The tenacious survival of the Douglases despite James V's revenge plot

Those “squabbles” reached a peak at the Battle of Arkinholm on May 1, 1455. I showed last week how James, the 9th Earl and leader of the Black Douglases, rose in rebellion against King James II – understandably, as the king had murdered his brother William, the 8th Earl. James II was known as “fiery face” because of birthmark, but also perhaps because of his legendary temper that led him to kill William Douglas at Stirling Castle in the most brutal manner.

The 9th Earl went to England where he tried and failed to raise support for his uprising. His three brothers stayed and fought the forces of the king at Arkinholm, near Langholm. It is still disputed whether the leader of the Red Douglas side of the family, George Douglas, 4th Earl of Angus, actually commanded the troops against his relatives, but with Borders families such as the Carruthers, Maxwells, Scotts and Johnstones also keen to throw off the Black Douglas yoke, there was no doubt about the outcome.

READ MORE: The tenacious survival of the Douglases despite the plotting of a king

Two brothers of the 9th Earl met grisly ends. Archibald, the Earl of Moray, was killed in the fighting, and his head was removed and presented to King James. Hugh, the Earl of Ormonde, was captured and executed shortly afterwards, while John Douglas, the Lord of Balvenie, fled to England. The power of the Black Douglases was destroyed that day at Arkinholm.

The excellent douglashistory.co.uk website quotes a verse on the matter:

Pompey by Caesar only was undone,

None but a Roman soldier conquered Rome;

A Douglas could not have been brought so low,

Had not a Douglas wrought his overthrow.

With their stronghold of Threave Castle captured, James II acted swiftly to ensure that the troublesome Black Douglases could not rise again – he had the Scottish Parliament pass an act of attainder against the 9th Earl and his lands were forfeited to the Crown. James promptly rewarded the Earl of Angus for his loyalty by giving the leader of the Red Douglases much of the old Douglas territories – he was also given the title of Earl of Douglas.

James II was killed by an exploding cannon at the siege of Roxburgh Castle in 1460. The man who was wounded beside the king and who took over the Scottish forces and successfully captured the castle from its English occupiers was George Douglas, Earl of Angus and Douglas.

The triumph of the Red Douglases was complete when the Earl placed the crown on the head of the new king, James III, during his coronation at Kelso Abbey. He is reported to have said: “There! Now that I have set it upon your Grace’s head, let me see who will be so bold as to move it.” The earl kept his word to the young king, but others of Clan Douglas would not.

The Earl was made Lieutenant of the Realm by Queen regent Mary of Gueldres, and was ambassador to England before his death in 1463. His son and heir Archibald has come down to us through history for his nickname, “Bell-the-cat”, though in his own lifetime he was known as the Great Earl. As the 5th Earl of Angus he was appointed Warden of the East March by James III, which made him responsible for defending Scotland’s east border against the threat of English invasion.

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A year later in 1482, Angus joined a group of nobles who rebelled against James III. It was the Earl 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 because of his low birth status. Angus seized Cochrane by the gold chain round his neck and then had him and his associates hanged from Lauder Bridge.

Angus also briefly joined the insurrection of Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany, but sided with James III once again in 1483. It was a much more serious rebellion by the nobles in 1488, as they were joined by the king’s own son, James, Duke of Rothesay. Angus fought against James III at the Battle of Sauchieburn, which ended with the king’s mysterious murder and the Duke taking the throne as James IV.

Angus flipped sides several times, including his treasonable dealings with England, and was in and out of favour with James IV – who eventually made him Lord of Bothwell, but took control of the Douglas castles at Tantallon and Hermitage. Otherwise, Angus seems to have led a charmed life until the Battle of Flodden in September, 1513, in which both his son and heir, George, Master of Douglas, and his second son Sir William Douglas, were killed. Angus was overcome with grief and died the following month.

His successor as Earl and thus chief of Clan Douglas was Archibald Douglas, about whom I will write extensively in my next series on men and women who shaped Scotland without ever being on the throne. Suffice to say he was an intriguer who married James IV’s widow Margaret Tudor, sister of King Henry VIII, with whom Angus formed an alliance. Margaret soon wanted a divorce and she sided with the powerful Duke of Albany against her husband, who found himself charged with high treason and exiled in France and London. He survived that charge and his English allies, including Henry VIII against his own sister, supported his return to Scotland – where he served as regent for the boy king James V.

The Earl was a harsh man and effectively imprisoned James V, who grew up to hate the Douglases with a vengeance which he exacted when he assumed his full kingship in 1528. It did not matter that he was the stepson of the 6th Earl of Angus, though he was still only a teenager, James V wanted punishment for the entire Douglas family.

One of those upon whom he vented his considerable ire was Janet Douglas, Lady Glamis (above), whose story exemplifies the fate of many of those Douglases who were close to the Scottish monarchs. In 1528, she was accused of treason but was not prosecuted for that – instead she was accused of poisoning her husband, John Lyon, 6th Lord Glamis. But, the case never went to court, not least because the couple had been happily married until his death in late 1527. Their noble friends knew this, and some simply refused to act as jurors.

Without her husband’s protection, she and her brothers became fair game for James V and his cronies. The king had outlawed her Douglas brothers and she was accused of giving them shelter and food, contrary to royal decree. Lady Janet was summoned before the parliament to answer charges of assisting the Earl of Douglas in an “insurrectionary design” against the king. The case did not proceed, due to a lack of evidence, and the still young and beautiful Lady Glamis was freed – making the King and his crew more determined than ever to take the fullest action against her.

She married her second husband, Archibald Campbell of Skipness, in 1532 – only for both of them to be implicated five years later in another alleged plot against James V. Campbell was thrown into a dungeon in Edinburgh Castle. With her family and retainers tortured to gain evidence against her, Lady Glamis was duly convicted of planning to poison the king, who then accused her of witchcraft against his person.

A history of the Douglases calls it “one of the most profligate and atrocious outbursts of private revenge which anywhere disfigure the records of authentic history”. It is hard to disagree that Lady Glamis was entirely innocent and that James V simply went too far in his obsession against Clan Douglas. Even those who sat in judgement, knowing the awful penalty for her crimes, asked King James to be merciful, but he was not for it, and said she should suffer death by being burned alive at the stake at Edinburgh Castle.

The Douglas history records: “A little time after the sentence, she was delivered into the hands of the executioner, to be led out to suffer. The constancy and courage of this heroine are almost incredible, which astonished all the spectators. She heard the sentence pronounced against her without the least sign of concern; neither did she cry, groan, or shed a tear, though that kind of death is most frightful to human nature.

“When she was brought out to suffer, the people who looked on could not conceal their grief and compassion; some of them who were acquainted with her, and knew her innocence, designed to rescue her; but the presence of the King and his ministers restrained them. She seemed to be the only unconcerned person there; and her beauty and charms never appeared with greater advantage than when she was led to the flames; and her soul being fortified with support from heaven, and the sense of her own innocence, she outbraved death, and her courage was equal in the fire, to what it was before her judges. She suffered those torments without the least noise, only she prayed devoutly for divine assistance to support her during her sufferings. Thus died this famous lady with a courage not inferior to that of any of the heroes of antiquity.”

Her son John Lyon, 7th Lord Glamis, was only 15 or 16 at the time and he, too, had been arrested and imprisoned. James V commanded that he be forced to watch his mother burn. Her husband Archibald Campbell was killed trying to escape from the Castle.

As we shall see in that promised future column, the 6th Earl of Angus had major influence in the events surrounding Mary, Queen of Scots, but chief among his actions was being the father of Lady Margaret Douglas, his only legitimate child by Margaret Tudor. She married Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox, and their son was Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, the mother of James VI and I who brought about his personal union of the thrones of Scotland and England.

The Red Douglases continued to flourish in royal service, although subsequent Earls of Angus had their disagreements with the Stuart monarchs. The religious upheavals of that era saw them in peril at times, largely because of the 10th Earl of Angus’s conversion to Roman Catholicism that saw him placed under house arrest.

His son William spent several years on the Continent for health reasons, but he returned to the court of King Charles I and seems to have become a favourite of the king, being made the Marquess of Douglas during the king’s visit to Scotland for his somewhat delayed coronation in 1633. He fought for the Royalist side in the War of the Three Kingdoms, but ended up being imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle and also paying huge fines to Oliver Cromwell. As his son and heir died while he was still alive, the Marquess was succeeded by his grandson, James Douglas, whose main claim to fame is that he was a close associate and privy councillor to both Charles II and James VII and II.

That brings us to next week’s final part of the series which will feature one of the most famous legal battles in Scottish history, the Douglas Cause, and I will show how this great clan ended up without a chief.