19 minute read
The House of Stuart
Words by JENNY ROWE
Survey three centuries of the kings and queens that saw Scotland rise above its clan divisions and move towards a future as rulers of the United Kingdom
RIGHT:
An engraving of the first Stewart king, Robert II W hile in England the Stuart dynasty did not begin until the Union of the Crowns in 1603, the family ruled the Scots from 1371, which makes 2021 the 650th anniversary of Robert II’s founding of the supreme House of Stuart.
The son of Marjorie, the eldest daughter of Robert the Bruce, Robert Stewart ascended to the throne when Robert I’s only son, David II, died. The Stewarts, historically crucial Bruce allies, were the hereditary High Stewards of Scotland (first officers of the king), and it is thought the surname developed from this title. It was Mary, Queen of Scots who introduced the variant spelling ‘Stuart’, because the French language rarely used the letter ‘w’; there are at least 20 spellings in use today.
The establishment of the Stewarts on the Scottish throne in the 14th century was the beginning of an epic royal line that saw assassination, rebellion, betrayal, incarceration, execution, and thankfully, a couple of altogether happier reigns that enjoyed relative peace and stability. Over their cumulative 343 years of reign, the Stuarts oversaw increased centralisation of the Scottish government through James I, the Renaissance ushered in by James IV, the Union of the Crowns under James VI and eventually a united Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain under Queen Anne.
By way of introduction to a new series spotlighting some of Scotland’s most illustrious and intriguing Stuart monarchs, here we present the royal line in full, beginning with Robert II and ending with the death of Queen Anne in 1714.
ROBERT II (1316-1390) R:1371-1390
A difficult birth at Paisley Abbey, west of Glasgow, sadly led to Robert’s mother Marjorie’s death. It is also thought to have been the cause of the future king’s visual impairment, for which he was nicknamed ‘King Blearie’. Nevertheless, he grew into a charming man that attracted many love interests; Robert had about 21 children to two wives and numerous mistresses. Though many were illegitimate, his prolificacy did much to strengthen the position of the family within Scotland, with the Stewarts holding more than half of the nation’s earldoms during his reign.
Made High Steward of Scotland at just 10 years old after the death of his father, Walter, Robert wasn’t made king until he was 54, when David II died aged 46. In the end his was a nominal kingship. His sons took the reigns while his daughters were strategically married off to powerful families; Isabella to a Douglas and Margaret to the Lord of the Isles. Robert died aged 74 and his eldest son John succeeded him.
TOP TO BOTTOM:
James I by unknown artist, after 1578; James II, by unknown artist, after 1578 ROBERT III (C.1337-1406) R:1390-1406
At 53, John Stewart became King Robert III, changing his first name because of its association with the unpopular King John Balliol of Scotland. Two years prior to his coronation, John was involved in a riding accident that left him lame and possibly damaged his mental state too. He struggled with clan rivalries over his 16-year reign, during which he was rarely the real ruler of the country. One notable clash occurred at the 1396 Battle of North Inch in Perth, when Robert III suggested a 30-man team of champions from the so-called Chattan and Quhele clans fight it out to the death. The last Quhele man standing swam across the Tay to safety, leaving the Chattan fighters victorious and relative peace in the area.
Meanwhile the king’s nearest and dearest were causing problems. His brother, Robert, Earl of Fife, created Duke of Albany in 1398, governed throughout most of his reign, except for three years (1399–1402) when Robert III’s eldest son, David, Duke of Rothesay, took his place. A disgraced Rothesay was imprisoned by Albany in Falkland Palace in 1402 – he died there under suspicious circumstances. The king’s second surviving son, James, was sent to France to save him from Albany’s clutches. Unfortunately, he was captured by English pirates, possibly with help from Albany’s men – the king died shortly after receiving this devastating news.
JAMES I (1394-1437) R:1406-1437
Though James had a rocky start, he certainly pulled his weight later in his reign. From the age of 12 James was prisoner and then ‘guest’ of Kings Henry IV and V in England until 1424. His extended exile was likely due to his uncle, the Duke of Albany’s, deliberate delay to pay his ransom – Albany was Regent in Scotland during most of James I’s absence. While the king waited, he became fluent in Latin and French and wrote his own poetry such as The Kingis Quair, a poem supposedly narrating the love story of James’s marriage to Joan Beaufort that is often attributed to the king.
However, between 1424-37 King James I was able to put into practice some of the other talents he had learned in England. A strong leader, James restored order to the Scottish government by taking power from the nobility (sometimes beheading them to be on the safe side). Popular during his reign, having improved the justice system for the common people, unfortunately it was not enough to avoid brutal assassination in his own quarters by a group of conspirators.
JAMES II (1430-1460) R:1437-1460
James II was only six years old when he succeeded to the throne after his father’s gory exit. Various Regents and co-Regents were appointed during his minority, which destabilised the country, undoing his father’s work. When he did finally gain control in 1449, he had to wrest power from three rival families: the Crichtons, the Livingstons and the Douglases. This was easier said than done. His unstable relationship with the Douglases came to a head when James II murdered William, 8th Earl of Douglas, in 1452. He was kindly exonerated by the Scots Parliament. The king’s unstable relationship with the Three years later he also confiscated the Douglas estates. Douglases came to a head when James II The money was put to good use. As murdered the 8th Earl in 1452 Charles Kinder Bradbury and Henry Steuart Fothringham note in their
comprehensive book of biographies, Stewart Heritage: “Like his English and French counterparts, [James II] set himself well above his nobles as an autocratic ruler, hailed by his subjects and by Parliament for the restoration of law and order in Scotland.”
JAMES III (1451-1488) R:1460-1488
Like his father, James III had a lengthy minority reign. However, unlike his father, he never managed to restore a strong central government when he eventually gained control in 1469. It was perhaps a case of surrounding himself with the ‘wrong’ people. James III was more interested in the arts than politics and frustrated nobles by picking talented though powerless commoners as his favourites, among them Robert Cochrane, an architect and Leonard, a shoemaker.
There were many rebellions, including those led by his brothers, Alexander, Duke of Albany, and John, Earl of Mar, whom he arrested on suspicion of treason. The latter was murdered, but Albany escaped to England, and in 1482 English troops entering Scotland forced James to restore Albany to his domains, while dissident nobles hung his unpopular favourites – without trial – at Lauder Bridge. In March 1483 the king recovered enough power to expel Albany, yet in 1488 the tables turned once more and James III’s own 15-year-old son, James, Duke of Rothesay, led two powerful rebel border families, the Homes and the Hepburns, against him at the Battle of Sauchieburn. The king’s army was defeated, and he died shortly afterwards, allegedly, and bizarrely, killed by an unknown assassin dressed as a priest.
James III frustrated nobles by picking talented though powerless commoners as his favourites, among them an architect and a shoemaker
JAMES IV (1473-1513) R:1488-1513
As summarised by Bradbury and Fothringham, James IV was “probably the most talented and successful of the Medieval Royal Stewarts and was a much-loved and respected king”. Though only 16, there was no need for a minority period. The circumstances of his succession were unusual, and James IV was the first to accept this: in penance for his part in the death of his father he wore an iron chain around his waist, which led him to be called ‘James of the Iron Belt’. He was a warrior by nature but had a more cultured side too: he was a keen linguist, scientist and historian. He even found time, between pursuits, to go undercover and in disguise to speak personally with his subjects, a tradition that his son, James V, would continue.
During his reign, James IV introduced printing into Scotland, having eagerly followed Caxton’s innovation in England. He also built up the nation’s navy and established a gun foundry at Edinburgh Castle. While internally stable, James did twice break a truce with England, the first time to support Perkin Warbeck, a pretender to the English throne. Fortunately, his marriage to Margaret Tudor in 1503, the eldest daughter of the English King Henry VII and sister to the future Henry VIII, strengthened relations. This match formed the basis of the Union of the Crowns 100 years later.
JAMES V (1512-1542) R:1513-1542
Thrown into the deep end at 17 months old, James V was James IV and Queen Margaret Tudor’s only child to survive infancy. During his minority reign, James V was essentially used as a pawn by pro-French and pro-English factions. After
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James III by unknown artist, after 1578; James V by unknown artist, c.1579
he assumed personal control of the government, he upheld Roman Catholicism against the Protestant nobles, allying his country with France with his two marriages to Madeleine of Valois and later Mary of Guise.
He was a cruel ruler, particularly in his later years, and a greedy one too. Bradbury and Fothringham remark that “during his reign, royal expenditure on luxuries, tours at home and abroad, jewellery, apparel and other items reached astonishing levels, funded by raids on the coffers of the Church, the dowries of his two marriages and profits from the administration of justice, customs and feudal rights.” One outcome of this was the remoulding of some of the jewels that today are known as the Honours of Scotland: James V had the sceptre lengthened in 1536 and the crown enlarged using gold from Crawford Moor in 1540.
In 1542, soon after his mother, Queen Margaret, had died, Henry VIII’s army defeated James V’s at the Battle of Solway Moss. Shortly afterwards James fell ill and died, just a week after the birth of his daughter and only surviving legitimate child: Mary, Queen of Scots.
MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS (1542-1587) R:1542-1567
Queen at just six days old, Mary was sent to France aged five, where she was brought up at the court of King Henry II and Queen Catherine de’ Médici. French was her first language and she married Francis, the eldest son of Henry and Catherine, in April 1558; in many ways she was a Frenchwoman rather than a Scot.
When Francis II ascended to the French throne, Mary was made Queen Consort of France and the nations were united. Her Tudor blood meant that she also had claim to the English throne: when Elizabeth Tudor became queen in November 1558, Mary was next in line. So, when the Roman Catholic Mary finally returned to Scotland in 1561, aged 19, she had to battle with Elizabeth’s hostility as well as an alienated nation, which had been reformed to Protestantism in her absence, and feuding Scottish nobles.
For a time the charismatic queen managed well (aided by her half-brother James, Earl of Moray) but her unpopular second marriage to her English cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, was the beginning of her fall from grace, which saw Darnley murdered in February 1567 and the queen imprisoned on an island on Loch Leven for almost a year during which she was forced to abdicate in favour of her one-year-old son.
When she escaped, Mary fled to England only to be incarcerated again, this time by her cousin Queen Elizabeth, for 18 years. Perceived as a beacon of hope by English Catholics, Elizabeth judged that Mary, Queen of Scots would remain a threat so long as she remained living and breathing.
Mary was executed in 1587 at 44 years old.
JAMES VI/I (1566-1625) R:1567-1625 [UNION OF THE CROWNS 1603]
The son of star-crossed lovers Lord Darnley and Mary, Queen of Scots, James succeeded to the Scottish throne aged 13 months in July 1567. He had four successive regents (the earls of Moray, Lennox, Mar, and Morton) and was well-educated as a child. Once free from their clutches, his chief aim, since Elizabeth I remained childless, was to lay his claim to the throne of England. By staying on the right side of her, even after the execution of his own
mother, James VI’s policy worked. He had been King of Scotland for 36 years when he became King of England and Ireland, thus achieving the Union of the Crowns in 1603. However, while James governed Scotland competently, his encounters with the English Parliament were more fraught.
Nevertheless, he accomplished much during his reign. He became a notorious witch-hunter, busted the Gunpowder Plot (1605), introduced a new translation of the Bible (1611); and wrote The True Lawe of Free Monarchies (1598), expounding his belief in the Divine Right of Kings. The outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48) in Europe meant that on James’s death in 1625, his barely ‘united’ kingdom was on the verge of war with Spain.
CHARLES I (1600-1649) R:1625-1649
The second surviving son of James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark, Charles’s poor health meant that when his father became King of England, he was left behind in Scotland. He maintained a Scots accent (and a stammer) throughout his life. Small, reserved and renowned for his good manners, he nevertheless had a stubborn streak, rarely mixed with ordinary people, and inherited from his father a strong desire for authoritarian rule and a distrust of the English House of Commons. There was friction from the beginning.
In 1629, the king dissolved English Parliament (for the third time) and ruled without one until 1640 in a period known as the Eleven Years’ Tyranny. He also got off on the wrong foot with the Scots. When he was eventually crowned there in 1633, he outraged them by conducting the ceremony with full Anglican rites, perceived as a threat by Scots Presbyterians. They were angered further in 1637 when Charles I imposed a new liturgy upon them. This led to the Bishops’ Wars (163940), marking the beginning of the English Civil War (more properly known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms), which is conventionally recorded as having begun in 1642, when Charles I declared war on the English Parliament.
Charged with high treason in 1649, Charles I was beheaded – like his grandmother – but his marriage to Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV of France, had at least produced two future monarchs, the to-be Charles II and James VII/II.
CHARLES II (1630-1685) R:1649-1685
Charles II was born in St James’s Palace, London, and proclaimed king by the Scottish Parliament in 1649. However, the English army under Oliver Cromwell defeated the Scots at Dunbar in September 1650, and in 1651 Charles’s invasion of England ended in defeat at Worcester, transforming him from king to fugitive. Hunted through England for 40 days, he made a desperate escape to France in October 1651.
The Restoration of the Monarchy took place two years after Cromwell’s death in May 1660, though Charles II’s reign was not plain sailing to say the least. He faced the plague (1665), the Great Fire of London (1666) and then the AngloDutch Wars (1665-7). In a similar fashion to his father, Charles
CLOCKWISE, FROM ABOVE:
Charles I by Sir Anthony van Dyck, 1641; Charles II after Peter Lely, c.1675; James VI and I by John de Critz, 1604; Mary, Queen of Scots by unknown artist, c.1610-15
A beacon of hope for English Catholics, Elizabeth judged her cousin remained a threat so long as she lived, so Mary was executed
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James VII and II by unknown artist, 1690; Mary II by Willem Wissing, c.1685; Queen Anne by Sir Godfrey Kneller, c.1705 dissolved Parliament in 1681 and ruled as an absolute monarch. Though Charles II had married the Portuguese Princess Catherine of Braganza, they had no children, and he was succeeded on his death in 1685 by his brother, James. (Charles did leave at least 17 illegitimate children by his various mistresses, the most famous of which was Nell Gwyn.)
JAMES VII/II (1633-1701) R:1685-1688
Exiled in France with his mother and brother, and later serving in both the French and Spanish armies, in 1668/9 James was admitted to the Roman Catholic Church. This panicked Parliament who tried hard to exclude James from succession by statute. Nevertheless, James came to the throne in February 1685. Soon though, there were rebellions led by the Duke of Monmouth in England and the Duke of Argyll in Scotland.
In 1673 James had married his second wife, Mary of Modena, an Italian Catholic Princess (described by James’s opposition as ‘an agent of the Pope’), and her pregnancy in November 1687, underlining the possibility of a Roman Catholic succession, was one of the main factors leading to his deposition in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Charles II had ensured that James’s daughters, Mary and Anne, were raised in the Protestant faith, and so Mary, with her husband, her first cousin William, were invited by the English Parliament to take the throne in February 1689 and therefore restore Protestantism and democracy. The Scots followed suit in May.
WILLIAM III/II (1650-1702) & MARY II (1662-1694) R:1689-1702
Born in The Hague in the Netherlands, William III of England, II of Scotland, and Mary II reigned jointly over England, Scotland, and Ireland. Their marriage smoothed ragged relations between England and The Netherlands, but they had no surviving children. Meanwhile, Parliament’s Bill of Rights in 1689 preventing Catholics from succeeding to the throne ensured that Mary’s sister Anne would become the next queen and limited the powers of monarchs – wishing to avoid history repeating itself – so that they could neither pass laws nor impose taxes without the consent of Parliament.
While the revolution in England was unopposed, in Scotland and Ireland there was armed resistance. In 1689 William and Mary also faced two Jacobite attempts to regain the throne, their supporters adamant that James VII/II’s son, James Francis Edward Stuart, and his descendants were the rightful monarchs of England, Scotland and Ireland (the movement took its name from the Latin form of James, ‘Jacobus’). In 1692, reluctant support for the newly established monarchy in parts of Scotland led to bloodshed when Alexander MacDonald of Glen Coe and some of his clansmen were coldly murdered in the Glen Coe Massacre.
QUEEN ANNE (1665-1714) R:1702-1714
The younger daughter of King James VII of Scotland, II of England, Queen Anne married Prince George of
Denmark. Although she had 16-18 pregnancies, her only surviving child died aged 11 in 1700.
Meanwhile, the 1701 Act of Settlement established Protestant succession to the throne through Sophia, granddaughter of James VI/I. Anne’s reign also (finally) saw the formation of a Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain when the Treaty of Union was signed by
both the English and Scots parliaments in 1707. Foreign policy related to the War of the Spanish Succession occupied much of her rule, with John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, taking victory in a series of battles between 1704-9.
Anne was already 37 when she ascended the throne, and in her later years she developed crippling gout. On her death in 1714 her body had swollen so large that her coffin was almost square in shape. The Act of Settlement ensured that the crown fell to George I, great-grandson of James VI/I and son of Sophia, Electress of Hanover, who incidentally had died just two months before she would have become queen.
The son of James VII of Scotland, II of England, and his second wife Mary of Modena, James Francis Edward Stuart had a shaky start, as his mother was judged too old to have children and his legitimacy questioned from the off. Luckily, when James VII/II was deposed, Mary smuggled her son to France, and King Louis XIV took up his cause. Following the accession of King George I, a Jacobite rebellion, known as ‘the Fifteen Rebellion’ brewed in Braemar and the Old Pretender, attempting to capitalise on his support, sailed to Scotland. Unfortunately, he didn’t arrive until December 1715, after the Jacobites had lost at Sheriffmuir (13 November) and Preston (14 November). The Old Pretender, Following the accession of the Hanoverian the so-called King James VIII of Scotland, returned to France with his tail between his King George I, a Jacobite rebellion, known legs in February 1716. as ‘the Fifteen’ brewed in Braemar
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Prince James Francis Edward Stuart by E Gill, 1727-8; Prince Charles Edward Stuart by Allan Ramsay, c.1745
‘The Forty-five Rebellion’ was the most serious of the Jacobite uprisings. While the Scottish Lowlands remained apathetic, there was still considerable support in the Highlands, encouraged by the enthusiasm and youth of James Stuart’s son, Charles Edward. In July, so-called ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ landed on Eriskay off the west coast of Scotland, and supporters gathered at Glenfinnan where the standard was raised, and his father declared King James VIII. The Jacobites won the Battle of Prestonpans in September 1745 and defeated George II’s army again at Derby in England in December. However, forced to retreat when the anticipated French and Spanish backup did not materialise, the uprising was crushed at Culloden in April 1746. Charles escaped by the skin of his teeth back to the continent that September, famously aided by heroine Flora MacDonald. Jacobitism, though retaining some sentimental meaning in the Highlands, lost its political undertones as the 18th century went on. George III even went so far as to give the last pretender, Henry Stuart, a pension. S
FURTHER READING
Stewart Heritage by Charles Kinder Bradbury and Henry Steuart Fothringham is a modern pictorial history of the Stewart line, at home and abroad, from the Middle Ages to the present day. Made up of more than 100 biographies, its chapters extend far beyond the royals. (Braykcpublishing, £25) braykcpublishing.com
