Myth and History: The Case of the Black Douglases
By William Knox
Every child in a Scottish school was brought up to recognise the ‘Black
Douglas’ as one of the true, almost mythical heroes of Scottish history.
That attitude was underpinned by the part the Douglas family played
during the Scottish Wars of Independence. Good Sir James Douglas – ‘the
Black Douglas’ – fought alongside Robert the Bruce and was the one lord
to be selected to take his heart to the Crusades. To the Scots, he was a
hero. To the English, he was a bogeyman. In fact, an English lullaby
sung to children included the words: ‘Hush yea, Hush yea, Dinae fret
yea, the Black Douglas will nae get yea’. Try falling asleep after
hearing that.
Another reason the Douglases entered Scottish folklore was William
Douglas’s capture from the English of the heavily defended Edinburgh
Castle in 1341. Douglas and his lieutenants dressed as merchants, with
his men hidden in covered wagons, and gained entry into the castle. With
the help of the townspeople, they slaughtered the English defenders,
throwing many off the castle rock. The Douglases place in history as
good guys and patriots was established.
However, when the English threat disappeared, the Douglas family began
to harbour ambitions to seize the throne of Scotland from the Stewarts.
When James II acceded to the throne, the Black Douglases controlled
three earldoms and were claiming a fourth. Their rule stretched over
Galloway, Douglasdale, Annandale, Clydesdale, Lothian, Stirlingshire,
and Moray. The desire to curb the power of the Black Douglases became an
obsession with the king, and as such, relations between James and
William, Eighth Earl of Douglas, deteriorated to a fatal degree.
At the age of 23, James led a murderous attack on William by stabbing
him in the neck in Stirling Castle in 1542. William had no fewer than 26
stab wounds. Horrific as it was, the Eighth Earl’s murder did not mark
the end of the Douglas family; instead, it created a civil war of sorts
between them and the crown during the years 1452 to 1455. From heroes of
the struggle against English rule, the Douglases had become pariahs, but
pariahs with power.
To effectively kill off the threat from the Douglases, James bribed
their allies with gifts of land. These defections proved decisive in the
Battle of Arkinholm, Dumfriesshire, in 1552, in which the brothers of
James, the Ninth Earl of Douglas, all lost their lives. In the following
months, the Scottish parliament declared the Douglas lands and
possessions forfeit and permanently annexed them to the crown.
The destruction of the Black Douglases marked the consolidation of royal
power in Scotland. Future Stewart kings of Scotland never again had to
face such a powerful challenge from a rival family to their authority.
But while we hear of the beginnings of the story of the Black Douglases
– the swashbuckling, the daring do, and the love of country – their
unpatriotic demise as enemies of the monarch is a story Scottish
children are not often told. Better the myth than the reality.
See also:
• The Good Sir James
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