The slaughter of the Bonny Earl of Moray at Dunnibrissle stands
prominent amongst the tragic events of the time. It was much more
a piece of clan warfare than is generally allowed by Scottish
historians. Moray had connected himself with a number of gentlemen
and heads of clans in the north, who had combined against the Earl of
Huntly. In the latter part of 1590, there were in that district of
Scotland musterings, marchings, and fightings, too obscure to make an
appearance in general history, but enough to keep three counties in
a state resembling civil war. Huntly, who acted as lord-lieutenant
of the north, and thus had a colour of law on his side, pursued
the Mackintoshes and Grants, who befriended the Earl of Moray, as
rebels, both against himself, who was their feudal superior, and
against the king. In a reconnoitring expedition which he made at
Darnaway Castle, the Earl of Moray’s house, one of his gentlemen was
unfortunately killed by a musket-shot, discharged by a servant from the
battlements--an injury which the feelings of the day made it a virtue
to revenge.
By the intervention of Lord Ochiltree, Moray came south to his house
of Dunnibrissle, in Fife, with a view to a reconciliation with Huntly.
The northern chief was also at court; but his thoughts were not turned
on peace. In consequence of Moray having befriended the turbulent
Bothwell, the king and Chancellor Maitland were wrought upon to grant
a commission to Huntly for the capture of that nobleman, not dreaming,
as we may charitably hope, of the cruel tragedy which was to ensue.
Perhaps neither did Huntly meditate anything beyond taking Moray, and
having him subjected to trial.
Mustering forty friends on horseback, he set out with them, as to a
race at Leith; but, having thus lulled suspicion, he quickly turned
away, and crossed the Forth at the Queensferry. At a late hour on a
winter night, the Earl of Moray heard his lonely house surrounded by
the hostile Gordons, and received a summons to surrender. He had no
friend with him but one--Dunbar, sheriff of Moray--and a few servants;
yet he determined to make resistance. The Gordons then gathered corn
from the neighbouring farms, and piling it against the door, set it on
fire. To pursue the quaint recitals of the day: ‘The Earl of Moray,
being within, wissed not whether to come out and be slain, or be burned
quick; yet, after avisement, this Dunbar says to my Lord of Moray: “I
will go out at the gate before your lordship, and I am sure the people
will charge on me, thinking me to be your lordship; sae, it being mirk
under night, ye shall come out after me, and look if that ye can fend
[provide] for yourself.” In the meantime, this Dunbar came forth, and
ran desperately amang the Earl of Huntly’s folks, and they all ran upon
him and presently slew him. During this broil with Dunbar, the Earl
of Moray came running out at the gate of Dunnibrissle, which stands
beside the sea, and there sat down amang the rocks. But, unfortunately,
the said lord’s knapscull tippet, whereon was a silk string, had taken
fire, which betrayed him to his enemies in the darkness of the night,
himself not knowing the same. They came down on him on a sudden, and
there most cruelly, without mercy, murdered him.’--_Bir._ _Moy._
[Sidenote: 1591-2.]
Next morning, Edinburgh was full of mourning and lamentation for this
sad event. That the victim was a Protestant and son-in-law of the Good
Regent, while the Earl of Huntly was notedly the head of the popish
party in Scotland, was chiefly remembered by them. The conflict of
interests in the north, the death of John Gordon at Darnaway, and the
possibility of Huntly having been far from meditating slaughter, were
little known or reflected on. The sympathies of the king, on the other
hand, were with Huntly; nor, had it been otherwise, would his majesty
have found it an easy task to bring to justice a grandee who had
recently come forth against the Protestant interest with ten thousand
men at his back.
‘The king went forth to the hunting that morning; and hunting about
Inverleith and Wardie, he saw the fire, which had not yet died out; but
nothing moved with the matter.’--_Cal._ It was generally believed that
both he and the Chancellor Maitland had not been unwilling that Huntly
should do this deed. ‘The king sent for five or six of the ministers,
made an harangue to them, wherein he did what he could to clear
himself, and desired them to clear his part before the people. They
desired him to clear himself with earnest pursuing of Huntly with fire
and sword. The king alleged his part to be like David’s when Abner was
slain by Joab.’--_Cal._ It nevertheless appears, from the records of
Privy Council, that James, on the 8th of February, being the day after
the murder, retracted from Huntly his commission of lieutenancy.
[Sidenote: FEB. 9.]
‘---- the Earl of Moray’s mother, accompanied with her friends, brought
over her son’s and the sheriff of Moray’s dead corpse, in litters, to
Leith, to be brought from thence to be buried in the aile of the Great
Kirk of Edinburgh, in the Good Regent’s tomb, and, as some report, to
be made first a spectacle to the people at the Cross of Edinburgh;
but they were stayed by command from the king. Captain [John] Gordon
[a brother of the Laird of Gicht], was left for dead at Dunnibrissle;
his hat, his purse, his gold, his weapons were taken by one of his own
company; his shanks [stockings] were pulled off. He was taken in by the
Earl of Moray’s mother, and cherished with meat, drink, and clothing.
A rare example! She brought him over with her son’s corpse to seek
justice. The earl’s mother caused draw her son’s picture, as he was
demained, and presented it to the king in a fine _laine_ cloth, with
lamentations, and earnest suit for justice. But little regard was had
to the matter. Of the three bullets she found in the bowelling of the
body of her son, she presented one to the king, another to ..., the
third she reserved to herself, and said: “I sall not part with this
till it be bestowed on him that hindereth justice.”‘[187]--_Cal._
[Sidenote: 1591-2.]
One of the king’s friends, Lord Spynie, hearing that Captain Gordon
had been brought to Leith, got a warrant from the king to bring him to
Edinburgh Castle, ‘to have eschewit the present trial of law;’ but Lord
Ochiltree, being informed of this, took horse with about forty friends
and servants in arms, and went forth after the king, who, even at this
dismal moment, could not restrain his inordinate propensity to hunting.
Lord Ochiltree ‘came upon the king on the north side of Corstorphine
Craigs, where his majesty was taking a drink. [He] lichtit and stayit
his horse at the hill foot, and came to his majesty and show[ed] him
... how far this murder touched his highness, whereof he besought him
maist humbly to consider.... Upon Lord Ochiltree his earnest desire,
his majesty granted him a warrant to present Captain Gordon and his man
to the trial of ane assize that same day; whilk with all diligence the
said lord did perform, and the said captain was beheadit, and his man
hanged. The captain condemned the fact, protesting that he was brought
ignorantly upon it.’--_Moy._ _Cal._
The Earl of Huntly made an appearance of satisfying the demands of law
for the slaughter of Moray, by entering himself in ward in Blackness
Castle, as preliminary to his trial; but the king released him after
eight days’ confinement, and he was not again troubled on that score.
It is to be observed, however, that the Bonny Earl’s death did not pass
without at least an attempt at revenge in the north.
The Clan Chattan or Mackintoshes, and the Grants, were much incensed
by the fact, and made great ‘stirs’ against their superior the Earl
of Huntly. The earl sent the Clan Cameron against the one, and a
leader called Mackranald against the other, and had great slaughter
committed upon both. The Mackintoshes, still indisposed to submit,
came in the fall of the year 1592, eight hundred strong, into the
Gordon territories of Strathdee and Glenmuick, where they killed
four gentlemen of Huntly’s vassalage. One of these was the Laird of
Brackla, a place near the modern watering-village of Ballater. He was
an old man, much given to hospitality, and had received a party of
these invaders without any apprehension of their hostile intentions.
After a kindly entertainment, they killed the old man in his own hall
(November 1)--a circumstance which naturally added much bitterness to
the feelings of his friends, as it was considered as the foulest style
in which murder could be committed.[188]
[Sidenote: 1591-2.]
The Earl of Huntly was interrupted in an invasion of the Mackintosh
estate of Pettie in Inverness-shire, by a report of what was going on
in Aberdeenshire. With his uncle, Sir Patrick Gordon of Auchindoun,
and about thirty-six horsemen, he did not hesitate immediately to ride
into Strathdee and attack the Mackintoshes, now passing over a hill
called Stapliegate in the Cabrach. After a sharp skirmish, he routed
them utterly, killing about sixty. He then caused parties of his people
to invade and spoil the Mackintosh and Grant territories; nor did he
rest till, by slaughter and pillage, he had completely reduced these
clans to his obedience.[189]--_G. H. S._
[Sidenote: 1591-2.]
It is not unworthy of remark, that the Privy Council Record contains
no notice of these outrages in the north, beyond an entry dated
November 9, 1592, adverting to ‘great cruelties, herships, and
disorders recently committit by the lawless broken Highlandmen of the
Clan Chattan, Clan Cameron, Clanranald, and others pretending their
dependence on the Earls of Huntly and Athole;’ which had ‘sae wrackit
and shaken louss sundry parts of the north country, that great numbers
of honest and peaceable folks are murtherit, their houses burnt now
in the winter season, their guids spulyit, disponit, and exponit in
prey, in far greater rigour nor it was with foreign enemies;’ for which
reasons a commission was granted to the Earl of Angus to go north
and deal with the said earls for the pacification of the country,
and, failing this, to raise the well-affected people in arms, and put
down the lawless by force. This view of the matter is so inconsistent
with the statement of Sir Robert Gordon, above quoted, as to suggest
that the Scottish government knew hardly anything of the relations
of parties, and had heard only of there being troubles in a certain
district. No notice whatever is taken of the sweeping vengeance
executed by the Earl of Huntly upon the Mackintoshes and Grants.
Certainly, no feature of the time is more remarkable than this freedom
and power of the great nobles to do what they considered justice upon
their enemies, while the king was unable by any force under his own
immediate control to protect himself in his own palace.
We learn from another source, that the Earl of Angus brought matters to
a bearing in conformity with the king’s direction, by causing ‘baith
the parties subscryve ane assurance, bot of their awn form.’--_Moy._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: FEB. 28.]
Richard Graham had for some years been noted as a prominent licentiate
of the devil’s medical college. He professed to despise common
witchcraft as a vulgar thing, and would only admit that he consulted
spirits. Spottiswoode, speaking of the death of the good Earl of
Angus, says: ‘In the time of his sickness, when the physicians found
his disease not to proceed of any natural cause [it was concluded
to be by enchantment], one Richard Graham being brought to give his
opinion of it, made offer to cure him, saying, as the manner of these
wizards is, “that he had received wrong.” But when he [the earl] heard
that the man was suspected to use unlawful arts, he would by no means
admit him, saying: “That his life was not so dear to him, as, for
the continuance of it some years, he would be beholden to any of the
devil’s instruments; that he held his life of God, and was willing to
render the same at His good pleasure, knowing he should change it for a
better.”‘[190]
[Sidenote: 1591-2.]
It is related that Sir Lewis Bellenden, Lord Justice-clerk, dealt with
Graham to raise the devil. Graham having raised him in Sir Lewis’s own
yard in the Canongate, ‘he [Sir Lewis] was thereby so terrified that he
took sickness and thereof died.’--_Stag. State._
It was satisfactorily made out that Graham had been the adviser of
the witch Barbara Napier and her associates; and we have just seen
that the Earl of Bothwell was likewise believed to have consulted him
regarding the king’s death. This wizard, therefore--‘notour and knawn
necromancer, ane common abuser of the people’--was apprehended; and on
the day noted in the margin, he was ‘worried and burnt at the Cross
of Edinburgh.’ According to Calderwood, ‘he stood hard to his former
confession touching Bothwell’s practice against the king; that Arran,
Lord Fairnyear,[191] was an enchanter; that the devil was raised at
the Laird of Auchinleck’s dwelling-place, and in Sir Lewis Bellenden
the Justice-clerk’s yard. The bruit [rumour] went that the chancellor
[Maitland] had some tables and images about his neck, and that he was
sure [safe] so long as he used them so; but Richard Graham deponed no
such matter.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: MAR. 7.]
The presbytery of Edinburgh laboured hard to get the Earl of Huntly and
his friends excommunicated. They could not be brought to see that there
was any need for the same severity against the Earl of Bothwell and his
associates, who had tried to seize the king in his palace by night.
James ‘grudged’ at this, ‘and said it would not be weel till noblemen
and gentlemen got licence to break ministers’ heads.’--_Cal._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1592.