James III

King of Scotland (r. 1460-1488)

• Born: July 10, 1451, or May, 1452
• Birthplace: St. Andrews Castle, Fife, Scotland
• Died: June 11, 1488
• Place of death: Milltown, near Bannockburn, Stirlingshire, Scotland

James III was the first Scottish ruler to take an abiding interest in artistic and cultural matters, making him, in effect, Scotland’s earliest Renaissance prince. His reign, however, was marred by his incapacity to prevent and control uprisings among his feudal nobility in a medieval environment that celebrated the masculine pursuits of war and stringent leadership.

Early Life

James was the eldest son of King James II , the fourth monarch of the House of Stuart, and his wife, Mary of Gueldres, niece of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy. At the time of his birth, his father was in the process of successfully consolidating his power within the realm at the expense of some of the major feudal lords, notably the earls of Douglas, who were ultimately driven into exile. Younger sons, Alexander, duke of Albany, and John, earl of Mar, and two daughters, Mary and Margaret, were born to the royal couple and survived childhood.

On August 3, 1460, while laying siege to Roxburgh Castle on the border with England, King James II died instantly in the explosion of one of his own cannons. Mary assumed the regency, and after having the troops swear loyalty to her young son James III, she rallied the Scots to take Roxburgh. One week later, James III was officially crowned at Kelso Abbey.

During her period of regency, Queen Mary was able to frustrate the designs of King Edward IV of England, the earl of Douglas, and the McDonald Lord of the Isles to divide Scotland among them. She founded Holy Trinity Church in Edinburgh and generally kept intact her son’s inheritance.

Mary died in December of 1463 and was succeeded as regent by James Kennedy, bishop of St. Andrews. Bishop Kennedy secured peace between Scotland and King Edward IV and governed the kingdom capably until his death on May 10, 1465. Thereafter, King James III, who was fourteen, began his personal rule.

Life’s Work

Dark-complexioned and cultured, James III gained fame as a patron of poets, painters, musicians, and architects. His most famed art commission was an altarpiece by the Flemish painter Hugo van der Goes for Holy Trinity Church, Edinburgh, which contains the best likeness that has survived. Even more grandiose in conception, however, was the designing of the Great Hall of Stirling Castle by the architect Robert Cochrane, who became the most notorious of James’s court favorites.

From the beginning, James III was to demonstrate an uncanny inability to exert effective leadership and to control his ambitious and often turbulent nobility. His apparent lack of interest in what were then considered kingly pursuits of warfare and hunting raised some eyebrows and led some to question both his manhood and his competence to govern. In some sense, the cultural achievements of his reign became political liabilities in what was still a very conservative medieval environment.

The first crisis of the reign occurred in 1466, when Lord Boyd of Kilmarnock engineered a coup by kidnapping the king and basically seizing control of the government for three years. Sir Thomas, Lord Boyd’s son, even married the king’s sister, Mary. In 1469, James III married Princess Margaret, whose father was King Christian I of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. As a dowry, James obtained the Orkney and Shetland Islands, which he was to return to King Christian when the latter was able to raise 60,000 florins. When he failed to do so in the required time, James joyfully annexed the islands to the Scottish kingdom in 1472. Queen Margaret, who died in 1486, bore the king three sons. The monarch’s marriage signaled, also, the downfall of the Boyds, who were forced into exile.

In 1479, another crisis broke, this time involving members of the royal family more closely. Discontent with the king’s open-handed generosity to favorites such as Cochrane led to a gossip campaign, which in turn developed into support for the younger brothers, Alexander and John, who were better cast into the virile warlike role favored by much of the nobility. Suspicious, jealous of his brothers’ growing popularity, and worried that control was slipping through his fingers, King James arrested his siblings. John died under mysterious circumstances, but Alexander escaped to England.

Promising to recognize Edward IV of England as his overlord in return for help in deposing his brother, Alexander invaded Scotland in 1482. While marching to confront Alexander, James was faced with a mutiny by his army at Lauder Bridge. Resentment against Robert Cochrane and five other favorites reached the boiling point, and the unfortunate men were lynched in front of the king, who was further humiliated by becoming a prisoner of the mutineers. He was forced to come to a power-sharing agreement with Alexander. The next year, however, it was revealed that Alexander was once again plotting to deliver Scotland to Edward IV, and he was again forced to flee. Alexander would continue to attempt invasion and create disruption until his accidental death while participating in a jousting tournament in France in 1485.

Even after these unsettling series of events, which clearly demonstrated the king’s unpopularity and the extent to which the discontented nobility might go in their opposition, James changed his ways, this time granting power, influence, offices, and titles to favorites who were even more obnoxious to the aristocracy notably John Ramsey, earl of Bothwell. The Scottish parliament had also proved restive, criticizing the king time and again for his neglect in administering the law of the land and in his infrequent use of the death penalty for felons.

In 1488, rebellion erupted once more, led by Archibald Douglas, the fifth earl of Angus, and supported by half the nobles and bishops. The rebels captured the king’s eldest son and heir to the throne, James, who (more or less) became an accomplice by agreeing to pose as the uprising’s figurehead.

Both sides blundered into battle near Stirling Castle, on the old battleground of Bannockburn on June 11, 1488. The clash, which was called the Battle of Sauchieburn, was a series of confused skirmishes and encounters during which King James displayed inferior leadership. He was defeated and, either during the course of the melee, or shortly afterward, was killed.

The best-known account of James’s death (which is somewhat suspect because it was written nearly a century later) relates that King James was thrown from his horse and injured while attempting to flee. He was taken to Beaton’s Mill by the miller and his wife and had asked for a priest. They found a man who claimed to be a priest, but who instead of ministering to the king, stabbed him to death, fled, and evaded identification and capture.

Significance

Though largely ignored and often dismissed as an insignificant ruler in historical terms, James III proved sufficiently able to hold the realm together so that his successor, James IV, was able to exert more effective control and bring to fruition the cultural advancements that his father had initiated. What James lacked in domestic political skills, too, can be balanced against some major foreign policy coups, especially in what proved to be the permanent addition of the Orkneys and the Shetlands.

Bibliography

Barrell, A. D. M. Medieval Scotland. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. A generally unfavorable depiction that argues that James III was a monarch who did not develop the martial and political qualities to survive in a medieval environment.

Bingham, Caroline. The Stewart Kingdom of Scotland, 1371-1603. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1974. Takes a very sympathetic view of the much-maligned monarch, stating that his art patronage and his diplomatic successes have been downplayed by historians. The same author puts forth much the same arguments, though more compactly, in The Kings and Queens of Scotland (New York: Taplinger, 1976).

Linklater, Eric. The Royal House. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970. Perceives in James the major tragic flaw of being too advanced for his own time, that is, as a king who neglected the masculine pursuits of hunting and war making.

MacDougall, Norman. James III: A Political Study. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1982. A definitive study on the subject of James’s political shortcomings. The treatment is sympathetic and focuses on rashness as James’s main flaw. Discounts the story of the priest responsible for his death.

Magnusson, Magnus. Scotland: The Story of a Nation. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000. Argues that James’s mistakes were magnified by a particularly “bad press” and argues for a more balanced measure of his accomplishments and failures.

Mitchison, Rosalind. A History of Scotland. London: Methuen, 1982. Sees James as a victim of the attitudes of his time in a society that condemned artistic pursuits and extolled sport and horsemanship.