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Two other composers of note in the reign of James V were David Peebles and Robert Johnson, but only fragments of their work remains. Much of this can be put down to the Reformation, particularly during its Calvinist period (see Chapter 10), as steps were taken to destroy any traces of the Catholic musical tradition. Song schools were closed, manuscripts were destroyed, choirs were disbanded and organs were removed from churches.
However, prior to this development, monarchs had prided themselves on being Renaissance princes in their musical ability. The lute was the favoured instrument. Both James IV and James V were skilled lute players, and James IV also played the clavichord. Other instruments such as the harp, viol and fiddle were also popular at court. No secular chamber music from this time really survives to this day, far less the kind of music that ordinary people listened to and sang.
The Reign of James III
Like the other Stewart kings, James was a minor when he came to the Scottish throne. His father, James II, had died in an accident in 1451 when James was only 9 years old, and he was crowned a week later at Kelso Abbey in Roxburghshire. His mother, Mary of Guelders, was appointed guardian by the Scottish Parliament, until he assumed power. However, Mary died three years after her appointment, and her place was taken by Bishop James Ke
While hunting in 1466, James III was seized by the Boyds of Kilmarnock and held captive until his assumption of power in 1469. From 1466 to 1469, Lord Robert Boyd, aided by his brother, Alexander, assumed the position of regent. He made quite a number of enemies simply by doing what they all did in power: promoting his family. Boyd’s son, Thomas, was made earl of Arran and married off to James’s sister, Mary.
But it wasn’t all bad. In 1469, Lord Boyd arranged the marriage of James to Margaret, the 12-year-old daughter of Christian I, king of Denmark and Norway. As part of the dowry, Scotland received Orkney and Shetland. Scotland assumed the territorial boundaries with which we associate it today. Margaret bore James three sons, one of them, James IV, the future king of Scotland.
The Boyds got little thanks for their trouble. James was a
Threat over? Don’t believe it!
A little family bother
James was the only Stewart king to contend with a legitimate adult brother – in fact, two: Alexander, Duke of Albany, and John, Earl of Mar. He disposed of John in 1480, during his period of imprisonment in Edinburgh for treason. James’s other brother, Alexander, had fled to France the year before, likewise accused of treason. Initially welcomed by the French king, Alexander soon fell out with him for refusing to back his plans to invade Scotland.
The immediate source of the disagreement between the Stewart siblings was the relationship with England. James wanted to build stronger ties with the English king, Edward IV, and what better way to do this than by arranging in 1474 for his son, the future James IV, to marry the latter’s daughter, Princess Cecily? The Scottish nobility were not too happy with this arrangement because it went against the grain of longstanding hatred of the English born of the Wars of Independence (see Chapter 7). What a
By 1479, the alliance was begi
But the English invasion soon ran out of money, and Gloucester seemed content with the capture of Berwick (the last time it would change hands between England and Scotland) and left Scotland. The ‘Lauder Lords’, as they were known, tried to form a workable government with Albany, who was styled the ‘lieutenant general’ of the new regime. But the regime was doomed from the start because it owed its existence to England. Three years followed in which James, through promises of land and power, managed to persuade important figures (such as John Stewart; Lord Darnley, keeper of Edinburgh Castle; and the bishop of Dunkeld) of his right to reclaim the throne. The Renaissance concept of principle and honour didn’t seem to register with the Scottish elite. They were up for sale!
What sealed Albany’s fate was the death of his patron Edward IV in April 1483, forcing him to leave Scotland for England. In July 1484, there was one more attempt to seize the throne. This much smaller force invading Scotland was defeated at the Battle of Lochmaben, where his ally, one of the exiled Douglas family, was captured, while he fled south again. The invasion had no support from Richard III and failed to find any Scottish support even in the former estates of Albany and Douglas.
In 1485, Albany fled for the last time, again to France, and shortly afterward he was killed in a joust in Paris, allegedly by a splinter entering his eye.
Our friends in the north
James didn’t face difficulties only with his brother; he also had to deal with the rebellious lord of the Isles. The territory of the lord of the Isles was vast and included the Hebrides (Skye and Ross from 1438), Knoydart, Ardnamurchan and the Kintyre peninsula. Although nominally part of Scotland, successive lords of the Isles fiercely asserted their independence from the crown. In 1462, the last lord, John MacDonald, made a treaty with Edward IV to invade Scotland, but the invasion never took place – the War of the Roses got in the way. In 1475, the English produced documents to prove the treasonous behaviour of MacDonald.
James III stripped MacDonald of much of his land, giving his second son the earldom of Ross and parcelling out Kintyre and Knapdale to the earl of Argyll. MacDonald was allowed to retain his title, but it was no longer hereditary: the holder had to be approved by the crown. This proved to be a huge loss of prestige, and MacDonald was overthrown as chief of Clan Donald by his illegitimate son, Angus Og, in 1480. In the same year, Og razed the king’s castle at Inverness to the ground and inflicted a defeat on James’s army – one of only two defeats of a royal force by rebels in the medieval period.
The existence of a serious rival to Stewart power in the Highlands and Islands remained a barrier to the centralising strategy of the king to make himself supreme ruler. It was never solved in James’s reign and was bequeathed to his son and heir to deal with.
Business as usual
James III assumed the throne of Scotland once again, and it seemed as if nothing had happened. On 5 March 1486, Pope I
The king was never popular with a large section of the Scottish noble elite, and his policies only increased their opposition to his rule. He continued to seek an alliance with England, which was a bit mad given all that had happened. He also refused to travel to administer justice, a key function of medieval monarchy, preferring to hole up in Edinburgh. There was also the issue of favouritism. A group of favoured lesser nobles – ‘the familiars’ – were advanced as full lords of the Scottish Parliament in 1488, which antagonised the more powerful magnates. Among ‘the familiars’ was his second son, whom he favoured above his first. His wife, Margaret of Denmark, had been banished to Stirling. Trouble was brewing!
The opposition in Parliament, led by the earls of Angus and Argyll, were in open revolt. With the king’s eldest son, who was only 15, as their figurehead, they engaged in battle with James’s army at Sauchieburn, near Stirling, on 11 June 1488. It was highly exceptional that a sovereign had to yield to an army in the field – rebellions tended to fail. But the battle was a disaster for the monarch, and he died in mysterious circumstances after it. Some said he was assassinated, others said he fell off his horse and died of the injuries, and others claimed he was killed in battle. We’ll never know the true cause of death. But hey, the king is dead. Long live the king!
The Reign of James IV
Another Stewart minor was on the throne of Scotland, and that immediately produced challenges to royal authority. Within two years of being crowned king, James IV faced two major risings. As a result, he quickly realised that these risings were the product of pretentious nobles being excluded from a share of power due to favouritism.
After 1495, James tried to find a more balanced form of membership of the king’s council. This allowed him to bypass Parliament, the theatre where disaffected nobles could moan and generally sow the seeds of discontent. After 1496, the Scottish Parliament met only three times in 17 years, whereas between 1488 and 1494 it had met nine times.
But James also realised the full value of a monarchy based on shock and awe, particularly when it came to impressing the nobility. The Scots have always held an affection for the ‘hard man’. So, to fulfil the Renaissance ideal of the monarch as emperor within his own realm, James set about extending royal authority to those parts of the Highlands and islands that thought of themselves as beyond the monarch’s jurisdiction. In this, he was well placed: he spoke Gaelic and visited the Highlands six times in the first seven years of his reign.
The lordship of the Isles
After the murder of Angus Og by his Irish harpist in 1490, MacDonald tried to reassert his claim to the lordship by approving his nephew Alexander of Lochalsh’s plan to recover the earldom of Ross. After ravaging the Black Isle, belonging to Urquhart, King James’s sheriff of Cromarty, Lochalsh, was defeated by the Mackenzies at the Battle of Blar na Pairc in Strathconon, Inverness-shire. James sailed to Dunstaffnage Castle, near Oban, to receive the surrender of MacDonald and the homage of the clan chiefs of the Western Isles. MacDonald was subsequently charged with and found guilty of treason. By an act of Parliament, all his lands and titles were forfeited to the crown. As a favour, he was allowed to retire to the Abbey of Paisley, and according to the treasurer’s accounts, he died at Dundee in around 1502 or 1503.
The Highlands and Islands were now under royal control. Or were they?