Sir Archibald Douglas, of Kilspindie
Sir Archibald Douglas, of Kilspindie (b.
c.1490, d. before 1540),
administrator, was the fourth son of
Archibald
Douglas, fifth earl of Angus (c.1449–1513), and his first wife,
Elizabeth Boyd (d. 1498). Old enough to witness charters in
1509, he was probably born about 1490. His principal seat was
Kilspindie Castle and estate in Perthshire, but he was not a major
landowner, and his advancement resulted mainly from political
influence and from his having property in Edinburgh, some of which
he acquired through his marriage to Isobel Janet Hoppringle, widow
of John Murray, which had taken place before 27 May 1519. Kilspindie
owed his political career to his nephew
Archibald
Douglas, sixth earl of Angus, who in the confusion of James V's
minority won control of Edinburgh in 1519. Angus failed to secure
the castle, where the young king was in the keeping of Lord Ruthven,
but his grip on the town was strengthened by the election of his
uncle Douglas of Kilspindie to the office of provost. However, this
proved unacceptable to Angus's rival, James Hamilton, first earl of
Arran, who demanded that Kilspindie relinquish the office. In 1520
the regent, John Stewart, duke of Albany, attempted to solve the
tension by barring either a Douglas or a Hamilton from holding the
provostship, and Kilspindie duly ceded office to a neutral burgess,
Robert Logan of Coitfield. The arrival of Albany in Scotland in 1521
led to several years in the political wilderness for the Angus
faction, including Kilspindie.
The trust placed in Kilspindie
by his nephew is demonstrated by the positions of influence afforded
to him on the restoration in 1525 of Angus, following Albany's
departure for France the previous year. Douglas dominance was based
on control, principally within that family, of offices of state and
patronage, and Kilspindie was at the heart of this strategy. On 21
June 1526 he was one of the lords appointed to be a member of the
royal council and he had acquired the office of treasurer by 15
October. By November he had regained the provostship of Edinburgh
and held the important office of keeper of the privy seal. He
appears to have formed a close relationship with the young king, in
the light of the legend (first related by Hume of Godscroft in 1644)
that James V called him Greysteil. The nickname derives from an epic
poem, known to have been popular at court no later than 1498, whose
hero, Sir Greysteil, is a powerful, almost invincible, swordsman,
and points to James's youthful admiration for the man who was at the
centre of court administration. Kilspindie sat continuously upon the
session of lords of council; that the government was under severe
financial strain is suggested by the substantial debt of £3654 8s.
1d. which appeared in the account which he submitted as
treasurer for the period October 1526 to August 1527.
Political ascendancy could be personally lucrative, however;
Kilspindie received 1000 merks from Archbishop Beaton and shared in
the profits from the forfeiture of Patrick, Lord Lindsay of the
Byres. But dissatisfaction with the Douglases—with Angus's former
wife, Queen Margaret, prominent among the malcontents—was never far
beneath the surface of political life, and the escape of James V
from Angus-controlled Edinburgh to Stirling in early June 1528
caught the Douglases off guard. According to John Law's contemporary
account, the king's flight occurred while Angus was absent from
court and Kilspindie was visiting his mistress in Dundee. The
Observantine friar Adam Abell adds the opinion that the overbearing
pride of Kilspindie's wife, Isobel, referred to scathingly as ‘my
lady thesaurer’ (NL Scot., Add. MS 1746, fol. 116v), had also
alienated support from the Douglases.
With the effective
commencement of James V's personal rule in 1528 Kilspindie lost the
keepership of the privy seal to George Crichton, bishop of Dunkeld,
and as Kilspindie's accounts for the Edinburgh customs were being
audited in July, Lyon king, unable to find Kilspindie in person,
proclaimed a summons against him from Haddington market cross. On 19
July Robert Cairncross, provost of the collegiate church of
Corstorphine, was appointed treasurer in place of Kilspindie, who
had ignored instructions to enter into ward at
Edinburgh Castle, and in
August Robert, fifth Lord Maxwell, was appointed provost of
Edinburgh. Roger Lascelles, the English captain of Norham Castle,
describes Maxwell arriving in Edinburgh and proceeding to surround
the provost's house where Kilspindie was hosting dinner for his
nephews George and William, suggesting that the king's control of
Edinburgh was still not secure. The Douglases retreated to
Tantallon (according to
Lascelles, accommodation at Norham had been offered to the Douglases,
including Kilspindie and his wife). On 5 September 1528 sentence of
forfeiture of life, lands, and goods was passed against Kilspindie,
his possessions being divided between Hugh Montgomery, first earl of
Eglinton, and Robert Cairncross. His stepson, Andrew Murray of
Blackbarony, Peeblesshire, bailie of Ballencrieff, had to seek
remission for association with his stepfather after the latter's
forfeiture, although he was sufficiently in favour to have secured
the office of sheriff of Edinburgh by 1536.
A period of exile
in England followed. In February 1529 Kilspindie was involved in
tentative negotiations with Sir James Hamilton of Finnart at
Cockburnspath, possibly aimed at seeking political rehabilitation.
Nothing came of these discussions, and in 1540 charges were brought
against Hamilton which included the accusation that in 1529 he had
plotted with Kilspindie and others to kill the king at Holyrood.
Kilspindie joined Northumberland's raid on Haddingtonshire and the
Merse on 11 December 1532, but he appears to have approached Thomas
Erskine, secretary to James V, while Erskine was on business at the
English court, with a view to sounding him out on the possibility of
returning to Scotland. An undated letter to Erskine from the king
warns him against association with the Douglases, probably in
response to these encounters, yet Kilspindie, encouraged by the
peace treaty between Scotland and England, risked returning to seek
clemency in August 1534. While he had a cold reception from the
king, he did not suffer imprisonment. Instead James V commanded that
he should be conveyed overseas, probably to France, which amounted
to effective banishment, as Kilspindie seems to have died abroad
before 1540.
After John Murray's death at Flodden, Isobel Hoppar was described as a
"rich widow of Edinburgh" in 1515 by Baron Dacre. Isobel's second
husband was Archibald Douglas of Kilspindie, called Greysteil, brother
and advisor of the Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus. By the King's
gift in 1526, Archibald Douglas of Kilspindie and Isobel Hoppar were
given another property on the south side of the High Street, when
Kilspindie was Lord High Treasurer and Provost of Edinburgh. The house
had belonged to Isobel's former husband and to James Forstar or
Forrester, son of Jonet Halyburton and a grandson of Sir Duncan
Forrester of Garden. She was given rights of the property of James, Lord
Carlyle of Torthorwald in January 1527.
In 1527 Isobel as "executrice" of her husband received £100 for an
old royal debt owed to Murray. When James V reached his
majority and escaped from the Douglases in 1528, he began to take
revenge on the Douglas family. Archibald and Isobel lost the
Forrester house, and the lands she held near Peebles. In
February 1529 Isobel's lands at Staneburn near Linlithgow
were given to Gavin Hamilton, and her rents, crops, and livestock at
Blackbarony and 'Puro' (which she held conjointly with her husband) were
given to Patrick Hepburn of Wauchtoun.
His son, also Archibald, succeeded to Kilspindie in
1543, upon the lifting of the sentence of forfeiture. His son,
Alexander became bishop
designate in Moray
