James IV – Scotland’s Forgotten Renaissance King
Scanning the lists of Scottish historical fiction
titles, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there are only two Scots monarchs
ever worth writing about: Robert the Bruce and Mary Queen of Scots. Today I’ll be giving Robert I and Mary a well
earned rest by talking about a king of Scots whose achievements remain sadly
under-appreciated, even by the Scots themselves, remembered only for the one
monumental mistake which ended his life at the tragically young age of 40.
James IV (b. 1473, d. 1513) is a king who is invariably
overshadowed by his tyrannical (and latterly, somewhat corpulent...) counterpart
south of the border – Henry VIII. Which
is a shame, because James was a remarkable man in many respects.
He came to the throne in 1488 aged 15, following a
coup which left his father, King James III, dead. This was the culmination of a rebellion which supposedly
came about through a plot engineered by the young man’s advisers, though I
suspect that in reality James had much more to do with the planning than he
ever cared to admit. He was, after all, an extraordinarily clever man and it
could be argued that he did have genuine reason to fear for his future, if not
indeed his life.
Following this shaky start, James had difficulty
securing his grip upon the Scots. The
discontent was only to be expected – you don’t just bump off a legitimately-reigning
monarch without incurring some degree of resentment within the wider
population. But James’s response was
unusually flexible. He rapidly discovered that he couldn’t secure his position
through force alone. Instead, he appears
to have made a sterling effort to win friends and build alliances which brought
him support across the whole of mainland Scotland, even bridging the traditional
divide between the Scots-speaking lowlanders and the gaelic-speaking north-west.
Inevitably, there were winners and losers. James’s first effort to unite the Scots into
a single military force brought disaster upon the gaelic-speaking Lords of the Isles in 1493 when James ended their
independence once and for all, forcing the last Lord of the Isles to end his
days under ‘house arrest’ as a pensioner at Paisley Abbey. It was only later
that James aimed his sights at England, assisting Perkin Warbeck, pretender to
the English throne, in 1495, and following this insult with injury in the form
of a foray south of the border in 1497.
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This wasn’t mindless harrying. Far from it.
James wanted the return of Berwick, captured by the English in 1482 and
still a festering sore in the Scots’ side.
While James didn’t quite achieve the restoration of Berwick, he did
manage to secure a Treaty of Perpetual Peace with England and to cement diplomatic
relations further through marriage to Henry VII’s daughter Margaret Tudor, a
marriage which eventually resulted in the Union of the Crowns following James
VI’s accession to the English throne in the early 1600s.
In many respects, James represents an ideal example of
medieval kingship. He was bold, assertive, and articulate, visibly proficient
on the battlefield. He founded a
flourishing arms industry in Scotland, and commissioned the building of the
finest warship in Europe – the 1000 ton Michael – a vessel launched in 1512 which
surpassed even the Mary Rose.
If James as warrior king was impressive enough, then
his court was even more remarkable for its artistic and intellectual endeavours.
James himself was fluent in a number of languages. He was a patron of
Renaissance architecture, creating buildings which could hold their own
alongside those being built in France and Italy at the time. He encouraged music and the arts, and took a
keen interest in medicine and dentistry. He also sponsored poets and
alchemists. Amongst the latter was an over-ambitious monk named Damian, who in
1507 leapt from the ramparts at Stirling Castle with a pair of wings strapped
to his back, plummeting to earth where he landed in the midden, shaken but
unharmed. Inspired by his audacity,
James made him Abbot of Tongland in Dumfries & Galloway.
James was also a notorious womaniser. With a succession of mistresses lodged in
various parts of the country, he’d go on pilgrimages to religious sites at
opposite ends of the country (such as Whithorn or Tain), conveniently visiting
his ‘bidie-in’s’ along the way, and distributing largesse to his subjects. In
1504, he passed through Renfrewshire where he lodged at Ellestoun with John, 1st
Lord Sempill, where it is recorded in the accounts that he gave ‘drinksilver’
to the masons who were building the Collegiate Church of Castle Semple, as well
as giving a gratuity to John Sempill’s harper, a man named John Haislet.
But despite all these achievements, it’s for his
demise at Flodden that James is remembered. And with the benefit of hindsight
comes condemnation. It was hubris which
toppled him, they say. If only he’d
turned back and marched home before Surrey confronted him at Branxton. If only he hadn’t come down off that
hill. If only he hadn’t taken on Henry
VIII in the first place. If only he’d
relied on the tried-and-tested Scots schiltron, instead of investing in all those
fancy Swiss pikes... If only he’d
spotted the watercourse lurking at the foot of Branxton Hill...
I personally believe that a confrontation with Henry VIII
was inevitable. Sooner or later, the
showdown would have happened, and - whatever the time, whatever the place - the
outcome would probably have been exactly the same. Is it
fair to blame James for sabre-rattling?
I don’t think so. Henry had been
provoking James for years by withholding Margaret’s Tudor’s dowry, and
James... Well, by invading England and
harrying the north-east, he was merely using exactly the same tactics which had
worked so well in 1497 against Henry VII.
But Henry VIII, as we all know, was a very different
beast. And so James died the way he
lived, as a courageous medieval king who wasn’t afraid to hurl himself into the
fray, leading the assault as an example to those around him.
James wasn’t the only casualty of Flodden. Nine earls
died that day, along with 21 Lords of Parliament and at least 79 knights and
barons. The church lost its leading figures; the Archbishop of Saint Andrews
was a casualty, dying alongside two bishops and two abbots. Virtually
the entire ruling class of Scotland was wiped out, and this is a measure of
James’s success as a king. When he first came to the throne, he inherited a
fractured, divided kingdom, but when he died it was with Scotland’s governing
class standing united alongside him.
And that, I think, was a truly remarkable achievement.
The critically acclaimed author of The King's Mistress brings another fascinating woman from history to life in an enthralling story of political intrigue, personal tragedy, and illicit love.
Emma Campion did her graduate work in medieval literature and history, and has continued to study the period while working first as an editor of scientific publications and now for some years as a freelance writer. She was born in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, grew up in Cincinnati, and has lived most of her adult life in Seattle, which she and her husband love for its combination of natural beauty and culture. Emma enjoys walking, hiking, and gardening, and practices yoga and vipassana meditation. She travels frequently to Great Britain.
