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by Robert Carver | The Apostle Paul was the founder of the church in Corinth. That is, he was the human instrument that God used to bring to birth this church. It was on his second missionary journey, early in the 50s, that he arrived in this city located on the land bridge that connected the Achaean mainland with the Peloponnesus to the south. It was a city blessed...
21st September 1513: Coronation of King James V of Scotland in Stirling
(The Honours of Scotland- the sceptre and sword were both gifts to James V’s father. Not my picture)
On this day in 1513, the young James V was crowned King of Scots in the chapel of Stirling Castle. Not yet eighteen months old, he had fallen heir to the throne a fortnight earlier after the death of his father James IV at the Battle of Flodden. After over twenty years of comparative stability under a popular adult monarch, Scotland now faced a long minority. While this was not an unusual occurrence in Scottish history, James V’s especially troubled minority would provide ample cause for the chronicler Adam Abell, writing twenty years later, to have recourse to that age-old complaint, “Wa is þe kinrik quar þe king is ane barne, ffor þan nowder pece nor iustice rang.” *
The future James V had been born at Linlithgow in April 1512, the fifth of King James IV’s legitimate children by his queen Margaret Tudor. None of the previous babies had survived infancy (though James IV had several living illegitimate children). Despite James IV’s hopeful observation that the new prince “gives promise of living to succeed” in a letter announcing the birth to his uncle the king of Denmark, and the English ambassador’s comment in 1513 that the Prince “is a right fair child, and a large of his age”, there was no way anyone could really be certain. His parents probably hoped for further children anyway, and by the end of August 1513, Margaret Tudor was again pregnant.
This time, however, other issues took precedence. Relations between Scotland and its neighbour England had recently deteriorated to the point where war seemed inevitable. Following on from James IV’s successful campaigns on the border in the 1490s, a Treaty of Perpetual Peace between England and Scotland had been signed in 1502. Within a decade, however, the fledgling peace was under threa. Political events on the continent had begun to impinge directly on the affairs of James IV’s small kingdom on the edges of Europe. James IV had generally enjoyed profitable relations with the papacy but now Pope Julius II had formed the Holy League with Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, Venice, and the Swiss. This was an alliance against Scotland’s ancient ally France. This placed the King of Scots in a bind and a bad situation was only made worse when the young Henry VIII of England (Queen Margaret’s younger brother), eager to make a name for himself on the European stage, was induced to join the Holy League. The king of England eventually led an invasion of France in summer 1513. When France appealed to Scotland for help, James IV was forced to choose between an old ally and the fragile truce. Deciding in France’s favour, he raised one of the largest armies Scotland had ever furnished and invaded the north of England in August 1513.**
The campaign initially went well for the Scots, who captured the Bishop of Durham’s great castle of Norham after a siege of only five days, and then took the smaller castles of Etal and Ford. But the Earl of Surrey had been appointed lieutenant of the north while the king of England was on the continent and hurried north from Yorkshire as soon as he heard of the invasion, arriving in Northumberland with his army in early September. James IV was willing to stand and fight, as he held a position of strategic advantage on top of Flodden Hill and his army had superior numbers and artillery. But Surrey outflanked him by marching his army to nearby Branxton hill on the morning of 9th September 1513, blocking the Scots’ retreat north. A pitched battle then ensued on the waterlogged fields in between the hills. The result was not only a defeat for the Scots, but one of the worst military catastrophes in Scottish history. The death toll as enormous, not least among the Scottish nobility and clergy: among the dead were the archbishop of St Andrews, the bishop of the Isles and the abbots of Kilwinning and Inchaffray; the earls of Argyll, Bothwell, Morton, Lennox, Cassilis, Caithness, Montrose, Erroll, Crawford, and Rothes; lords Elphinstone, Maxwell, Avondale, Borthwick, Ross, and Seton and many other lords, knights, and common soldiers. Worst of all, the king of Scots himself had been killed. The loss of so many men, and especially leading members of the political elite, was to have a lasting effect on Scotland’s political and cultural experience for decades to come.
(The memorial cross on Piper’s Hill overlooking the site of the Battle of Flodden. Source Wikimedia commons)
News of the appalling catastrophe spread gradually- disturbing rumours had reached Edinburgh by the next day, while confused stories continued to filter across Europe for some months. Shock, anguish, and denial seem to have been the immediate reactions back in Scotland, and for decades rumours would persist that James IV himself had not died, but had escaped somehow and might yet return. The news must have been particularly heavy for the young Queen Margaret, a widow at twenty-three and an English princess now mother to the new king of Scots, an infant who represented the hopes of an entire kingdom. As the full scale of the crisis became clear, the political community had to come to terms with the new situation swiftly, and ensure that the work of government, trade, justice, and domestic life carried on.
Not much is recorded of the government’s immediate reaction to the disaster, but by 19th of September 1513, a large number of lords and prelates had assembled at the castle of Stirling, a secure fortress which was further from the border than Linlithgow or Edinburgh and therefore a better seat of government in the face of possible English invasion. There the lords took measures to restore normality and reestablish authority; most importantly, the new king must be crowned as soon as possible. Despite his infancy, and the existence of adult male cousins just behind him in the line of succession who might have seemed more appealing as leaders during such a disturbed period, there is no evidence that the young James V’s claim to the throne was ever seriously questioned. In the immediate aftermath of Flodden, the political community rallied around the boy king and his mother, and it was arranged that his coronation would take place two days later on 21st September. In the meantime, the general council nominated over thirty nobles and churchmen to sit in daily council to advise on the government of the kingdom, with at least three spiritual and three temporal to remain in attendance always “as it lykis the queyn to command”.
The coronation went ahead as planned on Wednesday 21st September, “in the kirk of the castell of Striveling”. This would be the first occasion on which a coronation took place in Stirling, though the town was later to host the coronations of James V’s daughter Mary I (in the Chapel Royal) and grandson James VI (in the burgh kirk of the Holy Rude). It was a significant choice: while the coronations of the boy kings James II and James III had broken with the age-old tradition of inaugurating a King of Scots at Scone, James IV had restored this tradition upon his accession in 1488. However, the nobles who had placed the then fifteen year old James IV on the throne had come to power following a rebellion against the king’s father, James III, and Scone was probably chosen on that occasion to lend legitimacy to the new regime. By contrast, in 1513 the government’s priorities seem to have been security and speed in the face of any possible English invasions or public unrest. The infant king was therefore crowned in Stirling Castle’s chapel. It is usually assumed that this was the Chapel Royal, dedicated to St Mary the Virgin and St Michael, which had recently been erected to the status of a collegiate church and promoted as the chapel royal of the realm by James IV. However, due to reasons of space it is possible that the older chapel in the castle was used instead since, for all the attention lavished on it by James IV, the new Chapel Royal may have been too small to house large numbers of guests.
Not much is known about the coronation proceedings, but the surviving evidence gives the impression that it was a hastily planned affair. In the absence of an archbishop of St Andrews (the previous archbishop, James V’s older half-brother, having died at Flodden), the archbishop of Glasgow, James Beaton, was placed in charge of the proceedings “and all uther necessar provisioun”. Meanwhile, the music for the coronation may have been recycled from a previous Michaelmas celebration- it has been argued that Robert Carver’s beautiful “Missa Dum Sacrum Mysterium” was reworked for this purpose. The honours of Scotland- i.e. the crown jewels- were probably used in the ceremony, including the papal sword and sceptre which had been presented to the new king’s late father, though the toddler king may only have touched them from his position in the arms of an usher. But neither the glittering honours nor the soaring heights of the mass seem to have been enough to lift the spirits of the assembled guests, many of whom had lost fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons at Flodden. Not for nothing has this event become known in modern times as the “mourning coronation”.
(Robert Carver’s “Missa Dum Sacrum Mysterium”, thought to have been used at James V’s coronation in 1513)
Life had to go on however. Widows and orphans had to be provided for, and unrest and crime suppressed. Flodden was a military disaster, but it had not robbed Scotland of its entire political community. The wily James Beaton was soon made chancellor; Gavin Dunbar remained as clerk register; the ubiquitous Patrick Paniter- who had once been described as “the man who dooth all” about James IV- continued as secretary; and the aged yet dependable and experienced William Elphinstone still held the privy seal, while the government was soon pressing for him to be promoted to the vacant see of St Andrews. The chief alteration was in the official head of government. Soon after Flodden, Margaret Tudor had been recognised as tutrix testamentar and therefore regent for her young son, and she was exercising power in this capacity as early as 23rd September. Unlike Mary of Guise thirty years later, Margaret Tudor, though pregnant, was not yet in confinement at the time of her husband’s death and she was able to grasp the chance to become regent with both hands. Previous examples of Scottish queenship had permitted such regency, and Mary of Guelders at least had filled the role admirably (though she did not have a very good reputation in the early sixteenth century). While some among the Scottish political community might have preferred a man at the head of government during this crucial period, rather than a young English widow, and although the Earl of Arran and Lord Fleming had already tried persuading the young James V’s cousin and heir, the Duke of Albany, to return from France in order to lead Scotland during the minority, Margaret’s official rights to govern for her son would prevail, for the time being at least. It was a task which would have been daunting to even the most experienced statesman, but as yet it remained to be seen what she would make of it.
(King James V as an adult- born in 1512 and crowned in 1513, he would die at the age of thirty in 1542 and be succeeded in turn by another child monarch, his daughter Mary, Queen of Scots)
Notes and references beneath the cut.
by Robert Carver | For seven or eight hours each week, balance is an extremely important thing to me. During that time, I am seated on a very narrow seat, and underneath me are two very narrow tires. If I lose my balance, the results could be disastrous, or damaging at the least. The fact is, though, that when I get finished...
Oh honey. Robert is dead.
HOLY SHIT!!!!
What has he found?
A mate? Who was it then Mickey Bricks? Three Socks Morgan?
Is he a conman in this? Because if he is then I think that it counts as type casting.
