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| Flodden Field. |
The House of Stewart that ruled the Kingdom of Scotland from 1371 to 1715, including James VI becoming James I of England in 1603, were not strangers to betrayal, treachery and murder. The lure of power was all compassing especially if your name was James and you were a Stewart. King James I was murdered by his Uncle in 1437. His son, James II later invited the young Earl of Douglas to dinner and royal hospitality only to then behead him after the meal had finished. James II was later killed by an exploding cannon. His son, also called James became king when he was just 8 years old. He as James III, was later killed after the Battle of Sauchieburn in 1488. The opposing side wanted James III off the throne, in their ranks they had his son, the Duke of Rothesay. When James III was killed, possibly murdered, his son became James IV, he was 15 years old. In the space of fifty years Scotland had went through four monarchs.
It is a matter of speculation to wonder what influence the spectre of betrayal and death had on James IV as a young man. Only James’ grandfather, James II, can have any claim on being a popular monarch. Young James IV must have been aware of his family’s history and perhaps, in the wee small hours, he had moments when he must have wondered if tragedy was weaved throughout his DNA. There is a story told of young James that he carried such a great deal of guilt over his father’s death that he wore a belt of heavy iron links around his waist as a penance.
This week’s ballad is not, in the strictest sense, a murder ballad. However the stench of murder, betrayal and tragedy weave a potent and powerful scent around the life and death of James VI. Indeed the death of the king is what this week’s ballad is all about. In trying to dissect the song we see that behind great pain there lies great love. The disastrous Battle of Flodden in which more than 10000 Scots were killed are the ‘flooers o’ the forest’. That James’ death was seen as a desperate tragedy indicates how highly he had become regarded by his people. It is clear that James IV was regarded as the highest flower. This first part telling the story of James IV should be seen as prologue to the battle and the story of how this song came to be.
Let’s begin at the end as Dick Gaughan shares his haunting, powerful version of the song.
Part One – the Renaissance King.
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| King James IV of Scotland |
In 1497 the Spanish ambassador to Scotland, Don Pedro de Ayala visited the court of King James IV. He was later to write:
The King is 25 years and some months old. He is of noble stature, neither tall nor short, and as handsome in complexion and shape as a man can be. His address is very agreeable. He speaks the following foreign languages ; Latin, very well ; French, German, Flemish, Italian, and Spanish ; Spanish as well as the Marquis, but he pronounces it more distinctly. He likes, very much, to receive Spanish letters. His own Scots language is as different from English as Aragonese from Castilian. The King speaks, besides, the language of the savages who live in some parts of Scotland and on the islands. It is as different from Scots as Biscayan is from Castilian. His knowledge of languages is wonderful. He is well read in the Bible and in some other devout books. He is a good historian. He has read many Latin and French histories, and profited by them, as he has a very good memory. He never cuts his hair or his beard. It becomes him very well.
James was utterly obsessed with the ideas and thoughts coming out of the European Renaissance. He turned the Royal residence at Falkland from a turreted building into one of the finest renaissance palaces in Europe.
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| Falkland Palace |
James spent huge sums of money building up his army and navy including the building of his flagship, the Great Michael, built in Newhaven and was in 1511, the largest ship afloat.
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| The Great Michael |
King James IV was highly regarded by his people. He was strongly interested in the arts and developing cutlure across Scotland. He granted the Edinburgh College of Surgeons a royal charter in 1506 and he was a patron to the Scots Makars, the poets who included William Dunbar, Robert Henryson and Gavin Douglas who was the first writer in the North of Europe to complete a full translation of Virgil’s Aeneid.
James was also greatly interested in languages and was fluent in many. He is also believed to be the last Scots monarch who could speak gaelic. There are many stories of the King disguising himself and wandering amongest his people.
James introduced printing to Scotland in 1508. The first press was started in Edinburgh by Walter Chepman and Andrew Myllar. James also sought to reshape Scottish identity and to establish Scots as the official language of the court. Gaelic was still widely spoken, especially in the west and this decision let to great tensions between the lowlands and the highlands of Scotland. This is possibly the start of what led on to such incidents as the Glencoe massacre and the eventual clearances of the Highland in the 18th and 19th centuries.
There was an interesting war of words that reflected James’ desires to reshape Scotland, between two poets,
William Dunbar and
Walter Kennedy. Dunbar spoke and wrote in Scots, Kennedy in Gaelic. Dunbar wrote a caustic, angry poem attacking the language that Kennedy used (translated from Scots into English):
“Irish (i.e. Gaelic-speaking) rascal bard, vile beggar with your rags,
Pox-ridden craven Kennedy, coward like you kin,
Ugly and dried up, like a Dane on the rack
Misshapen monster, mad every full moon,
Renounce your rhyming, you scoundrel, you just rave,
Your treacherous tongue has taken a Highland strain,
A Lowland arse would make a better noise… “
James’ desire for all things Scots led to the Gaelic north and west being ignored. The strong heads and hearts of the Highlands and Islands did not take well to being ignored by their King and were soon turning on each other.
“Everyone in the wild west was out to grab whatever he could. In the bloodletting, old scores were settled: Angus Og, the upstart son who had tried to wrest control of the Lordship (of the Isles) from his father, was strangled to death by one of his own followers, an Irish harpist named Dairmaid O’Cairbre. O’Cairbre in turn was tied between two horses and ripped apart. It was a time remembered by the Gaels as Linn nan Creach, or the raiding time. The Highlands and Islands descended into the chaos of lawlessness. James IV must have looked on with grim satisfaction as the territory that had for so long defied the men of his blood now drowned in its own. In the end, the Lordship of the Isles visited upon itself a fate no king could ever have inflicted – it ate itself.” (1.)
James happily made himself the Lord of the Isles and the Highlands and Islands now become a fully fledged part of the Kingdom of Scotland. Flushed with feeling that he had achieved something that no other monarch of Scotland James married the daughter of the King Henry VII of England, Margaret Tudor. James also signed a treaty with Henry, grandly entitled the Treaty of Perpetual Peace in 1502. There was a sense that James felt he could do no wrong. He was regarded as one of the greatest monarchs in Europe. Indeed, in a powerful reversal of fortune, Margaret Tudor’s marriage to the House of Stewart was seen as bringing the Tudors much needed praise and status from European royality.
And yet, that lingering scent of death that whispered around James’ ascent to the throne reappeared as the winds of fortune started to change for James. As old Henry VII of England died, his young, brooding, ambitious son Henry VIII took the throne of England. The ink on the Treaty of Perpetual Peace starts to crack and fade. At the same time, across the English Channel, Louis XII was making major waves so much so that King Ferninand of Spain, the City-state of Venice, and even the Pope formed a ‘Holy League’ against him. The young and thrusting Henry happily joins them, clearly well before he started to get fed up with his wives.
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| King Henry VIII of England |
Suddenly James is caught between a rock and a hard place. Henry is James’ brother-in-law. Scotland and England have signed a Treaty of Perpetual Peace. And yet Scotland had also been in a military and polticial alliance with France for over two hundred years. Indeed as soon as young Henry had became King of England, Louis of France had fired off a letter to James reminding him of his obligations under the alliance.
In 1513 Henry invades France and the path to battle is set. All over Scotland the signal goes out for men to ready themselves for war. James who became King on a battlefield had set the course for his removal as King. The Flowering of Renaissance Scotland was about to end in butchery and death.
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