by R J M Pugh
Despite his immaturity and inexperience, Argyll had chosen favourable ground for his fight. To neutralize Huntly’s heavy cavalry, Argyll placed his men on the declivity of a hill with a boggy marsh at its foot; he also had pits dug to discomfit Huntly’s horses. The battle commenced with Huntly and Errol advancing at a slow but steady pace up the hill. Then Huntly ordered his cannon to open fire, the target being Argyll’s yellow standard. Many of Argyll’s Highlanders had never experienced an artillery bombardment before; the cannon threw them into confusion which Huntly was not slow to exploit. Charging Argyll’s force with their cavalry, Huntly and Errol added to the confusion among the terrified Highlanders. The ensuing battle lasted for two hours, both sides fighting bravely and vigorously until at length Argyll’s centre and left wing were completely broken. Argyll’s fatalities were 500, Huntly’s a trifling fourteen, although there were many wounded. Glen Livet was a victory won by well trained, well equipped cavalry, infantry and artillery against irregular infantry.
As for James VI and his ‘relief’ army, it would appear that the King had no intention of joining Argyll; his army remained in Dundee, where he received news of Argyll’s defeat. Only then did he march north to destroy Strathbogie Castle and the House of Slains, respectively the chief residences of Huntly and Errol. The rebels Huntly and Errol were permitted to go into voluntary exile in Flanders and Germany, where they would remain until 1597 when James considered it safe for their return to Scotland. In 1599 James, who had always had a high regard for the Earl of Huntly, elevated him to the rank of 1st Marquis of Huntly, a signal honour which was testimony to the extent of the royal favour.
The second half of James’s reign was spent in England where he quickly stamped his authority when he ascended the English throne in 1603. During the years 1603 to his death in 1625, James showed that he had inherited the heady ambitions of his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots. At his coronation on 25 July 1603 James I of England sat on St Edward’s Chair in Westminster Abbey, the same chair Edward I, ‘Longshanks’, had commissioned in 1301 and under which had been placed the Stone of Destiny taken from Scotland by Edward I in 1296. From the outset of his reign in England, James favoured the establishment of a Great Britain but neither the Scots nor the English shared his enthusiasm. The Scots thought it a betrayal of the independence for which they had bled for three centuries, a loss of their identity; the English did not relish being unequally yoked to a financially poor and what they saw as a backward nation; the latter was hardly true, as Scotland possessed no fewer than four universities at the time.
James returned to Scotland only once during the remainder of his life, in 1617. In London he surrounded himself with Scots, alienating his English courtiers and particularly those of the Catholic faith who showed their anger by attempting to rid themselves of the king in 1605; the Gunpowder Plot of 5 November that year was not intended to destroy parliament but James himself. (Even today, we retain an indelible, if somewhat picaresque image of Guido ( Guy) Fawkes wearing a wide-brimmed hat, conspiratorial cloak, tight hose and folded down boot-tops, looking for all the world like the melodramatic villains so beloved of the Victorian vaudeville stage, his furtive, whitterick (Scots for weasel) eyes darting from side to side. Who, however, remembers King James so graphically?)
James VI and I was regarded as the wisest fool in Christendom because his critics said he never spoke a foolish word, nor ever committed himself to a wise act. In his native Scotland there was still unrest, chiefly in the Western Isles, where James attempted to civilize the chieftains by exhorting them to abandon the old ways and traditions; the local populace reacted vigorously, refusing to become ‘Lowlanders’.
When James died in 1625 he was succeeded by his son Charles (1625 – 1649). Barely five foot tall, Charles I was pious, studious, aloof and distant, which made him seem abrupt and lacking in charm; in addition, he was afflicted by a stutter and was slightly lame. In one matter, he was resolute; like his father before him, Charles believed that he ruled by Divine Right, not subject to the whims and vagaries of the prevailing political climate. It was this and, to a lesser extent, his tinkering with and meddling in the form of religious worship in both England and Scotland that would bring him to grief. James had re-introduced episcopacy in Scotland, a policy his son would support. After 1603 any attack on the bishops would be considered as an attack on the king himself.
Charles I visited Scotland in 1633, some eight years after his coronation in Westminster Abbey. At his coronation in Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, the crown of Scotland was placed on his head by a bishop wearing what John Knox had once called Papist rags – white rochets (surplice-like vestments worn by bishops and abbots), white sleeves and, horror of horrors, a crucifix to which the bishops present bowed as they filed past. Charles thus not only alienated his lowly subjects but his clergy and nobles as well; the latter were particularly incensed by the passing of Charles’s Act of Revocation which annexed all church and Crown lands that had been alienated since the accession of Mary, Queen of Scots in 1542. Hardly a single Scottish noble escaped the loss of lands, teinds (taxes) and heritable rights. The political significance of this was to drive the nobility into a union with the Presbyterian clergy, thus restoring an alliance which, during the period of the Reformation, had been so disastrous for the Crown. The consequences of this would bring down Charles I, particularly on the field of battle.
In 1636 Charles issued his Code of Canons to bring the Scottish Kirk further into line with the Anglican Church; hot on its heels was Archbishop William Laud’s New Book of Common Prayer, which would replace Knox’s Book of Common Order. Laud’s book was published in 1637 and was immediately branded Popish. On Sunday 23 July 1637 James Hannay, Dean of St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, ascended the pulpit to read from the prayer book which resulted in a riot among the congregation. According to legend, one of the female worshippers heard a gentleman in the pew behind her utter ‘Amen’ to what Dean Hannay had been reading aloud. The elderly lady’s name has come down to us as Jenny Geddes; she turned round angrily to confront the gentleman, reputedly shouting ‘Traitor, dost thou say Mass at my lug [ear]?’ and struck him on the face with her Bible. Then, for good measure, she reputedly hurled her creepie [a low stool or footstool used in church] at the head of the Dean himself. A large part of the congregation stormed out of St Giles’ Cathedral to continue their protest in the High Street. (It is now thought that the entire episode was stage-managed beforehand, possibly including Jenny Geddes’s dramatic outburst.) The ferment quickly spread through all of Scotland, leading to the signing of the National Covenant in Greyfriars Churchyard, Edinburgh on 28 February 1638. The country was on the brink of civil war.
The National Covenant was the reaffirmation of the Confession of Faith drawn up in 1581 by the Scottish reformers abjuring Popery in all its forms. The signatories to the 1638 Covenant were required to swear an oath to maintain religion in the same state as it was in 1580 and to reject all innovations introduced since that time. In time, it would be followed by the Solemn League and Covenant, a contract entered into by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and commissioners from the English parliament of 1643, having as its object a uniformity of doctrine, worship and discipline throughout Scotland, England and Ireland according to the word of God and the example of the best reformed Churches. Copies of the 1638 Covenant were sent to every parish in Scotland where some of the more ardent of its supporters signed the document in their own blood.
First Bishops’ War
Early in 1639 Charles I intended to gather an army of 30,000 and invade Scotland; lacking the support of his English Protestant subjects who sympathized with the Scots, Charles could raise only 10,000 troops. The Scots responded by taking steps for the nation’s defence; the forces against Charles were raised by Alexander Leslie who had fought in the army of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and held the Swedish rank of field marshal. The ‘war’ was bloodless save for a skirmish known as the Trot of Turriff where, i
n Aberdeenshire, the Earl of Huntly’s supporters routed a few Covenanters. Leslie led an army numbering 18,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry to Duns Law to confront Charles’s expected invasion force. Neither side wished to resort to battle, so a compromise was reached; Charles and Leslie signed a peace treaty known as the Pacification of Berwick on 18 June 1639, Charles agreeing to restore the liberties the Covenanters demanded.
Second Bishops’ War
The ink was hardly dry on the Berwick treaty when each party to it accused the other of breaching its terms. Charles complained that the Covenanters had not disbanded their army as promised; in turn the Covenanters accused Charles of not having evacuated Berwick and other places on the English side of the Tweed. Bickering continued until the spring of 1640 when Charles decided he would draw the teeth of the rebellious Scots once and for all. He summoned an English parliament and demanded that it subsidize an army to subdue the Covenanters; it soon became apparent that the English were unwilling to support Charles in the coercion of his Scottish subjects. On 17 April 1640 Alexander Leslie was appointed commander in chief of the Scottish army being raised by the Scottish parliament’s War Committee; by July Leslie commanded a force of 20,000 well equipped and well provisioned soldiers. On 20 August Leslie crossed the Tweed and entered Newcastle where he drove away a force of Charles’s supporters at Newburn-on-Tyne on 30 August. From the outset Leslie made it clear that his quarrel was not with the English nor had he come to northern England to plunder, let alone fight a battle. His quarrel was with Charles I, his intention being to defend the desire of both Scotland and England – to obtain a lasting settlement and peace on both sides of the Border. Leslie made the Scots’ demands clear to Charles; nothing less than the abolition of episcopacy and recognition of the National Covenant would satisfy Scotland. Charles prevaricated, then consented to meet with the Scots in his own time and on his own terms. As part of the negotiations, the Scots insisted that he subsidize their army to the tune of £850 a day while it remained on English soil.
The English Long Parliament met on 3 November 1640 but was in no great hurry to conclude a treaty with Scotland, regarding Leslie’s army as part of that of England; Leslie’s continuing presence in the north gave the English parliamentarians exactly what they wanted – a firm hold on Charles and his madcap enterprises. Finally, a settlement was reached on 10 August 1641; the Scots demanded – and secured – the impeachment and execution of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford who had urged Charles to put down the rebellion with a firm hand. Another gain for the Scots was the fall of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury the hated author of Laud’s Liturgy with its strong leanings towards Roman Catholicism. Laud was impeached and imprisoned in the Tower of London until 1645, when he was declared guilty of high treason and beheaded. At the close of the so-called Second Bishops’ War, the Scots could rightly say that they had achieved all their demands. However, despite this success, the Covenanter party was in truth divided; Archibald Campbell, 8th Earl of Argyll demanded nothing less than the deposing of Charles, while James Graham, Earl of Montrose, one of the first to sign the National Covenant, had drawn closer to the King, plotting against Argyll. For this he was put in prison; Montrose would not forget this insult to his House easily. Montrose’s head was Presbyterian but his heart was with the Royalist cause. In August 1641 Charles arrived in Edinburgh to address the Scottish parliament, anxious to convince its members that he was a man of peace. His efforts failed miserably. Charles had not come to Scotland as a peacemaker but to establish a following to support him in his planned dismissal of the Long Parliament. Argyll was now appointed leader of those opposed to Charles; for purely political reasons, Argyll was elevated to the rank of Marquis, while Alexander Leslie was created Earl of Leven.
In November Charles returned to England; he would never set foot in Scotland again. We need not dwell overlong on his quarrel with the English Long Parliament and his attempt to arrest five MPs, which brought about the English Civil War, although the remainder of this chapter is devoted to the effects of that bloody conflict in so far as it affected Scotland. In the third week of August 1642, Charles raised the Royal Standard at Nottingham. The main question the English parliamentarians sought answer to was this: on which side would Scotland fight? Whatever their grievances against Charles, the Scottish people preferred monarchy to any other form of government; after all, Charles was a Stuart and a Scot with an impressive pedigree and whose forebears had resisted England in the past. A considerable percentage of those zealots who had signed the National Covenant would take Charles’s side in the conflict. And yet … There were those in the Covenanter or Kirk party who dared to look into the crystal ball of the future, rightly deducing that if Charles triumphed over the English parliamentarians, Scotland would be his next victim. This was not a prospect universally accepted north of the Border; many men like James Graham, 1st Marquis of Montrose did not subscribe to this view but, in this aspect of his character, Montrose followed the dictates of his heart and his emotive beliefs; a brilliant military strategist and tactician, he fought in the name of the King, abandoning the Covenanters and repudiating his signature on the National Covenant he had signed only four years before. When Charles gained a slight advantage over the parliamentary army at Edgehill on 23 October 1642, it seemed he might again become master of England, then Scotland. It was obvious to most Scots on whose side they should fight. Both Royalist and Covenanter parties began to lay their plans. Montrose offered to raise an army for Charles on receipt of a royal commission to that effect; in the eyes of the English Royalists Montrose was seen as little more than an opportunist adventurer. On 2 August 1643 the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland – the leading vox populi mouthpiece which had virtually replaced the Scottish parliament – decreed that Scotland would be party to a bond of mutual defence and action with England, which had been mooted by the Convention of Estates appointed by parliament the previous month. Both Houses of the Scottish parliament endorsed the bond which became known as the Solemn League and Covenant; the General Assembly and the Convention offered the new Covenant as an alliance with the English parliament. It was not the kind of treaty the English would have preferred but with Charles’s victory at Edgehill the previous autumn, they were hardly in a position to quibble over, let alone dictate, terms. There were conditions, however; the Solemn League and Covenant demanded no less than reformation of the religion of the entire British kingdom ‘according to the word of God’ as the purest form of worship – meaning, of course, uniformity of doctrine and polity according to the reformed Kirk of Scotland. The English read the words but had no intention of heeding them; on 25 September 1643 the English parliament formally accepted the new Covenant in the interests of furthering their war with Charles I. As mentioned above, it is outwith the scope of this book to discuss the several battles fought on English soil during the course of the English Civil War. The rest of this chapter will concentrate on those killing fields in Scotland which were occasioned by that war fought for Charles I by James Graham, Marquis of Montrose during his brilliant campaign of 1644-45, the ‘Year of Miracles’.
On 1 February 1644 Montrose received Charles I’s commission he had so ardently sought – appointment as the King’s Lieutenant Governor of Scotland. Charles had been in correspondence with the Marquis of Antrim who had promised to raise an Irish army of 10,000 which would invade the west of Scotland and be commanded by Montrose. In the event only 1,600 arrived, led by a giant of a man, Alastair or Alasdair MacColla MacDonald whom Montrose and others would call Colkitto, a corruption of the Gaelic for one who is left-handed. (From now on, MacDonald will be referred to as MacColla.) MacColla was a fierce warrior rather than a soldier; he originated in Antrim and like the rest of the Clan MacDonald, harboured an intense hatred of the Clan Campbell whose chief was Archibald Campbell, 1st and only Marquis of Argyll, a fervent Covenanter who hated Charles I and all he stood for. MacColla arrived in Scotland with Irish mercenaries recruited from Antrim, Ulst
er, Dublin and Connaught, eager to engage the forces of Argyll rather than serve Charles I.
On 30 August 1644 Montrose raised the King’s standard at Blair Atholl. It is perhaps appropriate here to comment on Montrose’s eagerness to entertain an Irish (Catholic) force and lead it against his own countrymen, men who were little more than savages who would give and expect no quarter in the coming battles. Montrose embraced MacColla and his band, salving his conscience by insisting that he was obliged to do so under his sworn duty to Charles I; furthermore, it was Charles himself who was responsible for the recruitment of MacColla and his Irish mercenaries. Montrose was thus able to swallow his pride, believing that he should fight his campaign with the resources his sovereign King had provided. Montrose was a realist even if he was compelled to enter the service of Charles by the promptings of his heart; he knew that the Irish auxiliaries had no enthusiasm whatsoever in supporting Charles I; MacColla and his men came to Scotland for plunder and revenge on the hated Clan Campbell. MacColla’s men were warriors rather than soldiers, possessed of great courage, endurance and determination, making them a formidable force in Montrose’s army. In point of fact, the Irish were Montrose’s army until he was able to recruit men from the northern clans to his cause. (Despite Montrose’s spectacular victories in a single year, Charles, that unhappy King, suffered resounding defeats at Marston Moor and Naseby; in the latter battle, on 14 June 1645, Oliver Cromwell and his New Model Army decisively defeated the royal army.)