by Allan Massie
Told baldly, the story of the murder, drawn from accounts written decades later, is unconvincing, scarcely credible in detail. If James found time to tear up the floorboards, wouldn’t he also have had time to seize sword and shield or summon help – not all his retainers or members of his household can have been in on the plot – even put on armour? It seems probable that the version we have is that authorised by his widow, Queen Joan, and that it was framed, or spun, so as to emphasise the wicked treachery of the assassins and the heroism of the King, thus deepening the pathos. The nineteenth-century historian Andrew Lang, who called James ‘the ablest and not the most scrupulous of the Stewarts’, hints at this: ‘the dramatic story of his death had won him a sympathy which his aims deserve better than his methods’. This judgement may be too harsh. Certainly when the citizens of Perth learned of the murder, they hurried to the abbey calling for vengeance. The conspirators, alarmed by this incursion, took flight and made for the hills.
James had been harsh, cruel, overbearing, careless of what his nobles considered to be their rights. He had failed to practise the necessary art of conciliation, had made his determination to exercise his authority to the full all too obvious, and in doing so had rendered his nobles insecure. Yet this was only a murder, not a coup d’état, for the conspirators had made no provision to seize power. Perhaps they expected that the murder would be popular. If so, they were mistaken. Within a month, James’s six-year-old son was crowned king. Only the decision to hold the ceremony at Holyrood, so much further from the Highland Line and from the estates of some of the conspirators than Scone, traditional crowning-place of Scottish kings, suggests that there was any apprehension about the future of the dynasty.
The murderers were soon rounded up and dealt with. They were first tortured, as an act of revenge, but also in an attempt to discover how widespread the conspiracy had been, and then executed. Sir Robert Graham, the instigator of the murder, defended his action vigorously, declaring that he had renounced his allegiance to King James and was thereby entitled to slay him. His memory would, he said, be honoured as a tyrannicide. But he deceived himself. A popular rhyme expressed the general opinion: ‘Robert Graham, / That slew our king, / God Grant him shame!’ The aged Earl of Atholl protested his innocence; in vain. It was impossible to believe that he was not privy to the conspiracy, even if he took no part in the actual murder. In fact he admitted that his son, Sir Robert Stewart, had told him of the plot, but pathetically maintained that he had tried to dissuade him. In the belief that the old man had been the designated successor, a crown of red-hot iron was placed on his head. By her swift severity, inspired perhaps by grief for the husband who had celebrated her beauty in his verse, Queen Joan, the regent, not only assured her son’s succession; she all but completed the destruction of the Stewart cousinship that her husband had begun with the execution of Albany and his sons thirteen years before. Only Malise Graham, Earl of Strathearn, survived in the male line of descent from Robert II and Euphemia Ross, but he was still a prisoner-hostage in England, and Queen Joan could rely on her Beaufort relations to see that he remained there.
Chapter 5
James II (1437–60): A Quick-Tempered King
James II was known as ‘James of the Fiery Face’, on account of a disfiguring birthmark. This was sufficiently well known to be remarked on by François Villon, poet and criminal, who wrote of:
…le roy Scotiste
Qui demy face ot, ce dit on,
Vermeille comme une amatiste
Depuis le front jusqu’au menton.
[The Scottish king whose half face, it is said, was bright red like an amethyst from forehead to chin.]
The mark is evident in a portrait, probably the first authentic likeness of a Scottish king, a drawing on vellum made a couple of years before his death.
James being only six when his father was murdered, Scotland was condemned to endure a long minority. The chronicler Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie,1 writing a hundred years later, expressed what was no doubt the common opinion: ‘so lang as the king is young, great men reignis at their awin libertie’. If medieval kings were always likely to find their authority challenged or defied by the ‘over-mighty subject’, this danger was all the more acute when the king was a minor. Moreover, no regent or lieutenant-general of the country could be confident of exercising the royal powers unless he secured possession of the young king’s person. Nevertheless, throughout these minorities, the Scottish political class recognised ‘the fundamental importance of maintaining the authority of the monarchy’.2
The politics of the second James’s minority are especially confused. Gordon Donaldson wrote, ‘the evidence at the historian’s disposal can hardly be called ample. And there are many points where it leaves us at a loss, unable to determine the precise course of events and the reason why things happened as they did. But even if this was not so, the shifting loyalties and alliance and the certainly important acts of men who are little more than names might well leave us perplexed.’3
A struggle for control of the King’s person inevitably dominated these early years. His mother, Queen Joan, had acted quickly and effectively to ensure his succession and coronation and to avenge her husband’s murder, but whatever her abilities, it was generally understood that a woman was incompetent to rule without male assistance. She was therefore first associated in government with Archibald, fifth Earl of Douglas, who was appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom. But Douglas died in 1439, and Joan then made the mistake of marrying again. The mistake lay less in the fact of remarriage, for that was expected of widows, than in her choice of husband. Sir James Stewart, a distant royal cousin known as ‘the Black Knight of Lorne’, was a wild and ambitious man with an unsavoury reputation.
Even before this marriage, Joan had lost possession of her son, entrusted by the Council to Sir William Crichton, governor of Edinburgh Castle. Crichton was no great nobleman, but he had been trusted by James I, who had employed him on diplomatic missions and made him a member of his Privy Council, master of his household and chancellor. He has been described as ‘an enigmatic figure’, but this may mean no more than that little is known about him. He may have thought Joan’s English connections dangerous; it is impossible to tell. However, during Crichton’s absence on other business, the Queen, along with her new husband, found supporters willing to smuggle the boy king out of Edinburgh Castle, and sailed with the young monarch up the Forth to Stirling Castle. Its governor, Sir Alexander Livingstone, a minor baron from the Lothians, had been another of her first husband’s trusted servants, serving for instance on the court that tried the Duke of Albany and his sons and found them guilty of treason. However, either on account of Joan’s second marriage, or for some other reason, he too turned against the Queen, and arrested her along with her new husband and his brother, who were both imprisoned. In order to free them, Joan had to surrender custody of her son and was thenceforth forbidden to speak to him alone.
This was the end of Queen Joan as a political force, though she lived another six years and bore her second husband three sons, all of whom would play a part in future reigns. For the moment, the combination of Crichton and Livingstone ruled; Livingstone’s extensive family were rewarded with lands and official posts. The pair could not, however, consider themselves secure. The curtain now rose on the central drama of the reign: conflict between the Crown and the House of Douglas.
The Douglases were the dominant family across the Scottish Borders while also holding estates in other parts of the kingdom. There were two branches, the Black Douglases, who held the earldom of Douglas, and the Red Douglases, earls of Angus. Both were descended from Robert the Bruce’s general Sir James Douglas (sometimes called ‘the Good Lord James’), to whose exploits in the War of Independence the family owed its rise; the Blacks from one of his illegitimate sons, the Reds from a son, also illegitimate, of James, the second Earl of Douglas, killed in the victorious Battle of Otterburn in 1388 and commemorated in a ballad:
O I hae dreamed a dreary dream,
Ayont the Isle of Skye;
I saw a dead man win a fight,
And I dreamed that man was I.
Since then, the power and reputation of the Black Douglases had grown steadily. The fourth earl had commanded the Scots army that fought against the English in France and had been rewarded with the duchy of Touraine. Moreover, he had married Margaret, daughter of Robert III, while his son Archibald had married Euphemia of Strathearn, herself descended from Robert II’s second and unquestionably lawful marriage. Accordingly, Archibald’s son, the sixth earl, William, a boy still in his teens, was close to the succession to the throne, should anything befall James; and his claim was all the stronger since he was in the line of inheritance from both wives of the first Stewart king
The young William was attractive and high-spirited, with a touch of arrogance. Not surprising; within the extensive Douglas lands he rode at the head of a thousand horsemen, and his vassals looked to him rather than to the King. Indeed, just as their English rivals, and sometimes allies, the Percys were known as ‘the kings of the North’, so too in Scotland the Douglases were kings of the Borderland.
To Crichton and Livingstone the young Earl represented a threat; no doubt, they might argue, the royal authority was also challenged and menaced by his power. Certainly, as an adult, James II would make the same judgement of the House of Douglas; but the King was not yet ten. His keepers acted to remove the threat before the Earl came to full manhood. They invited him to a meeting ‘that they might confer in all amity and to some purpose concerning the grave affairs of the kingdom’. No doubt he was flattered by this apparent recognition that he was now regarded as being of an age to be consulted about matters of state policy. He accepted the invitation, and, despite the misgivings of some of his entourage, rode to Edinburgh, taking with him his younger brother David. For a fortnight they were guests in the castle, and James was delighted by his new friends. According to one account, he said they would be to him as their ancestor the good Lord James had been to his forefather the Bruce (from whom the Douglas boys were also of course descended). But Crichton and Livingstone had other plans, and what followed became one of the darkest and grimmest of Scottish legends, to be dramatically recounted by Walter Scott:
Of a sudden the scene began to change. At an entertainment which was served up to the Earl and his brother, the head of a black bull was placed on the table. The Douglases knew this, according to a custom which prevailed in Scotland, to be the sign of death, and leaped from the table in great dismay. But they were seized by armed men who entered the apartment. They underwent a mock trial, in which all the insolences of their ancestors were charged against them, and were condemned to immediate execution. The young King wept and implored Livingstone and Crichton to show mercy to the young noblemen, but in vain. These cruel men only reproved him for weeping at the death of those whom they called his enemies. The brothers were led out into the court of the castle, and beheaded without delay. Malcolm Fleming of Cumbernauld, a faithful adherent of their house, shared the same fate.4
The deed was long remembered in verse:
Edinburgh Castle, towne and toure,
God grant thou sink for sinne!
And that even for the black dinoir
Erl Douglas gat therein.
It was an appalling crime, murder scarcely concealed by the trappings of a cursory trial. Crichton and Livingstone might argue that the power of the Douglases threatened the Crown. It might indeed have done so, and as an adult, James II would come to that conclusion. Yet the young Earl had done little more than assert his own authority in his own lands and over his own tenants and vassals. It is probable that the two governors acted to protect their own position rather than that of the Crown. Certainly the power of the Douglases was not broken, even if the new Earl – the dead boy’s uncle – a fat, lazy man known as James the Gross, did not inherit all the Douglas estates, a share going to the young sister of the murdered boys, Margaret, known as the Maid of Galloway. Fat James made no effort to avenge his nephews. It has been suggested that he may have been complicit in the crime, but perhaps he was merely happy to benefit from it. If he felt any resentment, this was soon appeased when Crichton and Livingstone arranged to have his younger son, Archibald, made Earl of Moray. In any event the Douglases were not long weakened. When James the Gross died in 1443, his son William, the eighth earl, married his cousin, the Maid of Galloway, and reunited the Douglas lands. By doing so, he was in a position to revive any Douglas claim to the throne, no matter whether the rightful king was James Stewart or Malise, Earl of Menteith, who still languished in England. Malise would live to a great age, over eighty – evidence that there was something to be said for being held in the condition of a hostage. Since he never seems to have asserted his claim to the throne, Gordon Donaldson suggests that ‘it may perhaps be inferred that he was infirm either mentally or physically’.5 He may, however, simply have been content with his lot.
Throughout the 1440s, there was a truce with England (though such an agreement did not prevent skirmishes either side of the border). The English, embroiled in what was now a losing war in France, had little appetite for renewed conflict in the north, while it was a characteristic of the Stewart minorities that the struggle of various magnates to control the Crown generally precluded an active foreign policy.
The young King was growing up. When he was fourteen, in 1444, a General Council declared his minority at at end. The next year his mother, Queen Joan, died, and her husband, the Black Knight of Lorne, deprived of the protection her name and status had afforded him, decided it was prudent to withdraw to England with their three sons. It is doubtful whether James was yet in control of the government, but the prospect, generally welcome, was alarming for those in office. Crichton was dismissed as chancellor in 1445, probably with the connivance of his rival and sometime partner, Livingstone, who was meanwhile assiduously seeking to strengthen his own position by inserting his relatives in positions of power. One was chamberlain, another controller of the royal finances, a third master of the mint, and the keepers of the castles of Stirling, Dumbarton, Doune and Methven were all Livingstones. Few families had risen so far and so fast in such a short time.
Their fall would be equally swift and complete. First, though, Livingstone tried to ingratiate himself with the young King by arranging a splendid marriage for him in 1449. The bride was Mary, daughter of the Duke of Gueldres and a niece of Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy. Little is known of her character, but with Flanders then economically and culturally the richest and most developed province of northern Europe, it was a good match for the King of Scots. She brought with her a substantial dowry (60,000 crowns in cash) and the promise of commercial links with the rich cities of the Netherlands. The marriage was celebrated with some pomp in Holyrood Abbey and may have been harmonious. At any rate, it produced six children, four boys (one of whom died young) and two girls. The Stewart succession was thus secured, though the presence of royal brothers would be a threat to future domestic peace.
The same year, at the age of eighteen, James assumed full control of the government. If Livingstone had indeed looked for gratitude, he deceived himself. James acted swiftly to break him and destroy the power base he had constructed for his family. Several, including Sir Alexander himself, were arrested and put to death. No pretext was given. No doubt it was felt that none was necessary. But the fact that the Livingstones had been granted, or had granted themselves, royal castles and estates, at least two of which had been promised to the new Queen as her jointure, may have been sufficient excuse. James himself owed the comptroller one thousand pounds, a debt conveniently cancelled by the latter’s execution.
The Livingstones were ‘new men’ with neither an extensive and influential cousinship nor great estates of their own; they were easy to deal with and dispose of. The Douglases were a different matter. In the last years of the King’s minority, the eighth earl, William, h
ad been made lieutenant-general of the kingdom. As a youth, the King had been dazzled by him. Now he saw him as a rival, reasonably enough, for across the south of Scotland it was Douglas’s writ that ran, not the King’s. It was Douglas, not the King, to whom the lesser nobility, barons and knights of the borderland owed their first loyalty. And Douglas was carrying on what amounted to an independent foreign policy and assuming a quasi-royal status. He held something resembling a parliament of his own and even forbade his dependants to attend the legitimate parliament when summoned by the King. In 1451 he formed an alliance, or ‘bond’ as it was termed, with two northern magnates, the Earl of Crawford, and John, Lord of the Isles. It looked as if he was seeking to encircle the King; perhaps he aimed at the crown himself.
One incident in particular shows his arrogance and determination to be a law unto himself. While still stopping short of open rebellion, he summoned his vassals in defiance of the royal authority. One, by name MacLellan, the tutor or guardian of the young laird of Bombie, refused to answer the summons. Douglas seized him and held him prisoner in his island castle of Threave. This MacLellan was the nephew of Sir Patrick Gray, the captain of the King’s Guard, who protested to James. The King sent him to Threave with a letter in which he ordered Douglas to surrender his captive to Sir Patrick. Douglas greeted the royal messenger politely, and quoted the old proverb that it was ill to come between a hungry man and his dinner and that there was no good talking between a full man and a fasting. He invited Gray to sit and dine, after which, he said, he would read the King’s letter and they could settle the matter. Meanwhile he sent orders to prepare the prisoner. When Sir Patrick had eaten, Douglas read the letter and said he would grant the King’s request. He led him out into the courtyard, where the body of MacLellan lay beside the execution block. ‘There is your nephew,’ Douglas said, ‘but you have come too late, for he wants his head.’ Gray contrived to make his escape, waiting till he was safe across the drawbridge before cursing Douglas and promising revenge.6
