James V

Jamie Cameron, R.A. MacDonald

• Publisher: John Donald
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781904607786
• eBook ISBN: 9781788852449
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

James V suffered the fate of many a son of a famous father in being somewhat overshadowed not only by his father James IV but also by his internationally renowned daughter Mary Queen of Scots. But no-one would deny the importance of his reign, embracing as it did the establishment of the Court of Session, the birthpangs of religious dissent, and the growth of royal power to such a remarkable extent that this king could leave his kingdom for nine months in 1536-7 without fear of rebellion. Jamie Cameron concentrates on James V's style of government and relations with his nobility, and challenges the widely held view of a vindictive and irrational king, motivated largely by greed, who antagonised most of his leading magnates and met his just deserts when they refused to support him in 1542. This book offers a different view, and presents us with a rounded picture of a king whose approach to government, in spite of some personal defects, closely resembles that of his supposedly more popular father; and, like James IV himself, retained impressive magnate support to the end of his reign.

CHAPTER ONE

‘Ill Beloved’? James V and the Historians

The received view of James V is of a king who was very successful at making money: this was commented upon by Lesley and Buchanan, writing in the latter part of the 16th century, and again by Donaldson and Mitchison four hundred years later. Indeed these latter two historians have considered the pursuit of wealth to be the prime driving force behind all of James’ policies.¹ A quick look at the account books for the reign confirms this impression. Total revenue in 1530–31 was under £24,000 Scots. In 1539–40 it was over £50,000 Scots, almost four times as much as it had been in 1525–26.

Casualty income doubled between 1530 and 1542, while Household costs and other expenditure rose to keep pace with this income.² Other sources of revenue were available to the king in the form of taxation (of the Church, burghs and laity); two vast marriage dowries (together worth almost £170,000 Scots); and the appointment of his illegitimate sons to vacant benefices (perhaps yielding £10,000 Scots each year).³ James’ expenditure on royal palaces was partially financed from casualties, but largely through taxation of the Church.⁴ A great proportion of this income did not even pass through the account books. When the king died in 1542, he left £26,000 in his treasure chest at Edinburgh castle, which sum was quickly dispersed in his daughter’s minority. Knox narrated how in his last few weeks James made an inventory of all his wealth.⁵

In the context of crown-magnate relations this pursuit is said to have made him extremely unpopular. Through blending financial extortion with unpredictable strikes against some magnates James managed to alienate the bulk of his nobility. By taking the counsel of members of the royal Household (and its subdepartment the Scottish church⁶) he denied the ‘natural’ advisers of the monarchy – the Second Estate – the opportunity of remedying the situation. The personal rule ended in humiliation at Lauder in the course of the last week of October 1542. There the decision was taken to disband the Scots host, despite the recent presence on Scottish soil of the ‘auld enemy’, engaged in burning Kelso abbey and the neighbourhood some twenty-five miles to the south east. The inference taken from this episode is that the lords of Scotland had been driven into refusing to acknowledge that most fundamental feudal concept – to support the king in war. Less than a month later, the fiasco of Solway Moss provided enough good copy for later historians to complete their demolition of James V’s political career; at Solway Moss, a Scots army was supposedly thrown into confusion by the efforts of a member of the royal household – Oliver Sinclair – to get himself appointed as its captain. The man supposedly in command – Lord Maxwell – was captured by the English together with two earls and four other lords. Later it was revealed that Maxwell allowed himself to be taken and in fact held Lutheran views. He and his magnate colleagues had taken advantage of the confusion to defect to the ‘auld enemy’. In Scotland James V’s chief regret was that Sinclair was also captured. James died of nervous exhaustion – or perhaps of a broken heart? Few regretted the passing of this ‘terrifying’ and ‘vindictive’ Stewart king.⁷

The verdict is that the king could not establish a working relationship with his magnates, hence their lack of support for him at the end of the reign. James V is seen as an example of complete failure.⁸ John Knox simply stated that some called him a murderer of the nobility.⁹ James’ approach to crown-magnate relations was epitomised in dramatic form in 1537 with the executions of the Master of Forbes and Lady Glamis, and emphasised in 1540 by the execution of James Hamilton of Finnart – all three found guilty of treasonably plotting regicide. The burning of Lady Glamis on the castle hill at Edinburgh has particularly excited the pens of some historians (though the contemporary chronicler Adam Abell was content merely to note the bald facts¹⁰). Their judgements have ranged from ‘an accident’ through to ‘almost unprecedented vindictiveness’.¹¹ Whether or not she was guilty (even if only on the balance of probabilities) is almost an afterthought. However, it was in the context of the events immediately following her death that James was dubbed ‘ill-beloved’ by the Duke of Norfolk.¹²

Other examples of James’ approach to politics include his exiling of the third earl of Bothwell and annexation of his lands; and his imprisonment of the fourth earl of Argyll in 1531, of the archbishop of St. Andrews, James Beaton, in 1533, and of the third earl of Atholl in 1534. This last earl, according to Pitscottie and Bingham, had in 1530 entertained the king in a palace especially built for the royal visit. There the king, together with his mother, Margaret Tudor, and the papal ambassador, were wined and dined (with gingerbread, claret and swans on the menu) at Atholl’s expense – which amounted to £3000 Scots in total.¹³ Additionally, James hounded the eighth earl of Crawford for nonentries – reducing him, in Michael Lynch’s words, ‘to a near cipher of the court’.¹⁴ In 1541 James attempted to relieve the disabled third earl of Morton of his earldom. Further down the social scale, in the early summer of 1530 the king warded several of the Border lords and lairds – including all three wardens of the Marches – and hanged the notorious Johnnie Armstrong of Gilknockie. The ballad recording this event inspired one historian to thunder that James had the attitude of a schoolboy. Possibly less well known is that in July of the same year, Lord Maxwell, newly out of ward, presented James with a fresh sturgeon, perhaps by way of a thank you for the gift of the escheat of the late John Armstrong.¹⁵

The Armstrong episode also reflects the image of James V as ‘the poor man’s king’ (first noted by Knox and Chalmers). Bishop Lesley and Buchanan credited James with ease of access to the poor and a sense of justice that drove him to act against their oppressors. This is partially borne out by several civil cases brought before the newly created court of session by ‘puir tenants’. James also revived the idea of legal aid, by appointing an ‘advocate of the poor’.¹⁶ Records show that the king visited the Borders in almost every year of the reign, and that justice ayres were frequent and lucrative. The wardens were urged to apprehend thieves, but it was Johnston of that Ilk – a trouble maker under Angus – whom the author of the Diurnal of Occurrents credits with the capture of George Scott of the Bog. Donaldson has used Scott’s execution by burning at the stake to illustrate graphically James’ cruelty rather than his sense of justice.¹⁷

The touchstone to crown-magnate relations throughout the entire personal reign of James V is considered by some historians to be the tension between the king and the Douglases. This theme is sustained throughout – from the sixteenth century author of the Diurnal, commenting that the king had a ‘great suspicion’ of where his temporal lords’ sympathies lay, to Dr. Wormald, who comments on the king’s ‘hounding’ of those bearing the surname Douglas.¹⁸ (It is perhaps worth noting here that in 1540 Patrick Hepburn, bishop of Moray, remarked on how James appeared to penalise those of the surname Hepburn¹⁹). Dr. Kelley considers that James’ malice in the last few years of the reign reached ‘illogical and alarming proportions’, shown by his gullible reactions on hearing rumours of Douglas-inspired treason.²⁰ Certainly the adult rule of James V caused a hiatus in the Scottish career of the sixth earl of Angus, and possibly it is the obviousness of this fourteen year gap which creates the touchstone. Magnate domination was totally incompatible with adult Stewart monarchy, as the Boyds had discovered in the reign of James III.²¹ Purging those families which held power in the minority was nothing new in James V’s reign. However, Dr. Emond has argued that the memory of earlier minorities was not a major influence on the consciousness of either the Douglases or the king.²²

The majority rule of James...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Editor’s Note
• Dedication and Acknowledgements
• Conventions
• 1. ‘Ill Beloved’? James V and the Historians
• 2. The Assumption of Royal Authority
• 3. The Struggle for Power: July to November 1528
• 4. Royal Victory?
• 5. The Assertion of Royal Authority in the Borders
• 6. Poisoned Chalice? The Douglas Connection
• 7. The Major Magnates and the Absentee King
• 8. National Politics and the Executions of 1537
• 9. The Rise and Fall of Sir James Hamilton of Finnart
• 10. Daunting the Isles
• 11. Wealth and Patronage
• 12. 1542
• 13. The Final Weeks of the Reign
• 14. ‘The Most Unpleasant of all the Stewarts’?
• Appendices:
• Bibliography
• Index
• Picture Section