The powers behind the throne of Scotland: The story of James IV

Readers may recall that last week I described how James Stewart, Duke of Rothesay, became James IV after his father, James III, was killed or murdered during or after the Battle of Sauchieburn in 1488. James IV was just 15 when he took part in the rebellion that led to his father’s death, and for the remaining 25 years of his life, he did penance for his patricidal and regicidal actions.

He would become one of the best Stewart kings, but he depended on three remarkable men to run his government – Archibald “Bell the Cat” Douglas, the 5th Earl of Angus; Patrick Hepburn, the 1st Earl of Bothwell; and William Elphinstone, the Bishop of Aberdeen.

How these three exerted their influence tells us a lot about James IV and his court. They were not always friends and colleagues in having considerable influence over the king, and the rise of the Home family dates to that era, and their arrival on the scene diminished the power of the Douglases in particular.

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I have written before about Archibald “Bell the Cat” Douglas, who was the leader of the Red Douglas branch of the clan. As I wrote before in my series on the great lowland clans, in 1482, despite being made Warden of the Eastern March – effectively Scotland’s border guard – by James III, the Earl of Angus joined the group of nobles that rebelled against the king who had filled his court with ‘familiars’ of low birth instead of the aristocracy. It was Angus who offered to “bell the cat”, ie capture and kill the king’s favourite Thomas (or Robert, no one’s quite sure which) Cochrane – who the nobles despised. Angus grabbed Cochrane by the gold chain round his neck and then had him and his associates hanged from Lauder Bridge. The phrase “bell the cat” supposedly comes from Aesop’s fable The Mice in Council in which a group of mice agree to put a bell round the neck of a marauding cat except no one volunteers for the job, so that “belling the cat” came to mean an impossible task.

Accomplishing the supposedly impossible was enough to get Angus depicted next to Cochrane in the famous frieze of Scotland’s historical figures by William Hole in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.

There is also a painting on the douglashistory.co.uk website of his most famous exploit, the killing in single combat of Spens of Kilspindie, by which the Kilspindie lands became part of the Douglas possessions – in their joust, the unfortunate Spens was matching his mighty opponent until the metal plate guarding his thigh came loose and Angus promptly chopped off his leg so that Spens succumbed.

Having hanged Cochrane, Angus and his associate (the king’s brother Alexander Stewart, the Duke of Albany, who had made a pact with King Edward IV of England) made peace of sorts with James III, and were forgiven their treason. But having risen in a further rebellion against James III in 1488, this time Angus saw James IV crowned and as the most powerful noble around, he became one of the king’s guardians.

His time as a guardian did not last long. Young James was anxious to rule, and seems to have favoured others who would carry out his commands. Angus, meanwhile, seems to have become personally close to the young king who loved nothing more than gambling, hawking and hunting.

He is supposed to have taught James IV how to play cards, an affliction which lasted a lifetime. He also saw to the king’s romantic life – his own niece Marion Boyd was allegedly the king’s first lover. She certainly was his first admitted mistress and mother of his first two illegitimate children: Alexander Stewart, who would become Archbishop of St Andrews and Lord Chancellor of Scotland, and Catherine Stewart, who became the wife of the Earl of Morton.

ANGUS was very powerful, but others had their eyes on the powers he held. According to the clan’s official history at douglashistory.co.uk, Angus “soon lost influence, being superseded by the Homes and Hepburns, and the wardenship of the marches was given to Alexander Home.

It reads: “Though outwardly on good terms with James, he treacherously made a treaty with Henry VII around 1489 or 1491, by which he undertook to govern his relations with James according to instructions from England. He also agreed to hand over Hermitage Castle, commanding the pass through Liddesdale into Scotland, on the condition of receiving English estates in compensation.

“In October 1491, he fortified his castle of Tantallon against James, but was obliged to submit and exchange his Liddesdale estate and Hermitage Castle for the lordship of Bothwell.”

Yet by 1493, having no doubt made proper apologies, “Bell the Cat” Angus was back at court as chancellor of the realm, and in this capacity, he took part in James’s military expansion and the extraordinary dealings with Perkin Warbeck, the would-be usurper of the throne of England who resided in Scotland from 1495 to 1497.

This is one of the least understood but very meaningful episodes in the history of the Stewart/Stuart dynasty and I will devote a whole column to it soon. Suffice to say that neither James IV nor his henchmen the Earl of Angus and Patrick Hepburn, Lord Hailes, the 1st Earl of Bothwell, came out of the Warbeck intrigue smelling of roses.

Angus retained the office of Chancellor until 1498, but shortly afterwards he was in disgrace again and was confined to Dumbarton Castle. We know little about what happened to him between then and the Battle of Flodden Field in 1514 in which he lost his two eldest sons. Angus briefly served as counsellor to the Queen Regent before he died in November that year.

Patrick Hepburn, as Lord Hailes, had fought for James IV at Sauchieburn and is generally regarded as one of the leaders of the rebellion who may even have caused the death of James III – one of his retinues is supposed to have disguised himself as a priest and then slain the king. His choice of replacement king was certainly fortunate for him – he was made Earl of Bothwell as a reward for helping James IV, and went on to be a close advisor and ambassador for the young king.

The Hepburns were previously renowned for their roles in defending the besieged town of Berwick-upon-Tweed during the English invasion of 1482. They eventually had to desert the town which has been English ever since.

Though previously only a sheriff, the Earl of Bothwell rose high in the court of James IV. On September 10, 1488, he was made Lord High Admiral of Scotland, and he and King James set out to vastly expand the Scottish navy. Some years later Scotland would have a navy which included the Great Michael, then the largest warship afloat.

Bothwell was given the very powerful sheriffdoms of Edinburgh and Haddington in East Lothian, and was also made custodian of Edinburgh Castle.

His greatest power was as Master of the Royal Household, and in this capacity he was sent as the king’s ambassador to France for the renewal of the Auld Alliance in 1492 – the fourth such renewal in the 15th century, which led at first to a Scottish campaign of little more than harassment of the north of England.

Bothwell was accompanied on that trip to France by Robert Blackadder, the first Archbishop of Glasgow who had previously been Bishop of Aberdeen. That post was now filled by William Elphinstone, who had been a multi-lingual church diplomat, and who acted as ambassador for James IV in what were often little more than searches for a suitable bride for the king.

As anti-English feeling was high in Scotland at the time – due in no small part to the loss of Berwick – Elphinstone and other ambassadors went to France, Spain, and the various states that now make up the Netherlands, as well as the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I.

Elphinstone personally attended the emperor’s court, but most Scottish diplomatic forays at the time were attempts to seek a bride for the king that could be of any royal lineage other than English. Eventually, James would indeed marry an English princess, Margaret Tudor, who will feature largely in next week’s column.

James IV is often remembered as Scotland’s “Renaissance King”, and indeed he was a patron of the arts and sciences. Yet it was his alliance with Elphinstone, formerly a student and then a professor at Paris University, which produced two of the greatest achievements of the king’s reign – the introduction of printing in Scotland and the foundation of the University of Aberdeen.

It was the bishop who encouraged the printing press to be set up in the Cowgate in Edinburgh by Walter Chepman and Androw Myllar. Elphinstone himself contributed to, and may have paid for, their masterpiece known as the Aberdeen Breviary, which included works on the lives of 68 saints.

There’s a little-known link between that Cowgate printing business and the Earl of Angus – they printed the work of the poet Gavin Douglas who was the third son of “Bell the Cat” Angus and who, as well as becoming Bishop of Dunkeld, also translated the Aeneid of Virgil into Scots, which became a 16th century bestseller.

Bishop Elphinstone was very much the prime mover of the foundation of the University of Aberdeen, where he also erected the first stone bridge over the River Dee. With King James’s support, Elphinstone petitioned Pope Alexander VI for the right to build a university – which would be the third in Scotland after St Andrews and Glasgow.

The papal bull to found the university was issued in February 1495, and the Royal Charter was granted by James IV later that year. Due to its royal connections, the university was founded as King’s College and its first principal was a former colleague of Elphinstone at Paris, Dundee-born Hector Boece, later to write the Historia Gentis Scotorum, (History of the Scottish People), which was hugely popular in its time It remains an important source for historians to this day.

One of the first things to be taught at Aberdeen was medicine, in which James IV had a great interest. He was also very influenced by Elphinstone’s thoughts on education, and the bishop’s imprint can be seen all over the Education Act of 1496, which made it compulsory for the sons of barons and freeholders to be sent to grammar school at the age of eight or nine.

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I consider Bishop Elphinstone to be a hugely important figure and would recommend Leslie J Macfarlane’s book William Elphinstone and the Kingdom of Scotland, 1431 - 1514: The Struggle for Order as a superb read about the bishop.

Indeed, I agree with Gordon Donaldson writing in the Times Literary Supplement: “William Elphinstone’s career as a lawyer, patron of learning and printing, bishop, politician and ambassador touched most facets of Scottish life and Leslie J Macfarlane is at home in all of them.

“To the architecture of King’s College, Aberdeen, and to liturgical and bibliographical studies related to Elphinstone’s Breviary, Macfarlane brings warm enthusiasm as well as expert scholarship without shirking the laborious investigation of royal and ecclesiastical finance. His book is informative, stimulating and often absorbing.”

We all know how James IV’s reign ended at Flodden, and next week I will show how his widow and another Earl of Angus came to have a huge part in the development of Scotland and indeed, the history of the United Kingdom.