The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain

by Allan Massie

  The King he wrytes a loving letter,

  With his ain hand sae tenderly;

  And he hath sent it to Johnnie Armstrong,

  To cum and speik with him speedily.9

  Armstrong, trusting in the promise and confident of his own prowess, swaggered to the meeting, richly dressed, at the head of some fifty men. The King remarked on his splendour and then accused him of many crimes. The reiver defended himself boldly, arguing that he was a good Scot, a loyal subject of King James, and no traitor. Then, becoming aware that he was in imminent peril, he exclaimed that King Henry of England would ‘downweigh my best horse with gold to know that I was condemned to die this day’.

  As Alistair Moffat writes in his history of the Borders, Armstrong was ‘missing the subtleties of the political reality behind his situation. Henry would have paid dearly; that was the point.’10 James had no wish to be on anything but good terms with his uncle of England; suppressing the reivers was good policy.

  So the noose was slipped round Armstrong’s neck as he sat his horse. It was attached to the overhanging branch of a tree, the horse given a whack on its rump, and Johnnie was left swinging in the air. The same treatment was meted out to his followers. But the ballad-maker gives Johnnie the last word, and it is a fine one:

  To seik het water beneath cauld ice,

  Surely it is a greit folie;

  I have asked grace at a graceless face

  But there is nane for my men and me.

  Asking grace of a graceless face, and being refused it; that is one picture of James V, and it is a fair one. Yet the other side of the King’s character should not be forgotten, the side that caused him to be remembered in song and story with affection by the common people. If he aroused the animosity, even hatred, of many of his nobles, this was at least in part because of his determination to enforce laws to protect the weak against the oppression of the strong. His care for justice was sincere, and he would be remembered as the ‘King of the Commons’ and ‘the Gudeman of Ballenguich’, this latter the name he reputedly assumed when travelling the country incognito so that, as Scott puts it in his Tales of a Grandfather, ‘he might hear complaints which might not otherwise reach his ears, and, perhaps, that he might enjoy amusements which he could not have partaken of in his avowed royal character’.

  It is in this guise that he appears as a character in Scott’s poem The Lady of the Lake, and in one of the notes appended to the poem Scott wrote:

  The two excellent comic songs, entitled ‘The Gaberlunzie Man’ and ‘We’ll gae nae mair a-roving’, are said to have been founded on his amorous adventures when travelling in the guise of a beggar. Another adventure, which had nearly cost him his life, is said to have taken place at the village of Cramond, near Edinburgh, where he had rendered his addresses acceptable to a pretty girl of the lower rank. Four or five persons, whether relations or lovers of his mistress is uncertain, beset the disguised monarch as he returned from his rendez-vous. Naturally gallant and an admirable master of his weapon, the king took post on the high and narrow bridge over the Almond river, and defended himself bravely with his sword. A peasant, who was threshing in a neighbouring barn, came out upon the noise, and, whether moved by compassion or natural gallantry, took the weaker side, and laid about so effectively with his flail as to disperse the assailants. He then conducted the king into his barn, where his guest requested a basin and a towel, to remove the stains of the broil. This being procured with difficulty, James employed himself in learning what was the summit of his deliverer’s earthly wishes, and found that they were bounded by the desire of possessing, in property, the farm of Braehead on which he laboured as a bondsman. The lands happened to belong to the Crown, and James directed him to come to the palace of Holyrood, and enquire for the Gudeman (i.e. farmer) of Ballengiech, a name by which he was known in his excursions, and which answered to the Il Bondocani of Haroun al-Raschid. He presented himself accordingly, and found, with due astonishment, that he had saved his monarch’s life, and that he was to be gratified with a crown charter of the lands of Braehead, under the service of presenting a ewer, basin and towel, for the king to wash his hands when he shall happen to pass the Bridge of Cramond.11

  The tale may have no basis, or little basis, in fact: neither the date of this remarkable occurrence nor the name of the King’s mistress is known, though Scott does attempt to give ballast to the story, one of several such he recounts, by assuring us that ‘this person was ancestor of the Howisons of Braehead, in Mid-Lothian, a respectable family, who continue to hold the lands (now passed into the female line) under the same tenure’.

  That such stories, no matter how fancifully embroidered over the years, were told about James V testifies to the hold he had on popular imagination, and suggests that the harsh judgements made by some contemporaries and later historians should be tempered by a more generous appreciation of the King’s character.

  James’s personal rule would last for fourteen years, years dominated by deepening controversy about the direction Scotland should take with regard to foreign policy and in matters of religion. In 1528 the Protestant Reformation – or Revolution – set in motion in Germany by Martin Luther eleven years previously, had scarcely touched Scotland, or indeed England. Nevertheless, communications between the east-coast towns and Germany already gave the authorities some cause for alarm. In 1525 the Estates had passed a law prohibiting the import of Lutheran books, and in 1527 a letter was sent to Rome affirming the determination of the King of Scots (then still, as we have seen, detained by Angus) to prevent the Lutheran heresy from infecting his people. James himself followed this up as soon as he was in control of the government, and assured His Holiness that he would ‘banish the foul Lutheran sect’. In return he asked the Pope to confirm the privileges of the Scottish Crown. Two years later he would reap the reward of his orthodoxy when the Pope authorised him to collect a tax of £10,000 a year from the Scottish Church, and a levy for three years of one-tenth of all Scottish ecclesiastical revenues. The pretext for the former was to establish a College of Justice. Actually the Court of Session was already in being, and the only change was that its judges were now termed (as they still are) Senators of the College of Justice. We may assume that the name ‘senator’ sounded impressive to Roman ears. There is, however, no reason to believe that James ever intended to spend as much as £10,000 on the College of Justice.

  The Pope had good reason to be generous to James, for in England Henry VIII was moving – uncertainly, till Thomas Cromwell became his chief minister – towards the breach with Rome. Henry would never himself become a Protestant – indeed, he prided himself on his doctrinal orthodoxy, and would burn Protestants as heretics as happily as he sent obstinate papalists like Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher of Rochester to the block as traitors; but by 1534 he had first made it illegal for anyone to appeal to Rome against a decision of the English courts, and had then had himself declared, by Act of Parliament, Supreme Head of the Church in England. Within a few years Cromwell would organise the Dissolution of the Monasteries in England, transferring their property and wealth to the Crown and subsequently to its favoured servants, himself chief among them. Henry would urge his nephew James to follow his example, but James remained obdurate.

  For one thing he was already doing well out of the Church, since in addition to the taxation the Pope had authorised, His Holiness had granted him the right to appoint all Scottish bishops and abbots. He made good use of this – from his point of view anyway – giving nominal authority over several abbeys, and real control of their revenues, to at least four of his illegitimate sons (though they were still children) as well as to favoured nobles. This nepotism and disregard for the true interests of the Church brought the ecclesiastical system into disrespect and turned some who were seeking a spiritual reformation towards Protestantism.

  The King’s orthodoxy may have been sincere. Like his father he displayed devotion to shrines and relics, and he patronised the Observant Fr
iars, a reforming order within the Catholic Church. At the same time he was close to Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, his former tutor, who attacked the vices of the Church in his play Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaites, which James himself ordered to be performed before him at Linlithgow. But anti-clericalism can sit easily with orthodoxy; and criticism of clerical vice had been a commonplace for centuries. Chaucer and Langland in England, Henryson and Dunbar in Scotland had all expressed such criticism in verse, without their orthodoxy being questioned. James upheld the authority of the Pope in all spiritual matters, and was happy to persecute heretics who challenged it. When the English ambassador told him that Cromwell’s examination of monasteries, friaries and convents had revealed them to be nurseries of vice, James merely smiled and said that if members of the religious orders in Scotland did not live well, he would amend them, and then changed the subject. In the last year of his life he demonstrated his commitment to Catholicism by having Parliament pass an act that decreed the death penalty for anyone who argued against the Pope’s authority or in any way impugned it. Another act declared that it was unlawful for any except ‘theologians appointed by famous universities, or admitted thereto by those who have lawful power’ to hold conventicles in order to dispute the Holy Scriptures, and unlawful too for anyone to give lodging to a known heretic. Such measures might be difficult to enforce; their intent is, however, clear.

  Kings must be married, and the search for a suitable wife for James occupied several years. A daughter of the Emperor Charles V was at one time proposed; and then the offer was withdrawn. Henry suggested that James might marry his elder daughter, Mary, and even held out the hope that this might enable him to be his successor as King of England. This was surprising, for Mary was loyal to her mother, the discarded Catherine of Aragon, and committed to the Roman Church. However, since her fond father had, after he had rid himself of Catherine, declared the Lady Mary to be illegitimate, the proposal was less flattering than it seemed; and James rejected it. There was talk of a French princess, Madeleine, daughter of Francis I, but her health was poor – she was indeed consumptive – and Francis was reluctant to let her go to Scotland. In 1537, though, James himself went to France to inspect a daughter of the Constable de Vendôme. Disliking what he saw, he moved on to the French court, saw Madeleine, and, it appears, fell in love with her and she with him. At any rate, he charmed Francis, or at least persuaded him to approve the match. They were married in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, and a few months later took the five-day voyage from Dieppe to Leith. On arrival the Queen fell to her knees and kissed the earth, expressing her gratitude that she had survived the voyage and come safe to her husband’s land. She would have little experience of it, for a few weeks later her condition deteriorated sharply, as tuberculosis often does, and she died. So James was soon in the marriage market again. This time his choice fell on Marie de Guise, daughter of the house whose members would be the chiefs of the Catholic party in the French Wars of Religion that broke out twenty years later. Henry VIII, when between wives as he so often was, had proposed himself as her husband, but she had declined the offer, remarking that she had only one neck, if a pretty one, and preferred to keep her head attached to it.12 However, she was happy to accept James, and so the French alliance was once more secured. It soon seemed that the future of the dynasty was also assured, for Marie bore James two sons within the first three years of their marriage.

  James was covetous to the point of rapacity, resuming Crown lands granted with dubious legality during the years of his minority; this was a prime cause of the disaffection of the nobility that became apparent in the last years of his reign. If the King was grasping, he was also extravagant, spending lavishly on castles and palaces. Stirling, Holyrood, Linlithgow and Falkland were all enlarged and embellished at his command and at his expense; he brought craftsmen and artists from France and the Netherlands to work there. He looked to the future in other ways too, importing stallions and mares from Denmark to improve the native breed of horses and provide himself with a more formidable cavalry.

  James seemed a strong and masterful king. In 1540, when word came of a minor revolt or rebellion in Skye, he responded by sailing in a fleet of twelve ships around the northern isles, where his favourite Oliver Sinclair, from an old Anglo-Norman family, was installed as Sheriff of Orkney, and on to the western isles. The rebellion, probably not very significant, was crushed, and a number of Highland chiefs whose loyalty was doubtful were arrested. The following year he visited Aberdeen. Its citizens were always pleased to see the wild Highlanders kept in check, and the university was delighted to honour the royal couple and to entertain them with plays and addresses ‘in Greek, Latin and other languages’.

  Yet in just a few months James’s rule crumbled. He rejected attempts by his uncle Henry VIII to wean him from the French alliance, and when Henry condescended to travel to York, further north than he had ventured in his thirty years as king, in order to meet him, James, having first accepted the invitation, then changed his mind, probably because he distrusted Henry and feared he would be taken prisoner. The insult infuriated the English king and the next year, without any formal declaration of war, he made to invade Scotland, only to suffer a further humiliation: defeat at Haddon Rig, near Berwick. However, another detachment burned Roxburgh and Kelso. Meanwhile Henry denounced James as the aggressor.

  Now the Scots king learned the cost of having alienated so large a part of his nobility, for when he proposed to march into England, he found that he could not command their support. They would fight on the defensive, they said, but would not cross the border. Pitscottie tells us that they asserted that the war ‘was not grounded upon no good cause or reason, and he was ane better priests’ king nor he was theirs, and used more of priests’ counsel nor theirs. Therefore they had the less will to fight with him, and said it was more meritoriously done to hang all such as gave counsel to the King to break his promises to the King of England, whereof they perceived great inconvenience to befall.’13

  James accused these nobles of cowardice. They turned aside. Some distrusted him, others had good cause to resent him; some, no more than a few perhaps, disapproved of the French alliance, believed that Scotland should be on good terms with England, and were attracted to the new reformed religion. And there were those who were either already in English pay or looked for some personal advantage from England.

  The King did not give up immediately. There was still fight in him. He gathered another smaller army, and made to invade England by the western route, across the Solway. The army marched in two divisions, one commanded by the King, the other by Oliver Sinclair. But the borderland through which they advanced was hostile. James’s punitive expeditions against Armstrongs, Elliotts and Scotts had been neither forgotten nor forgiven. While James halted at Lochmaben, waiting for the ebb tide that would let him cross into England, Sinclair’s division encountered the English Warden of the Marches, Sir Thomas Wharton, at Solway Moss. It was scarcely a battle. The Scots army was rounded up – like cattle, it was said – with the help of the Liddesdale men, who had rich experience in cattle-rustling, and who had opportunely changed sides, having come to an accommodation with the English for the time being.14

  James now suffered a moral collapse. Only a few months previously he had been secure in his power, rich, married to a beautiful and capable princess, father of two sons. Then the boys had died within a week of each other, and now failure in war and the hostility of leading nobles saw his authority washed away, like a sandcastle before the incoming tide. His favourite Oliver had disgraced both himself and his master. ‘Is Oliver fled? Is Oliver tane?’ James asked repeatedly. ‘Then all is lost.’ He spent a few days in Edinburgh, then in Linlithgow, where his queen was about to give birth, then withdrew to the palace of Falkland, where Angus had held him prisoner, and whence he had escaped to begin his personal rule. There they brought him news that the Queen had given birth to a daughter. This was no consolation. Remembering Marjorie B
ruce, by way of whom came the Stewarts’ right to reign, he sighed and muttered the words that became famous: ‘it cam’ wi’ a lass and it’ll gang wi’ a lass’ – a prophecy that would not be fulfilled.

  And then he died. No cause of death has been identified. He seems simply to have lost the will to live. It is the most mysterious of Stewart deaths, for this was a king regarded as being strong in body and resolute in will. He died as an old dog might, hiding itself away to die; but James was only thirty, not old at all.

  Chapter 9

  Mary (1542–67): Scotland’s Tragic Queen

  Mary Stuart’s effective reign lasted barely six years and was therefore far shorter than that of any of her Stewart ancestors. Yet the drama of her life, the horror of her death, and the courage and dignity with which she met it have made her a figure of romance, the best known of her family, and the subject of many novels, plays and films. When in Edinburgh, on their way to the Hebrides, Boswell spoke to Dr Johnson of his regret that since the Union of 1707, ‘our independent kingdom was lost’, the old English Tory flared up in dismissive contempt: ‘Sir, never talk to me of your independency, who could let your Queen remain twenty years in captivity, and then be put to death, without even a pretence of justice, without your ever attempting to rescue her; and such a Queen too! as every man of any gallantry of spirit would have sacrificed his life for.’1 We shall see why there was no such attempt, why the Scots acquiesced in Mary’s execution. But Dr Johnson’s indignation on her behalf speaks eloquently of the power of the Marian myth. Though many of her contemporaries thought her wicked, and some historians have dismissed her as foolish, no amount of critical investigation of her career, or psychological enquiry, can alter the popular perception of her as the glamorous, unhappy and much abused queen. That is the myth, and it cannot be easily argued away.