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Chapter 8
The Foundations of the Stewart Dynasty (1371–1460)
In This Chapter
Looking at the reigns of the first four Stewart kings
Considering the social and economic life in Scotland during the Stewart Dynasty
Examining the foundations of the Stewart Dynasty is not only important in understanding the rise of absolute monarchy in Scotland, but also for the light it sheds on the Stewarts as future kings of Britain. These hundred or so years marked a fierce struggle for control between the monarchy and ambitious nobles, in particular the Albany Stewarts and the Black Douglases, and were marked by lawlessness, feuds, murder and rebellions.
As one contemporary source put it:
In those days there was no law in Scotland, but the strong oppressed the weak, and the whole kingdom was one den of thieves. Homicides, robberies, fire-raisings and other misdeeds remained unpunished, and justice seemed banished beyond the kingdom’s bounds.
To impose order on the lawlessness of the nobility was the huge task faced by the early Stewart kings. As you see in this chapter, some were up to the task and others were not.
The Reign of Robert II
Many historians think of Robert II as a lame-duck king who gave away too much power to the nobility and, thus, created the basis for a great deal of instability in his realm. With the crown politically and militarily paralysed, the members of the Scottish nobility wreaked havoc on each other as they fought for land and power.
However, you could argue that Robert was a bit savvier than many historians give him credit for. Sure, the nobility increased in power under Robert II, but so did the influence of the crown through his astute policy of marrying his many offspring to the major noble houses, thus creating a series of alliances that shored up the crown rather than weakened it.
The fact that Robert became the first Stewart king was a bit of a fluke. He had the lineage as son of Marjorie, daughter of Robert the Bruce, but his fortune came when David II, last of the Bruce kings (see Chapter 7), died unexpectedly without an heir in 1371.
Robert II was 54 years old when he was crowned king in 1371. By that time, he had sired 22 children; of these, 9 were by his mistress, Elizabeth Mure (whom he later married in 1348), and 4 (2 boys and 2 girls) were by his second wife, Euphemia de Ross (whom he married in 1355, the same year as Elizabeth’s death). Succession was never going to be a problem, especially because he had five sons.
Don’t worry about keeping track of all these people – the main point is that Robert II had a lot of children by a variety of women, and he didn’t have to worry about finding someone to succeed him.
Jobs for the boys
Robert used his family to extend his authority by promoting them to influential positions within the government and as major regional
magnates
(great landholders). Here are some examples:
His heir presumptive, John, was earl of Carrick and keeper of Edinburgh Castle.
His second surviving son, Robert, was granted the earldoms of Fife and Menteith and was keeper of Stirling Castle.
His fourth son, Alexander, was made earl of Buchan and the king’s lieutenant for the north and west of Inverness.
The earldoms of Strathearn and Caithness went to David, his eldest son by Euphemia.
Robert also married off his daughters to powerful rivals, such as John, lord of the Isles, and James, the heir to the earls of Douglas. By the mid-1390s, only four of the 15 Scottish earldoms were outside the direct control or influence of the Stewart family.
A little family difficulty
Robert’s strategy was to delegate authority to his powerful sons and earls. This plan generally worked for the first decade of his reign, but from 1380, it began to unravel.
One serious drawback affected Robert’s ability to reign: he couldn’t ride a horse. Because of this, he found travelling difficult, which caused him to fail one of the key functions of medieval kingship: the dispensation of justice. Plus, his failure or unwillingness to deal with his rebellious son Alexander, now styling himself as the Wolf of Badenoch in the north, and to consider mobilising for a war against the ‘auld enemy’ led to political upheaval in November 1384. The council, in a
coup d’état,
removed Robert’s authority to govern and appointed his son, the earl of Carrick, as lieutenant of the kingdom.
With Robert sidelined, there was now no impediment in the way of war with England. In June 1385, a force of 1,200 French soldiers joined the Scots in a campaign that involved the earl of Douglas, the earl of Carrick and the king’s other son, Robert, Earl of Fife. The ‘war’ was really a series of border skirmishes with the English that led to small territorial gains, but a quarrel between the French and Scottish commanders saw the abandonment of an attack by the Scots on the English-held Roxburgh castle.
However, better things were to come in August 1488, when the Scots defeated a superior English force at the Battle of Otterburn, Northumberland. (We’re much better underdogs!) According to contemporary sources, around 2,000 English were killed and more than 1,000 were captured (compared to only 100 Scots dead and 200 taken prisoner). One notable casualty was Carrick’s ally, James, Earl of Douglas; his death had unintended results for the lord lieutenant.
Douglas died without an heir, and various candidates came forward to claim the title. Carrick supported the claim of Malcolm Drummond, the husband of the late earl’s sister, while his brother Robert championed the claim of Sir Archibald Douglas, lord of Galloway. With the support of his new ally, Robert was able to engineer a second coup d’état in December, when the guardianship moved from Carrick to Fife.
This move was popular with the leading nobles because Fife proposed to deal with the lawlessness in the north of Scotland largely provoked by his younger brother, Alexander, Earl of Buchan and Wolf of Badenoch. In 1389,Alexander had taken revenge on the bishops of Moray and Ross, who had excommunicated him for deserting his wife, by burning down the town of Forres and the magnificent Elgin Cathedral. Fife stripped Buchan of his office of king’s lieutenant and justiciar in the north and gave them to his son, Murdoch Stewart.
The transfer of power from one branch of the Stewart family to the other seemed complete when the king toured the north in late January 1390 and gave his blessing to the new balance of power. However, within two months, Robert II was lying dead in Dundonald Castle in Ayrshire, and a new monarch was on the throne.
The Reign of Robert III
In 1390, the Scottish Parliament granted John, Earl of Carrick, permission to change his regnal name to Robert III, mainly because it suggested a direct line to Robert I, but also because it distanced him from a co
Within nine years of acceding to the throne, Robert III had been largely sidelined and made irrelevant to the business of government. At a meeting in November 1389 held in Falkland Castle and attended by the leading magnates and churchmen, a decision was taken over the king’s future. That decision was made clear when, at a council meeting, it was declared that, owing to the king’s ‘sickness of his person’, his 21-year-old son and first Scot to hold the title of duke, David of Rothesay, was to be made lord lieutenant of the kingdom for three years, although subject to supervision by a parliamentary group dominated by his uncle, Robert, Earl of Fife, now also Duke of Albany.
The rise of the Albany Stewarts
With Robert III out of the way, Rothesay began to act with little regard to the best interests of the kingdom, using his office to enrich himself and appearing to be high-handed and callous in his dealings with his peers. His efforts were begi
He reneged on a promise to marry Elizabeth, the daughter of George Dunbar, Earl of March, and instead married Marjorie, the daughter of the earl of Douglas. Dunbar was so angry with the duke that he wrote to Henry IV and entered the English king’s service in July 1400. Rothesay was also plundering the public purse by appropriating the customs revenues of the east coast burghs, which were intended for the crown. Talk about robber barons!
Rothesay, in alliance with his disgraced uncle, Alexander, Wolf of Badenoch, began to confront the influence of Albany in central Scotland – a big mistake. He had clearly got above himself, and he had to go. In late February 1402, as soon as his three years were up, Rothesay was arrested on his way to St Andrews and imprisoned in Albany’s residence, Falkland Castle. It was not going to end well!
In fact, Rothesay died on 26 March 1402 in suspicious circumstances, appearing to have been starved to death. In May of that year, a public inquiry exonerated Albany of any blame and reappointed him as lord lieutenant. The duke of Albany was now Scotland’s most powerful man and had designs on the throne itself.
The English and Scottish battle in Northumberland
Shortly after Rothesay’s death, Albany’s regime was drawn into the fierce and seemingly endless conflicts around the border of the two kingdoms, which threatened to destroy all he was working to achieve. In June 1402, a small government-backed force returning from a border raid was intercepted by the son of George Dunbar (revenge time) and defeated at the ‘battle’ of Nesbit Moor. This incident was used as a pretext for Archibald Douglas, 4th Earl of Douglas, to lead a punitive expedition in September into England. At the head of 10,000 men and with Murdoch Stewart at his side, they laid waste to the whole of Northumberland, reaching as far as Newcastle.
The Scots were decimated. Archibald Douglas was captured, along with George Douglas, 1st Earl of Angus; Thomas Dunbar, 5th Earl of Moray; and Murdoch Stewart. It was really only Henry IV’s internal problems, particularly in Wales, that prevented the English from mounting a full-scale invasion of Scotland. But with so many of the Scottish nobles in English custody, it cleared the stage of rivals for Albany.
The Albany Governorship(1406–1424)
Robert III may have been weak in body, but he wasn’t weak in the head. Reading the cards, he saw that the next victim of Albany would be his son James, now heir presumptive. To escape the ‘guardianship’ of Albany, in 1406 Robert arranged for his son to be sent to France for safekeeping. But Stewart plans almost always ended in farce or tragedy, and this was no different.
The young prince had to hide out in Bass Rock before boarding the
Maryenknyght,
a Danzig-bound ship out of Leith with a cargo of hides and wool. But the vessel was attacked on 14 March by English pirates, and James was handed over to Henry IV of England, where he would remain for the next 18 years.