The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain (49 page)

Chapter 4

1
Scott’s portrait of Louis XI is among the most brilliant of his depictions of ‘real historical’ figures. In his introduction to the novel he writes that Louis ‘was of a character so purely selfish – so guiltless of entertaining any purpose unconnected with his ambition, covetousness, and desire of selfish enjoyment, that he almost seems an incarnation of the devil himself’. He granted him also ‘that caustic wit which can turn into ridicule all that a man does for any other person’s advantage but his own’. But for his superstition, Louis XI would have been the perfect cynic.

2
‘[I am] weary of the life of this world. Don’t speak to me of it any more. More than anything I am bored.’

3
The title ‘Lord of the Isles’ – in Gaelic ‘Ri Innse Gall’, Ruler or King of the Isles of the Hebrides – goes back to at least the seventh century AD. For much of the early medieval period they were subject to the kings of Norway, until the Western Isles were ceded to Alexander III (1249–86) after his victory at Largs (1263). But it could scarcely be said that they had been incorporated into the Kingdom of Scotland, and the Lord of the Isles, which title became hereditary in a branch of the MacDonald family, was a semi-independent potentate, whose loyalty to the Scottish Crown was doubtful. At times indeed the Lords of the Isles allied themselves to the King of England. In 1499, in the reign of James IV, it was recorded that ‘A great deed was done in Scotland this year by the king of the Scots.’ This ‘great deed’ was the execution on Edinburgh’s Burgh Muir of John Mor MacDonald, Lord of the Isles, along with his son and two grandsons. Subsequently the title passed to the heir to the Scottish throne, the Duke of Rothesay. When in Scotland, Prince Charles, though usually styled Prince of Wales, is Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick (the Bruce earldom) and Lord of the Isles.

4
Real (that is, ‘royal’) tennis, not lawn tennis, which was not devised till the late nineteenth century.

5
Pius II (Aeneas Sylvius) (
c
. 1405–64) left an account of visits as papal legate to Scotland, England and Germany.

6
There is no contemporary evidence for this story, which first appears more than a hundred years later. Nevertheless, the girl is remembered in legend as Catherine Barlass (the lass who barred the door), and members of the family of Barless or Barles have been known to claim descent from the heroine.

Chapter 5

1
Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie (
c.
1532–80) wrote a
Historie and Chronicles of Scotland
in Scots rather than Latin or English. It was a continuation of Boece’s
History
, translated into Scots by Bellenden (
see Chapter 1
, note 1). Pitscottie’s work covers the years 1436–1575. Trevor Royle writes: ‘Although he has been found to be inaccurate and credulous, his style is vivid and picturesque’ (
The Macmillan Companion to Scottish Literature
, London, 1983).

2
This point is cogently made by Jenny Wormald in her essay ‘The House of Stewart and its Realm’, published in
Scotland Revisited
(Collins & Brown, London, 1991). She also argues that ‘the breaks caused by minorities restrained the tendency towards an increasingly autocratic style of kingship, associated with the so-called “new monarchies” of sixteenth-century France, Spain, England; every Scottish king, save Mary, showed signs of such a move, but none lived long enough nor left an heir old enough to bring it to fruition’.

3
Gordon Donaldson,
Scottish Kings
(London, 1967).

4
Sir Walter Scott,
Tales of a Grandfather
.

5
Donaldson, op. cit.

6
Scott, op. cit.

7
Ibid.

8
Eric Linklater,
The Royal House of Scotland
(Macmillan, London, 1970; Sphere Books, 1972, p. 30).

9
Michael Lynch,
History of Scotland
(Century, 1991), p. 149.

10
Donaldson, op. cit.

11
Ibid.

12
Ibid.

13
Quoted by Donaldson.

Chapter 6

1
In recounting a Jacobite rising that never was, Scott may be said to have devised a new genre: the counter-factual historical novel. Robert Harris’s
Fatherland
is one of the more successful recent examples of the genre.

2
Gordon Donaldson,
Scottish Kings
(London, 1967).

3
Sir Walter Scott,
Tales of a Grandfather
.

4
Agnes Mure Mackenzie,
The Rise of the Stewarts
(London, 1935), p. 280.

5
Ibid., p. 293.

Chapter 7

1
‘Proud as a Scotsman’.

2
Erasmus’s judgements, frequently quoted by historians who have written about James IV, are to be found in his
Letters
.

3
Ayala’s reports to the Spanish court, likewise quoted by most historians of the reign, will (I assume) be found in the Spanish Archives. I haven’t checked these quotations because they are so well known, and have been frequently cited.

4
George Buchanan (1506–82), scholar, poet and propagandist, took a less flattering view of James’s intellectual abilities, declaring that he was ‘
ab litteris incultus
’, untaught by letters. However, Agnes Mure Mackenzie, in
The Rise of the Stewarts
(London, 1935), p. 294, observes that ‘Ayala knew James personally and well; he was a responsible diplomat, writing a secret and confidential report; Buchanan lived nearly a century later [actually half a century] and was writing propaganda against James’s grand-daughter and her house in general.’

5
Ayala, op. cit.

6
Margaret Drummond (
c
. 1472–1502) was the youngest daughter of the first Lord Drummond. The rumours of poison arose because she and her two sisters all died after what has been described as ‘a suspect breakfast’. If they were deliberately poisoned, the crime may have had nothing to do with the King’s intended marriage. Suspicion fell on Lord Fleming, the husband of one of Margaret’s sisters. The cause of death may equally well have been food poisoning.

7
Gavin Douglas (
c.
1474–1522) was the third son of Archibald Douglas, fifth Earl of Angus (Bell-the-Cat). He was appointed Bishop of Dunkeld in 1515. His translation into Scots of
The Aeneid
(
Eneados
) was regarded by Ezra Pound as the finest version of the poem in any variety of the English language. ‘In a barbarous age, / He gave rude Scotland Virgil’s page’: Walter Scott,
Marmion
, Canto VI, Stanza XI.

8
There were good reasons to fear the Turk. In 1526, thirteen years after James’s death at Flodden, the Ottoman army defeated King Louis of Hungary at the Battle of Mohacs and Hungary was lost to Christendom, annexed to the Ottoman Empire. In 1529 the Turk even besieged Vienna.

9
The sword may still be seen in Edinburgh Castle, but sadly the hat has long ago been lost.

10
I have taken this anglicised version of Pitscottie’s Scots from the notes supplied by Sir Walter Scott to his long poem
Marmion
, which has the Battle of Flodden as its climax: ‘The stubborn spearmen still made good / Their dark impenetrable wood, / Each stepping where his comrade stood, / The instant that he fell.’

11
I owe this quotation and the greater part of my account of the Flodden campaign and battle to Niall Barr’s masterly
Flodden
(Tempus, 2001). This offers the best analysis of late medieval/Renaissance warfare that I know.

12
Ibid.

13
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527), Florentine statesman and political philospher. Most famous for
Il Principe
(
The Prince
), he also wrote
Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
and
Seven Books on the Art of War
.

14
Thomas Percy,
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry
(1765).

15
Sighing over his pupil Alexander’s death in battle, Erasmus asked: ‘What had you to do with fierce Mars, being destined for the Muses and for Christ?’

16
Flodden gave rise to one of the great Border laments, ‘The Flowers of the Forest’. It exists in several versions, the best being that by Jean Elliot (1727–1805). The only Selkirk survivor of the battle, by name Fletcher, returned bearing an English standard, which he lowered in the burgh marketplace. A re-enactment of Fletcher’s gesture forms the centrepiece of the closing ceremony of Selkirk’s Common Riding Day, held annually on the first Friday after the second Monday in June. After the ‘Casting of the Colours’, the town band plays ‘The Flowers of the Forest’, known locally as ‘The Liltin’, a moment that never fails to be deeply moving.

Chapter 8

1
Gordon Donaldson,
Scottish Kings
(London, 1967).

2
Lady Margaret Douglas would marry Matthew, Earl of Lennox, and their elder son was Henry, Lord Darnley, the second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots. Since Margaret was a granddaughter of Henry VII, her son was in the line of inheritance to the English throne.

3
She spelled his name ‘Anguisshe’, but whether this is indicative of her feelings or of her defective orthography must be a matter of opinion.

4
Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie,
Historie and Chronicles of Scotland
.

5
She spelled Methven as ‘Muffin’.

6
‘Disjeuner’ for breakfast is further evidence of French cultural influence.

7
Pitscottie, op. cit.

8
Andrew Lang (1844–1912) was a prolific man of letters: poet, essayist, folklorist, biographer, critic and translator. He wrote a
History of Scotland
in four volumes. It remains readable but has been superseded by modern scholarship.

9
Sir Walter Scott,
The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
. In the prefatory note to this ballad, he writes: ‘The common people of the high parts of Teviotdale, Liddesdale and the counties adjacent, hold the memory of Johnnie Armstrong in very high respect. They affirm also that one of his attendants broke through the king’s guard and carried to Gilknockie Tower the news of the bloody catastrophe. This song was first published by Allan Ramsay, in his ‘Evergreen’, who says he copied it from the mouth of a gentleman called Armstrong, who was in the sixth generation from this John.’

10
Alistair Moffat,
The Borders
(Deerpark Press, 2002), p. 255.

11
Sir Walter Scott,
The Lady of the Lake
, note.

12
Marie de Guise.

13
Pitscottie, op. cit.

14
It is likely that the action of the Liddesdale men owed something to bitter memories of James’s punitive expeditions into the Borders, and of the execution of Johnnie Armstrong in particular.

Chapter 9

1
James Boswell,
The Journey of a Tour to the Hebrides
(Everyman’s Library edition, 2002), p. 169.

2
Jenny Wormald, op. cit.

3
The Sieur de Brantôme,
Life of Mary Queen of Scots
, trans. Barrett H. Clark (
Great Biographies of the World
, Heinemann, 1929), pp. 516–30, passim. Pierre Ronsard and Jacques du Bellay were the leading members of the group of poets known as ‘la Pléiade’. Ronsard himself admired Mary’s verses, all written in French. An edition with translations by the Scottish poet Robin Bell was published in Edinburgh in 2001.

4
The only man with whom Mary fell passionately in love was Darnley, and that did not last. There is no hint of any affair during her years of captivity in England, though there would have been opportunities during the early years when her confinement was not close. If there had been any rumours of an entanglement we cannot doubt that Elizabeth’s ministers would have made good use of such rumours further to blacken Mary’s reputation. Josephine Tey, in her novel
The Daughter of Time
, has her main character (a Scotland Yard detective) declare: ‘Mary Stuart would have made an excellent gamesmistress at a girls’ school.’

5
See a perceptive essay, ‘Knox and his Relations to Women’ by Robert Louis Stevenson, published in the collection
Familiar Studies of Men and Books
: ‘For the man Knox was a true man, and woman, the “ewig-weibliche”, was as necessary to him, in spite of all low theories, as ever she was to Goethe.’