by Allan Massie
There was a darker side to the King’s character, however, reflected in the sobriquet ‘James of the Iron Belt’. His involvement, whether voluntary or not, in the rebellion that had led to his father’s death seems to have weighed heavy on his conscience, and as penance, he wore an iron chain round his waist next to his skin. He made frequent pilgrimages to shrines such as that of St Ninian at Whithorn and St Dutho at Tain, though the austerity of these excursions was alleviated by the company of minstrels and other entertainers, while he broke at least one journey to Tain with a visit to his mistress at Darnaway. Nevertheless, there is no reason to think him insincere in displaying contrition for his part in his father’s death. But it is worth remarking that while he immediately paid for Masses to be said for the soul of his mother, Margaret of Denmark, who had died in 1486, it was to be eight years before he did the same for his murdered father.
He had already celebrated his sixteenth birthday when he came to the throne. The circumstances of his accession were awkward, for the rebellion that had resulted in his father’s murder had been that only of a discontented faction, members of which now seized, or were rewarded with, some of the great offices of state. Those who had been loyal to James III could not be expected to approve. The records of the Scots parliament refer to the ‘unhappy field’ of Sauchieburn, ‘in the quhilk the King our soverane lord happinit to be slane’. If this prudently glossed over the murder, it fell short of excusing it. It was perhaps to emphasise the legitimacy of the succession that the young King was crowned at Scone, the historic crowning place of Scottish kings dating back to legendary times, till Edward I of England had taken possession of the coronation stone – the Stone of Destiny – and carried it off to Westminster Abbey. Despite the stone’s absence, Robert the Bruce had been crowned at Scone, but neither James II nor James III had been – perhaps because they were only small children when they became king. The decision that James IV’s coronation be celebrated there was thus of some significance. Scone would not see another coronation till 1650, when Charles II was crowned there after the execution of his father.
James IV had one advantage over his immediate predecessors, and indeed his successors. He was, at sixteen, old enough to assume control of the government himself. Scotland was therefore spared yet another minority, and James’s personal reign of twenty-five unchallenged years was to be the longest of any Scots monarch since Alexander III in the thirteenth century.
In other respects too he was in a much stronger position than any of his Stewart ancestors. Whatever the failings and mis fortunes of James III, his reign had not interrupted the process set in motion by James I. It had been that king’s intention to elevate the Crown above the nobility, and, despite the minorities and baronial faction-fighting, this had been achieved by the time of James IV. Through the recovery of Crown lands alienated in the reigns of the two Roberts and during the minorities, the confiscation of estates of condemned rebels, and the securing of the payment of customs duties to the Crown, the Stewarts were now far richer than any of their nobility. The King was no longer merely first among equals as the two Roberts had been.
Moreover, by cultivating the smaller landowners and the representatives of the burghs in parliament, and by encouraging trade and prosperity, the Stewarts had associated themselves with the progressive forces in the country, and might now fairly be seen as the representative of these forces and the guarantor of order. This was reflected in James IV’s establishment of a permanent civil court, which in his son’s reign would become the Court of Session, still today the fount and arbiter of Scots law.
Nevertheless, though James was more powerful than any previous Scottish king, direct royal control was limited to the Lowlands, and did not even extend to the border counties, which remained lawless and anarchic. Scotland was still a country of localities. James tried to ensure that the same law was observed throughout the kingdom and was himself active in dispensing justice, but he still had to rely on the co-operation of the nobility, who continued to hold their own law courts, punish wrongdoers and settle disputes. He made several military expeditions into the Highlands; yet was no more successful than James I had been in establishing enduring royal authority there. He did end the semi-independent Lordship of the Isles, but he had to entrust administration to local magnates – the chief of Clan Campbell in Argyll, Mackenzie of Kintail in the eastern Highlands, and the Earl of Huntly, head of the Gordon family, in the north-east. While serving the King, these men also served their own interests, establishing authority over their neighbouring barons. It could not be otherwise.
James’s reign saw the opening of a question that was to dominate the foreign policy of the Scots government for the next seventy years. Ever since the brief reign of John Balliol, Scotland had been allied to France and both countries had been intermittently at war with England. Those wars had been interrupted by frequent truces, but there had been no settled peace. The border counties, either side of the Anglo-Scottish frontier, were the scene of raids and skirmishes, occasionally full-blown battles, even when there was no regular state of war between the two nations. Dissident or disaffected subjects of either the Scots or English king could find a refuge across the border and would be used, as James III’s brother Alexander had been, to stir up trouble in their own country.
This pattern persisted in the early years of James IV’s reign. John Ramsay, the only one of James III’s favourites to have escaped the lynch mob led by Bell-the-Cat at Lauder, was stripped of the earldom of Bothwell his master had granted him, and resentfully departed to the English court, where he proposed to the new king, Henry VII, that he should kidnap James and his brother. Meanwhile Bell-the-Cat himself was in negotiations with England. These dissidents may have received little encouragement from Henry VII, who was keener on peace than war, but their mere presence in England was an irritant.
James responded by taking up the cause of the mysterious Perkin Warbeck, who claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, the younger son of Edward IV and one of the Princes in the Tower, reputedly murdered by order of their uncle Richard III. Perkin had been recognised as her nephew by Margaret of Burgundy, Edward IV’s sister, though the identification was not worth much as evidence, for she had not seen Richard since he was an infant. Nevertheless, she acclaimed him as her ‘White Rose of York’, and this gave the boy credibility – at least among those adherents of the Yorkist cause who were more than willing to be convinced. In any case he was a handsome young man, with some charm of manner, and on his travels through western Europe seeking support he had been welcomed by the Habsburg Emperor Maximilian, whose response was so enthusiastic that he may fairly be said to have fallen in love with the boy. Now Warbeck arrived in Scotland touting his claims and eager to seek James’s support for his attempt to win the English throne, which was ‘rightfully’ his. To his gratification, he was hailed as Richard IV of England.
If the boy wasn’t the prince he claimed to be, he yet made a good show of royalty. James in his turn made him welcome. Was he convinced by Warbeck’s claim? It’s impossible to say. Only one thing suggests that he may have been: he arranged for the boy to marry Lady Katharine Gordon, one of the daughters of the Earl of Huntly. Since she was a cousin of the King, if a distant one, this was tantamount to admitting the young man into the royal family.
Would James have done this if he had been sure that Warbeck was an impostor? Or did the young man’s claims and bearing merely appeal to the streak of knight-errantry in the King’s character? Whatever the answer, it was clear that Warbeck might be of use either as an ally or at least as a bargaining counter. There were some in the King’s Council who were less impressed and asserted that the boy was not what he claimed to be. They were certainly unwilling to engage in war with England on his behalf. But James was not to be deterred from championing his guest. He might have reflected, cynically, that there were advantages either way. If Warbeck was successful, he would owe his throne to the King of Scots; if the war went badly, then Henry mi
ght be prepared to pay for the surrender of the Pretender. But James was no cynic, and it is likely that he thought there was a fair chance that the boy might indeed be the Yorkist heir and the legitimate king of England.
It was not impossible to win the throne for his protégé. Henry VII had himself invaded England with only a few thousand troops, met and defeated Richard III at Bosworth, and made himself king. Furthermore, James had another ambition that might be more easily realised. The town of Berwick-on-Tweed, which had changed hands thirteen times in the last two hundred years, was once again in English possession. It might be retaken in even a limited campaign, and Warbeck obligingly promised to hand it back to Scotland and also to pay James 50,000 marks in return for his assistance. Accordingly, even if the campaign achieved nothing more than the recapture of Berwick, James could consider it a success. So by force of argument or personality he overcame the doubters in his Council, and was able to prepare for war.
In the summer of 1496 the army, with the big guns that were James’s especial pride, crossed the Tweed at Coldstream and laid siege to Hetton Castle. Warbeck was soon disillusioned and disheartened. None of the support he had expected from Yorkist sympathisers appeared, and he discovered in himself a distaste for the savage warfare of the borderlands. James on the other hand relished it. Ayala, the Spanish ambassador, who had been invited to accompany him on the campaign, thought him braver and more reckless than a king should properly be. When he remarked on this, James replied that he must do anything he required of his soldiers. Ayala was not convinced. Later he was to reflect that James was not a good commander, because ‘he begins to fight before he has given his orders’.5 This was to prove a sadly prophetic judgement.
The campaign petered out. When word came that an English army was advancing from Newcastle, James withdrew. Berwick remained in English hands. The invasion had been a gesture, nothing more. Poor Warbeck had preceded the King back to Edinburgh, and James soon abandoned his cause. It seems that the boy’s dislike of seeing men killed in battle may have convinced James that he was not of royal blood. Nevertheless, he paid his pension for another couple of years, then gave him a ship to take him from Ayr to Exeter, where he had been persuaded, or had persuaded himself, that enthusiasm for the Yorkist cause ran high. He was wrong again. Taken prisoner in a skirmish, he was carried to London and imprisoned in the Tower. His wife, Lady Katherine, followed him south, evidence of at least some affection, and begged Henry to spare his life. Henry took a liking to the young woman and was at first agreeable. But Warbeck attempted to escape, with a genuine Yorkist heir, the young Earl of Warwick, and this was too much for Henry. Warwick, who lacked some of his wits, was beheaded as was proper for a nobleman and the King’s cousin. Warbeck was first beaten up in his prison until he signed a confession admitting his imposture, and was then hanged at Tyburn, a sad end to a strange life in which he may well have come to believe that he was indeed the prince he had claimed to be. His widow, Lady Katherine, remained at the English court.
It was time James himself was married. He was already well on in his twenties and there was need for a legitimate heir to the throne. He was more ambitious than most of his predecessors, among whom only his father had married into another fully royal family. Approaches for a Spanish princess had come to nothing, though. Soon after James’s abandonment of Perkin Warbeck in 1497, Henry VII offered his elder daughter Margaret to the Scottish king, and with her the promise of peace between England and Scotland. Margaret was still a child of seven or eight, and despite political considerations, James was in no hurry to marry. He had already fathered a number of children by different mothers, and was now in love with a young woman called Margaret Drummond.6 She was the youngest daughter of the first Lord Drummond, and if the poet Dunbar is to be believed was graceful, intelligent and beautiful. James’s affections were inconstant, though he provided for discarded lovers and for their children, as records of the royal accounts show, but it may be that he felt more for Margaret Drummond than for any other; their liaison lasted six years.
Still, kings must marry and so Margaret Drummond had to be set aside, for the time being anyway. As it happened, she and her two younger sisters all died suddenly, and there was, as there usually is, talk of poison. The rumour was wild and there is no evidence that it had any foundation. No doubt some, eager for the English marriage, may have supposed that the young woman was an obstacle in the way of its achievement. But this is unlikely. Kings may marry where policy dictates and keep mistresses as fancy chooses.
The marriage of the Scottish king and the young English princess, on 8 August 1503, was to be the most significant in British history, for a hundred years later it led to the Union of the Crowns of England and Scotland. But few would have thought this likely at the time. Certainly Henry VII cannot have done so. He had two sons, Arthur and Henry, and the succession to the English throne seemed assured. He hoped only to secure his northern frontier and deter his new son-in-law from any hostile adventures.
James’s court poet William Dunbar dutifully celebrated this union of the Thistle and the Rose. In his poem, the Thistle, ‘keepit with a bush of spears’, is told by Dame Nature that it is his duty to love and protect ‘the fresshe Rose of colour reid and whyte’ – Margaret being the daughter of a marriage that had itself united the Red Rose of Lancaster with the White Rose of York. Dunbar then, in full panegyric vein, declares the Rose to be of more illustrious lineage than the Lily, which was the emblem of France. So he advises that Scotland’s future should lie in this marriage with England and in the abandonment of the ‘Auld Alliance’. The poem is a fine one and the poet’s message not necessarily more sincere than was normal on such occasions.
James had no intention of renouncing the French alliance, no matter how eagerly his new father-in-law urged him to do so, for that would have been to lose all freedom of action. Nevertheless he did sign a Treaty of Perpetual Peace with England, and this treaty was confirmed by the Pope, which meant that if either party broke it, he would be subject to excommunication. For the moment the question did not arise. So long as France and England were at peace, James could be so also.
His new wife was only fifteen and, not surprisingly, had herself no great relish for the marriage to a husband twice her age. Observers thought she looked sulky and discontented, but she may merely have been shy and nervous. She was in time to prove that she could be as disagreeable as most members of her family. Almost at once she expressed a dislike for her husband’s red beard and he obligingly had it shaved. Still, Margaret and James did their royal duty. Six children were born in the ten years of marriage, though only one, the future James V, survived infancy. Since the King had several bastards in rude good health (his favourite among them, Alexander, was, according to Erasmus, extremely short-sighted, though in other respects utterly admirable), James may have held his wife responsible for the high mortality rate of their children. Be that as it may, he did not allow marriage to tie him down but continued to amuse himself with new mistresses.
The King’s patronage of the arts and ambitious building in Edinburgh, Stirling and Fife was matched by others whom the prosperity of the times encouraged to be equally munificent: Bishop Elphinstone founded the University of Aberdeen (King’s College) in 1495, and James’s illegitimate son, Alexander, though barely out of his teens, collaborated as Archbishop of St Andrews with Prior John Hepburn in founding St Leonard’s College at the university there. Dunbar was not the only poet the King supported. He also patronised Gavin Douglas, the translator of The Aeneid,7 rewarding him with the provostship of St Giles in Edinburgh, though it was in his son’s reign that Douglas was made Bishop of Dunkeld. One of James’s more eccentric dependants was an Italian alchemist, John Damian: the King financed his attempts to discover the ‘elixir of life’ for at least ten years. Damian’s researches are said to have required the stimulus of brandy and whisky, and he was perhaps under the influence when, wearing a pair of wings of his own design, he attempted to fly from t
he battlements of Stirling Castle in September 1507. The design of the wings proved inadequate. He plunged into a midden and broke his thigh, to the happy amusement of Dunbar, who resented the money the King had lavished on this imposter and perhaps thought it would have been better given to him.
James was eager to play a more prominent part in European politics than his predecessors – testimony to the security of his position at home. From soon after his marriage he talked of engaging in a crusade against the Turks, even of leading one. Some historians have dismissed this as a mere fanciful project and one that was also out of date. Yet in the circumstances of the time it was not unreasonable. It was only some fifty years since the Ottoman Turks had taken Constantinople and then in 1461 had captured Trebizond, the last outpost of the Byzantine empire. Tension between an aggressive Islam and the West was real enough.8 James looked to the Pope for approval and encouragement.
It was not forthcoming. His Holiness Julius II had other more pressing concerns. He was not only the head of the Church, but also an Italian prince, occupied with the shifting politics of the peninsula. A hard-drinking and bellicose pederast, the Pope was ready to scandalise the faithful by leading his own troops in battle, but he had no enthusiasm for the idea of a crusade. It was a matter of greater urgency to prevent either Spain or France from achieving a dominant position in Italy, and since the French invasion of 1494, it seemed that the greater danger came from France. So the Pope occupied himself in constructing an alliance to check French ambitions, and the extent of his spiritual interest was limited to calling this a ‘Holy League’. James’s brother-in-law Henry VIII, married to a Spanish princess, Catherine of Aragon, and eager to revive the old English claim to the throne of France, signed up happily to the alliance. Thus James not only found his ambition thwarted; he was placed in an awkward position.
