Scottish King: James V

JAMES V
James V (10 April 1512 – 14 December 1542) was King of Scots from 9 September 1513 until his death, which followed the Scottish defeat at the Battle of Solway Moss. His only surviving legitimate child, Mary, succeeded him when she was just six days old. James was son of King James IV of Scotland and his wife Margaret Tudor, a daughter of Henry VII of England, and was the only legitimate child of James IV to survive infancy. He was born on 10 April 1512 at Linlithgow Palace, Linlithgowshire and baptized the following day, receiving the titles Duke of Rothesay and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland. He became king at just seventeen months old when his father was killed at the Battle of Flodden Field on 9 September 1513.

James V groat

James was crowned in the Chapel Royal at Stirling Castle on 21 September 1513. During his childhood the country was ruled by regents, first by his mother, until she remarried the following year, and then by John Stewart, 2nd Duke of Albany, next in line to the Crown after James and his younger brother, the posthumously-born Alexander Stewart, Duke of Ross. Other regents included Robert Maxwell, 5th Lord Maxwell, a member of the Council of Regency who was also bestowed as Regent of Arran, the largest island in the Firth of Clyde.

John Stewart, 2nd Duke of Albany & Anne de La Tour

The first action James took as king was to remove Angus from the scene. The Douglas family were forced into exile and James besieged their castle at Tantallon. He then subdued the Border rebels and the chiefs of the Western Isles. As well as taking advice from his nobility and using the services of the Duke of Albany in France and at Rome, James had a team of professional lawyers and diplomats, including Adam Otterburn and Thomas Erskine of Haltoun. Even his pursemaster and yeoman of the wardrobe, John Tennent of Listonschiels, was sent on an errand to England, though he got a frosty reception.

Henry VII

Domestic and international policy was affected by the Reformation, especially after Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church. James V did not tolerate heresy, and during his reign a number of outspoken Protestants were persecuted. The most famous of these was Patrick Hamilton, who was burned at the stake as a heretic at St Andrews in 1528.

Henry VIII coin

Later in the reign, the English ambassador Ralph Sadler tried to encourage James to close the monasteries and take their revenue so that he would not have to keep sheep like a mean subject.

James replied that he had no sheep, he could depend on his god-father the King of France, and it was against reason to close the abbeys that "stand these many years, and God's service maintained and kept in the same, and I might have anything I require of them." (Sadler knew that James did farm sheep on his estates.)

James recovered money from the church by getting Pope Clement VII to allow him to tax monastic incomes. He sent £50 to Johann Cochlaeus, a German opponent of Martin Luther, after receiving one of his books in 1534.

 On 19 January 1537 Pope Paul III sent James a blessed sword and hat symbolising his prayers that James would be strengthened against heresies from across the border. These gifts were delivered by the Pope's messenger while James was at Compiègne in France on 25 February 1537.

According to 16th-century writers his treasurer James Kirkcaldy of Grange tried to persuade James against the persecution of Protestants and to meet Henry VIII at York.

Seal of Francis I

Although Henry VIII sent his tapestries to York in September 1541 ahead of a meeting, James did not come. The lack of commitment to this meeting was regarded by English observers as a sign that Scotland was firmly allied to France and Catholicism, particularly by the influence of Cardinal Beaton, Keeper of the Privy Seal, and as a cause for war. In a July 1541 communication with Irish chiefs, James assumed the style of "Lord of Ireland" (dominus Hiberniae), as a further challenge to Henry VIII, lately created King of Ireland.

As early as August 1517 a clause of the Treaty of Rouen provided that if the Auld Alliance between France and Scotland was maintained, James should have a French royal bride.

Madeleine of Valois

Yet the daughters of Francis I of France were promised elsewhere or sickly.

Perhaps to remind Francis of his obligations James's envoys began negotiations for his marriage elsewhere from the summer of 1529, both to Catherine de' Medici, the Duchess of Urbino, and Mary of Austria, Queen of Hungary, the sister of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.

But plans changed. In February 1533, two French ambassadors, Guillaume du Bellay, sieur de Langes, and Etienne de Laigue, sieur de Beauvais, who had just been in Scotland, told the Venetian ambassador in London that James was thinking of marrying Christina of Denmark. Marguerite d'Angoulême, sister of Francis I, suggested her sister-in-law Isabella, who was the same age. Francis I insisted that his daughter Madeleine's health was too poor for marriage. Eventually, on 6 March 1536, a contract was made for James V to marry Mary of Bourbon, daughter of the Duke of Vendôme.

 Mary of Austria, Queen of Hungary

She would have a dowry as if she were a French Princess. James decided to visit France in person. He sailed from Kirkcaldy on 1 September 1536, with the Earl of Argyll, the Earl of Rothes, Lord Fleming, David Beaton, the Prior of Pittenweem, the Laird of Drumlanrig and 500 others, using the Mary Willoughby as his flagship. First he visited Mary of Bourbon at St. Quentin in Picardy, but then went south to meet King Francis I. During his stay in France, in October 1536, James went boar-hunting at Loches with Francis, his son the Dauphin, the King of Navarre and Ippolito II d'Este.

James renewed the Auld Alliance and fulfilled the 1517 Treaty of Rouen on 1 January 1537 by marrying Madeleine of Valois, the king's daughter, in Notre Dame de Paris.

Mary of Guise

 The wedding was a great event: Francis I made a contract with six painters for the splendid decorations, and there were days of jousting at the Château du Louvre.

At his entry to Paris, James wore a coat described as "sad cramasy velvet slashed all over with gold cut out on plain cloth of gold fringed with gold and all cut out, knit with horns and lined with red taffeta." James V so liked red clothing that, during the wedding festivities, he upset the city dignitaries who had sole right to wear that colour in processions. They noted he could not speak a word of French.

James and Madeleine returned from France on 19 May 1537, arriving at Leith, the king's Scottish fleet accompanied with ten great French ships. As the couple sailed northwards, some Englishmen had come aboard off Bridlington and Scarborough.

While the fleet was off Bamburgh on 15 May, three English fishing boats supplied fish, and the King's butcher landed in Northumbria to buy meat. The English border authorities were dismayed by this activity. Madeleine did not enjoy good health. In fact she was consumptive and died soon after arrival in Scotland in July 1537.

Spies told Thomas Clifford, the Captain of Berwick, that James omitted "all manner of pastime and pleasure," but continually oversaw the maintenance of his guns, going twice a week secretly to Dunbar Castle with six companions.

Holy Roman Emperor Charles V

James then proceeded to marry Mary of Guise, daughter of Claude, Duke of Guise, and widow of Louis II d'Orléans, Duke of Longueville, by proxy on 12 June 1538.

Mary already had two sons from her first marriage, and the union produced two sons. However, both died in April 1541, just eight days after baby Robert was baptised. Their daughter and James's only surviving legitimate child, Mary, was born in 1542 at Linlithgow Palace.

The death of James's mother in 1541 removed any incentive for peace with England, and war broke out. Initially the Scots won a victory at the Battle of Haddon Rig in August 1542.

The Imperial ambassador in London, Eustace Chapuys, wrote on 2 October that the Scottish ambassadors ruled out a conciliatory meeting between James and Henry VIII in England until the pregnant Mary of Guise delivered her child. Henry would not accept this condition and mobilised his army against Scotland.

James was with his army at Lauder on 31 October 1542. Although he hoped to invade England, his nobles were reluctant. He returned to Edinburgh, on the way writing a letter in French to his wife from Falahill mentioning he had three days of illness. The next month his army suffered a serious defeat at the Battle of Solway Moss.

A Black Trumpeter, Henry VIII court 

 He took ill shortly after this, on 6 December; by some accounts this was a nervous collapse caused by the defeat, and he may have died from the grief, although some historians consider that it may just have been an ordinary fever. John Knox later described his final movements in Fife.

Whatever the cause of his illness James was on his deathbed at Falkland Palace when his only surviving legitimate child, a girl, was born. Sir George Douglas of Pittendreich brought the news of the king's death to Berwick. He said James died at midnight on Thursday 15 December; the king was talking but delirious and spoke no "wise words." According to George Douglas in his delirium James lamented the capture of his banner and Oliver Sinclair at Solway Moss more than his other losses. An English chronicler suggested another cause of the king's grief was his discomfort on hearing of the murder of the English Somerset Herald, Thomas Trahern, at Dunbar. James was buried at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh.

Before he died he is reported to have said "it came wi a lass, it'll gang wi a lass" (meaning "It began with a girl and it will end with a girl"). This was either a reference to the Stewart dynasty's accession to the throne through Marjorie Bruce, daughter of Robert the Bruce or to the medieval origin myth of the Scots nation, recorded in the Scotichronicon in which the Scots people are descended from the Princess Scota.

Scottish King: James IV

JAMES IV
James IV (17 March 1473 – 9 September 1513) was the King of Scots from 11 June 1488 to his death. He assumed the throne following the death of his father, James III, after the Battle of Sauchieburn, a rebellion in which the younger James played an indirect role.

Seal of James IV

 He is generally regarded as the most successful of the Stewart monarchs of Scotland, but his reign ended with the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Flodden, where he became the last monarch not only from Scotland, but from all of Great Britain, to be killed in battle.

James was the son of James III and Margaret of Denmark, probably born in Stirling Castle.

As heir apparent to the Scottish crown, he became Duke of Rothesay. In 1474, his father arranged his betrothal to Princess Cecily of England.

His father was not a popular king and faced two major rebellions during his reign. The marriage negotiations and dowry payments led to the invasion of Scotland and capture of Berwick in 1482 by his uncle Alexander, Duke of Albany and Richard, Duke of Gloucester while James remained at Stirling. James III's army rebelled against him and the English army reached Edinburgh.

During the second rebellion, the rebels set up the 15-year-old James as their nominal leader. They fought James III at the Battle of Sauchieburn on 11 June 1488, where the king was killed. The younger James took the throne and was crowned at Scone on 24 June. When he realised the indirect role which he had played in the death of his father, he decided to do penance for his sin. From that date on, he wore a heavy iron chain cilice around his waist, next to the skin, each Lent as penance, adding every year extra ounces.

James IV Billon Penny 1488-1513

James IV quickly proved an effective ruler and a wise king. He defeated another rebellion in 1489, took a direct interest in the administration of justice and finally brought the Lord of the Isles under control in 1493. For a time, he supported Perkin Warbeck, pretender to the English throne, and carried out a brief invasion of England on his behalf in September 1496. Then, in August 1497, James laid siege to Norham Castle, using his grandfather's bombard Mons Meg.

James recognised nonetheless that peace between Scotland and England was in the interest of both countries, and established good diplomatic relations with England, which was at that time emerging from a period of civil war. First he ratified the Treaty of Ayton in February 1498.

Master of James IV of Scotland (Flemish before 1465 about 1541)

Then, in 1502 James signed the Treaty of Perpetual Peace with Henry VII. He also maintained his relations with France. With rumours that James would renew the Auld alliance, in April 1508 Thomas Wolsey was sent to discuss Henry VII's concerns over this. Wolsey found "there was never a man worse welcome into Scotland than I, ... they keep their matters so secret here that the wives in the market know every cause of my coming."

James saw the importance of building a fleet that could provide Scotland with a strong maritime presence. James founded two new dockyards for this purpose and acquired a total of 38 ships for the Royal Scots Navy, including the Margaret, and the carrack Michael or Great Michael.

Henry VII gold coin

The latter, built at great expense at Newhaven and launched in 1511, was 240 feet (73 m) in length, weighed 1,000 tons and was, at that time, the largest ship in the world.

James IV was a true Renaissance prince with an interest in practical and scientific matters. He granted the Incorporation of Surgeons and Barbers of Edinburgh (later the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh) a royal charter in 1506, turned Edinburgh Castle into one of Scotland's foremost gun foundries, and welcomed the establishment of Scotland's first printing press in 1507. He built a part of Falkland Palace, and Great Halls at Stirling and Edinburgh castles, and furnished his palaces with tapestries.

Henry VIII gold coin

James was a patron of the arts, including many literary figures, most notably the Scots makars whose diverse and socially observant works convey a vibrant and memorable picture of cultural life and intellectual concerns of the period. Figures associated with his court include William Dunbar, Walter Kennedy and Gavin Douglas, who made the first complete translation of Virgil's Aeneid in northern Europe. His reign also saw the passing of the makar Robert Henryson. He patronised music at Restalrig using rental money from the King's Wark.

In May 1493 John MacDonald, Lord of the Isles, was forfeited by the Parliament of Scotland. King James himself sailed to Dunstaffnage Castle, where the western chiefs made their submissions to him. John surrendered and was brought back as a prisioner to the royal court, then lived at Paisley Abbey. The Highlands and Islands now fell under direct royal control.

Young Henry VIII

John's grandson Domhnall Dubh (Donald Owre), one of the possible claimants to the Lordship, was peaceable, but the other, his nephew Alexander MacDonald of Lochalsh invaded Ross and was later killed on the island of Oronsay in 1497.

In October 1496 the Royal Council ordered that the clan chiefs in the region would be held responsible by the king for crimes of the islanders. This act for the governance of the region was unworkable, and after the Act of Revocation of 1498 undermined the chiefs' titles to their lands, resistance to Edinburgh rule was strengthened.

James waited at Kilkerran Castle at Campbeltown Loch to regrant the chiefs' charters in the summer of 1498. Few of the chiefs turned up. At first, Archibald Campbell, 2nd Earl of Argyll was set to fill the power vacuum and enforce royal authority, but he met with limited success in a struggle with his brother-in-law, Torquil MacLeod of Lewis. Torquil was ordered to hand over Donald Dubh, heir to the lordship of the Isles, to James IV at Inverness in 1501. James waited, but Torquil never came.

After this defiance, Alexander Gordon, 3rd Earl of Huntly, was granted Torquil's lands. He raised an army in Lochaber and also cleared the tenants of that area, replacing them with his supporters.

Pope Julius II coat of arms

 After the parliament of 1504, a royal fleet sailed north from Ayr to attack the Castle of Cairn-na-Burgh, west of Mull, where, it is thought, Maclean of Duart had Donald Dubh in his keeping.

As progress at the siege was slow, James sent Hans the royal gunner in Robert Barton's ship and then the Earl of Arran with provisions and more artillery.

Cairn-na-Burgh was captured by June 1504 but Donald Dubh remained at liberty. In September 1507, Torquil MacLeod was besieged at Stornoway Castle on Lewis.

Donald Dubh was captured and imprisoned for the rest of his life, and Torquil MacLeod died in exile in 1511.

The Earl of Huntly was richly rewarded for his troubles, a price that James was prepared to pay.

When war broke out between England and France as a result of the Italian Wars, James found himself in a difficult position as an ally by treaty to both France and England. Henry VIII of England invaded France, and James reacted by declaring war on England.

James had already balked at the interdict of his kingdom by Pope Julius II, and he opposed its confirmation by Pope Leo X, so he was not in a good position with the pontiff.

Pope Leo X

 Leo sent a letter to James, threatening him with ecclesiastical censure for breaking peace treaties, on 28 June 1513, and James subsequently was excommunicated by Cardinal Christopher Bainbridge.

James summoned sailors and sent the Scottish navy, including the Great Michael, to join the ships of Louis XII of France, so joining in the war of the League of Cambrai. Hoping to take advantage of Henry's absence at the siege of Thérouanne, he led an invading army southward into Northumbria, only to be killed, with many of his nobles and common soldiers, at the disastrous Battle of Flodden on 9 September 1513.

Both English and Scottish accounts of Flodden emphasise the King's determination to fight.

Pope Leo X

 In his otherwise flattering portrayal of James, Pedro de Ayala remarks on James's ability as a military commander, portraying him as brusque and fearless on the battlefield:

He is courageous, even more so than a king should be. I am a good witness of it. I have seen him often undertake most dangerous things in the last wars. On such occasions he does not take the least care of himself.

He is not a good captain, because he begins to fight before he has given his orders. He said to me that his subjects serve him with their persons and goods, in just and unjust quarrels, exactly as he likes, and that therefore he does not think it right to begin any warlike undertaking without being himself the first in danger. His deeds are as good as his words.

A body, thought to be that of James, was recovered from the battlefield and taken to London for burial. James had been excommunicated, and although Henry VIII had obtained a breve from the Pope on 29 November 1513 to have the King buried in consecrated ground at St. Paul's, the embalmed body lay unburied for many years at Sheen Priory in Surrey.

Louis XII coin

The body was lost after the Reformation, which led to the demolition of the priory. John Stow claimed to have seen it, and said the king's head (with red hair) was removed by a glazier and eventually buried at St Michael Wood Street. The church was later demolished and the site redeveloped many times; it is now occupied by a pub. James's bloodstained coat was sent to Henry VIII (then on campaign in France) by his queen, Catherine of Aragon.

Erasmus provided an epitaph for the King in his Adagia. Later, in 1533, he wrote to James V of Scotland pointing out this essay on duty under the adage Spartam nactus es, (You who were born to Sparta shall serve her), on the subject of the Flodden campaign and the death of James and his son Alexander.

Scottish King: James III

JAMES III
James III (10 July 1451/May 1452 – 11 June 1488) was King of Scots from 1460 to 1488. James was an unpopular and ineffective monarch owing to an unwillingness to administer justice fairly, a policy of pursuing alliance with the Kingdom of England, and a disastrous relationship with nearly all his extended family. However, it was through his marriage to Margaret of Denmark that the Orkney and Shetland islands became Scottish.

James III coin

His reputation as the first Renaissance monarch in Scotland has sometimes been exaggerated, based on attacks on him in later chronicles for being more interested in such unmanly pursuits as music than hunting, riding and leading his kingdom into war. In fact, the artistic legacy of his reign is slight, especially when compared to that of his successors, James IV and James V. Such evidence as there is consists of portrait coins produced during his reign that display the king in three-quarter profile wearing an imperial crown, the Trinity Altarpiece by Hugo van der Goes, which was probably not commissioned by the king, and an unusual hexagonal chapel at Restalrig near Edinburgh, perhaps inspired by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

Undiscovered Scotland, St Andrews Sarcophagus, 7th century 

James was born to James II of Scotland and Mary of Guelders. His exact date and place of birth have been a matter of debate. Claims were made that he was born in May 1452, or 10 or 20 July 1451. The place of birth was either Stirling Castle or the Castle of St Andrews, depending on the year. His most recent biographer, the historian Norman Macdougall, argued strongly for late May 1452 at St Andrews, Fife. He succeeded his father James II on 3 August 1460 and was crowned at Kelso Abbey, Roxburghshire, a week later.

During his childhood, the government was led by three successive factions, first the King's mother, Mary of Guelders (1460–1463) (who briefly secured the return of the burgh of Berwick to Scotland), then James Kennedy, Bishop of St Andrews, and Gilbert, Lord Kennedy (1463–1466), then Robert, Lord Boyd (1466–1469).

Margaret of Denmark

The Boyd faction made itself unpopular, especially with the king, through self-aggrandisement. Lord Boyd's son Thomas was made Earl of Arran and married to the king's sister Mary. However, the family successfully negotiated the king's marriage to Margaret of Denmark, daughter of

Christian I of Denmark in 1469 as a part of ending the annual fee owed to Norway for the Western Isles (agreed in the Treaty of Perth in 1266), and receiving Orkney and Shetland (theoretically only as a temporary measure to cover Margaret's dowry).

When James permanently annexed the islands to the crown in 1472, Scotland reached its greatest ever territorial extent. James married Margaret of Denmark in July 1469 at Holyrood Abbey, Edinburgh.

Christian I of Denmark gave the Orkney and Shetland Islands to Scotland in lieu of a dowry. The marriage produced three sons: James IV of Scotland, James Stewart, Duke of Ross and John Stewart, Earl of Mar. Conflict broke out between James and the Boyd family following the marriage to Princess Mary. Robert and Thomas Boyd (with Princess Mary) were out of the country involved in diplomacy when their regime was overthrown. Mary's marriage was later declared void in 1473. The family of Sir Alexander Boyd was executed by James in 1469.

James became powerful enough to attempt to manage the Lord of the Isles who ruled over the Western Isles and Highlands of Scotland in 1475. The treaty made by the Lords with England at Ardtornish in 1462 was used as evidence of their usurpation of royal power. John of Islay, Earl of Ross, Lord of the Isles was censured for making his son Angus his lieutenant and for besieging Rothesay Castle in the Isle of Bute. John, Lord of the Isles was ordered to appear for trial in Edinburgh on 1 December and when he did not attend, he was declared forfeit.

Edward IV

The Earls of Lennox, Argyll, Atholl and Huntly were ordered to put the forfeiture in practice. John, Lord of the Isles, came to Edinburgh in July 1476 and the forfeiture was rescinded, but he resigned to the crown the Earldom of Ross, lands in Kintyre and Knapdale, and the offices of Sheriff of Inverness and Nairn. James then made John a Lord of Parliament as Lord of the Isles. In April 1478 Parliament required John to answer for his assistance to rebels who held Castle Sween against the crown. In December John received confirmation of his 1476 charters.

James's policies during the 1470s revolved primarily around ambitious continental schemes for territorial expansion and alliance with England. Between 1471 and 1473 he suggested annexations or invasions of Brittany, Saintonge and Guelders.

Edward IV & Richard III

 These unrealistic aims resulted in parliamentary criticism, especially since the king was reluctant to deal with the more humdrum business of administering justice at home.

In 1474 a marriage alliance was agreed to with Edward IV of England by which the future James IV of Scotland was to marry Princess Cecily of York, daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville.

It might have been a sensible move for Scotland, but it went against the traditional enmity of the two countries dating back to the reign of Robert I and the Wars of Independence, not to mention the vested interests of the border nobility. The alliance, therefore (and the taxes raised to pay for the marriage) was at least one of the reasons why the king was unpopular by 1479.

Also during the 1470s conflict developed between the king and his two brothers, Alexander, Duke of Albany, and John, Earl of Mar.

Elizabeth Woodville

Mar died suspiciously in Edinburgh in 1480 and his estates were forfeited, possibly given to a royal favourite, Robert Cochrane. Albany fled to France in 1479, accused of treason and breaking the alliance with England.

But by 1479 the alliance was collapsing and war with England existed on an intermittent level in 1480–1482. In 1482 Edward IV launched a full-scale invasion led by the Duke of Gloucester, the future Richard III, including the Duke of Albany, styled "Alexander IV", as part of the invasion party.

James, in attempting to lead his subjects against the invasion, was arrested by a group of disaffected nobles at Lauder Bridge in July 1482. It has been suggested that the nobles were already in league with Albany.

The king was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle and a new regime, led by "lieutenant-general" Albany, became established during the autumn of 1482. Meanwhile, the English army, unable to take Edinburgh Castle, ran out of money and returned to England, having taken Berwick-upon-Tweed for the last time. While James remained imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, and as a result of that was politically sidelined in 1482-83, his two half-uncles (including Andrew Stewart) managed to form a new government.

He was eventually freed by late September 1482. After having been freed, James was able to regain power by buying off members of Albany's government, such that by December 1482 Albany's government was collapsing.

Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, mother of Edward IV and Richard III.

 From 1483, he was able to "steadily reduce any remaining support for Albany". In particular his attempt to claim the vacant earldom of Mar led to the intervention of the powerful George Gordon, 2nd Earl of Huntly, on the king's side.

In January 1483 Albany fled to his estates at Dunbar. The death of his patron, Edward IV, on 9 April, left Albany in a weak position. Following the Lochmaben, he was forced to flee back to England, where was condemned, and he never engaged James III again.

Following this, he moved to Scotland again, but was caught and imprisoned in the same castle where James had been incarcerated. However, he managed to escape from the castle after killing his guard and moving down by using a rope made of bedsheets. In 1483, he sailed back for France, however, he was killed there in Paris (1485) in a duel with the duke of Orléans, by a splinter from his lance. Certainly his right-hand man, James Liddale of Halkerston, was arrested and executed around that time. At the Battle of Bosworth in August 1485 Albany's last remaining support, Richard III, perished.

On 5 March 1486 Pope Innocent VIII blessed a Golden Rose and sent it James III. It was an annual custom to send the rose to a deserving prince.

COUNTY DURHAM: The two ends of the St Mary chancel arch are anchored by the heads of Edward IV (1442 -1483 (41)) and below) his brother Richard III.

Giacomo Passarelli, Bishop of Imola, brought the rose to Scotland, and returned to London to complete the dispensation for the marriage of Henry VII of England. Despite a lucky escape in 1482, when he easily could have been murdered or executed in an attempt to bring his son to the throne, James did not reform his behaviour during the 1480s.

Obsessive attempts to secure alliance with England continued, although they made little sense given the prevailing politics.

COUNTY DURHAM: The two ends of the St Mary chancel arch are anchored by the heads
of Richard III, and (above)  his brother Edward IV.

He continued to favour a group of "familiars" unpopular with the more powerful magnates. He refused to travel for the implementation of justice and remained invariably resident in Edinburgh. He was also estranged from his wife, Margaret of Denmark, who lived in Stirling, and increasingly his eldest son.


He favoured his second son instead. In January 1488, in Parliament, James tried to gain supporters by making his second son Duke of Ross and four Lairds full Lords of Parliament.

These allies were John Drummond of Cargill, made Lord Drummond; Robert Crichton of Sanquhar, made Lord Sanquhar; John Hay of Yester, made Lord Hay of Yester; and the Knight William Ruthven, made Lord Ruthven. But opposition to James was led by the Earls of Angus and Argyll, and the Home and Hepburn families. James's eldest son and heir, the future James IV, was delivered into the hands of the rebels by Schaw of Sauchie on 2 February 1488. The Prince became the figurehead of the opposition party, perhaps reluctantly, or perhaps provoked by the favouritism given to his younger brother.

Matters came to a head on 11 June 1488, when the king faced the army raised by the disaffected nobles and many former councillors near Stirling, at the Battle of Sauchieburn, and was defeated and killed. It is unknown whether James III was killed in the battle or while fleeing. He is buried at Cambuskenneth Abbey. Accounts of 16th-century chroniclers such as Adam Abell, Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, John Leslie and George Buchanan alleged that the king was assassinated near Bannockburn, soon after the battle, at Milltown,

Scottish King: James II

JAMES II
James II (Middle Scots: Iames Stewart; 16 October 1430 – 3 August 1460), who reigned as king of Scots from 1437 on, was the son of James I and Joan Beaufort.

James II

 Nothing is known of his early life, but by his first birthday his twin and only brother, Alexander, who was also the older twin, had died, thus making James the heir apparent and Duke of Rothesay.

On 21 February 1437, James I was assassinated and the six-year-old Duke of Rothesay immediately succeeded him as James II.

In 1449, nineteen-year-old James married fifteen-year-old Mary of Guelders, daughter of the Duke of Gelderland. She bore him seven children, six of whom survived into adulthood.

Subsequently, the relations between Flanders and Scotland improved. James's nickname, Fiery Face, referred to a conspicuous vermilion birthmark on his face which appears to have been deemed by contemporaries an outward sign of a fiery temper.

James was a politic, and singularly successful king. He was popular with the commoners, with whom, like most of the Stewarts, he socialised often, in times of peace and war. His legislation has a markedly popular character.

He does not appear to have inherited his father's taste for literature, which was "inherited" by at least two of his sisters; but the foundation of the University of Glasgow during his reign, by Bishop Turnbull, shows that he encouraged learning; and there are also traces of his endowments to St. Salvator's, the new college of Archbishop Kennedy at St Andrews. He possessed much of his father's restless energy.

However, his murder of the Earl of Douglas leaves a stain on his reign. James I was assassinated on 21 February 1437. The Queen, although hurt, managed to get to her six-year-old son, who was now king. On 25 March 1437, the six-year-old was formally crowned King of Scots at Holyrood Abbey. The Parliament of Scotland revoked alienation of crown property and prohibited them, without the consent of the Estates, that is, until James II's eighteenth birthday.

Mary of Guelders, wife of James II 

He lived along with his mother and five of his six sisters (Margaret had left for France, where she had married the future Louis XI of France) at Dunbar Castle until 1439.

From 1437 to 1439 the King's first cousin Archibald Douglas, 5th Earl of Douglas, headed the government as lieutenant-general of the realm.

After his death, and with a general lack of high-status earls in Scotland due to deaths, forfeiture or youth, political power became shared uneasily among William Crichton, 1st Lord Crichton, Lord Chancellor of Scotland (sometimes in co-operation with the Earl of Avondale), and Sir Alexander Livingston of Callendar, who had possession of the young king as the warden of the stronghold of Stirling Castle.

Taking advantage of these events, Livingston placed Queen Joan and her new husband, Sir John Stewart, under "house arrest" at Stirling Castle on 3 August 1439.

They were released on 4 September only by making a formal agreement to put James in the custody of the Livingstons, by giving up her dowry for his maintenance, and confessing that Livingston had acted through zeal for the king's safety. In 1440, in the King's name, an invitation is said to have been sent to the young 6th Earl of Douglas and his brother, eleven-year-old David, to visit the king at Edinburgh Castle in November 1440.

They came, and were entertained at the royal table, from which they were treacherously hurried to their doom, which took place by beheading in the castle yard of Edinburgh on 24 November.

St Bride's Church, Douglas (Scotland) - effigy of Archibald, 5th earl of Douglas

 Three days later Malcolm Fleming of Cumbernauld, their chief adherent, shared the same fate. This infamous incident took the name of "the Black Dinner". In 1449 James II reached adulthood, yet in many ways his "active kingship" differed little from his minority. The Douglases used his coming of age as a way to throw the Livingstons out of the shared government, as the young king took revenge for the brief arrest of his mother (a means to remove her from political influence) that had taken place in 1439. Douglas and Crichton continued to dominate political power, and the king's ability to rule without them remained arguably limited.

But James did not acquiesce with this situation without argument, and between 1451 and 1455 he struggled to free himself from the power of the Douglases. Attempts to curb the Douglases' power took place in 1451, during the absence of the Earl of Douglas from Scotland, and culminated with the murder of Lord Douglas at Stirling Castle on 22 February 1452.

James II of Scotland, second coinage class II groat (without annulets at neck), Edinburgh mint, mm crown, Spink 5233.

 The main account of Douglas's murder comes from the Auchinleck Chronicle, a near contemporary but fragmentary source. According to its account, the king accused the Earl (probably with justification) of forging links with John Macdonald, 11th Earl of Ross (also Lord of the Isles), and Alexander Lindsay, 4th Earl of Crawford.

This bond, if it existed, created a dangerous axis of power of independently-minded men, forming a major rival to royal authority. When Douglas refused to break the bond with Ross, James broke into a fit of temper and stabbed Douglas 26 times and threw his body out of a window.

Wedding of James I to Joan Beaufort

His court officials (many of whom would rise to great influence in later years, often in former Douglas lands) then joined in the bloodbath, one allegedly striking out the Earl's brain with an axe.

This murder did not end the power of the Douglases, but rather created a state of intermittent civil war between 1452 and 1455. The main engagements were at Brodick, on the Isle of Arran; Inverkip in Renfrew; and the Battle of Arkinholm. James attempted to seize Douglas lands, but his opponents repeatedly forced him into humiliating climbdowns, whereby he returned the lands to James Douglas, 9th Earl of Douglas, and a brief and uneasy peace ensued.

Military campaigns ended indecisively, and some have argued that James stood in serious danger of being overthrown, or of having to flee the country. But James's patronage of lands, titles and office to allies of the Douglases saw their erstwhile allies begin to change sides, most importantly the Earl of Crawford after the Battle of Brechin, and in May 1455 James struck a decisive blow against the Douglases, and they were finally defeated at the Battle of Arkinholm.

In the months that followed, the Parliament of Scotland declared the extensive Douglas lands forfeit and permanently annexed them to the crown, along with many other lands, finances and castles.

Jacques de Lalain,

The Earl fled into a long English exile.

James finally had the freedom to govern as he wished, and one can argue that his successors as Kings of Scots never faced such a powerful challenge to their authority again. Along with the forfeiture of the Albany Stewarts in the reign of James I, the destruction of the Black Douglases saw royal power in Scotland take a major step forward.

Negotiations for a marriage to Mary of Guelders began in July 1447, when a Burgundian envoy came to Scotland, and were concluded by an embassy under Crichton the chancellor in September 1448. Philip settled sixty thousand crowns on his kinswoman, and her dower of ten thousand was secured on lands in Strathearn, Athole, Methven, and Linlithgow. A tournament took place before James at Stirling, on 25 February 1449, between James, master of Douglas, another James, brother to the Laird of Lochleven, and two knights of Burgundy, one of whom, Jacques de Lalain, was the most celebrated knight-errant of the time.

The marriage was celebrated at Holyrood on 3 July 1449. A French chronicler, Mathieu d'Escouchy, gives a graphic account of the ceremony and the feasts which followed.

Joan Beaufort

 Many Flemings in Mary's suite remained in Scotland, and the relations between Scotland and Flanders, already friendly under James I, consequently became closer. In Scotland the king's marriage led to his emancipation from tutelage, and to the downfall of the Livingstons.

In the autumn Sir Alexander and other members of the family were arrested. At a parliament in Edinburgh on 19 January 1450, Alexander Livingston, a son of Sir Alexander, and Robert Livingston of Linlithgow were tried and executed on the Castle Hill.

Sir Alexander and his kinsmen were confined in different and distant castles. A single member of the family escaped the general proscription—James, the eldest son of Sir Alexander, who, after arrest and escape to the highlands, was restored in 1454 to the office of chamberlain to which he had been appointed in the summer of 1449.

James II enthusiastically promoted modern artillery, which he used with some success against the Black Douglases. His ambitions to increase Scotland's standing saw him besiege Roxburgh Castle in 1460, one of the last Scottish castles still held by the English after the Wars of Independence. For this siege, James took a large number of cannons imported from Flanders. On 3 August, he was standing near one of these cannons, known as "the Lion", when it exploded and killed him.

Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie stated in his history of James's reign that "as the King stood near a piece of artillery, his thigh bone was dug in two with a piece of misframed gun that brake in shooting, by which he was stricken to the ground and died hastily." The Scots carried on with the siege, led by George Douglas, 4th Earl of Angus, and the castle fell a few days later. Once the castle was captured James' widow, Mary of Guelders, ordered its destruction. James's son became king as James III and Mary acted as regent until her own death three years later.