Killing Fields of Scotland

by R J M Pugh

  Carberry Hill

  Bothwell hastily scraped together a force of 2,000 from East Lothian and the Merse, recruited mainly by the few nobles remaining loyal to Mary – Lords Seton and Hay of Yester being the most resolute among the Catholic minority. The two armies met at Carberry Hill, close to the field of Pinkie, Musselburgh, on 15 June, a month to the day after Mary and Bothwell’s wedding. Both sides were about equally matched in numbers although the Marian force had the advantage of seven or eight pieces of artillery from Dunbar Castle. Most of that sultry afternoon the two armies did little more than glower at each other, neither side willing to make the first move. Bothwell’s artillery fired a few desultory shots at the rebel picquets but inflicted no casualties. Mary was eager to join battle; but did she know it, the Confederate Lords were by no means united, nor were they predominantly Protestant. At least two, the Earls of Borthwick and Semple were Catholic and the Earl of Cassillis had changed his religion no fewer than three times in the past seven years. A publicly proclaimed aim of the Confederate Lords was to rescue Mary and her infant son James from Bothwell; their true purpose will be revealed shortly.

  Neither side desired to shed blood. The Confederate Lords believed that delay would bring them success. As the afternoon wore on Mary awaited reinforcements which never materialized. Her army dwindled rapidly as men deserted, ignoring her taunts of cowardice. Finally, Mary and Bothwell were left with only sixty men. A compromise was reached; if Mary crossed over to them the Confederate Lords would give safe-conduct to Bothwell to Dunbar. Mary was led to Edinburgh dressed in a short, red petticoat, the only female attire she could find at Dunbar that morning. The colour of the garment spoke volumes; not only was it a reminder of the detested scarlet of Rome, it was that of the common whore. In the streets of Edinburgh Mary was jeered by a hostile populace.

  As for James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, he escaped to Dunbar, garrisoned its castle with kinsmen and friends, then took ship for Orkney and Norway. It was there that his unsavoury past caught up with him. He was arrested by the Norwegian Viceroy, cousin of a Norwegian lady with whom he had had an affair and who lent him money; the lady sued him for the loan which Bothwell was unable to pay. Bothwell’s end was pure Greek tragedy; sent to prison for the remainder of his life, he died insane in a Danish prison at Faarvejle, near Dragsholm Castle on the island of Zealand on 14 April 1578.22 His death was unmourned by Mary, Queen of Scots.

  On 17 June 1567 Mary was taken to Lochleven Castle where, on 24 July, she was forced to sign three documents under the terms of which she abdicated in favour of her son, James VI. Mary’s half-brother James, Earl of Moray was appointed regent; he in turn nominated the Duke of Chatelherault, Earls Lennox, Argyll, Atholl, Morton, Glencairn and Mar as governors of Scotland. On 29 June James VI was crowned at Stirling, John Knox preaching the coronation sermon.23 Everything seemed to point to peace and stability, save for Mary. The deposed Queen had one more shot left in her locker.

  Langside

  Mary languished in Lochleven Castle until 2 May 1568 from where she escaped with the help of a pageboy, Willie Douglas. Making her way to the town of Hamilton, Mary was welcomed by the Hamilton family – staunch enemies of Mary’s half-brother James, Earl of Moray now regent of Scotland. In Hamilton Mary hastily gathered a formidable force which contained no fewer than nine earls, nine bishops, eighteen lords and a hundred barons who swore to defend her and restore her to the throne. The regent Moray was in Glasgow when he learnt of Mary’s escape from Lochleven. He immediately raised an army to confront his half-sister in the vicinity. According to Sir James Melville’s Memoirs, Mary, residing at Hamilton, was not minded to fight a battle; instead, she agreed with her advisers that she should make her headquarters in Dumbarton Castle, there to receive her loyal subjects and gain a political – and bloodless – advantage over her opponents and thereby regain her crown. When Moray received word that Mary was making her way from Hamilton to Dumbarton by the Dumbarton Road which led past Glasgow, he was resolved to confront her in battle. Moray marched his force to the village of Langside, south of Glasgow, hoping to intercept Mary there. Accounts of the sizes of Mary’s and Moray’s armies suggest that the Queen commanded 5,000 to the regent’s 3,00024 although the figures may have been higher by 1,000 on both sides.

  The two armies met at Langside. Mary’s forces partly occupied Clincart Hill; the right wing of Moray’s troops rested on the ground where a monument to the battle now stands, his left on the farm of Pathhead, part of which is now incorporated into what is known today as the Queen’s Park. Among Mary’s supporters were the Earls of Argyll, Cassillis, Rothes and Eglinton, along with the Lords Somerville, Yester, Livingston and Fleming. Moray’s force, inferior in number but superior in its commanders and discipline contained the Earl of Lennox – for long an enemy of the Hamiltons – the Earl of Morton and the militarily capable William Kirkcaldy of the Grange.

  Mary’s commander, the lacklustre Archibald Campbell, 5th Earl of Argyll was hardly equal to the task, despite his numerical superiority. Moray sent the competent Kirkcaldy of the Grange to observe Mary’s position. The Queen’s army was positioned on the south bank of the Clyde, Moray’s on the north bank. Kirkcaldy rightly anticipated Mary’s – or rather, Argyll’s – intention to occupy the high ground of Clincart Hill, so he sent a force of horse supported by arquebusiers riding behind every cavalry trooper to cross the Clyde at the old wooden Brig of Glasgow (demolished in 1850). Kirkcaldy placed his men in the hedges, cottages and gardens of Langside village It is believed that the battle of Langside on 13 May 1568 began at 9am. The vanguard of Argyll’s force charged along a road in an undisciplined mass, encountering Moray’s disciplined spearmen and arquebusiers who poured a steady fire into the ranks of the advancing enemy.

  Mary’s commander in chief Argyll appears to have had no battle plan other than to engage his enemy; he simply believed that superiority of numbers would bring him victory. His colleague, a Hamilton whose name is not recorded, tried to force his way through Langside Village only to be met by a steady, withering fire from Kirkcaldy of Grange’s arquebusiers in their places of concealment. Many of Hamilton’s men were killed or wounded but he pressed forward only to be confronted by Moray’s left wing placed on rising ground. Moray fought a defensive action, his spearmen holding their own, while Morton’s Border pikemen attacked Hamilton’s vanguard. Both sides engaged in a desperate push-of-pike until Argyll’s right wing began to give ground. Sensing victory, Kirkcaldy of Grange brought up reinforcements and broke through Argyll’s ranks while Moray, having repulsed Mary’s cavalry, drove forward against Argyll’s centre. The Marian forces were disintegrated and swept down the slopes of Clincart Hill. Mary watched the spectacle from a spot about a mile away from Langside, knowing she had been defeated.

  The battle of Langside lasted about forty-five minutes. Some 300 of Mary’s troops were slain; Moray’s losses were unquantified but were probably much fewer. The site of Langside is commemorated in an impressive fifty-eight-feet-high monument surmounted by a lion, with one of its front paws resting on a cannon ball. The Battlefield Monument was erected in Battlefield Road, Langside, now a suburb of modern Glasgow.

  A dispirited Mary, Queen of Scots, turned her horse south by way of Dumfries to the shore of the Solway Firth. On 16 May 1568 Mary crossed the Border to Workington, Cumberland. She would never see Scotland again. Mary spent the remaining eighteen years of her life in England, a prisoner of Elizabeth I; she occupied her years engaging in unrealistic plots against Elizabeth until that Queen’s patience finally ran out in 1587. In February of that year, Mary, Queen of Scots was found guilty of treason against Elizabeth. On 8 February Mary was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle. She met her death with great dignity. There was no outcry in Scotland for revenge.

  Notes

  1 Oliver, A History of Scotland, p.172.

  2 Hamilton Papers, vol. ii, p.256.

  3 Hamilton Papers, op. cit., p.108.

  4 Pugh, Swords,
Loaves and Fishes: A History of Dunbar, p.23.

  5 Pugh, op. cit., p.23.

  6 Hamilton Papers, op. cit., p.379.

  7 Hume Brown, History of Scotland, vol. ii, p.16.

  8 Pitscottie, Chronicles of Scotland, vol. ii, p.441.

  9 Hume Brown, op. cit., p.18.

  10 Patten, Expedicioune into Scotland.

  11 Brotchie, The Battlefields of Scotland, p.131.

  12 Pugh, op. cit., p23; Hume Brown, op. cit., p.31; Brotchie, op.cit., p.132.

  13 Pugh, op. cit., p.23.

  14 Patten, op. cit., quoted in Brotchie, op. cit., p.130.

  15 Hume Brown, op. cit., p.83; Oliver, op. cit., p.188.

  16 Pugh, op. cit., p.27.

  17 There is an interesting story on George Gordon’s captivity in Dunbar. During his incarceration, Mary had signed a death warrant – not authorized by her – which some enemy of Gordon had slipped into a sheaf of documents which Mary signed unread. (The culprit may have been her half-brother, Lord James Stewart.) Fortunately for Gordon, his jailer at Dunbar, Simon Preston of Craigmillar refused to carry out the execution without Mary’s personal confirmation of the warrant. Mary cancelled the death sentence and Gordon became one of her most loyal supporters. (Pugh, op. cit., p.27.)

  18 Pugh, op. cit., p.29.

  19 Diurnal of Occurrents, pp.105 – 6.

  20 Pugh, op. cit., p.31.

  21 CSP Scot.,vol. ii, No.523.

  22 For four centuries Bothwell’s mummified body was on display for the cost of a few pence until, in the latter half of the twentieth century, Scottish tourists complained to the Danish authorities that the remains of a Scottish nobleman should be given a Christian burial. The Queen of Denmark finally ended the gruesome practice and arranged the burial of Bothwell’s remains. (Pugh, op. cit., p.33 and note 99, p.392.)

  23 Hume Brown, op. cit., p.113.

  24 Diurnal of Occurrents, p.130; Tytler, History of Scotland, vol. vi, p.36.

  Chapter 9

  Civil Wars: 1594 – 1654

  The reign of James VI and I (1578 – 1625) is probably the most important of all the reigns of the Stewart or Stuart dynasty between 1371 and 1625 in that it saw the union of Scotland and England under one monarch, when James succeeded Elizabeth I in 1603 and became James VI and I. During his time as King of Scotland, James’s reign was similar to that of his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, in two respects. The first was that both reigns were beset by religious conflicts; the second is that there were few pitched battles fought. Both Mary and James were fortunate to have been spared the battles which had been a feature of the wars of independence. James VI’s minority (1567 – 78) was not dissimilar to those of several of his forebears; like other Stewart kings who ascended the throne as children, his was beset by lawlessness, division and disorder largely caused by feuding nobles.

  Much of the unrest in Mary’s and James’s reigns can be attributed to the adoption of Presbyterianism as Scotland’s state religion; rather than fighting in the name of Mary, then James, the conflict was between Catholic and Protestant, although not exclusively so, as Catholic fought Catholic, Protestant fought Protestant, often spuriously in the name of the reigning monarch. During James’s minority, no fewer than three regents – the Earl of Moray, James’s half-uncle, then the Earl of Mar and finally the Earl of Morton – ruled Scotland. In 1570 Moray was assassinated by George, 6th Earl of Huntly whose family had been a thorn in Moray’s side for years; Mar died of disappointment in 1572, ‘the maist cause’ of his death being ‘that he loved peace and could not have it’.1 Morton resigned on account of his unpopularity in 1578, then was executed for treason in 1581. All three regents experienced difficulties with those Catholic nobles who remained loyal to the deposed Mary, Queen of Scots. Countless conflicts between the King’s party (James) and the Marian party (Mary) brought destruction and death; these conflicts involved the besieging of castles, destruction of property, forfeiture of lands and titles, execution, exile and the spilling of (mostly) innocent blood. As if this was not enough, there was an ever-present danger during James’s reign – the spectre of the return of Roman Catholicism, either from within Scotland herself or from the Continent, chiefly in the person of Philip II of Spain, champion of the Catholic faith. At least James, like his mother, could draw some consolation from the fact that he experienced only one battle – that of Glen Livet in 1594. Although Glen Livet was fought between Highland clans, it cannot be considered a clan battle, outwith the scope of this book; it was a conflict between Catholic and Protestant, the last attempt of the adherents of Rome to re-impose Catholicism as the state religion of Scotland. To understand how Glen Livet came about, we need to look at the political situation in Scotland between 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada and 1594. The unrest was brought about by certain Catholic Scottish nobles intent on restoring the ‘True Faith’ to Scotland with the help of Philip II of Spain.

  After the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and Philip’s attempts to topple Elizabeth I from the throne of England, letters came into the possession of the English Queen written by the Catholic Earls of Huntly and Errol and addressed to the Spanish King. Huntly and Errol expressed their regret that the Armada had failed and promised assistance from Scotland in any future attempts by Spain to invade England. Elizabeth sent the letters to James VI, no doubt expecting the Scottish King to deal with his rebel subjects. The letters were a source of embarrassment to James whose policy had been to maintain a balance between his Protestant and Catholic subjects as evenly as public opinion would suffer. However, the clamour from the Protestant clergy for him to take action against the Earls of Huntly and Errol was such that James was forced to take punitive action against the rebels; in all conscience he could hardly ignore what was, in effect, treason. Huntly and Errol were subjected to a form of court hearing and Huntly was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle for a few days. In April Huntly, Errol and the Earls of Crawford, Montrose and Bothwell gathered a force of 3,000 to challenge James’s authority. Huntly made a show of menacing the royal army at the Bridge of Dee, near Aberdeen, but, on learning that James himself was at the head of the army, Huntly and his confederates backed down, disbanding their forces. The conspirators were tried by the Privy Council in Edinburgh but received light sentences; James was continuing his policy of keeping a balance between those among his nobles who were adherents of both religions. Huntly, Crawford and Bothwell were imprisoned for a few months, then set free in September. For a time it seemed that peace had broken out; then the nation’s attention was distracted (then as now) by the royal wedding between James and Anne of Denmark in 1589.

  The intriguers did not abandon their cause. Huntly, Errol and others continued to defy the royal writ and maintain their contact with Spain. Matters came to a head in July 1594 when Huntly and his confederates were declared guilty of acts of open rebellion which could not go unpunished. Then a Spanish ship arrived in Aberdeen bearing an envoy from Pope Clement VIII with letters for James and a sum of money; the Papal envoy was attended by three English Catholic priests. The Aberdeen magistrates seized the Papal envoy and his companions, taking them into custody. When Huntly and his associates learnt of this, they threatened to put the town to the torch and the sword if the prisoners were not freed. The Aberdeen town fathers had little option but to comply. James was forced to act, embarking on what was, in effect, a civil war which he had resolutely striven to avoid. In September he summoned his loyal nobles to raise an army and confront the rebels. Progress was slow, too long for the Presbyterian clergy; frustrated by and indignant at the delay, the ministers of the Kirk persuaded the nineteen-year-old Archibald Campbell, 7th Earl of Argyll to take up arms against Huntly in the field.

  Glen Livet

  On 3 October 1594 Argyll confronted Huntly and Errol near Glen Livet, Banffshire. The subsequent battle was fought at Altnachoylachan, or Altchonlachan, about two miles east of Glen Livet. Argyll’s army of 10,000 outnumbered Huntly’s by five to one; however, the former’s Highla
nd levies were lightly armed and wore no protective clothing other than plaids and bonnets. Huntly’s force of 2,000 included heavy cavalry armed with lances and protected by chain mail; Huntly also possessed several artillery pieces which he would put to effective use.

  Argyll was inexperienced in warfare but, assisted by the Earl of Atholl, he was confident of victory. Argyll’s scouts had ascertained the strength of the opposing force, so he felt that his army would gain victory by sheer weight of numbers. However, apprehensive about Huntly’s cavalry which could counter-balance his numerical superiority, Argyll held a council of war on 2 October, the night before the battle; he was advised to await the arrival of James VI and his army or, conversely, to stay his hand until Clans Fraser and Mackenzie from the north, then the Irvines, Forbes and Leslies from the Lowlands arrived, bringing cavalry. The impetuous youth declined to follow this sensible advice, no doubt offered by Atholl.

  On 3 October Argyll took up position on the declivity of a hill between Glen Livet and Glenrinnes. His right wing comprised men from Clans Maclean and Mackintosh commanded by Sir Lauchlan Maclean; the left wing contained Clans Grant, Macneil and Macgregor led by Grant of Gartinbec; the centre was held by Clan Campbell led by Campbell of Auchinbreck. This, the vanguard, numbered 4,000, Argyll commanding the reserve of 6,000 in the rear. Huntly’s van consisted of a mere thirty horse commanded by the Earl of Errol. Huntly led the bulk of his force behind this thin line of steel. Before the battle commenced Huntly’s men prepared themselves by celebrating Mass and communion, making their confessions to a priest, just as Bruce’s soldiers had done at Bannockburn. Their weapons were then sprinkled with holy water and a cross was placed on their armour, signifying they fought in defence of Christ.