James I and the seeds of a king's coming downfall

As far as I know, no-one is celebrating the anniversary of that event which took place on May 24, 1424, despite it being a pivotal point in Scottish history and James I being an ancestor of the current King Charles III.

Wait a minute, I hear some learned readers say, did his reign not start in April 1406? Indeed it did, when his father, King Robert III, died suddenly at Rothesay Castle. So why the long delay in getting him crowned?

Blame the English, of course, but also a few self-serving Scots, especially James’s uncle the Duke of Albany, who had designs on the throne for himself.

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James was born at Dunfermline to King Robert and his wife Annabella née Drummond some time in 1394. Tradition has it that he was born on the feast day of Saint James, July 25, but there is also evidence that he was born in December of that year.

He was never meant to be king. His elder brother Robert died in infancy and the declared heir to the throne, David, Duke of Rothesay, met a mysterious end – most probably murdered while imprisoned at Falkland in 1402 by the aforesaid Duke of Albany.

Not surprisingly, the ailing and possibly demented King Robert III feared for the life of his remaining son who was now his sole heir.

A plan was hatched for James to go to the court of the King of France, and in April 1406, the 11-year-old James set out for France by ship, having had to camp out on the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth to evade leaders of the Douglas clan, bitter opponents of Robert III.

He was captured by English pirates off Flamborough Head who handed him over to King Henry IV of England, a man James came to admire and who had him educated so that Scotland’s king became a scholar and poet.

James spent 18 years in mainly genteel captivity until his release was achieved through the payment of a £40,000 ransom – to be paid in yearly instalments – under the Treaty of London in 1423.

I have written before about James I in captivity, and especially his marriage to Joan of Beaufort which he chronicled in his remarkable autobiographical poem The Kingis Quair – one of the seminal works of Scottish literature.

Since no historian can say exactly what happened, I am not going to dwell on the big question of James’s time in captivity, whether he fought for Henry V in France while Scots fought for the French making them traitors to their king, as Henry decreed – suffice to say it is certain that James accompanied the body of Henry home from France after he died of dysentery in 1422, while those Scots who did fight for France stayed on, only for most of them to die under the command of John Stewart, Earl of Buchan, and Archibald, 4th Earl of Douglas, who were defeated in the Battle of Verneuil in 1424 by English forces under John, Duke of Bedford.

Today, I am going to concentrate on what happened after James was crowned at Scone, and next week I will tell of his horrific end.

James did not waste time in asserting the kingship that continued to be disputed by Albany’s son Murdoch, the king’s own cousin, and other nobles.

The Douglas family had lost many men and Earl Archibald in France, otherwise they would have been James’s leading opponents. Instead that dubious “honour” fell to the king’s own family, the Stewarts of Albany.

First of all, however, he set about sorting his own finances. Within days of being crowned, a Parliament was held in Perth – the first presided over by James as King.

He had Parliament pass an act under which gold and silver mines in Scotland – they were numerous at the time – became Crown property.

This is the actual wording of the Act: “Gif ony myne of golde or silver be fundyn in ony lordis landis of the realm and it may be provyt that thre halfpennys of silver may be fynit owt of the punde of leide the Lordis of Parliament consentis that sik myne be the kingis as is usuale in uthir realmys.”

Note that the final phrase translates as “as is usual in other realms”. James had clearly learned well from England’s kings, and now that he had the finance, he was able to start dealing with those opponents to his rule.

He acted relatively swiftly and very brutally.

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In March 1425, on his personal orders, James had his cousin Murdoch Stewart, 2nd Duke of Albany, arrested. James knew Murdoch well – they had both been imprisoned in the Tower of London for two years.

Nevertheless, James had Murdoch and two of his sons, Walter and Alexander, and Murdoch’s father-in-law the Earl of Lennox arrested for general lawlessness.

At his coronation the previous year, James had knighted Alexander in a bid to pacify the Albany faction but it clearly did not work as they encouraged an open rebellion which broke out in the lands of Lennox and Argyll, which gave James the excuse to accuse the quartet of treason.

They were tried for various crimes including extortion and all four were beheaded in front of Stirling Castle (above). A third Albany son, James, went into exile in Ireland.

The trial in front of hand-picked judges was a fix, of course, and no one was under any illusion that this was James acting against his opposition while also lining his pockets – three earldoms and their incomes were forfeited to the Crown.

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His obsession with money grew as James had the parliament institute a tax to pay for his ransom to England, but of the £29,000 raised, he only sent £12,000 south and kept the rest to spend on Flemish cannons and the building of Linlithgow Palace.

This was just the start of a career of avarice that would rebound on James I. Find out more next week.