Mary Queen of Scots { Part 1 of 2 }

 Mary, 1542-1554. Arran's Regency.

(Part 1 of 2)




James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, next heir to the throne by his descent from James the Second, was chosen Regent, but, as it was the Scots custom that the nearest of kin on the mother's side should have the care of the minor, the infant Queen was left in charge of her mother, Mary of Lorraine. The defeat at Solway Moss, and the death of the King, had left the people nearly as dispirited and defenceless as they had been after Flodden, and Henry the Eighth determined to get the kingdom into his power by marrying Mary to his son Edward, Prince of Wales.




To carry out his plans the better, he sent Angus back to Scotland, and with him the Lords Cassilis and Glencairn, and several other nobles, all pledged to do their best to place the Queen and the strongholds in the hands of Henry. These nobles were called by the English the Assured Scots, because Henry thought he could be sure of their help, but they were either unable or unwilling to give him the aid for which he had hoped. It was not till July in the next year that two treaties were drawn up at London: the one for the English alliance; the other agreeing to the English marriage of the Queen. But there was a strong national party, much set against any dealings with England; and, though the treaties were approved at one meeting of the Estates, it was plain that they would be thrown out at the next. The Regent tried to break them off, and Henry, greatly enraged, made [Pg 90]ready for war and seized some Scots ships which had been driven by bad weather into English ports. This was reason enough for the rejection of the treaties by the Estates. Shortly after, the "Assured Scots" changed sides and made a bond with the Regent; but Henry got a new supporter in Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, who, as he wished to marry Margaret Douglas, daughter of Angus, Henry's niece and ward, was eager to do anything to win Henry's favour.




War was declared at Edinburgh by an English herald, May 1, 1544, and an English army under Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, was sent by sea and landed at Granton. He was tasked to destroy Edinburgh and as many other towns and villages as he conveniently could, and he carried out his orders to the letter. He sacked and burned Leith, a wealthy trading town, set fire to Edinburgh, though no resistance had been made to him there, robbed the burghs on the coast of Fife, and then marched south to the Border, burning, slaying, spoiling, and leaving a wasted land behind him. The only resistance he met with was near the Border, where a division of his army which had been sent to Melrose to break open the tombs of the ancestors of Angus was routed at Ancrum by Angus himself and some of the Border lords. At the news of this success six hundred Borderers from the Scottish side, who had been fighting in the service of the English Wardens, changed sides and attacked their former brothers in arms. The rest of the nation then took heart, and a large force was mustered and brought to the Border but did nothing.


Before the traces of his former ravages had disappeared, just when the next harvest was ready for the sickle, Hertford appeared again at the head of a motley host, swelled by the Irish and by foreign hired soldiers, and repeated the wild work of the year before. The [Pg 91]invaders attacked and plundered the religious houses.

 The ruins of Kelso, Melrose, Dryburgh, Roxburgh, and Coldingham still bear witness to their zeal in carrying out the orders of their master. Towns, manors, churches, and between two and three hundred villages were left in ashes behind them. All this misery was wantonly inflicted without winning for Henry a foot of ground or a single new subject.

Two years passed, and again the sorely scourged country was visited by its old enemy. Hertford, now Duke of Somerset and Protector of England during the minority of Edward the Sixth, thought by one well-aimed blow to remove from the people their proud boast, the national independence.

 Two armies, the one led by himself and the other sent by sea, met at Musselburgh and threatened the capital. The Regent had mustered a large force to resist them, and the two hosts faced each other on opposite banks of the Esk. But the Scots very foolishly left their strong position and forced the English to a battle, in which they were again defeated with great slaughter, at Pinkie, September 10, 1547. After the battle Somerset went back to England and took the greater part of his army with him. As most of the strongholds were now in the hands of the English, it was thought best to send the Queen to France that she might be out of harm's way. The French sent six thousand men to help in driving out the English, a work that was not ended till 1550, when a short peace followed the nine years of cruel war. If we consider the difference of the times and the advance of civilization, the fiercest raids of Malcolm and of Wallace may be favourably compared with the misery wrought by Hertford in these three savage and unprovoked attacks.

The overthrow of the monasteries, the seizure of their revenues, and the other changes in religious matters carried out by Henry the Eighth in England, [Pg 92]had been approved by a large party in Scotland. They were eager to begin the same work there, for the Church, by her abuse of power and by her persecution of all who differed from her, was fast losing her hold upon the people. The first outbreak of the popular feeling was the murder of Cardinal David Beaton, the Primate, the leader of the French party in the state and the chief mover of religious persecution. In revenge for the burning of George Wishart in 1545, for preaching what was called heresy, sixteen of Wishart's followers murdered Beaton in his own Castle of St. Andrews, which they had entered by a stratagem, and which they held for fourteen months, setting at defiance all the Regent's efforts to retake it. It was only with the help of the French that they were at last obliged to give in and were sent to the French galleys. Among them was John Knox, who twelve years later became famous as the apostle of the Reformation among his countrymen. On the death of Beaton, Arran made his own ambitious brother John Archbishop of St. Andrews, in the room of the murdered Cardinal. The castle was destroyed.


End of part 1




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Broch Towers

Image
Towering Enigmas     For most of us, our home is a part refuge, part status symbol. That was just as true during the later Bronze and Iron Age, between 1,000 BC and 100 AD when Scotland was covered with the farms of settled and prosperous tribes. The centrepiece of these farms was a large roundhouse. In the south and east of the country, where timber was plentiful, these were usually massive wooden buildings with conical roofs rising up to 40ft above the ground. Unfortunately, centuries of intensive farming have wiped out all traces of them from the Lowlands. Further north, wood was less easily available, and so prehistoric farmers built their roundhouses from stone. These Atlantic roundhouses, so-called because they are most common around Scotland's Atlantic coasts, include the most imposing of all Iron Age buildings - the broch towers. Among the finest architectural achievements of prehistoric Europe, they are found only in Scotland. Some of the best examples are located in Orkne
Read more

Pictish Chains

Image
  The massive Pictish chains are our most striking examples of post-Roman jewellery. These precious and weighty symbols of power were made using recycled Roman silver. Just 10 of these chains have been found, mostly in Southern Scotland . They belonged to the tribal rulers, worn around their necks on important occasions. The heaviest, found in 1809 Caledonian Canal near Inverness, d uring the construction. It originally weighed just over 3 kg (6% lb). These marvellous objects, Scotland's earliest Crown Jewels, can be admired in the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Both Photos : The Whitecleuch chain,  was found in Whitecleuch, Lanarkshire, Scotland in 1869.
Read more

Declaration of Arbroath

Image
 Who was where,  as the seals were set? Who were the 40 people who put their seals to the Declaration of Arbroath to convince Pope John XXII that Robert Bruce was their rightful king? Some were Bruce supporters who had benefited from their loyalty to his cause in lands and titles. Nobles like Thomas Randolph, earl of Moray; Walter Stewart, the Steward of Scotland; Robert Keith, marischal of Scotland; James, lord of Douglas, the famous 'Good Sir James'; and Gilbert Hay, of Errol in Perthshire. Gaeldom, too, lent its support. Bruce in his hour of darkness had fled to the Celtic west where the MacDonalds sheltered him - and it is interesting to note, in the light of later history, that the Campbells were Bruce's kin.  Donald Campbell is listed, and his brother Neil, who had fought for Bruce since 1306, had married the king's sister, Mary. Others were more reluctant converts to Bruce—particularly those on the front line between Scotland and England in East Lothian where dip
Read more

The Blue Men

Image
  The Blue Men The three Shiant Islands, where the amazing find of the priceless gold tore was made, lie in the waters of the Minch, east of Harris, and are known in Gaelic as the enchanted isles. Strong tidal currents are not the only hazard facing those who venture into these waters. Legend has it that the Blue Men of the Minch live in the Sound of Shiant, and that they are either fallen angels who landed in the sea after being ejected from Heaven, or storm kelpies, Sailors are advised to treat the Blue Men with great respect. They should speak to the Blue Ones in rhyming Gaelic couplets, or else be dragged to the bottom of the Minch. A minister in the late 19th century recorded his meeting with one of them. He said "a blue-covered man, with a long, grey face, and floating from the waist out of the water came, so close, I could almost touch him.'' The strikingly attractive Shiants are a cluster of three islands and several islets made of basalt, formed by the eruption of
Read more

King MacBeth

Image
 MacBeth The real story of the man is far from Shakespeare's celebrated version. Indeed, MacBeth's 17-year reign was a prosperous and generous one, and he was to be fondly remembered as the last great Celtic king of Scots. The single most important fact we know about MacBeth is enshrined in a line borrowed from a Latin poem composed within a generation of his death. It says: "In his time there were productive seasons" - fertile tempus erat. Or, as Andrew Wyntoun, the 15th Century Scottish chronicler put it: "All his tyme was gret plenté/Aboundand baith in land and sé." Scots in MacBeth's time still believed in vestiges of sacral kingship, which meant that if calamity came upon the land in such disasters as war, famine, pestilence or atrocious weather, the solution was to sacrifice the king. MacBeth could thus have earned no higher praise. According to an Irish poem, he actually radiated the prosperity for which he was so famous - he was 'ruddy-faced,
Read more

Ystrat Clud

Image
 Ystrat Clud Britons are the ancestors no one seems to have heard about. They were Christians, spoke Welsh, worshipped at Govan, and ruled from Carlisle to Glasgow for 600 years. They are the nearest thing we have to a 'native' people! They called it Ystrat Clud - Strathclyde. Their church was at Govan, their hunting estate at Partick, their stronghold was Cadzow near Hamilton. They were the Welsh forefathers of today's Glaswegians. They were the Britons. Of all the peoples who made up Scotland in the early historic period, the group who are probably least well. Known to the average Scot was the Britons. This is odd, as these are the people who were here when written history began, the nearest thing Scotland has to a “native” people. When the Romans arrived in Britain, first in the 1st century BC, and then during their forays into Scotland in the 1st century AD, Britain was inhabited by Britons from south to north. The Romans called them Brittones. The languages spoken thro
Read more

Inchcolm Antiphoner

Image
SONGS ACROSS TIME Inchcolm Abbey, where the Antiphoner (a musical manuscript) originated. Scotland's Inchcolm Antiphoner is one of the most important yet neglected manuscripts in the history of early European music. It contains the only definitive remnants of the music of the Celtic Church, which was responsible for Christianising large areas of Europe. And it includes music probably composed in the 7th century, whose melodies are as unique as the organisation and practices of this ancient Church. The manuscript also shows that from an early date, Scotland's music has had a distinctive identity. It was written down, probably in the 13th century, on the island of Inchcolm, which lies in the Firth of Forth and can be clearly seen from Edinburgh. The music, known as plainchant, is the unaccompanied vocal music of the early Church, and it formed part of the soundtrack of the arrival of Christianity in Scotland. Plainchant was sung tirelessly by monks as a means of providing their d
Read more

Somerled

Image
 King of the Isles Somerled, King of the Isles, was feared and revered in equal measure in the 12th century, during which time he stood like a giant over Scotland's entire north-western seaboard. For many, his name has retained an almost mythical quality, while others have sought to portray him as an unruly rogue. In fact, he campaigned to defend the Scots kingship and government from what many saw as destructive foreign influences acting on kings David I and Malcolm IV. Somerled's kingship was in the heart of the ancient and distinctively Scottish Viking-Gael land, and he had Gaelic and Norse origins. His name in Gaelic, Somhairlidh, comes from the Norse sumarlidi meaning 'summer raider' or Viking, and his family was firmly among the ruling Celto-Norse chieftains of the Western Isles in the 11th and 12th centuries. Little is known about his early life, but by the 1130s Somerled had emerged as an important political figure. His royal titles were Ri Innse Gall, 'King
Read more

The Lost Battle

Image
The Lost Battle   Many theories exist over the venue for the Battle of Mons Graupius, but none is conclusive. More than a dozen places are rumoured to be the correct site—the more imaginative include the Gleneagles golf courses and the vicinity of Culloden. The name of the battle implies an isolated or at least distinctive hill, in other words, not the whole range of the Mounth. In the first printed edition of Tacitus's work, in 1480, a printer's error caused Graupius to appear as Grampius, which means the region Grampian took its name from a 15th-century spelling mistake.  Grampian Mountains link The very detailed description by Tacitus of the battle gives some clues regarding the lie of the land. The hill itself must have had a concave and rather steep slope. There was an open place for the Roman camp and a plain beside it, with wooded hills nearby and a Caledonian settlement within view.  Serious contenders for the site include: ● Duncrub near Dunning in Perthshire—may conta
Read more

Forgotten Folk

Image
 Forgotten folk Close to the centre of Glasgow is a collection of early Scottish works of art, which attracts experts from around the world. It is a national treasure, as important as lona, yet its historical importance has been neglected by the city fathers and the tourist industry. So much so, that 16 priceless stone carvings were scooped up and dumped as rubble. It seems incredible, but these symbols of our Christian heritage from more than a thousand years ago are virtually hidden, looked after by the minister and elders of Govan Parish Church. Few people knew about them. And the reason appears to be simply that no one knows about the people who created them, the Britonic people, who were the first Glaswegians. The belief is widely held that The when the Romans left Scotland, they turned off the lights, plunging us into centuries of barbarism known as the Dark Ages. Wrong. This was the time when the Kingdom of the Scots started to take shape with the blending of differing nations a
Read more