’, ‘3’ with ‘y’ and ‘ß’ with ‘s’ (single or plural), and folios reordered for continuity of narrative.

Heir followis ane schort memoriale of the scottis corniklis for addicoun.

[f. 109r]

Item It Is to wit that the scottis Regnit befor the pictis Regnit ijC lxv yeris & thre monethis The pictis Regnit IM lxj yere fra thai began or thai war distroyit. Scotland was a kinrik before the Incarnacioun CCCCxliiii yeris

The yeir of god IM iiij xxviij the xx day of september allane stewart lord dernlie was slane at polmais thorne be Sir thomas boyd vnder ane assouerance takin betuix tham

The yere of god IM iiijC xxxix the vij day of Iulij Sir thomas boyd was slane be alexander stewart buktuth & his sonis & mathow stewart with his brother and vther syndry

That samyn yere the thrid day of august The lord kalendar Sir alexander levingstoun that tyme beand in the castell of sterling with the qwene / Tuke the qwene and put hire in ane chalmere and kepit hir stratlye thairin / till scho was lowsit be the thre estatis at the counsall haldin at striuling that samyn yere the last day of august and that samyn tyme he tuke Sir Iames stewart the lord of lornis brother & willam stewart & put tham in pittis & bollit thaim / at that samyn counsall Sir Iames was borowit be the lord gordoun Sir alexr Setoune lord of the ylis Sir willam of crechtoun that tyme chanceller vnder the pane of thre thousand

[f. 109v]

The samyn yere the xxiiij day of september Ihon of culquhone the lord of luss was slane in Inchemuryne vnderneth ane assouerance be lauchlane mcclanis and murthow gibson The samyn tyme thar was in scotland a gret derth for the boll of quheit was at xi s’ and the boll of ete mele xxx s’ and werraly the derth was sa gret that thair deit a passinge peple for hungere and als the land Ill the wame Ill was so violent that thair deit ma that yere than euer thair deit vnder iij pestilens or yit in ony vther seikness in scotland and that samyn yere the pestilens come In scotland and began at drumfres and It was callit the pestilence but mercy O or thar tuke It nain that euer recouerit bot thai deit within xxiiij houris

The yeire of god IM iiijC xliij the x day of marche erll Iames douglas deit at the castell of abercorn to the takin thai said he had in him four stane of talch and maire

Thar faucht on mydsomere day in sanct Ihonston Schir willam rowane Ihon gorme stewart of athole quhar thair was slane willam of rowthwan and ane man with him on his syd & na man and on the tother syd the said Ihon gorme gilcrist makynare and of thaim slane out of hand of gentill men & yemen xviij & ma & mony hurt in perell of thair lyf (at gat away and this bargane was done on the north Inche of sanct Ihonston / all for the takin of a man for thift that the said willam tuke

[f. 110r]

The samyn yere forsaid the xv day of Iulij Scir Robert sempill than beand in the castell of dumbertan and schiref deput to the lord erskyn and patrik calbreth [Galbraith] beand in the ower bailye havand the entre be him self at wallace tuwre and the k[ep]ing of the ower balye The said Sir Robert put out the said Sir patrik clerlie fra all governans of the castell subtelly and gart him remuf his geir and on the morne the said patrik past agane to the castell & gat entre to remuf the laif of his gere and had in with him bot iij or iiij vnharnest men Neuertheless he tuke the portar & wan the ouyr balye clerlie on force and was commendit for his takin & supleite be the tovne of dumbertane and schortlie he put out the said Sir Robert of the nether balye & remanit yit with the hale castell efter that

Item that samyn yere the xxij day of august Erle willam of dowglas Iames son at the command of king Iames the secund come to bernetoun in louthian with ane gret ost and with him the forsaid kingis counsall beand with him and his houshald and schortlie he askit the hous on the kingis behalf and schew the kingis lettrez of commandement to ask It and suthlie androw crechtoun than beand thairin capitane answerd sayand that the hous was in the kingis hand and nychole of borthuik and Iames of crechtoun war wnder burrowis to the schiref / Sir willam of crechtoun and thai put in be him on the kingis behalf and said thai wald nocht gif him the hous bot gif it ware of the schirefis bidding and than the erll remanit about the

[f. 110v]

hous in proper person iiij days & iiij nychtis and on the fift day he schew the kingis banere and than thai gaf It our condicionaly that thai suld haf fredome vj days to remuf thair gudis & thaim self and he kest It dovne within iiij dayis efter

Thar was ane counsall generale haldin at striuling the ferd day of nouembere In the hender end of the quhilk counsall thai blewe out on Sir willam of crechtoun and Sir george of crechtoun & thare aduertence and Incontinent efter the out blawing Sir george & Sir willam tuke away Sir Ihon fosteris gudis that Is to say schepe & nolt and syne Sir george tuke the erll of douglas[’s] hors[es] and brynt his grangis of abercorne & strabrok & vther five placis and brynt the samyn tyme the blak nestis

The yere of god IM iiijC xlv the last day of may Schir Iames stewart of auchingowne was slane & ane with him at drumglass besyd kirkpatrick be the lard of duchall and alexr the lyle & thair childer and erdit in the kirk of dumbertane and that samyn tyme Robyn boyd send Sir alexander cunnynghame / chaplane to Robyn kalendare to the kirk of cardross to Sir Iames wyf efter that he had cummyn fra the slauchter of hir husband and bad hir cum to the castall and said thai suld send hir hame in a bait & warand hir for thai gart hir trow thair was men waitand hir on hors & fut to tak hir / and schortlie throu Sir alexris fair langage and hechtis scho passit with him and sone within vj days efter for diseis scho toke hir child ill and was

[f. 111r]

deliuerit befor hir tyme ix oulkis of ane knaif [male] child that liffit nocht ane hour and was erdit besyd his fader in the kirk forsaid

Ane thousand iiijC xlvj (ar decessit in the castall of glasqw Master Ihon cameron bischop of glasqw apon yule ewyne that was bischop xix yere

The samyn yere archebald of dunbar tuke the castell of halis on sanctandrois day the apostole and syne cowardlie gaf It owr to the master of douglas sodanlie

Thar was ane parliament haldin at perth the v day of Iunj be king Iames the secund and Remanit thar bot iij days and was continewit till Edinburgh becaus of the sege that was liand about the castell on the kingis behalf and Sir willam of crechtoun was in till It / and held It ix oulkis & than gaf It to the king throu trety and the xv day of Iulij the qwene his moder deit in dunbar and was erdit in the charterhous of perth and Incontinent the lord halis gaf our the castell of dunbar throu trety

This quene forsaid was callit Iane and scho was the duke of somersydis [Somerset’s] douchter that king Iames the first spousit in yngland for till help to lous him furth of It and he gat on hir Iames that was king and ane nother son callit alexandere and scho bair baith thir sonis on a nycht Item he gat with hir vj douchteris the eldest was callit margaret that was baith wys and wertuis and was spousit with the dalphin of fraunce The secund was

[f. 111v]

callit Elenor & was spousit with the duke of brettan

The yere of god IM iiijC xlv the xxiij day of Ianuare The erll of huntlie and the ogilbeis with him on the ta part and the erll of craufurd on the tother part met at the yettis of arbroth on ane sonday laite and faucht and the erll of huntlie and wat ogilby W ed and thair was slane on thair party Sir Ihon oliphant lard of aberdalghy Sir willam forbes Schir alexr barclay alexr ogilby Dauid of aberkerdath with vther syndry and on the tother part the erll of craufurd him self was hurt in the feild and deit within viij days / bot he & his son wan the feild and held It and efter that a gret tyme held the ogilbyis at gret subiectoun and tuke thair gudis & distroyit thair placis

Item thair was ane richt gret herschipe maid in fyff be thir personis The erll of craufurd Iames of levingstoun that tyme kepar to the king and capitane of striuling The ogilbeis all Robert reach the lard of kadyoch and vther syndry and this herschipe was maid on sanct androis land be the maist force and Incontinent efter bischope Iames kennedy cursit solempnitlie with myter & staf buke & candill contynually a yere and Interdytit all the placis quhar thir personis ware and the samyn day xij moneth that this hereschip was maide thair happinit the said batale betuix thaim and the forsaid erll of craufurd lay four days abone the yerd & thair durst no man erd him quhill the forsaid bischop send the prior of sanctandrois and..

[There is a break in the continuity of the entries, and folio 112r. does not proceed naturally from this point, but contains information which is a continuation of entries from folio 118v. For this reason, folios 114-16 have been placed next in this revised ordering of the chronicle and allude to events in 1451, 1452 and 1455.]

[f. 114r]

thai cryit him luftennent and sone efter this thai worthit als strange as euer thai war / and at this tyme thai gat the erllis sele to consent to the trewis and Incontinent thai send furth snawdoun the kingis herrod [herald] to lundoun to bynd wp the trewis and als fast as Sir Iames of douglas gat wit in herof he past till londone Incontinent / and quharfor men wist nocht redelye bot he was thar with the king of yngland lang tyme and was mekle maid of

The yere of god IM iiijC lj the xxv day Iunij (ar was haldin a parliament in Edr [Edinburgh] be king Iames the secund To the quhilk parliament the forsaid erle willam of douglas come and put him body landis and gudis in the kingis grace at the Request of the qwene and the thre estatis and grantit him all his lordschippis agane outtane the erldom of wigtoun (at Is to say galloway fra the watter of Cre west and stewartoun outtane the landis of pedynnane Of the quhilk the erllis moder had conjunct feftment and charterit him now of all the laif of his lordschippis and gaf him & all his a fre Remissioun of all thingis bygane to the day forsaid And all gud scottismen war rycht blyth of that accordance

That samyn yer’ Erll willam of douglas wes slane in the castell of striuling be king Iames the

[f. 114v]

secund that had the fyre mark in his face The forsaid king Iames send owt of striuling with willam lawder of haltoun a speciale assouerans and respit wnder his preve sele and subscriuit with his awne hand and all the lordis that war with the king that tyme war oblist suppos the king wald brek the band forsaid / that thai suld let It at thair powere (is beand done the forsaid willam of lawder of haltoun passit to the forsaid erll willam of douglas and brocht him to striuling to the king on the monunday befor fastrennisevyn that was the xxj day of februare and this samyn monunday he passit to the castell and spak with the king that tuke richt wele with him be apperans and callit him on the morne to the dynere & to the supper / and he come & dynit and sowpit and thai said thair was a band betuix the said erll of dowglas and the erll of ross & the erll of craufurd and efter supper at sevyne houris the king than beand in the Inner chalmer & the said erll he chargit him to breke the forsaid band he said he mycht nocht / nor wald nocht / (an the king said / fals tratour sen thow will nocht I sall / and stert sodanly till him with ane knyf and straik him in at the colere and down in the body and thai said that patrik gray straik him nixt the king

[f. 115r]

With ane poll ax on the hed and strak out his harnes [brains?] and syne the gentillis that war with the king gaf thaim Ilkane a straik or twa with knyffis and thire ar the names that war with the king that strake him for he had xxvj woundis In the first Sir alexr boyd the lord dernlie Sir androw stewart Sir willam of gremston Sir symond of glendonane and the lord gray

The yere of god IM iiijC lij^0 The xxvij day of merche Sir Iames of douglas erll Iames secund son for the foule slauchter of his brother erll willam of douglas Come on sanct patrikis day in lentryn to striuling & blew out xxiiij hornis attanis apon the king and apon all the lordis that war with him that tyme for the foule slauchter of his brother And schewe all thair seles at the corss on ane letter with thair handis subscriuit and tuke the letter and band it on ane burd and cuplit It till ane hors tale and gart draw It throu the towne spekand richt sclanderfully of the king and all that war with him that tyme & spulyeit all the tovne and brint It And thair was with him his brother the erll of ormond and the lord hammiltoun & na ma lordis and thai excedit nocht of gud men vjc all this tyme the king was into perth passand to the erll of craufurd

That samyn yere (ar was ane parliamemt haldin in Edinburgh the xij day of Iunij be king Iames

[f. 115v]

the secund and thair was forfaltit alexr lyndesaye The erll of craufurd and lord lyndesay bath land lyf and gudis and in that samyn parliament thar was put on the nycht on the parliament hous dure Ane letter wnder Sir Iames of douglas sele & the sele of the erll of ormond & Sir Iames hammiltonnis declynand fra the king Sayand that thai held nocht of him nor wald nocht hald with him with mony vther sclanderous wordis calland tham tratouris that war his secret counsall and than this parliament was continewit for xv dayis & chargit all maner of man till be at Edinburgh baith on fut & hors Ilk man for him self baith in burgh & land vnder the pane of ded & tinsall of thair landis

The quhilk day thai apperit all & semblit at pentland Mure and war novmerit xxxM and the king him self passit on southwart with the ost to peblis selkrig drumfres & vther syndry partis and did na gud bot distroyit the cuntre richt fellonly baith of cornes medowis & wittalis and herijt mony bath gentillmen & vtheris that war with him self

Item thair was maid in the forsaid parliament thre erllis viz / Sir Iames crechtoun son & air to Sir willam of crechton that spousit the eldest sister of murray was beltit erll of murray Item the lord hay and constable of scotland was beltit erll of erroll Item Sir george of crechtoun was beltit erll

[f. 116r]

of caithness Item thair was maid vj or vij lordis of the parliament and banrentis In the first the lord dernelie The lord halis the lord boyd of kilmarnok The lord W emyng of cummyrnald The lord borthuik of that Ilk The lord lyle of dowchale The lord of cathcart of that Ilk Item the lord of lorn Ihon stewart talyeit all his landis to the male and surname in the said parliament / Item the lord of cathcart deit in the samyn tyme Item Sir george of crechtoun annext all his landis to the erldome of caithness that samyn tyme Item thair was syndry landis gevin to syndry men in this parliament be the kingis secret counsall that Is to say the lord cambell to Sir colyne cambell to Sir alexr home to Sir dauid hvme to Sir Iames keyre and till vther syndry war rewardit be the said secret counsall the quhilk men demyt wald nocht stand

The yere of god IM iiijC lv^0 In the begynnyng of merche Iames the secund kest dovne the castell of Inuerawyne and syne Incontinent past till glasqw and gaderit the westland men with part of the ereschery and passit to lanerik and to douglas & syne brynt all douglasdale and all awendale and all the lord hammiltonnis landis & herijt thaim clerlye and syne passit till Edinburgh & fra thin till the forest with ane ost of lawland men and all that wald nocht cum till him furthwith he tuke thair gudis and brynt thair placis and tuke faith of all the gentillis clerlie and all this tyme

[f. 116v]

the lord hammiltoun was in yngland till haue gottyn suple and couth get nane / bot gif the douglas and he wald haue bene ynglis men and maid the aith and Incontinent efter the king passit in proper persoun and put ane sege till abercorn and within vij days lord hammiltoun come till him till abercorne and put him lyf landis and gudis in the kingis will purelie and sempillye throw the menys of his Eme Iames of levingstoun (at tyme chalmerlane of scotland and the king Resauit him till grace and send him on Incontinent with the erll of orknay that tyme chancellar of scotland till remane in warde In the castell of Roslyne at the kingis will and thus he left the erll of douglas all begylit as men said / and men wist nocht grathlie quhar the douglas was all this tyme the king remanit still at the sege and thair was mony hurt and nane slane till sanct georgis daye outtane allane pantour that was that tyme the mast Ingenious man that was in scotland & mast subtell in mony diuers thingis and was slane with ane ganye [gun] throu misgouernyng of him self and was richt mekle menyt be the king & mony vther lordis (us the king remanit still at the sege and gart strek mony of the towris dovn with the gret gwn the quhilk a franche man schot richt wele and falyeit na schot within a faldome quhar it was chargit him to hit and..

[The narrative breaks here, but there is continuity between the next four folios: 117, 118, 112, 113, 119 and 120, therefore they have been grouped together.]

[f. 117r]

The king gadderit ane gret ost and past In yngland and did gret scaith and wan mony towris and hous[es]

Item the xij day of maij Iames the brothire of erll willam of douglas that was slane in the castell of striuling come to knapdale and spak thar with the erll of Roß and lord of Ilis and maid thaim all richt gret rewardis of wyne clathis siluer silk and ynglis clath and thai gaf thaim mantillis agane and quhat was thar amangis thaim wes counsall to commounis and thai demyt Ill all

Item that samyn moneth and yere Sir george of crechtoun resignit all his conquest landis in the kingis handis and maid him his aire and within vj days Iames of crechtoun sone & aire to the said george of crechtoun tuke the castell of blakness and his fader in contrar of the king and Incontinent the king in proper persoun put ane sege to the blakness and lay at It ix or x dayis and than It was gevin oure be trety and Sir george was out to methfen and gaf him the landis of strathurd for the landis that he had conquest in louthiane

The hereschipe of Inuerkip be donald of the ylis viz. baloch with the powere of the Ilis with him and thai said Ihon of douglas ane bastard sone till archebald erll of douglas was with thaim thai war vxx of galays wele tald & ma and of men v or vj thousand (is hereschipe was done the said yeire

[f. 117v]

The x day of Iulij and thair was slane of gud men xv and of wyfis twa or thre and of barnis thre or foure and of hors[es] v or vjc and of oxin and ky xM and ma and of schepe and gait a thousand & ma and thai brynt that tyme certane townis In Inuerkep viz about the kirk Item this said donald with his ost of pe Ilis herijt all arane and wan the castell of braudwik and kest it down to the erd and herijt baith the Ilis of Cerayes the samyn tyme Item thai tuke crauchmet of bute the samyn tyme viz Ic bollis of male Ic bollis of malt Ic martis Ic merkis of siluer

Ane thousand iiijc lij the xxix day of august thair was cummand to the cathedrall kirk master george of lawder that tyme bischope of Ergyle fra his castall of auchindoun efter that he had bene in the Ile of lesmore that tyme xxx dayis and maire And thair was in his company that samyn tyme master herculis skrymgeour persoun of glassar Sir Ihon mcarthour and Sir adam his parrische preist and alexr skrymgeour the personis brother and the lordis awne seruandis of houshald & nane vththeris for the lord come for gud trety and trastit nain evil (is person forsaid brocht ane summondis apon Sir gilbert mclathane that tyme chanceller of the forsaid cathederall kirk and apon Sir moryss mcfadyane that tyme thesaurere of the said kirk The quhilk Sir gilbert and Sir moryss gadderit all hale the clanlathane and all vtheris that thai mycht

[f. 118r]

purches and send to thir men word that the forsaid bischop come with the forsaid clerk and put thaim out of thar benefice and to put In the forsaid master hercules and thus thai Informit the peple wranguisly and begylit thaim for the person had no thing bot a summondis apon Sir gilbert and apon Sir moryss mcfadyn for a sentence diffinitive (at thai gaf aganis him of his benefice that he had Ioysit peceably xv yere with Sir gotheray mcforsan becaus that this summondis was apon his chennonis the lord passit in proper persoun till haf maid gud tretye And als fast as this lord with thir personis forsaid come nere the kirk within the quarter of ane myle The forsaid Sir gilbert and Sir morys come with all the powere that thai mycht be in fere of were apon the forsaid lord the bischop & his company and spak till him self richt dispituoslie with felloun wordis and scorne and for dispyte halsit him in errische sayand bannachadee and dispytfully reft fra him the forsaid master hercules & pullit him fra his hors and brak the lordis belt and tuke the clerke and his brother & harllit & led thaim away rycht dispytfully and band the gentill man & thocht to strik of his hed and quhen this foull suppris was done till god and haly kirk / than the lord wald haf past on his fute till his kirk / thai stert befor him sayand (at and he schupe to gang thair away that thai suld sla him & all that war with him and thai war all about him and wald nocht lat him pass ony gait till he was oblist till assolye [absolve] thaim of all

[f. 118v]

thing that than was done thare and for dreid of his lyf and his mennis he grantit throw consall of rure alanson and vtheris that war with him and than thai come with a W yrdome & said that thai come for na Ill of him ne his childer and thai held the clerk and his brother and on the morne gart thaim swere that thai suld neuer follow him nother of summondis nor of vthir thing that was done to thaim be thaim self na na vtheris bot held thair bullis and thair siluer and a silkyn twys and all vther graith that thai had that was oucht worth viz gownis clokis hudis bannettis and vthire small geire

The yere of god IM iiijC lj^0 In the moneth of merche the erll of Ross and lord of the ylis tuke thir castellis of the king viz Inuerness our’cvart [Urquhart] and rothwane [Ruthven] in badyenoch and stuffit the castell of Inuerness and wrquhart and kest dovne the castell of rochwan in badyenoch and thai said that he gaf the keping of the castell of wrquhart till his gud fader Iames of levingstoun that was eschapit subtelly fra the king and his counsall out of the abbay of halyrudhous and was cummand to the lord for supple & succour that resauit him richt thankfully and tuke plane part agane the king for him and said he had the kingis wryt & walx to haf the castell of wrquhart for iij yere and he said that the kingis awne person gart him mary the said Iames douchter and hecht him gud lordschipe the quhilk

[f. 112r]

he had not gottin bot ewyn the contrary in all thingis

The samyn yere the xvj day of august thar was slane Ihon of sandelandis sone and are to the lard of caldor In that tyme bot xx yeris of age and his Eme Iames and ane man with tham

Item that samyn yere & moneth thare was drownit in the watter of crawmond Sir Ihon logane of lestalrig knycht of the age of xxij yeris

Item that samyn yere Sir patrik of corntoun was slane in dunbertane on setterday the vij day of august be allane hog that tyme portar

That samyn yere the priuilege of the vniuersite of glasqw come to glasqw throw the Instance of king Iames the secund and throw Instigacoun of master willam turnbull that tyme bischop of glasqw and was proclamit at the croce of glasqw On the trinite sonday the xxij day of Iune And on the morne thair was cryit ane gret Indulgence gevin to glasqw at the request of thaim forsaid be pap nycholas as It war the yere of grace and with all Indulgens that thai mycht haf in rome contenand iiij monethis begynnand the ix day of Iuly and durand to the x day of nouember

Item the yere of god IM iiijC liij^0 In the moneth of september deit alexander lyndesay erll of craufurd In fynevyne that was callit a rigorous man and ane

[f. 112v]

felloun and held ane gret rowme in his tyme O or he held all angus in his bandoun & was richt Inobedient to the king

Item the samyn yere & moneth thair decessit in Edinburgh Sir george of crechtoun and in the samyn moneth and yere Sir Iames lord of crechtoun decessit at dunbar and It was haldin fra the king a litill quhile and syne gevin till him and in the samyn moneth and yere decessit Ihon hammiltoun that was callit quhissilbery and was a licht man in his tyme Item in the samyn yere & moneth decessit in sterling androw cunnynghame sone & air till willam of cunynghame of glengarnok and the samyn androw spousit margaret cambell Sir duncan lord cambellis douchter and tuke viijc merkis of toucher & arit the land
and in the samyn moneth and yere decessit Sir alexr Ramsay lord of dalhousy and in the samyn moneth and yere decessit Ihon of park lard of that Ilk Item that samyn yere & moneth decessit Sir willam keith that was callit ane gentill knycht & a wertuos Item the samyn yere and moneth the lard of Ihonstonis twa sonis tuk the castall of lochmabane apon the lard of movswald callit carudderis & his ij sonis & other twa or thre men / & all throu tressoun of the portar

[f. 113r]

And syne the king gaf tham the keping of the hous to his prophet and how that was men ferleit

Thar was ane richt gret spait in clyde the xxv day and xxvj day of nouember The quhilk brocht dovn haile hous[es] bernis and millis and put all the town of gowane in ane W ote quhill thai sat on the hous[es]

The yere of god IM iiijC xlviij The xxv day of februare the master of douglas callit Iames and twasum with him (at Is to say Iames of douglas brother to the larde of lochlevyn and the lard of haukat facht in the barres at striuling aganis twa knychtis and ane sqwyar of burgunye and thir ware thair names Schir Iakkis de lalane Sir symond de lalane and the larde of longawell that was the sqwyare and this was befor king Iames the secund

That samyn yere the xxiij day of octobere was the battell of lochmabane stane within the parrische of Sanct patrik Quhar hew of Douglas erll of ormond was chiftane on the scottis syd and with him Schir Ihon wallace of cragy the lord of Ihonstoun the lord somerwellis son & aire Dauid stewart of castell myll the schiref of air with vther syndry gentillis of the westland and thair men was callit iiijM And on the ynglis syde the youngar persye Sir Iohn of pennyntoune Sir Ihon herntoun war chiftanis and with thaim sex thousand of ynglis men quhare thar chiftanis war tane and xvC men with thaim / slane

[f. 113v]

drownit vC And on the scottis syd xxvj slane and tane / bot na man of reputacoun war tane nor slane bot Sir Ihon wallace deit efter that he come hame throu misgouernance

Item IM iiijC Lvj^0 Cunynghame and dalrumpill faucht in the barras of striuling befor king Iames the secund

That samyn yere the thrid day of decembere thair decessit in glasqw master willam turnbull bischope of glascow (at brocht haim the pardoun of it

Item that samyn yere the last day of august deit in glasqw master walter stewart that was lord prowand

Item that samyn yere & moneth decessit in brechyne master Ihone crennok bischop of brechyne that was callit a gud actif and wertuis man and al his tyme wele gouernand

The yere of god IM iiijC lix the penult day of Iunij decessit at paslay thomas carvas [Tarvas] abbot of paslay the quhilk was ane richt gud man and helplyk to the place of ony that euer was O or he did mony notable thingis and held ane noble hous and was ay wele purvait he fand the place all out of gud rewle and destitut of leving and all the kirkis in lordis handis And the kirk vnbiggit / The body of the kirk fra the bricht stair wp and put on the ruf he biggit and thekit It with sclait and riggit it with stane and

[f. 119r]

biggit ane gret porcioun of the steple and ane staitlie yethous [gatehouse] and brocht hame mony gud Iowelis and clathis of gold siluer & silk & mony gud bukis and maid staitlie stallis and glasynnit mekle of all the kirk and brocht hame the staitliest tabernakle that was in all scotland and the maist costlie And schortlie he brocht all the place to fredome and fra nocht till ane mychti place and left It out of all kynd of det and at all fredome till dispone as thaim lykit and left ane of the best myteris that was in scotland and chandillaris of siluer and ane lettren [lectern] of brass with mony vther gud Iowellis

Item the xvj day of august king Iames the secund maid his first wayage in yngland with vjC thousand men and brynt and herijt xx mylis within the land and wan and distroyit xvij towris & fortaliceis and remanit on the ground of yngland vj days and vj nychtis and thair persewit thaim neuer ynglisman with Ill nother be day nor nycht and come hame with gret worschip / & tynt nocht a man of valour

Item Incontinent the ynglismen war gadderit wele till iiij or vC thousand and come to the marche and thair discordit and passit hame with ane gret velany / viz the duke of york the erll of salisbery with mony vther syndry gret lordis of the land

The yere of god IM iiijC lx the thrid sonday of august king Iames the secund with ane gret ost was

[f. 119v]

At the sege of Roxburgh and wnhappely was slane with ane gwn the quhilk brak in the fyring / for the quhilk was gret dolour throu all scotland and neuertheless all the lordis that war thar remanit still with the oist and on the fryday efter richt wysly & manfully wan the forsaid castell and tynt nocht a man may In the wynning of It

And than thai lordis Incontinent send till Edinburgh for the prince and the said prince with his modere the quene & bischopis & vther nobillis come to kelso on the fryday efter the deid of the king and remanit thar quhill he was crovnit and quhill the forsaid castell was wastit and distroyit and on the sonday efter he was crovnit in to kelso and the forsaid lordis passit to the castell of werk & sone thai wan that castell and Incontinent kest It dovne to the erd and distroyit It for euer Item in the tyme of the coronacoun of the king thair was maid ma than a hundreth knychtis

Item in the moneth of Ianuar in the yere forsaid The prince of yngland and the quene of yngland come in scotland to get help & suple aganis the duke of yorke and thai come to drumfres and the qwene of scotland the duke of gillerlandis dochter met the forsaid prince and his modere at kyncloudane and thai remanit thair togidder x or xij days and thai said thai war spekand of mariage betuix the forsaid prince and king Iames the thridis sister and sum said that thai war accordit on baith the sydis and in the meyne tyme

[f. 120r]

The duke of york and the erll of salisbery & the dukis son war slane with vther diuers lordis of thair company

The yere of god IM iiijC lx The erll of ergyle colyne cambell passit in lorne for the redempcoun of his cosing Ihon keire of lorne The quhilk was tane be his brother allane of lorne of the wod sister son to downe balloch And schortlie this erll forsaid with his oist came to the Ile of kerewra quhar this allane had his brother in fessynans and his entent was to distroye him that he mycht haue succedit to the heretage And schortlie thai come sa suddanlie apon the forsaid allane in the said Ile that he mycht nocht pass away with his schippis in the quhilkis war a hundreth men and this said Ihon keire was bound and his men was slane to the novmer of iiij or vxx and brynt thair schippis and Redemit his cosing and restorit him to his lordschip and the tother chapit richt narowly with his lyf and iiij or v personis and this was the first slauchter efter the deid of king Iames the secund

The samyn yere the xxiij day of februare king Iames the thrid held his first parliament at Edinburgh to the quhilk parliament come thir lordis wnder writtin (at Is to say the lord of ylis & erll of Ross and all the lardis of the Ilis Lord dernlie and the lord kalendare The Lord hammiltoun and thai did litill gud in the forsaid parliament Bot that thai ordanit sessionis to sit first at aberdene syne in

[f. 120v]

perth syne in Edinburgh and thai left the king in keping with his modere the qwene and gouernyng of all the kinrik And thairfor the lordis said that thai war litill gud worth bath spirituale & temporall (at gaf the keping of the kinrik till a woman and Incontinent the quene efter this parliament put in new keparis In the castellis of Edinburgh striuling and dunbar viz in Edinburgh androwe keir In dunbar lord hales In blakness and striuling Robert liddale

Item the said quene efter the deid of king Iames the secund tuke master Iames lyndesay for principale counsalour and gart him kepe the preve sele nochtwithstanding that the said master Iames was excludit fra the counsall of the forsaid king & fra the court & for his werray helynes and had bene slane for his demeritis had nocht bene he was redemit with gold

Item efter the deid of the forsaid king the lord of ylis past till Inuerness and tuke the kingis fermes and all wittalis of the kingis and proclamit all the gudis and the landis of the kingis in till his handis & gaf remissionis and respittis and for thir causes he was summond to the parliament wnder the pane of forfalt And comperit nocht and than thai supersedit his caus quhill the feist of sanct Ihon the baptist and continewit the forsaid parliament till that day to be haldin in aberdene

Item the lord of curthous come till Edinburgh till.

[There is another break in continuity here, therefore the final three folios (121-3) have been placed together, although they contain entries which cover predominantly events from the minority or early years of the personal rule.]

[f. 121r]

of the law and the kingis proffetis and of all the Realme and that the king suld cum be him selfe & his and the qwene be hir self & hirris / bot the king suld ay remane with the qwene Bot scho suld nocht Intromet with his proffettis bot allanerlie with his person

The yere of god IM iiijC xx archebald erll of douglas & the duke of turane decessit in fraunce and In the samyn tyme and place decessit Ihon stewart erll of buchane and constable of fraunce

Iames of douglas sone to the said erll Sir walter of bekirtoune Sir willam of Setoun Sir richert of bekirtoun Schir henry bekirtoune gouernor to the scottis archeris & alexr bikirtoun with mony vtheris gud knychtis and sqwyeris

Item that samyn yere Robert stewart decessit in the castell of striuling and lyis in dunfermling

Item duke murthok decessit at striuling walter stewart erll of levinnox and Sir alexander stewart

Item IM iiijC xxxvj The fals erll of athole his son and Robert stewart war put to ded at Edinburgh for tresoun

Item The erll of mar Alexander stewart decesit

Item IM iiijC xxxviij^0 archebald erll of douglas and sister son to king Iames the first deit at lestalrig

Item IM iiijC xl Erll willam of douglas archebaldis son beand than xviij yeris of age & his brother dauid

[f. 121v]

douglas was put to deid at Edinburgh and malcome W emyng of beggar was put to deid in that samyn place within thre days efter

The yere of god IM iiijCxlix Sir Iames auchinleck was slane be richert coluile the xx day of aprile and within v or vj days cowartlie gaf our the castell and was hedit and iij sum with him and Incontinent efter that he come furth the castell was castin dovn be erll willam of douglas Iames son

That samyn yere in the moneth of may Sir Iames stewart the qwenes knycht was tane apon the se be the W emyngis befor the son & thair was put to deid & of thaim that come with him viijxx of ynglismen

That samyn yere the xviij day of Iunij qwene mary of scotland come in scotland and this qwene was the duke of gillirlandis douchter and sister douchter to the duke of burgone (ar come with hir xiij gret schippis and ane craike In the quhilk thair was the lord of causere with xvxx of men in harness Master Ihon ralstoun bischope of dunkelden and Sir willam of crechtoun chancellere of scotland (at tyme was the hame bringaris of the qwene with the counsall of the king of fraunce The duke of sawoy [Savoy] The duke of ostrich [Austria] the duke of bertane [Brittany] the duke of burgunye [Burgundy] and all thire war bundyn In suple & manteinans of king Iames of scotland and this king forsaid and this qwene war marijt at Edinburgh the thrid day of Iulij The yere forsaid

[f. 122r]

Item in that samyn yere master willam turnbull said his first mess in glasqw the xx day of september and on the monunday the xxiij day of september Iames of levingstoun was arrestit be the king and Robyn kalendar capitane of Dunbertane and Ihon of levingstoun dauid levingstoun of the grene yardis with syndry vtheris and sone efter this Sir alexr levingstoun was arrestit and robyn of levingstoun of lichqw that tyme comptrollar and Iames and his brother alexr and Robyne of lithqw war put in the blakness and thair gudis tane within xl days in all placis and put wnder arrest and all thair gudis that pertenit to that party and all officeris that war put in be thaim war clerlie put out of all officis and all put dovn that thai put wp and this was a gret ferlie and in the samyn tyme the forsaid Iames dochter that was spousit with the lord of the Ilis come till him sodanlie with few personis with hire & thai met in dumbertane Sir duncane persone and led hir with him to kyntyre the xxiij day of the said moneth and It Is to wit that the first arresting was maid at the brig of Inchebelle on kylwyne betuix glasqw & kirkyntulloch

That samyn yere the xix day of Ianuare Iames the thrid [sic] held his first parliament at Edinburgh In to the quhilk parliament thar was forfaltit Schir alexr levinstoun lord kalendar and Iames dundas of that Ilk and Robert brus the lard of clakman

[f. 122v]

nannis brother And Iames of levingstoun sone & air to the said alexander was put to deid and Robyne of levingstoun of lithqw that tyme comptrollar was put to deid baith togidder on castellhill thair heidis strikin of / The thrid day of the parliament and that samyn tyme archebald of Dundas brother till the said Iames of dundas stuffit the towre of dundas and said he suld de and It baith attanis bot gif the king did thaim grace and at the dissolvyne of the said parliament the king baith send & come him self and askit the said hous and gat It nocht as than and Incontinent laide ane sege about It that remanit quhill the latter end of aprile and than It was gevin oure and all that war in It was put in the kingis grace and thai war tane and sum send till a castell and sum till vtheris and the hous was cassyn dovn and the stuf thairof partit betuix the king and the erll of douglas Schir willam of crechtoun and Sir george of crechtoun

The yere of god IM iiijC & L pe xix day of maij qwene mary partit with barne in striuling xij oulkis befor hir tyme and the barne liffit bot the space of sex houris

Item the said yeire in the moneth of Junij (ar was funding in dunfermling a merwalous deid cors [corpse] In the ryping of ane wall for first thair was found

[f. 123r]

About him a kist of stane and syne ane of tre & syne a cape of leid and syne clathis of gold and silk als fresche as evir thai ware and the cors hale in hyde & hewe as It semyte bot of xviij yeris of age and It was xjxx yeris sen that wall was maide and men demyt that it was a barne or cosing of sanct margaretis

The yere of god IM iiijC xlix The birnyng of dunbar be young persie and Sir robert ogile In the moneth of maij and that samyn yere drumfres was brynt be the erll of salisbery in the moneth of Iunij And that samyn yere erll willam of douglas Iames son and with him the erll of orknay angus & ormond brynt awnwick in the moneth of Iunij the thrid day and come hame wele and did gret scaith Item the said erll passit In yngland the xviij day of Iulij with xlM men and did gret scaith and brynt werkworth And in the hamecummyng tynt ijc fut men that war tane & nocht ten men slane / bot the lard of glendonwyne and the scottis men tuk agane colune wod for him and Ilkane of thire mennis sonnis tuke vtheris faderis

The battell of arbroth brechyne

Item about that samyn tyme the xviij day of maij (ar met & faucht in the feld on the mure besyd brechyne The erll of craufurd callit allexander The

[f. 123v]

erll of huntlie callit alexander and thair was with the erll of huntlie fer ma than was with the erll of craufurd becaus he displayit the kingis banere and said It was the kingis actioun and he was his luftennend and schortlie the erll of huntlie wan the feld and slewe the erll of craufurdis brother callit Ihon lyndesay of brechyne & the lard of dundas and vther syndry gentill men wele till iijxx of cotarmouris on that syd and on that vther syd willam of setoun the erllis brother and vthir thre or four of gentill men & v or sex of yemen and the erll of huntlie held the feld and raid in angus with thre or foure thousand with him and the erll of craufurd

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Van Buuren, C., ‘John Asloan and his Manuscript: An Edinburgh Notary and Scribe in the Days of James III, IV and V (c.1470-c.1530), in Janet Hadley Williams (ed.), Stewart Style, 1513-1542: Essays on the Court of James V (East Linton, 1998), 15-51

Watt, D. E. R., ‘The Papacy and Scotland in the Fifteenth Century’, in R. B. Dobson (ed.), The Church, Politics and Patronage in the Fifteenth Century (Gloucester, 1984), 115-32

Wormald, J., ‘Bloodfeud, Kindred and Government in Early Modern Scotland’, Past and Present, lxxxvii (May 1980), 54-97

Wormald, J., ‘‘Taming the Magnates?’, in K. J. Stringer (ed.), Essays on the Nobility of Medieval Scotland (Edinburgh, 1985), 270-80

Wormald, J., ‘Lords and Lairds in Fifteenth-Century Scotland’, in M. C. E. Jones (ed.), Gentry and Lesser Nobility in Late Medieval Europe (Gloucester, 1986), 181-220

Wormald, J., ‘National Pride, Decentralised Nation: The Political Culture of Fifteenth-Century Scotland’, in L. Clark and C. Carpenter (eds), Political Culture in Late Medieval Britain (The Fifteenth Century, 4) (Woodbridge, 2004), 181-94

THESES

Boardman, S. I., ‘Politics and the Feud in Late Medieval Scotland’ (unpublished PhD thesis, St Andrews University, 1989)

Borthwick, A. R., ‘The King, Council and Councillors in Scotland, c.1430-1460’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Edinburgh University, 1989)

Chalmers, Trevor M., ‘The King’s Council, Patronage, and the Governance of Scotland, 1460-1513’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Aberdeen University, 1982)

Crawford, B., ‘The Earls of Orkney-Caithness and their Relations with Norway and Scotland: 1158-1470’ (unpublished PhD thesis, St Andrews University, 1971)

Kelham, C. A., ‘Bases of Magnatial Power in Later Fifteenth-Century Scotland’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Edinburgh University, 1986)

Kelley, M. G., ‘The Douglas Earls of Angus: A Study in the Social and Political Bases of Power of a Scottish Family from 1389 until 1557’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Edinburgh University, 1973)

Mason, R. A., ‘Kingship and Commonweal: Political (ought and Ideology in Reformation Scotland’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1983)

McGladdery, Christine A., ‘Crown-Magnate Relations in the Reign of James II of Scotland, 1437-1460’ (unpublished PhD thesis, St Andrews University, 1988)

Stevenson, A. W. K., ‘Trade between Scotland and the Low Countries in the Later Middle Ages’ (unpublished PhD thesis, St Andrews University, 1982)

Tanner, R. J., ‘The Political Role of the (ree Estates in Parliament and General Council in Scotland, 1424-1488’ (unpublished PhD thesis, St Andrews University, 1999)

Thorson, S. M., ‘Adam Abell’s “The Roit or Quheill of Tyme”: An Edition’ (unpublished PhD thesis, St Andrews University, 1998)

REFERENCE

Handbook of British Chronology, ed. F. M. Powicke and E. B. Fryde (London, 1961)

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004-

Index

Abell, Adam, Observantine friar of Jedburgh, 203, 229–30, 231, 234 n.77, 240

Abercorn, castle of (West Lothian), 14, 32 n.14, 45, 48, 128, 147
siege of (1455), 151, 153–6, 219

Aberdeen, burgh of, 16, 28–9, 52, 100, 108
and bishops of, see Ingram, Lindsay; Spens, Thomas; Elphinstone, William
and visits of James II, 67, 143–4, 171, 173, 191

Abercromby, Thomas, 94

Abernethy, Laurence, Lord Saltoun of, 27, 59, 66, 149–50, 162 n.108

Adolf, son of Arnold, duke of Gueldres, 78–9

Agnew, Andrew, sheriff of Wigtown (d. 1455), 138, 152

Agnew, Andrew, 2nd sheriff of Wigtown, 152, 201

Ainslie, John, of Dolphinstone, 129

Albany, Dukes of, see Stewart, Murdac,

Albert, of Austria, 74–5

Alexander V, pope, 40

Alfonso V, of Portugal, 195

Alloa, castle of, 49, 66–7

Altani, Anthony, Bishop of Urbino, papal nuncio, 3, 7, 17

Angus, Earls of, see Douglas, Archibald; Douglas, James; Douglas, George

Anjou, René of, 74
and Charles of Maine, brother of René, 74

Annandale, 19, 37, 135, 149, 170, 228

Annexation, Act of (1455), 164–7, 192, 238

‘annual’, the, Scottish payment to Denmark– Norway, 176–7

‘appoyntement’, the (1439), 14–15, 24–6; (1452), 137–8, 139

Arbroath, Tironensian abbey of, 62, 143, 216–17
and abbots of, see Paniter, Walter
and battle of (1446), 62–5, 108, 129, 213, 225

Ardmanach, 67, 167

Argyll, Earl of, see Campbell, Colin

Argyll, bishop of, see Tulloch, Thomas

Arkinholm, battle of (1455), 150, 168, 172, 197, 227–9

Arnold, Duke of Gueldres, 74–7, 79

Arous, John, archdeacon of Glasgow, 88, 111

Artillery, royal, 4, 78, 154, 181
see also Mons Meg

Asloan, John, 211, 241

Atholl, Earl of, see Stewart, John, of Balvenie; Stewart, Walter

Auchinleck chronicle, 17, 20, 49, 51, 61, 65, 69, 97, 125–6, 135, 141–3, 149, 217
analysis of, 210–21
appendix of, 263–78

Arbroath, battle of, 63–4, 213
attack on George Lauder, bishop of Argyll, 131, 214–15
attack on the Livingstons, 23, 88–92
attack on Bishop Kennedy, 52–3
battle of Lochmabenstone (Sark), 68
border warfare, 180

Brechin, battle of, 129–32, 213
the Crichtons, 46–7, 147–8
death of William 6th earl of Douglas, 30
death of William 8th earl of Douglas, 114–19, 218–19

Joan Beaufort, 14–15, 220

James 9th earl of Douglas, 104–7, 127–8, 144–5, 151–4

John earl of Ross, 109
marriage of the king, 77–8

Mary of Gueldres, 98, 129, 189
siege of Roxburgh (1460), 202–3

Auchinleck, Adam of, canon of Glasgow, 113

Auchinleck, James of, 27, 60, 69

Auchinleck, John, 60

Auchterlonie, William, of Kelly, 67

Avandale, see Douglas, James, earl of, and Stewart, Sir Andrew

Ayr, 103

Balfour, Sir James, of Kinnaird, 64, 248–9

Balfour, John, 6

Balloch, Donald, Lord of Dunivaig, 131–2, 145, 151

Banff, 108, 191

Barbour, John, and The Bruce, 70

Barclay brothers of Tentsmuir, assassins of James I, 5, 7

Barnton, 46–8
barratry, 40–1

Basle, Council of, 13, 41, 47, 52

Beauchamp, Richard, Earl of Warwick, 3

Beaufort, Edmund, 2nd Duke of Somerset, 66, 152

Beaufort, Edmund, son of Edmund duke of Somerset, 190

Beaufort, Henry, Cardinal bishop of Winchester, 3, 43, 66

Beaufort, Henry, 3rd Duke of Somerset, 152, 190

Beaufort, Joan, queen of James I, 1, 12–15, 22, 52, 89, 229, 231, 236
and the assassination of James I, 3, 6–8

‘appoyntement’, 24–6, 118, 220–1
death of, 60–1, 98
marries James Stewart of Lorne, 23

Bellenden, John, 236, 240

Benedict XIII, pope, 40–1

Berwick, royal burgh and castle of, 158, 170, 174, 181, 202–3

Bishops, see Bruce, James, bishop of Dunkeld; Bullock, John, bishop of Ross; Cameron, John, bishop of Glasgow; Close, Nicholas, bishop of Carlisle; Cranach, John, bishop of Brechin; Lauder, Alexander, bishop of Dunkeld; Lauder, George, bishop of Argyll; Lauder, Robert, bishop of Dunblane; Lichton, Henry, bishop of Aberdeen; Lindsay, Ingram, bishop of Aberdeen; Livingston, Thomas, bishop of Dunkeld; Macgilleon, John Hector, bishop of the Isles; Ochiltree, Michael, bishop of Dunblane; Shoreswood, George, bishop of Brechin; Tulloch, Thomas, bishop of Ross; Wardlaw, Henry, bishop of St Andrews

‘Black Dinner’ (1440), 30, 38–9, 46, 48, 59, 68, 108
in later histories, 216, 229, 237, 242, 245, 247–8, 254

Blackness, castle of, 48, 89, 131, 147

Boece, Hector

Lives of the Bishops of Mortlach and Aberdeen (1522), 285

Scotorum Historiae, 235–7, 242–4

Boniface IX, pope, 40

Booth, Lawrence, Bishop of Durham, 200

Borthwick, Janet, 38, 150, 198

Borthwick, William, Lord Borthwick, 102, 132, 156, 198

Bothwell, Lanarkshire, 37, 129, 151

Bothwell, Richard, abbot of Dunfermline, 88, 94, 113, 216, 223

Bower, Walter, abbot and chronicler, 1, 3, 39

Scotichronicon, 2, 21, 39, 100, 210, 222, 225, 237, 240

Boyd, Sir Alexander, of Drumcoll, 117, 158, 219

Boyd, Robert, of Tinwald, 51, 57 n.57, 97, 217
as Lord Boyd, 132, 156, 189

Boyd, Sir Thomas of Kilmarnock (d. 1438), 117

Boyd, Thomas, 17

Boys, William, 43

Brechin, abbey of, 217, 232 n.28

Brechin, bishops of, see Cranach, John; Shoreswood, George

Brechin, battle of (1452), 129–30, 136, 172

Brechin, burgh of, 97

Brittany, duchy of,
and John, Duke of, 7, 39, 72
and Francis, Count of Montfort, Duke of, 39, 72–3, 77, 143
and Peter, Duke of, 143

Brodick, castle of, 145

Brown, John, of Kennet, 44

Bruce, James, bishop of Dunkeld, 42, 45, 47, 48, 72

Bruges, 13, 78, 88, 99, 201

Brussels, Treaty of, 77, 86

Buchanan, George (1506–82), Rerum Scoticarum Historia, 22, 244–6, 248

Bullock, John, Bishop of Ross, 25

Burgundy, Dukes of, see Philip the Good

Burgundian champions, see Lalain, Jaques de; Lalain, Simon de; Meriadec, Hervé de

Bute, 24

Caithness, Earldom of, 176–7

Caithness, Earls of, see Crichton, Sir George; Sinclair, William

Calixtus III, pope, 169, 196

Callendar, barony of, 102, 108

Cambuskenneth, abbey of, 225
camel, 258

Cameron, John, bishop of Glasgow, Chancellor, 8, 13, 16, 18, 25–9, 40–1, 44, 65, 216

Cameron, Thomas, canon of Glasgow, 113

Campbell, Alexander, 125

Campbell, Colin, 2nd Lord Campbell, 1st earl of Argyll, 17–18, 133, 156, 198, 257

Campbell, Duncan, of Lochawe, 1st Lord Campbell (d. 1453), 21, 133

Campbell, Sir Duncan, of Glenorchy, 17, 51, 151

Campbell, George, of Loudon, 27

Campbell, Sir Nicholas, 99

Carmichael, Thomas, canon of Moray, 173

Carrick, 13

Carruthers, John, Laird of Mouswald, 149–50

Castile, 194

Castillon, battle of (1453), 142

Cathcart, Sir Alan, 99
as Lord Cathcart, 132

Cawdor, William, Thane of, 171–3

Chalmers, David, of Ormond, 241

Chalon sur Saône, 76, 99

Chambers, Thomas and Christopher, burgesses of Perth, assassins of James I, 5–8

Charles VII, King of France (1422–1461)

and the Breton succession, 143
and Castile, 194–5
and Denmark, 178–9, 196
and the dukedom of Touraine, 13, 37, 69, 99
letters to, 98, 117, 129, 152, 155, 170, 180–1
letter from (1457), 186
and Stewart marriage alliances, 72–5, 77, 196
and William 8th earl of Douglas, 100–1

Charolais, Charles, Count of, son of Philip Duke of Burgundy, 74
and Catherine, Countess of Charolais, 74

Chastellain, George, 76
chaudmella, 116–17

Christian I, King of Denmark–Norway (d. 1481), 177–9, 196

Clement VII, pope, 40–1

Cleves, Catherine of, Duchess of Gueldres, 74, 78

Close, Nicholas, Bishop of Carlisle, 135

Cockburn, Patrick, 81 n.15

Cockburn, William, 125

Coldingham, priory of (Berwickshire), 42–5, 49
and priors of, see Drax, William; Oll, John

Colquhoun, Sir John, of Luss, 17, 213, 241

Colville, Agnes, Lady, 103, 122 n.75

Colville, Richard, of Ochiltree, 69

Colville, Robert, of Ochiltree, 103, 112

Constance, Council of, 41

Corbet, Alexander, 87

Corstorphine, see Forrester, Sir John

Cortachy, barony of (Forfarshire),

Craig, Richard, royal clerk, 27

Craig, William, 106, 122 n.89

Craig Douglas, castle of, 104–5, 113–14

Cranach, John, Bishop of Brechin, 93, 95–6

Cranston, Thomas, of that Ilk, 25, 27, 94, 118, 125, 143

Cranston, Sir William, 24–6, 49, 99, 113–14, 118, 125, 128, 155, 219, 226

Cranston, William, burgess and commissioner of Edinburgh, 26

Cranston, William, of Crailing, 125

Crawford, Andrew, burgess of Edinburgh, 181, 222, 258

Crawford, Earls of, see Lindsay, Alexander, Lindsay, David

Crichton, barony and castle of, 13, 27, 32 n.10

Crichton, Christian, 103

Crichton, Elizabeth, daughter of William lord Crichton, 29, 39, 62, 172

Crichton, Sir George, 72, 89, 91, 98, 101, 112, 115, 119, 125, 228
attack on (1443), 46–7
death of, 148–50
as Earl of Caithness, 132, 135, 146–8, 177, 219
marriage to Janet Borthwick, 38–9, 150
offices, 14, 26
siege of Blackness, 147

Crichton, James, son and heir of Chancellor Sir William Crichton, 39
as Earl of Moray, 132, 135, 148, 172, 219
siege of Dunbar (1454), 146, 148

Crichton, James, son of George Crichton, 146–8, 162 n. 93

Crichton, Sir John, 13

Crichton, Robert of Sanquhar, 38, 103, 112

Crichton, Sir William, Chancellor, 38, 60–1, 89, 113
attack upon (1444), 48, 72
besieged in Edinburgh castle, 52–3, 58, 238
chancellor, 25–6, 41, 44, 74–5, 86–8, 93–4, 96, 107, 119, 144
early career, 13–14, 21
gives loans to the king, 98–9, 166
and Joan Beaufort, 15, 24–5
keeper of Edinburgh castle, 6, 14, 22
and the marriage of James II, 78

Master of the King’s Household, 13–14, 16
reputation, 46, 236, 246
sheriff of Edinburgh, 14, 47
supports the king against the Douglases, 101, 110–11, 125, 136, 146, 148, 228

Cromarty, 167

Croyser, William, archdeacon of Teviotdale, 40–1, 45

Cullace, John, of Balnamone, 97

Cunningham, Sir Alexander, 57 n.57
d’Escouchy, Mathieu, chronicler, 78–80, 190
de Boys, William, 43

De Cronicis Scotorum brevia, see Law, John
de la Marche, Oliver, 76
del Monte, Piero, Venetian envoy, 3–4

Dalkeith, lordship of, 150, 198

Darnaway, castle of, 157, 171

David II, 164–5

Dempster, John, 79

Dingwall, castle of (Ross), 61, 67, 91

Douglas, Archibald, 4th Earl of Douglas, Duke of Touraine, 37, 43, 69, 71, 221

Douglas, Archibald, 5th Earl of Douglas, Duke of Touraine, 31, 37–8, 41, 71, 115, 245–6
death of, 20, 22
as Lieutenant-General, 13–16, 18–20, 25–7, 52, 143

Douglas, Archibald, Earl of Moray, brother of William 8th Earl of Douglas, 96, 105, 107–8,
at Arkinholm (1455), 155–7, 197, 226
and the Buke of the Howlat, 70
declared the younger twin, 66, 126
as earl of Moray, 39, 59, 62, 110, 132, 142, 168, 172, 238

Douglas, Archibald, of Cavers, 139, 180

Douglas, Beatrice, Countess of, see Sinclair, Beatrice

Douglas, Beatrix, Countess of Erroll, sister of William 8th earl of Douglas, 132

Douglas, David, younger brother of William, 6th Earl of Douglas, 30–1, 59, 119, 200, 237

Douglas, Egidia, Countess of Orkney, 19, 38, 177

Douglas, Elizabeth, Countess of Orkney, 38, 50, 143, 157, 176

Douglas, George, 4th Earl of Angus, 61, 94, 96, 101, 106–7, 111, 135, 155–6, 168, 199, 227

Douglas, Henry, Lord of Borgue, 39, 59, 150, 197

Douglas, Henry, of Lochleven, 75–7, 187

Douglas, Hugh, Earl of Ormond, brother of William, 8th Earl of Douglas
at Arkinholm (1455), 155–7, 229
death of, 156, 226
as earl of Ormond, 59, 62, 67–8, 83 n.48, 96, 102, 105, 107, 110, 126, 238
forfeiture, 167–8
at Lochmabenstone [Sark] (1448), 69, 150

Douglas, Hugh, Dean of Brechin, son of Hugh earl of Ormond, 168

Douglas, Hugh, Archdeacon of St Andrews, 196

Douglas, James, ‘the Good Sir James’, 68, 70

Douglas, James, 3rd Earl of Angus, 15, 19, 43, 49, 52, 61, 196

Douglas, James, Lord of Dalkeith (d. 1440), 38, 198

Douglas, James, Lord of Dalkeith (d. 1457), 198

Douglas, Sir James of Dalkeith, Earl of Morton, 150, 197–8, 238

Douglas, James of Balvenie and Abercorn, Earl of Avandale, 7th Earl of Douglas (‘James the

Gross’)

and the Black Dinner (1440), 31, 37
death of (1443), 45, 220
as earl of Avandale, 20, 24–9, 93, 139
as earl of Douglas, 37–9, 40–1, 45–6, 48, 59, 66
marriage to Beatrice Sinclair, 14, 38, 157
reputation, 37, 54 n.2, 242, 245, 247

Douglas, James, 9th Earl of Douglas, 149, 186–7

‘appoyntement’ with James II, 137–8
attacks Kirkcudbright (1457), 175
attacks Stirling (1452), 126–7, 134, 228
becomes 9th Earl (1452), 126
declared the elder twin, 66, 126
exile in England, 168, 200
forfeiture (1455), 156, 167
and John, earl of Ross, 131–2
and Lanark bond (16 January, 1453), 139–41, 153
marriage to Margaret Douglas, 140

Master of Douglas, 42, 45, 65, 82 n.36, 66, 75–6, 88, 99–100, 105–8, 113, 126
struggle with James II, 129, 135, 142, 144, 150–2, 155

Douglas, James, of Ralston (Lochleven, Lugton), 75, 76, 84 n.79, 112, 187

Douglas, John, Lord of Balvenie, brother of William 8th Earl of Douglas, 67–8, 102, 126, 155–6, 167, 226

Douglas, John, bastard son of Archibald 4th earl, 145

Douglas, Margaret, ‘Fair Maid’ of Galloway, sister of William 6th Earl of Douglas
marriage to James 9th earl of Douglas, 140, 155, 157, 168
marriage to William 8th earl of Douglas, 31, 38, 48, 66, 69, 95, 135, 242
returns to Scotland, 200

Douglas, Margaret, daughter of James the Gross, 39

Douglas, William, 2nd Earl of Angus, 7, 15, 20, 71

Douglas, William, 6th Earl of Douglas, 19–20, 26–31, 37–8, 59, 119, 200, 237, 245–6

Douglas, William, 8th earl of Douglas, 52–3, 58–9, 61, 66, 75–6, 94–5
bond with Crawford and Ross, 64–5, 67, 108–13, 115, 117, 131, 137, 140, 218–19, 238, 242–3, 247, 249
border lordship, 68–71
killed by James II (1452), 114–19, 140, 157, 218–20, 226, 243, 247–9
letter of safe-conduct, 127–89
and the Livingstons, 51, 86–8, 93, 97
marriage to Magaret of Galloway, 31, 38, 48, 66, 69, 95, 135, 242
at siege of Barnton, 45–7, 130
surrenders to the king in parliament, 106–7, 138
travels to Rome, 99–105, 113, 116, 228, 238, 242, 247

Douglas, William, of Drumlanrig, 112

Douglas, William, of Strathbrock, 147

Douglas, Robert, 148

Douglas, castle of, Lanarkshire, 88, 137, 151, 156, 186

Doune, castle of, 92

Drax, William, prior of Coldingham, 43

Drumminor, castle of [also, Castle Forbes], 50, 172

Drummond, William, of Hawthornden, 247–8

Dumbarton, castle of, 49–51, 66, 91–2, 149, 165, 213

Dumfries, burgh of, 20, 94, 125, 135, 186

Dunbar, Alexander, 39

Dunbar, Archibald, son of George, earl of March, 65

Dunbar, David, of Cockburn, 142

Dunbar, Elizabeth, Countess of Moray, 39, 172–3, 197

Dunbar, George, Earl of March, 43

Dunbar, James, Earl of Moray (d. 1430), 39

Dunbar, Janet, elder heiress of Moray, 39, 172

Dunbar, John, 39, 158, 181

Dunbar, castle of, 61, 146, 229

Dunblane, bishops of, see Lauder, Robert; Ochiltree, Michael

Duncan, Earl of Lennox, 16–17

Duncanson, Robert, of Struan, 9

Dundas, castle of, 92, 96–7

Dundas, Archibald, of that Ilk, 67

Dundas, Archibald, brother of James Dundas, 92, 96, 136, 139

Dundas, Duncan, brother of James Dundas, 92, 136, 139

Dundas, James, of that Ilk, 90, 92, 130, 136

Dundee, 92, 100, 194

Dundrennan, see Lilburn, William, abbot of

Dunfermline, abbey of, 42–3
abbot of, see Bothwell, Richard
prior of, see Kirkcaldy, Andrew of

Dunglass, collegiate church of, 202

Dunkeld, bishops of, see Bruce, James; Livingston, Thomas; Ralston, John

Dunoon, castle of, 51

Dunottar, castle of, 27, 198

Dunrobin, castle of, 173, 191

Durham, 23, 88, 200

Benedictine priory of, mother house of Coldingham, 42
bishop of, see Booth, Lawrence
priors of, see Wessington, John

Durisdeer (Muirhead), Andrew, 100, 148–9
as bishop of Glasgow, 200, 230

Edinburgh castle, 22–3, 26–7, 30, 47, 88, 100, 113, 165, 237–8
siege of (1445), 53

Edinburgh, royal burgh of, 7–9, 12, 18, 38–9, 58, 60, 79, 96, 153, 181, 190

Edmonstone, Sir James of, 27, 30

Edmonstone, William, 158

Edward, Earl of March (later Edward IV), 241

Elgin, 39, 171, 191

Elphinstone, William, bishop of Aberdeen, 235

Erik, King of Norway, 176–7

Erroll, Earl of, see Hay, William

Erskine, Alan, 44, 50

Erskine, Christian of, 60

Erskine, Janet, 28

Erskine, Robert, 1st Lord, 28–9, 44, 49–51, 66–7, 94, 190
claim to the earldom of Mar, 28, 35 n.72
indenture with Alexander Forbes, 28, 35 n.74

Erskine, Thomas, 2nd Lord, 51, 66–7, 94, 144, 156, 190–1

Ettrick forest, 94–5, 104, 125, 165

Eugenius IV, pope, 3, 23, 40–2, 45, 47, 87

Extracta, 203, 225–7

Falkland
burgh of, 194
palace of, 26, 147, 165, 175, 190, 194

Falou, George, 33 n.32, 92

Felix V, pope, 41–2, 45

Ferguson, Adam, 249

Ferreri, Giovanni, chronicler, 236
and Appendix to Boece (1574), 236, 243
feu-farm tenure, 193–4

Fife, earldom of, 165, 194

Finavon, castle of, 64, 226

Finlaggan, Loch (Islay), 67

Fleming, Sir Malcolm, of Cumbernauld and Biggar, 27, 30–1, 34 n.69, 46, 54 n.38, 237

Fleming, Sir Robert, of Cumbernauld, Lord Fleming, 31, 132, 139

Fochart, Patrick, captain of the Garde Ecossaises, 194
football, 193, 206 n.37

Forbes, Sir Alexander, 1st Lord, 28, 50–1, 59, 190–1

Forbes, James, 2nd Lord, 144, 172

Fordun, John of, 209–10, 235

Forrester, Sir Adam (d. 1405), 48

Forrester, John, of Corstorphine, chamberlain, 13, 16. 18, 48

Foulis, William, Archdeacon of St Andrews and keeper of the privy seal, 13, 16, 72

Foullarton, Fergus, 199

Francis I, see Brittany, Dukes of

Frederick III, envoy from, 147

Frendraught, barony of, 39

Galbraith, Patrick, 49, 56 n. 49, 50

Galloway, bishops of, see Spens, Thomas; Spot, Ninian

Galloway, Lordship of, 19, 38, 94, 102–3, 138, 140, 165

Gannat, treaty of, 146, 196

Garioch, earldom of, 135, 143, 190

Garter King of Arms, English herald, 104, 105, 122 n.79, 139, 180

General Councils

4 February 1437, 3, 5

22 October 1437, 4

6 May 1437, 13, 15

27 November 1438, 18

24 December 1438, 19

13 March 1439, 19

20 February 1440, 27

2 August 1440, 27

3 April 1441, 39

4 November 1443, 47

6 February 1444, 52

4 May 1450, 97

19 October 1456, 181

Gifford, James, of sheriffhall, 39

Glamis, Lordship of, see Lyon, Patrick

Glasgow, Bishops of, see Cameron, John; Durisdeer (Muirhead), Andrew; Turnbull, William

Glasgow, University of, 100

Glendinning, Sir Simon, 113–14, 118, 125, 187, 199, 219

Glenmoriston, 167
golf, 193

Golspie, 173

Gordon, Sir Adam, 28

Gordon, Sir Alexander Seton of, 1st Earl of Huntly
and the battle of Arbroath (1446), 62–5, 108
and the battle of Brechin, 129–30, 136, 240
as Earl of Huntly, 51, 60, 94–6, 106–8, 156, 172–3, 197, 257
granted the lordship of Badenoch, 110
as Lord of Gordon, 18, 26, 28–9, 39, 44, 59

Gordon, Elizabeth, 28

Gordon, George, Master of Huntly, 172–3, 197

Gordon, Margaret, daughter of Alexander earl of Huntly, 197

Graham, Euphemia, 37–8, 48, 59, 106, 142, 165

Graham, Malise, Earl of Menteith, 20, 106, 142, 156

Graham, Patrick, Lord, 67, 156

Graham, Robert, Lord of Kinpunt, 3–7, 9, 16

Graham, Thomas, son of Robert Graham, 5–6

Gray, Andrew, 1st Lord, 51, 59, 67, 88, 94, 111, 113, 156
involved in the attack on William earl of Douglas (1452), 118, 136, 219

Gray, Patrick, 112, 117–18, 219, 226, 243, 247, 252 n. 32

Gregory XI, pope, 40

Gregory XII, pope, 40–1

Grey, Ralph, 199

Grierson, Gilbert, 112

Gueldres, see Arnold, duke of; Margaret of; Mary of

Guthrie, Sir David, of that Ilk, 189

Haddington, John of, 94, 191

Hailes, Lord, see Hepburn, Sir Adam; Hepburn, Patrick

Haliburton, George, 39, 104

Haliburton, John, Lord, 104, 139

Haliburton, Mark of, secretary to James 9th earl of Douglas, 113, 139, 186–7

Haliburton, Walter, Lord of Dirleton, 26–7

Haliburton, Walter of, 139

Hall, John and Thomas, assassins of James I, 5

Hamilton, James, of Cadzow, 38, 53, 54 n.5, 99, 105–6, 108, 113
creation of the Lordship of Hamilton, 58–9
marriage to Euphemia Graham, 37–8, 48
submits to James II, 153–4, 156, 165, 168
supports James 9th earl of Douglas, 129, 137, 139, 142, 151–3

Harfleur, 196

Harp, The, 15th century vernacular poem, 31 n.1, 222–4

Harper, Robert de, 74

Hatton, castle of, besieged (1452), 128

Hay, Nichol, son of William earl of Erroll, 197

Hay, William, 1st earl of Erroll, Constable, 98, 107, 111, 132, 156, 197, 199

Henry IV, King of Castile, 194–6

Henry V, King of England (1413–22), 2, 13

Henry VI, King of England, 18, 33 n. 31, 43, 80, 170, 179–80, 186, 190, 241–2
and the Douglases, 105, 134–5, 142, 152, 155, 157, 200

Henry, David, 58 n.4

Hepburn, Sir Adam, of Hailes, 27, 43–4, 49, 60–1, 65, 136, 229

Hepburn, Adam, son of Patrick Hepburn, 65

Hepburn, Agnes, sister of Patrick Hepburn, 65

Hepburn, Patrick, 27, 60, 65, 104, 112
made Lord Hailes, 132, 180

Heralds, see Garter King; Marchmont Herald; Snowdon Herald

Herman, master of the queen’s stable, 80

Herries, 247

Holland, Richard, 70
and The Buke of the Howlat, 91

Home, Alexander, of Dunglass, 199

Homildon Hill, battle of (1402), 14

Holyrood, 8, 79, 147

Hume, Alexander, bailie of Coldingham, 43

Hume, Sir Alexander of that Ilk, 1st Lord Hume, 43–4, 49, 52, 65, 99, 113, 125

Hume, Alexander, son of Sir Alexander Hume, 65

Hume, Sir David, of Wedderburn, 43–4, 49, 125

Hume, David, of Godscroft, and History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus (1644), 30, 121 n.63, 246–8

Hume, David, 249

Hume, Ellen, 65

Hume, Patrick, archdeacon of Teviotdale, 45

Hunter, Andrew, abbot of Melrose, 88, 113, 200–1

Huntly, Earls of, see Gordon, Sir Alexander Seton of; Gordon, George

Inchcolm, abbey of, 78, 210

Inchmurrin, 17

Innocent VII, pope, 40

Inveravon, castle of, besieged (1455), 151

Inverkip, 131, 145

Inverness, burgh of, 171, 173, 191

Inverness, castle of, 67, 109, 131, 150, 165, 171, 220

Isabella, Duchess of Albany and Countess of Lennox, 16–18

Isabella, of Portugal, Duchess of Burgundy, 74, 84 n.68, 78, 80

Isle of May, 78

James I, King of Scots (1406–37), 13, 15–16, 20, 23–4, 43, 71, 98
assassination of, 1–9, 17, 60, 254–5
attitude to Mar, 28
in Bower, 210
and France, 196
and Malise Graham, 106
and the papacy, 40–1
and Wigtown, 102

James II, King of Scots (1437–60), 12, 19, 23, 25–6, 49
in Aberdeen, 67, 143–4, 171, 173, 191
and Act of Annexation (1455), 164–7, 192, 238
and Act of Revocation (1455), 169–70, 174
appearance, 116, 221, 229, 250
at Barnton, siege of (1443), 46
birth, 1
at ‘Black Dinner’ (1440), 237
and the Black Douglases, 71–2, 102–7, 132–4, 137, 151
bond with James 9th earl of Douglas, 64, 139–41, 153, 256
border warfare, 170–1, 181, 199, 227, 258
character of, 86–7, 239, 244, 250, 254–8
coronation, 8–9
death of, at Roxburgh (1460), 202–3, 227, 230, 239
diplomacy, 72–3, 194–6, 200–1
as Duke of Rothesay, 6
forfeits the Black Douglases, 156–7, 164
and Isabella, countess of Lennox, 18
and John, earl of Ross, 91, 109–10
justice, 230
kills William 8th Earl of Douglas (1452), 114–19, 239, 256
and the Livingstons, 88–90
and Man, Isle of, 174
marriage of, to Mary of Gueldres (1449), 74–81
marriage settlement, 92, 108
at Melrose (1450), 101
at Methven, siege of (1444), 52
oaths in parliament (1445), 53
and parliament, 93
peerage creations, 133, 197–9
raids southern Scotland, 134–5, 180–2
in the south-west (1457), 186, 189

James III, King of Scots (1460–88), 79, 126, 203–4, 224, 238

James IV, King of Scots (1488–1513), 194

James V, King of Scots (1513–42), 236

Jedburgh, 125

Joan, Queen, see Beaufort, Joan

Johnstone, 149–50, 155, 228

Junem, Henry, 80

Justice, ayres, 171, 189, 190

Justiciar, office of, 14, 19, 27

Keith, William, 1st Earl Marischal, 27, 107, 111, 148, 198

Kelso, 203

Kemp, John, Archbishop of York, 4, 135

Kennedy, Sir Gilbert, of Dunure, 1st Lord Kennedy, 103, 151

Kennedy, James, bishop of St Andrews (1408–65), 41–5, 47, 94–6, 186, 195–6
attack on (1445), 52–3, 63–4, 108, 226
bishop of Dunkeld, 23, 26, 34 n. 64
in Burgundy, 85 n.94

‘Golden Charter’ (14 June, 1452), 129, 132
in Rome (1450–1), 100
secures bishopric of St Andrews, 26, 34 n. 64, 225
supports king against the Douglases, 126, 129, 130, 136, 142, 156, 159 n.21, 167, 179, 181, 238, 240, 247

Kennedy, John, 13, 103, 151, 194, 196

Kerr, Andrew, of Cessford (Altonburn), 27, 139, 152, 199

Kildrummy, castle of (Strathdon), 29, 49, 66–7, 92, 143–4, 173

Kinloss, abbey of, 171

Kirkcaldy, Andrew of, abbot of Dunfermline, 43

Kirkcudbright, burgh of, 165, 186, 189, 197
attacked (1456), 175

Lalain, Isabel de, 80

Lalain, Jaques de, 75–8, 80, 99

Lalain, Simon de, 75–7, 99

Lanark, 103, 152
and bond made at (1453), 139–41, 188

Langley, Thomas, Bishop of Durham, 4

Lauder, Alexander, Bishop of Dunkeld, 42, 96, 107, 111, 136

Lauder, George, Bishop of Argyll, 95, 131, 156
attack on, 214–5

Lauder, Robert, Bishop of Dunblane, 95–6, 113, 156

Lauder, William, of Hatton, 113–14, 128–9

Law, John, canon of St Andrews, chronicler, 100–1, 104, 119, 227

Lennox, 16–18
and Earldom of, see Duncan, earl of; Darnley, John Stewart, Lord; Isabella, countess of

Lesley, John, bishop of Ross, 240–2
and vernacular History (1568), 22, 239–42, 244, 248

Leslie, George, Lord, 156, 191
as Earl of Rothes, 191

Liber Pluscardensis, see Pluscarden, Book of

Liberton, William, 94

Lichton, Henry, Bishop of Aberdeen, 8

Lieutenant-General, see Douglas, Archibald, 5th Earl of Douglas

Lilburn, William, abbot of Dundrennan, 165

Lille, 99

Lincluden, 149, 188
and statutes of (1448), 71

Lindsay, Alexander 4th Earl of Crawford

Arbroath, dispute, 62–4, 129, 225–6

Brechin, battle of, 130, 172
death of, 143, 148
and the Douglases, 66, 108, 110, 115–16, 128, 132, 137, 140–2, 144, 188, 240

‘Tiger Earl’, 228

Lindsay, David, 3rd Earl of Crawford, 7, 19–20, 28, 44, 53, 62–4, 108, 225–6

Lindsay, David, 5th earl of Crawford, 143

Lindsay, Ingram, bishop of Aberdeen, 45

Lindsay, Janet, 19, 37, 108

Lindsay, John, 1st Lord Lindsay of Byres, 26, 66, 125, 144

Lindsay, John, of Brechin, 130

Lindsay, James, of Covington, provost of Lincluden, Keeper of the Privy Seal, 137, 139, 188–9, 229

Lindsay, Robert, of Pitscottie, chronicler, and Historie and Cronicles of Scotland (1576–9), 112, 118, 141, 170, 236, 243

Linlithgow, burgh of, 14, 88, 96, 190

Linlithgow, royal palace of, 24, 92, 147, 256

Linlithgow [Lithcow], John of, 216–17

Livingston, Sir Alexander, of Callendar, keeper of Stirling castle
attack on, 89–93, 102, 219
and the Black Dinner, 30
and the Douglases, 61, 79, 86, 137
indenture (1445), 60
oath (1443), 46
posthumous remission to, 136
reputation, 46, 236, 246
in royal service, 22–7, 29–30, 44, 59, 88, 112

Livingston, Alexander, of Filde, younger son of Sir Alexander, 52, 89–90, 92, 219

Livingston, David, of Greenyards, 89

Livingston, Elizabeth, daughter of Chamberlain James Livingston, 65, 90–1, 109

Livingston, Janet, daughter of Alexander Livingston of Callendar, 59

Livingston, James, custodian of the king’s person, Chamberlain, later Lord Livingston
and the ‘appoyntement’ (1439), 24–5
attack on, 89–91, 99, 219, 241
attack on Bishop Kennedy (1445), 52–3
as Chamberlain (1453), 141, 145, 148, 154
custodian of the king, 44, 53, 86
indentures, 60, 67
and John, earl of Ross, 90–1, 136, 148
remission, 136, 139
sheriff of Lanark, 156

Livingston, James, son of James lord Livingston, 60

Livingston, John, 24–5, 27, 89, 92

Livingston, Marion, 82 n.38

Livingston, Robert, of Middle Binning [Linlithgow], comptroller, 24, 51, 66, 88–9, 91–2, 137, 219

Livingston, Robert, 23

Livingston, Thomas, abbot of Dundrennan, 41–2
and Bishop of Dunkeld, 156

Lochdoon, castle of, 112

Lochindorb, castle of (Invernesshire), 157, 171, 173

Lochmaben, 102, 125, 149–50, 189

Lochmabenstone, battle of (1448) [also, Sark], 68, 71, 229

Lochranza, 131

Logan, John, of Restalrig, 102

Lords of the Articles, 182

Lords of the Isles, see MacDonald

Lords of Parliament, 20–1, 28, 58–9, 199, 257

Lorne, see Stewart, John, Lord of Lorne and Stewart, James, ‘Black Knight’ of Lorne

Louis, Dauphin of France, 72–4, 176, 181, 196, 218

Lyle, Robert, of Duchal, 50–1, 56 n.55, 56
as Lord Lyle of Duchal, 132, 144

Lyon, John, 246

Lyon, Patrick, 1st Lord Glamis, 59, 88, 156, 173

MacAlexander, Ranald, 131, 199

MacDonald, Alexander, Earl of Ross, 3rd Lord of the Isles, 24, 61–2, 109, 177
and bishopric of Ross, 42
and bond with Douglas and Crawford, 64–5, 67
death of, 91
imprisoned by James I (1428), 115
justiciar north of the Forth, 19, 27

MacDonald, Gillespic (Celestine) of Lochalsh, 167, 191

MacDonald, John, Earl of Ross, 4th Lord of the Isles
and bond with Douglas and Crawford, 65, 108, 113–5, 130–1, 226, 257
grants to, 167, 156, 199
and Inverness, 67, 84 n.47, 109–11, 150, 220
and Livingstons, 90–1, 109, 136, 148
negotiations with James 9th earl of Douglas, 144–5
and Sutherland, 191–2

Macgilleon, John Hector, Bishop of the Isles, 175

Macgregor, Henry, assassin of James I, 5

MacIntosh, Malcolm, 191

MacIntyre, Thomas, 136

Maclean, Lauchlan, of Duart, 17

Maclellan, John, custumar of Kirkcudbright, 112

Maclellan, Malcolm, 112

Maclellan, of Bombie, 112, 118, 243–4, 247

Mair (Major), John, 235, 237–40, 244

Man, Isle of, 174–5

Man, Lordship of, 170, 175

Mar, earldom of, 18, 28, 35 n. 72–74, 39, 44, 49–51, 59, 66–7, 94, 143–4, 166, 173, 190

March, Earldom of, 170

Marchmont Herald, 207 n.69

Margaret of Anjou, queen of Henry VI, 190

Margaret of Gueldres, sister of Mary of Gueldres, 75, 84 n.74

Marischal, Earls, see Keith, William

Martin V, pope, 40–1

Mary of Gueldres, queen of James II (d. 1463)

children of, see Stewart, Alexander; Stewart, David; Stewart, James (James III); Stewart, John; Stewart, Mary; Stewart, Margaret
confused with Joan Beaufort, 220, 229, 231
coronation of, 80–1
dowry settlement, 79, 86, 88, 92, 96–7, 102, 107–8, 194, 113, 137
and Georg von Ehingen, 195, 222
grants to, 129, 135, 143, 165–6
at Kirkcudbright, 197
and Lindsay, James, of Covington, 229
marriage of, 74–5, 77–81, 218
in parliament (1450), 81, 96; (1451), 107
pregnancies of, 98, 106, 126, 129, 149, 226
at Roxburgh, 203–4, 230
seal of, 81

Maxwell, Herbert, Lord of Caerlaverock, 1st Lord Maxwell (d. 1453), 20–1, 38, 58, 125

Maxwell, Robert, 2nd Lord Maxwell, 155–6

Maxwell, John, of Calderwood, 27

Maxwell, Katharine, 103

Melrose, Abbey of, 101–3
and abbot of, see Hunter, Andrew

Menteith, Earldom of, 92, 96; see also Graham, Malise

Menzies, Gilbert, 94

Meriadec, Hervé de, 75–7, 99

Methven, castle of, 8, 52, 63, 90, 92, 96, 107

Methven, John, secretary and provost of Lincluden, 18

Michelle, de Valois, 1st Duchess of Burgundy, 74

Mons Meg, bombard, 201, 208 n.79

Montgomery, William, Lord, 18, 20–1, 58, 66, 113, 130–2, 156, 199

Montrose, 92, 108, 194

Monypenny, George, 196

Monypenny, Sir William, 1st Lord Monypenny, Lord of Concressault, 72–4, 101, 143, 194, 196

Moray, Earls of, see Douglas, Archibald; Crichton, George; Stewart, David

Moray, bishop of, see Winchester, John

Morow, Thomas, abbot of Paisley, 216

Mortimer, Edmund, sheriff of Aberdeen, 191, 205 n.28

Morton, barony of, Dumfriesshire, 39, 150, 198

Morton, castle of, 125–6

Morton, Earldom of, see Douglas, James

Muirhead, Andrew, bishop of Glasgow, see Durisdeer

Munro, Andrew, 42

Munro, Rona, author of The James Plays (2014), 251, 253 n.56

Mure, Elizabeth, 1st wife of Robert II, 106

Murray, David, of Tullibardine and Gask, 23, 26, 66, 94

Murray, Joanna, wife of Archibald 3rd earl of Douglas, 37, 70

Murray, John, of Cranston, 27

Murray, William, of Cranston, 27, 135

Myln, Alexander, chronicler, 225

Nairn, Alexander, of Sandford, 27, 94, 135

Napier, Alexander, 91

Navarre, Charles, Prince of, 146

Neville, Richard, 5th Earl of Salisbury, 43, 135
and Earl of Warwick, 199

Newark, tower of, 165

Newcastle, 104, 108, 200

Nicholas V, pope, 71, 100–1

Nithsdale, Lordship of, 19, 38, 150

Norry, Robert, 129

Northampton, battle of (1460), 201

Nudrie, William, of Brechin, 97

O’Neill, 201

Ochiltree, Michael, Bishop of Dunblane, 8, 25, 44

Ogilvy, Alexander, of Auchterhouse, 60, 63, 234 n.61

Ogilvy, Alexander, of Inverarity, 49, 63–4

Ogilvy, David, 16

Ogilvy, John, of Lintrathen, 29–30, 63, 99

Ogilvy, Marjory, Countess of Crawford, 63–4, 226, 234 n.61

Ogilvy, Walter, of Deskford, 29–30

Ogilvy, Sir Walter, of Lintrathen, treasurer, 13, 16, 18, 63, 234 n.61

Ogilvy, Walter, of Inverarity, 225, 226, 234 n.61

Ogilvy, Walter, of Beaufort, 59–60

Oll, John, prior of Coldingham, 43, 65

Orkney, Earldom of, see Sinclair, William

Ormiston, George of, 113

Ormond, Earl of, see Douglas, Hugh

Ormond, see Chalmers, David of

Otterburn, Nicholas, 75, 88

Otto, de Puflich, 74

Paisley, abbey of, 97, 113, 144, 215–8
abbots of, see Morow, Thomas; Tarvas, Thomas

Paniter, Walter, abbot of Arbroath, 62–4

Pantour, Alan, 154, 202

Paris, 178

Park, John, 147

Parkle, James, commissioner of Linlithgow, 26

Parliaments,

25 March 1437, 8 June 1445, 53, 58

19 January 1450, 90–8

28 June 1451, 106

25 October 1451, 110

12 June 1452, 132, 133–4, 256

26 August 1452, 135

9 June 1455, 156

October 1455, 169–70

October 1457, 182 6 March 1458, 193

Patillo, Robert, of Claremont, 194, 196

Pearson, Duncan, 91

Peel, castle of, 175

Percy, Henry, 2rd Earl of Northumberland, 4, 43

Percy, Henry, Lord Poynings, 3rd Earl of Northumberland, 68, 135, 199

Percy, Ralph, 199

Perth, 7–8, 53, 96–7, 190, 194

Carthusian Priory [Charterhouse], 7, 60, 97–8

Dominican Friary, Blackfriars, 5, 15
pestilence, 20, 33 n. 41, 228

Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, 73–7, 80, 99, 108, 201

Pisa, Council of, 40

Pius II, pope, 196

Pluscarden, Book of, 1, 7, 222–4

Poke, Robert, 147

Popes, see Alexander V; Benedict XIII; Boniface IX; Calixtus III; Clement VII; Eugenius IV; Felix V; Gregory XI; Gregory XII; Innocent VII; Martin V; Nicholas V; Pius II;

Urban VI
prices, 228–9

Pringle, Robert, 125, 139

Queens, see Beaufort, Joan; Mary of Gueldres; Mure, Elizabeth;

Rait, John, bishop of Aberdeen (1351–5), 44

Ralston, James, rector of Douglas, 27

Ralston, John, bishop of Dunkeld, 75, 87, 88, 94–5, 119 n.4

Ramsay, Alexander, of Dalhousie, 27, 102, 125, 148

Redcastle, 165, 167, 191

Reddenburn, 199–200

Reid, Andrew, burgess and commissioner of Inverness, 26

Remissions, 173, 191–2, 223–4, 240

Restalrig, 20, 92

Revocation, Act of (October 1455), 169–70, 174

Robert I (Bruce), King of Scots (1306–29), 1, 70, 174

Robert II, King of Scots (1371–1390), 1, 254

Robert III, King of Scots (1390–1406), 254

Robertson, William, 249

Roit or Quheill of Tyme, The, chronicle, see Abell, Adam

Rome, 169

Papal Jubilee (1450–1), 99–102, 104, 129

Ross, bishop of, see Tulloch, Thomas

Ross, Earl of, see MacDonald, Alexander; MacDonald, John

Ross, Euphemia, 2nd wife of Robert II, 106

Ross, John, of Hawkhead, 75–6

Rothes, Earldom of, see Leslie, George

Rothesay Herald, 200, 207 n.66

Roxburgh, burgh and castle of, 158, 170, 175, 181
siege of (1436), 4, 71
siege of (1460), 154, 202, 227, 230, 239, 258

Rutherford, Andrew, 129

Rutherford, James, of that Ilk, 27, 113, 125, 139

Ruthven, castle of, 109–10, 131, 150, 220

Ruthven, Sir William, 246

St Albans, 1st battle of (1455), 152, 158

St Andrews
bishop of, see Kennedy, James
castle of, 64, 126, 129, 186

St Salvator’s College in, 100, 141

University of, 53, 100

St Anthony, Augustinian hospital, Leith, 79

St Michael, John, 168

Saintonge, French county of, 196

Sark, see Lochmabenstone

Savoy, Louis of, Count of Geneva, 146, 196

Schethow, John, 109

Scheves, John, 94

Schism, papal, 29, 40–1

Scone, 8

Scott, David of Buccleuch, 126, 139, 155, 168

Scott, Walter, of Kirkurd (Strathord), 126, 155, 168

Scott, Sir Walter, 242, 249–50

Scrimegeour, Alexander, 214

Scrimegeour, Hercules, 214

Sempill, Sir Robert, 49–50, 56 n.50, 112

Seton, Sir William, 28

Seton, William of, brother of Alexander earl of Huntly, 130

Shirley, John, 3–6
and The Dethe of the Kynge of Scotis, 3, 6–7, 9

Shoreswood, George, bishop of Brechin (Chancellor), 111, 156
as Chancellor, 179, 190, 198–200
removed as Chancellor, 201

Sigismund, Archduke of Austria,
and marriage to Eleanor Stewart, 75, 218, 221

Sinclair, Beatrice, Countess of Douglas, wife of James the Gross, 101, 107, 135
exiled, 155, 168, 200
forfeited, 156–7
marriage to James the Gross (1423), 14, 32 n.13, 38

Sinclair, Henry, Earl of Orkney (d. 1420), 176

Sinclair, Thomas, 112

Sinclair, William, Earl of Caithness and Orkney, 14, 23–4, 29–30, 38, 50, 96, 201
accompanied Princess Margaret to Tours, 176
and castle of Roslin, 154, 176
as Chancellor, 141, 143, 154, 176, 181
as Earl of Caithness, 176–7
tension with James II, 178–9, 190, 257

Smailholm, tower of, 125

Snowdon Herald, 104–5

Somerville, William 1st Lord, 58, 88, 104, 111, 136, 139, 156

Somerville, John, 68

Spens, John, royal steward, 6

Spens, Thomas
as secretary to William 6th Earl of Douglas, 27
as bishop of Galloway (Whithorn), 87, 107, 113, 135–6, 143, 152, 199
as bishop of Aberdeen, 188, 196–7

Spot, Ninian, Bishop of Galloway, 165, 201

Spynie (Moray), bishop’s palace, 171, 190

Stanley, John, 174–5, 189

Stewart, Alan, of Darnley, 17, 117

Stewart, Alexander, twin brother of James II, 1

Stewart, Alexander, Earl of Mar, 28, 61

Stewart, Alexander ‘buktuth’, brother of Alan, 17, 117

Stewart, Alexander, Earl of March, Duke of Rothesay, eldest son of James II, 149, 166, 170, 201

Stewart, Andrew, half-brother of James II, 61, 149

Stewart, Andrew, 118, 219
becomes Chancellor, 201
as Lord Avandale, 189

Stewart, Annabella, youngest sister of James II, 146, 190, 196, 197, 206 n.53, 206–7 n.56–8

Stewart, Archibald, younger brother of James Stewart of Lorne, 23, 26

Stewart, David, Duke of Rothesay (d. 1402), 3, 16, 254

Stewart, David, of Rosyth, 26, 210

Stewart, David, son of James II, Earl of Moray (d. 1457), 166, 173, 184 n.40

Stewart, Eleanor, sister of James II, = rst wife of Sigismund, Archduke of Austria, 61, 73–4, 195–6, 206 n.56, 218, 221

Stewart, Isabella, sister of James II, Duchess of Brittany, 39, 72–3, 77, 143, 146, 206 n.56, 218

Stewart, James, Earl of Buchan, son of Murdac, duke of Albany, 13

Stewart, James, half-brother of James II, 61, 187, 201

Stewart, Sir James, the ‘Black Knight’ of Lorne, 23, 26, 52, 61, 118, 152, 220–1

Stewart, Sir James, of Auchingowan, 51

Stewart, James, son of James II, see James III

Stewart, Joanna, sister of James II, 61, 73–4, 84 n.65, 190, 196–7, 206 n.56

Stewart, John, Gorme of Atholl, 9, 246

Stewart, John, of Darnley, 118
as Lord Darnley, 132, 187, 189, 219

Stewart, John, of Balvenie, half-brother of James II, 61, 140
as Earl of Atholl, 146, 156, 167
marriage to Margaret Douglas, 200

Stewart, John, 2nd Lord of Lorne, 133, 151, 156

Stewart, John, Earl of Mar, youngest son of James II, 166, 191

Stewart, Margaret, Countess of Douglas, Duchess of Touraine, sister of James I, 13, 19, 37, 69, 102–3, 157, 206 n. 56

Stewart, Margaret, dauphiness of France, eldest sister of James II, 72, 74, 176, 196, 218

Stewart, Margaret, daughter of James II, 200 n. 68

Stewart, Marion, 17–18

Stewart, Mary, sister of James II, 73, 91, 201, 206 n.56, 207 n.72

Stewart, Mary, daughter of James II, 126, 159 n.7

Stewart, Matthew, 17

Stewart, Murdac, 2nd Duke of Albany, 5, 16, 24

Stewart, Robert, Duke of Albany, 3, 23

Stewart, Robert, grandson of Walter Earl of Atholl, 3–5, 7–8

Stewart, Robert, Lord of Lorne, 22–3, 26

Stewart, Walter, Earl of Atholl, 3–5, 6, 8, 22
execution, 8–9
sons, David and Alan, 5

Stewart, Walter, 118

Stewarton, lordship of, 107, 111, 137–8, 141

Stirling
burgh of, 27, 43, 96, 110, 134, 190
castle of, 9, 14, 16, 22–5, 46–7, 65, 78–9, 88, 98, 114–15, 119, 125–8, 147, 165

Dominican friary, 226

Strathaven, 95, 151, 156

Strathbrock, 147

Strathearn, earldom of, 5, 165
sumptuary legislation (1455), 169; (1458), ?? (author)

Sutherland, Earldom of, 177, 191
and John, Earl of, 20, 173, 191

Tain, parish church of, 167

Tarvas, Thomas, Abbot of Paisley, 112, 144, 215–18

Teviotdale, archdeaconry of, 45

Thorleiffson, Bjarn, governor of Iceland, 178

Threave
castle of (Galloway), 102, 140, 150–1, 155, 165, 175
siege of (1455), 157–8, 176, 181

Tongland, monastery of (Galloway), 187

Truces, Anglo-Scottish

9 June 1450, 100

14 August 1451, 106

23 May 1453, 142

20 June 1457, 190

Tulloch, Thomas, bishop of Ross, 42, 45, 95–6, 156

Turnbull, William, bishop of Glasgow, Keeper of the Privy Seal (d. 1454)

bishop of Glasgow, 67, 87–9, 91, 106–7, 110–11, 113, 132, 135, 137
death of, 148–9
founds the University of Glasgow, 100, 230
as keeper of the privy seal, 41, 67
supports James II against the Douglases, 93–6, 101, 119, 130, 136, 159 n.21, 166, 228

Tweedie, James, of Drumelzier, 152–3

Tytler, Patrick, 31, 36 n. 85

Urban VI, pope, 40

Urquhart, castle of (Loch Ness), 91, 109, 131, 150, 165, 167, 220

Urquhart, William, 173, 191

Van Borselen, Wolfaert, of Veere, 73, 77
and son, Charles, 73, 83 n.63

Vanderfelde, Henry, tutor to Mary of Guledres, 80

Vaus, John, 18

Vaus, Robert, 113

Veere, Henry, Lord of, 73, 91, 201

Verneuil, battle of (1424), 43

Von Ehingen, Georg, 195, 221–2

Von Ehingen, Rudolf, of Kilchberg, 221

Wallace, Sir William, of Craigie, 68

Waltoun, John of, master of works, 24

Wardlaw, Henry, Bishop of St Andrews, 8–9, 26, 87

Wark, castle, seized by Scots (1460), 203, 241

Wemyss, Thomas, 67

Wessington, John, prior of Durham, 43, 49

White, David, Abbot of Cambuskenneth, 26

Whitelaw, Archibald, 201

Whithorn, 174
bishopric of, see Galloway

Wigtown, burgh of, 165, 186, 206 n.55

Wigtown, Earldom of, 38, 102–3, 107–8, 111, 113, 126, 135, 137–8, 141, 143

Winchester, John, bishop of Moray, 41, 47, 156, 171, 173, 246
and the ‘appoyntement’ (1439), 25
on diplomatic business, 113, 135–6
in parliament, 95–6, 107, 111
receives royal patronage, 168

Wyntoun, Andrew, chronicler, 229–30

York, Richard, Duke of (d. 1460), 142, 152, 170, 180, 186, 201

Contemporary portrait of James II from the Diary of the Austrian traveller, Georg von Ehingen. This shows clearly the deep-red birthmark that covered the left-hand side of James II’s face and earned him the sobriquet, ‘fiery face’. (Reproduced with kind permission of the Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart)

Contemporary portrait of Charles VII of France from the Diary of Georg von Ehingen. The tradition of Scottish participation in the Hundred Years’ war on the side of Charles (as Dauphin and then king) led to numerous diplomatic exchanges with James II. (Reproduced with kind permission of the Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart)

Contemporary portrait of Henry VI of England from the Diary of Georg von Ehingen. James II exploited the tensions in England between the houses of York and Lancaster in the late 1450s, many of which stemmed from Henry VI’s weak personal rule. (Reproduced with kind permission of the Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart)

Philip ‘the Good’, duke of Burgundy. He was Mary of Gueldres’ great-uncle and brokered the negotiations for the marriage between Mary and James II. He provided Mary’s wedding dowry and supplied James II with Burgundian artillery weapons, including Mons Meg. (Copy of a portrait (now lost) by Rogier ven der Weyden)

Isabella Stewart, duchess of Brittany. The second sister of James II, Isabella was married to Francis duke of Brittany in 1442. This illustration from her Book of Hours shows her being presented to the Virgin and child by St Catherine, and incorporates the arms of Scotland and Brittany. (© The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge)

Silver groat of James II minted at Edinburgh. Obverse shows the king’s crowned head and shoulders in a nine-arc tressure, with an inscription in Latin which translates as ‘James, by the Grace of God, King of Scots’. (© National Museums Scotland. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk)

Seal of Mary of Gueldres, from a nineteenth-century impression. This seal would have been made for the queen at the time of her coronation in 1449 and she would have used it to seal her own documents. It depicts an angel supporting a shield with the arms of Scotland and those of Gueldres. (© National Museums Scotland. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk)

Treaty of Brussels, 1 April 1449. This was the treaty that sealed the marriage contract between James II and Mary of Gueldres, brokered by Philip duke of Burgundy. (Lille, ADN, Musée 107)

Roxburgh, aerial view looking east, with the site of the castle on the central mound, skirted by the road. The river Tweed is on the left and the river Teviot to the right. At the top of the photograph is Kelso, where the young James III was crowned after the death of his father. The mediaeval town of Roxburgh occupied the open ground beyond the castle, between the rivers and the town of Kelso. (© Colin J. M. Martin. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk)

Blackness castle, West Lothian, situated on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth. It was designed in the shape of a ship with its bow facing the estuary, and owned by George Crichton, admiral of Scotland. From the battlements, it would have had the great Lothian stronghold of James the Gross, Abercorn, in line of sight. (Photo: courtesy of Andrew Eccles)

Stirling castle, looking to the western side of the rock on which it stands. The burgh of Stirling, at the base of the castle rock, was attacked by a force led by James 9th earl of Douglas in March 1452 in response to the killing of his brother, William, by James II. (Photo: courtesy of Andrew Eccles)

Tomb of James ‘the Gross’, 7th earl of Douglas, in St Bride’s Church, Douglas, Lanarkshire. James became earl of Douglas after the execution of his two great-nephews at the ‘Black Dinner’ in 1440, and this transferred the Douglas inheritance to his branch of the family. (Photo: courtesy of Richard Oram)

Threave castle artillery tower. The castle of Threave is on a small island in the river Dee, near the town of Castle Douglas in Galloway. Built by Archibald ‘the Grim’, 3rd earl of Douglas, in the late fourteenth century, it was the last Black Douglas stronghold to surrender to James II in 1455 and had been fortified to meet the threat of a royal siege. (Photo: courtesy of Richard Oram)

Mons Meg. Although not given this name until later, Mons Meg, made at Mons in 1449, was one of two great bombards presented to James II by Philip duke of Burgundy in 1457. (© Crown Copyright reproduced courtesy of Historic Scotland. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk)

Table of Contents

- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- List of Plates
- Foreword

- Preface: The King with ‘the fyre mark in his face’

- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Maps and Genealogical Tables

- Chapter 1: The Legacy of James I (1424-1437)

- Chapter 2: Protecting the Rights of the Crown (1437-1440)

- Chapter 3: The Principle of Consent (1440-1445)

- Chapter 4: The Rise of the ‘New’ Black Douglases (1445-1449)

- Chapter 5: Ambition and Assertion (1450-1452)

- Chapter 6: Confrontation and Crisis (1453-1455)

- Chapter 7: Recovery and Compromise (1455-1456)

- Chapter 8: Consolidation and the Road to War (1457-1460)

- Chapter 9: Profile of a King – the Sources
- Chapter 10: Establishing Perceptions
- Conclusion
- Glossary
- Appendix: The Auchinleck Chronicle
- Bibliography
- Index