by Linda Porter
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Young King
‘And, ay, when thou came from the school
Then I behufft to play the fool.’
Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, poet and master usher to James V, recalls the lighter moments of a troubled childhood
‘Before going, it would be well to find out what England will do for Scotland, telling them that Albany has authority to treat, if they think fit … If Henry refuse these overtures, it will be evident that he does not wish to treat France as a friend.’
Memorandum prepared for Francis I before his meeting with Henry VIII at the Field of Cloth of Gold, 1520
JAMES V was only three years old when his mother fled to England. The episode marked a decisive break in their relationship and led to a distance, both literal and metaphorical, that could never fully be bridged thereafter. He had lived with Queen Margaret in various palaces, principally at Stirling and Linlithgow, cared for by his own team of retainers but very much under maternal supervision and with frequent contact. Suddenly, she was gone and his world changed. The impact that this had on him at the time can only be imagined but the unpredictable and occasionally frightening course of his childhood helped shape the man he became.
His father dead and bereft of his mother, James V grew up without family ties. His younger brother died before the age of two and he never became close to his half-sister, Lady Margaret Douglas, who was in the custody of her father, the earl of Angus, and spent considerable parts of her childhood outside Scotland. It is unlikely that James was deprived of the company of other children – Alexander Gordon, fourth earl of Huntly, son of James V’s much older half-sister, Lady Margaret Stewart, became a close companion when both boys were in their teens – but the names of his playmates are not known.1 He was a child but also a king and this set him apart. As the long years of his minority went by, the struggle for ‘the person of the king’ became the one constant in Scottish politics and a matter of considerable interest in England. Many wanted to control James V – Henry VIII, Albany, Francis I, the Hamilton faction under the earl of Arran and their sworn enemies, the Douglases. Queen Margaret herself, through initial exile, ill health and fraught relations with her brother and second husband, never abandoned hope that she would regain direction of her son on her own terms. Half a Tudor James may have been (and his portraits show a strong resemblance to Henry VIII as a young man), yet the fact that he seemed to belong to everyone developed in the young man the belief that he was beholden to no one. It is a facet of the king and his reign that has not been adequately recognized.
His childhood, though sometimes chaotic, was by no means unpleasant. Carefully nurtured in the ‘safe’ castles of Edinburgh, Stirling and Craigmillar, his security was in the hands of a rota of nobles deemed trustworthy by regent Albany (initially Lords Borthwick, Fleming and Erskine), men who could reasonably be relied upon to put the national interest and the king’s well-being above that of personal or family ambition. It is worthwhile remembering that such men did exist and not to tarnish the entire Scottish nobility with the failings of the better known few. But it was James’s fiercely loyal and affectionate household staff who gave him the day-to-day comforts that any small child, even a king, holds dear. And the man who was closest to him in these difficult times, who supervised the domestic arrangements and was ever present, was Sir David Lindsay of the Mount.
Lindsay was a member of an old family from Fife in eastern Scotland. Although little is known about his formal education, he was at court by 1508 and attached to the household of the first son of Margaret Tudor and James IV, who died young. The contact he had with the queen and his friendship with the man who became her secretary in 1515, Sir James Inglis, suggests that Margaret and her entourage had confidence in Lindsay. This link may have made it easier for James V to cope with the absence of his mother. His relationship with Lindsay was close and warm: ‘when thou was young,’ wrote Lindsay, ‘I bore thee in mine arms, full tenderly, till thou began to grow.’ He also sang sweetly to lull the little king to sleep, ‘with lute in hand’, taught him music and dance, told him tales, dressed up and acted for James’s entertainment. ‘So, since thy birth, I have continually been occupied, and always to thy pleasure.’2 It is a touching testimony of someone who cared deeply for his charge and was conscious of the need for warmth and continuity in the upbringing of a child, especially one born into such a demanding role.
Albany took seriously his obligations towards the king, ensuring, as much as his interrupted presence in Scotland permitted, that the boy was trained appropriately. James seems to have liked and respected him but circumstances made it difficult for them to develop a really close relationship. Albany also saw his role primarily in political terms. But there was another aspect to kingship that needed to be addressed as the king grew and this was in the hands of churchmen.
It was a deeply religious age and the king’s understanding of his quasi-spiritual responsibilities called for nurturing under sensitive guidance. Several chaplains attended on him, supervised by his master almoner, Sir James Haswell. At the beginning of 1517, with his mother still absent in England, it was felt appropriate to appoint a full-time tutor and the post was given to Gavin Dunbar, the future archbishop of Glasgow and a staunch supporter of Albany. Dunbar remained in this post until 1525 when the earl of Angus, by then back in power, dismissed him and effectively brought to an end the formal education of James V.
Given Renaissance views of learning and study as a lifelong process, especially for the upper classes, this was an extraordinarily truncated education. In the young king’s case, it was all the more serious because he does not seem to have been a natural scholar. His apparent struggle to read a letter in English when he was twelve years old was noted by the English ambassador, though this may have been more a response to the pressure of a public occasion and the fact that he was being watched by his councillors than a problem of basic literacy.3 Later on, it was remarked that his Latin and French were both deficient and, for a monarch who was to commit himself firmly to the French alliance, this was a drawback. Henry VIII was fluent in French, conducting much of his diplomacy in it, and his son, Edward VI, admittedly educated twenty years later and in much more stable circumstances, was viewed as something of a paragon for his prowess in the schoolroom.
To be fair to James, he was brought up and educated in a way that helped him connect with his Scottish subjects on a much closer level than mastery of French or Latin would have done. He inherited the love of music common to both his parents and seems to have been an able musician. He loved hunting and riding and wrote poetry in the Scots language. Acquiring the courtly, chivalric qualities of kingship appealed to him more than the schoolroom, a testament to his dual heritage. He was delighted when his Uncle Henry sent him a jewelled sword and hunting paraphernalia and let it be known that what he really wanted was a full-sized English buckler, the round shield used in fighting to ward off blows, not the miniature version for children. His social prowess and love of aristocratic pastimes were praised: ‘His said grace,’ it was reported, ‘stirred his horses and ran with a spear, amongst others his lords and servants, at a glove. And also … we have seen his said grace use himself otherwise pleasantly, both in singing and dancing, and showing familiarity among his lords. All which his princely acts and doings be so excellent for his age, not yet of thirteen years … that in our opinion it is not possible they should be amended.’4
* * *
IT WAS, as it would always be, European imperatives that ended Albany’s first period as governor of Scotland in the spring of 1517. Francis I, like Charles VIII before him, wanted mastery of Italy and had achieved a great victory at Marignano in the autumn of 1515, a glorious beginning to his reign but not one that he was destined to repeat. He was, naturally, loath to compromise his position by giving too much offence to the English and if that meant that new treaties of friendship with Scotland could not be ratified, then he was willing to sacrifice his s
maller ally, at least for the time being. The upshot was that the Scots were backed into agreeing a truce with England, whereby Albany, his job apparently done for the time being, nominated a council deemed competent to govern Scotland without his presence. Retaining the title of governor of Scotland, he left on 8 June 1517, intending to return in five months. In fact, it would be more than four years before he reappeared on Scottish soil. But one thing that he did bring to fruition, soon after he got back to France, was to rectify the diplomatic humiliation felt by the Scots when their overtures for a binding treaty with France had been rebuffed the previous year. A new treaty of friendship and alliance, negotiated by Albany for the Scots and the duke of Alençon for France, was signed at Rouen on 20 August 1517.
The treaty of Rouen has been called one of the most important in sixteenth-century Scottish history. Certainly, it reconfirmed the Auld Alliance, giving Scotland the security of knowing that the French were committed to coming to their aid in the event of an English invasion, though, of course, it also tied the Scots to a similar undertaking if England attacked France. And in agreeing in principle to the future marriage of James V with a French princess, it determined the emphasis of Scottish foreign policy when the king reached his majority. The wider, long-term implications were even more important, since Scotland was set firmly on a course that would lead to dependence on France and cause deep divisions in Scottish society.
Meanwhile, it was confirmed that Queen Margaret should end her exile in England and come back to Scotland, to be reunited with her son and the earl of Angus. She left London on 18 May 1517, little more than two weeks after some of the most serious rioting the capital had witnessed for many years, when property of foreigners was attacked in a xenophobic outburst badly handled, at first, by the authorities. The king’s advisers sought to put Tudor spin on this debacle, which resulted in the public hangings of many predominantly young people, aggrieved by the belief that their livelihoods and prospects were being undermined by foreign workers, distrust and jealousy of immigrants certainly not being confined to modern times. By depicting the unrest as a mass outbreak of treason, the authorities were able to cover their own slack response to the early signs of trouble and allow the king to appear magnanimous in his treatment of the perpetrators. Further summary punishment was halted, often at the gallows themselves, by the supposed spontaneous intervention of the three queens, Katherine of Aragon and Henry VIII’s sisters, Margaret and Mary. But as Margaret well knew, when she left the troubled city behind and made her way northwards once more with her jewels, dresses and money provided by her brother, Henry could be ruthless when he felt it necessary. He had made it clear that she could not expect to live out the rest of her life in England at his expense. He wanted her in Scotland. It was her duty to go back. Yet she could not rely on him to support her unequivocally (indeed, by that time she must have realized that his support, when he chose to give it, would always be on his terms), nor could she be certain of what lay in store for her in Scotland. The truth was far worse than she could have anticipated.
Henry VIII had been assured by Albany that the Scottish lords ‘have granted all that he demanded in the name of his sister, the Queen of Scots, and never had any other intention than to honour her.’ But the regent either did not know, or felt that it was not his place to point out, that the same could not be said of the earl of Angus, Margaret’s husband. During his wife’s absence, the earl had taken up again with his former fiancée, Lady Jane Stewart, and was openly living with her while appropriating Margaret’s rents to fund himself and his mistress. The liaison resulted in the birth of a daughter and Margaret was, understandably, furious when she found out. The queen had probably regretted her second marriage from very early on, but now the relationship foundered completely. Margaret was not the sort of person to forgive meekly the infidelity of a husband who had not brought her the political power she craved and was also a social inferior. She had no wish to live with him again but did not raise the question of divorce until the spring of 1519, when she wrote to her brother that her husband ‘had done her more evil, that I shall cause a servant of mine to show your grace, which is too long to write.’ And now she thought of ending the marriage altogether: ‘I am so minded, that, an I may by law of God and to my honour, to part with him for I wit well he loves me not, as he shows me daily.’5 Henry VIII was horrified. The idea of his sister trying to obtain a divorce was completely unacceptable and Queen Katherine joined him in urging Margaret to abandon all thoughts of bringing such a disgrace to the family, a sad irony in view of what the future had in store for her. More pragmatically, Henry put considerable store on the usefulness of the Anglophile Angus and so he urged Margaret towards reconciliation. This took place briefly, but Angus soon abandoned Margaret for his unofficial family again, all the while blatantly spending her revenues. So Margaret’s marital problems were a further complication in Henry VIII’s policy towards Scotland.
Margaret’s position was unenviable. She had little income, was not allowed to live with her son because the Scottish regency council feared she would remove James V to England and her brother refused further requests for money and armed support. At one stage she was reduced to borrowing money from her financial controller and dismissing household servants to economize. Some of the Scottish lords affected to sympathize with her, but their sympathy did not amount to hard cash or an improvement in her standing in Scotland. Their reluctance, however, was understandable given the wider political problems that threatened to engulf Scotland in Albany’s absence. They had more to occupy them than the wailings of a dowager queen.
For though Angus might have been playing fast and loose with his wife and her money, he was not so successful in dominating the government of Scotland at this time. Albany had left a council of no fewer than seven regents to govern in his absence. Angus sat with the other three leading earls, Argyll, Huntly and Arran, as well as the still useful Andrew Forman, archbishop of St Andrews, and James Beaton, archbishop of Glasgow. Most had some reason to dislike Angus and to chafe at the seventh appointee, Antoine d’Arces, Seigneur de la Bastie, the trusted French lieutenant of the duke of Albany.
The council did not hold together long. De la Bastie’s influence in south-east Scotland, where he had been given administrative responsibility by Albany, upset the great local families and none more than the troublesome Humes, who contrived to ambush and assassinate the Frenchman on 17 September 1517. But it was Angus who felt the most aggrieved when the regency council voted to hand de la Bastie’s role to the earl of Arran, thus effectively making him head of the Scottish government. For several years, the two earls circled each other, vying for power and influence, particularly in the capital, until there was an armed confrontation in Edinburgh known as ‘Cleanse the Causeway’, when Angus and Arran supporters fought each other along the High Street on 30 April 1520. Small wonder that Queen Margaret described Scotland as ‘evil-governed’ at this time, but she never gave up her struggle for restitution of her rights. And then, towards the end of the following year, in November 1521, the duke of Albany at last returned to Scotland. War with England was again on the horizon but perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the duke’s second period of direct Scottish rule was that it was supported wholeheartedly by the woman who had previously opposed him so vigorously six years earlier. Abandoned by her brother and overlooked by the Scottish lords, Margaret Tudor now threw in her lot with Albany. She believed he alone could get her what she wanted. No amount of cajoling by one of the succession of friars that either Henry VIII or Katherine of Aragon kept sending up to Scotland over the years, to offer soft words of comfort and keep Margaret on the path of duty (as they saw it), could prevail. The queen had heard it all before and she was at breaking point. Her brother, her husband, even Lord Dacre, always so free with advice that provided little practical solution to her problems, had all let her down:
As to my lord of Angus [she wrote to Dacre], if he had desired my company or my love, he would
have shown him more kindly than he hath done. For now of late when I came to Edinburgh to him, he took my house without my consent and withholding my rents from me which he should not do. I had no help of his grace my brother, nor no love of my lord of Angus and he to take my living at his pleasure and despoil. Methinks, my lord, that ye should not think this reasonable, if ye be my friend. I must cause me to please this realm [Scotland] when I have my life here.6
Henry was aghast at his sister’s volte-face. Showing the streak of ruthlessness that all the Tudors possessed when it came to their own interests, she had surprised him. Never mind the fact that he had turned down her pleas to be allowed to return to England, heartlessly requiring her to stay in a marriage that was humiliating and effectively condoning the loss of dignity she suffered; Henry felt himself the wronged party. It has been said that Henry and Wolsey, his chief minister, did not allow themselves to be distracted by Scotland but it could be argued that a distraction is precisely what Scotland always was for the English king. His policy towards his northern neighbour was often incoherent and always opportunistic. Margaret’s support of Albany (and, by extension, French interest in Scotland) came at a particularly delicate time for the king of England. At home, he had just executed an overmighty subject, the duke of Buckingham, for treason, thus ridding himself of a potential rival for the throne but also highlighting the weakness of his own dynastic position. Buckingham was but the first of many high-profile victims of the English king’s jealousy and concern about the survival of his dynasty. And abroad, as the pattern of European alliances was frequently being reconfigured, Henry was facing the prospect of war with France. Merely a year before it had all been so different.
