The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain (13 page)

Too hazardous, indeed. Surrey was an experienced commander, and it was obvious to him that the Scots’ position was very strong, so strong as to deter an attack. Accordingly he determined to outflank the Scots, march round behind them, and position his army between them and the Tweed. This manoeuvre was itself risky, for the Scots might choose to attack his line of march. But the alternative for Surrey was to withdraw and refuse battle. That course too was dangerous, all the more so because he was short of provisions, and had reason to fear that some of his levies would make for home if there was no immediate requirement to fight a battle. As it was, he effected his march successfully in the early morning of Friday, 9 September. James responded by abandoning his position on Flodden Edge, turning his army about to take up a position on Branxton Hill. So it happened that the two armies were now in place, the wrong way round as it were, the Scots with their backs to England, the English with theirs to Scotland. This made battle unavoidable. Nevertheless, the Scottish position remained formidable. They held the high ground. Their troops were fresh, while the English were wearied by their march; and they were better provisioned. Surrey would have to launch an attack uphill. That prospect was less daunting than it had been when the Scots were dug in on Flodden Edge, but still unattractive.

James’s plan was simple and, in theory, sound. The Scots artillery would open fire, and this would provoke Surrey to attack up the slope of Branxton Hill. When they did so, James would, at the right moment, launch his pike columns forward, in the approved ‘Allmayne fashion’. With the advantage of the ground, they would surely push the disordered English back, till retreat turned into rout.

That was the theory. Reality was different. The heavy Scottish guns, designed for siege work, had a slower rate of fire than the lighter English ones. Moreover, the apparent advantage of the ground turned against them. They were firing downhill, and their cannonballs, instead of bouncing and doing damage in the ranks of the English army, embedded themselves in the soft earth. Meanwhile the English gunners, at perhaps 600 yards range (twice the effective distance of the longbow) began to direct their fire at the phalanxes of Scottish pikemen.

James was now confronted by a choice he hadn’t expected. He could either withdraw his army behind the ridge of the hill, out of range of the guns, and hope that the English, seeing this, would respond by advancing up the slope. But orderly retreat was a risky manoeuvre, and it was probable he couldn’t trust his troops, inexperienced and at best half-trained, to carry it out. The alter native was to order his pikemen to advance in an all-out attack – another risk but one in accordance with advanced military thinking and Swiss practice. ‘The best remedy’ – for an army under artillery fire – was, according to Machiavelli in his treatise
The Art of War
– to make ‘a resolute attack on it [the artillery] as soon as possible’.
¹³
In theory, again, the advantage lay with the more numerous Scots.

James himself led one of the ‘battles’, columns of pikemen. He has been criticised for this, on the grounds that it made it impossible for him to direct the course of the encounter. But on the one hand the Scots expected their king and his chief nobles to take the lead in the battle and expose themselves to danger, and on the other, once this sort of battle was joined there was very little that a commander remaining in the rear on the hill could do to influence its course.

As it happened, while the Scots triumphed on one wing and were routed and fled for home on the other, the decisive battle was in the centre, where the King himself was to be found. What determined its outcome was not faulty tactics on James’s part, but the lie of the land, for at the bottom of the hill there was a little stream invisible from the top, which the pikemen had to cross to get at the English on the other side. The stream was not wide – a man could leap it – but what is an insignificant obstacle to an individual may be formidable to an army. The momentum of the advance slackened, then was lost altogether. Instead of charging into the English ranks in a powerful column, the Scots did so irregularly, and the battle in the centre became a desperate hand-to-hand encounter in which the versatility of the English bills had an advantage over the long Scottish pikes. At some point, perhaps quite early in the struggle, the men in the rear of the Scottish columns seem to have lost heart, and fled. This enabled the English archers, previously ineffectual (partly because the wind and rain reduced their range), to get round the Scottish flank and fire from close range into the heaving mass.

So the battle turned against the Scots. Instead of the promised comprehensive victory, they were now under huge pressure, fighting for their lives and with no obvious way of retreat to Scotland. James himself is said to have led a charge – perhaps by now a desperate one – against the spot where Surrey’s banners flew, and to have been ‘slain within a spear length from the said Earl of Surrey’. In the thick of the fighting few probably saw him fall. The struggle went on till night fell, while beyond the field English cavalry pursued fleeing Scots.

In the words of the old poem:

For all the lords of their land were left them behind,

Behind Brymstone in a brook breathless they lie

Gaping against the moon, their ghosts were away.
¹⁴

Besides the King, his favourite bastard son, the Archbishop of St Andrews, Alexander
¹⁵
was killed, as were the Bishop of the Isles, two abbots and the Dean of Glasgow. Nine of Scotland’s twenty-one earls fell at Flodden, and fourteen other lords of Parliament. At least 300 knights and lairds were among the dead. The Royal Burgh of Selkirk sent eighty men to Flodden; only one returned home.
¹⁶

James’s body was found with ‘diverse deadly wounds’. It was stripped and taken to Berwick, where it was embalmed and placed in a lead coffin, which was later brought to London and placed in the Carthusian monastery of Sheen, near Richmond, until Henry VIII decided where his brother-in-law, the King of Scots, should be buried. It seems to have been a matter of no great moment to him, and the coffin was left at Sheen in a storeroom. It disappeared when that monastery was dissolved more than twenty years later, and no one knows where the bones of Scotland’s Renaissance king found their last resting place.

Chapter 8

James V (1513–42): People’s King or Tyrant?

James V was the first Scottish king for five generations to die in his own bed, which he did abruptly, aged only thirty, of no discernible cause. It is perhaps proper that his death should have been mysterious, for much in his life is baffling. His character, like that of his grandfather James III, was enigmatic; all the more so because, although we have more information about the fifth James, it is difficult, even impossible, to determine what manner of man he was.

On the one hand he was remembered fondly by the common people, stories about his habit of travelling in disguise among them being told for generations after his death. On the other hand he frequently showed himself to be harsh to the point, it has been suggested, of sadism, bitterly resentful, unforgiving to his enemies, greedy and covetous, willing to pervert justice when his interest was at stake. He alienated most of the Scots nobility, and eventually found himself unable to assemble a loyal army. ‘Taking into account his vindictiveness, his ruthlessness and his cruelty, as well as his acquisitiveness, he must,’ Gordon Donaldson judged, ‘have been one of the most unpopular monarchs who ever sat on the Scottish throne.’ He quotes an observer who, in 1537, declared: ‘So sore a dread king and so ill-beloved of his subjects, was never in that land. Every man that hath any substance fearing to have a quarrel made to begin therefore.’
¹

Only eighteen months old when his father was killed at Flodden, he never knew what it was not to be king. His mother, Margaret Tudor, was made regent and tutrix – that is, guardian – of her infant son. This testifies to her strength of character, given that her husband had been killed in a war against her brother. As regent, her power was provisional, her authority necessarily more limited than that of a king. Unlike a reigning monarch, an unpopular or incompetent regent could always be removed without threatening the stability of the state. All kings had to pay heed to the opinions of their Council, but a regent, being no more than first among equals, could be successful only if he or she pursued policies that had general approval.

The position of a female regent was especially precarious. There was no tradition of being governed by a woman, and it was generally accepted that a widow who had inherited great estates would marry again. When the widow was a queen and mother of the infant king, her choice of husband was politically important. Margaret married again in 1514, with what some considered indecent speed. Her new husband was Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, the grandson of old Bell-the-Cat. Few had much regard for him; one of his uncles had called him ‘a young witless fool’. The marriage was immediately unpopular with other magnates. Prompted by them, the Estates formally demanded that Margaret be deprived of both her position in the Council and the guardianship of the young King. In her place they summoned John Stewart, Duke of Albany, from France, where he had lived all his life, and appointed him governor of Scotland. He was the son of James III’s turbulent brother Alexander, and so the great-uncle of the little King. Fortunately Albany was a very different man from his violent and treacherous father, being sensible, public-spirited and trustworthy. Though he was heir presumptive to the throne, he had no ambition to occupy it, partly perhaps because he had been brought up speaking French and was fluent in neither Scots nor English. Next in line of succession was James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, another grandson of James II, but he did not dispute the appointment of Albany and may indeed have been one of those who proposed it.

Flodden had been as disastrous a battle as any in Scotland’s history, but it did not lead either to panic or a change of policy. Indeed, before Albany’s arrival from France, there were even tentative plans to renew the war the following year, though in the weeks after the battle, the Council, fearing an English invasion, gave orders for the fortifications of Edinburgh to be extended. A new wall was built that enclosed the suburbs on the southern side, including the convent of Greyfriars, the church of St Mary-in-the-Fields, and the country houses of rich merchants, lawyers and other notables. Portions of this Flodden Wall still stand, but the precautions proved unnecessary. Surrey made no attempt to follow up his victory. He had cleared the Scots out of England and that was enough. Besides, his own army had been badly mauled too, and he at once dismissed most of the feudal levies, smugly telling King Henry how much money he had saved him by doing so. In Scotland, talk of a new campaign evaporated, rendered unnecessary, even if ever practical, by the announcement of a peace treaty between England and France.

The years of James’s minority were dominated by the shifting alliances among the nobility. Inasmuch as any consistent thread can be discerned, it took the form of argument between those who held by the French alliance and those who favoured an accommodation with England. Some were motivated by patriotism, a consideration of what was best for Scotland; others, perhaps more numerous, by personal ambition. Those who promoted an English alliance could expect to be well rewarded by Henry. Given his background, it is natural that Albany should have stood by the Auld Alliance, but it is characteristic of the confusion and uncertainties of the time that the Queen Dowager, Margaret, should have belonged first to one party, then the other. In 1515, after her unpopular marriage, she and Angus withdrew to England, where she gave birth to a daughter, Lady Margaret Douglas.
²
However, while Albany was temporarily absent in France, where he had gone to attend to his estates, Margaret and Angus were able to return to Scotland, hoping to re-establish their political position and leaving their infant daughter in the care of her uncle, Henry VIII. Soon, though, a quarrel broke out between the couple, partly because Angus had seized control of his wife’s revenues, partly because of his infidelity. They separated, the Queen Dowager now expressing her hatred for her husband,
³
and despite being English herself, she joined the pro-French party. This weakened Angus’s position as a rival to Albany, but as a great nobleman and the chief agent of the English king in Scotland, he retained a deal of authority. Yet being wayward and quick-tempered, he soon fell out with almost everyone, even the Earl of Arran, despite their shared preference for an English alliance. In 1520 the feud betwen the two noblemen boiled over with a running battle in the capital between their followers, when Arran’s men were driven out by the Douglases; it became known as ‘Cleanse the Causeway’ and was symptomatic of the turbulence of these years of the King’s minority.

Albany returned, revived the pro-French party, made two unsuccessful raids into England, which cost him much support among the nobility, and in 1524 left Scotland for ever, returning to France, where he would act as the Scottish ambassador till he died in 1536. But he also served the French king, Francis I, acting as his envoy to the Pope, and arranging the marriage of the Dauphin, the future Henry II, to the Pope’s niece, Catherine de Medici (previously proposed as a bride for the young King James). While there he also obtained papal approval in 1527 for the annulment of Margaret’s marriage to Angus. Her brother, Henry VIII, already embroiled in his attempt to secure an annulment of his own marriage to Catherine of Aragon, which would enable him to marry Anne Boleyn, must have envied the ease with which his sister had been freed of an unwelcome husband.