James V, King
of Scotts
Assembled by D.
A. Sharpe
James V was King of Scotts.
He was born April 10, 1512, and lived until
December 12, 1542, only living to the age of 30. His ancestry is quite extensive.
Out information associated with James V goes back 50 generations to Godwulf, a
Norwegian Viking born an estimated 80 AD.
The Ancestor report is 200 pages.
James is the
fourth cousin, four times removed of Danette Abney, the step father of
Ellen Newton, my great grandniece.
James' death followed
the Scottish defeat at the Battle
of Solway Moss. His only surviving legitimate child, Mary,
succeeded him when she was just six days old. She became known as Mary Queen of
Scotts.
James was son of King
James
IV of Scotland and his wife Margaret
Tudor, a daughter of Henry
VII of England and sister of Henry VIII, and was the only legitimate
child of James IV to survive infancy. He was born on 10 April 1512 at Linlithgow
Palace, Linlithgowshire and baptized the following day, receiving
the titles Duke of Rothesay and Prince
and Great Steward of Scotland. He became king at just seventeen
months old when his father was killed at the Battle
of Flodden Field on 9 September 1513. The coronation of James V was September
12, 1513.
James was crowned in
the Chapel Royal at Stirling Castle on 21 September 1513. During his childhood
the country was ruled by regents, first by his mother, until she remarried the
following year, and then by John Stewart, 2nd Duke of Albany, next in line to the Crown
after James and his younger brother, the posthumously-born Alexander Stewart, Duke of Ross, who died in infancy. Other
regents included Robert Maxwell, 5th Lord Maxwell, a member of the Council
of Regency who was also bestowed as Regent of Arran,
the largest island in the Firth of Clyde. In February 1517 James came from
Stirling to Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, but during an outbreak of plague
in the city he was moved to the care of Antoine
d'Arces at nearby rural Craigmillar
Castle. At Stirling, the 10-year-old James had a guard of 20 footmen
dressed in his colors, red and yellow. When he went to the park below the
Castle, "by secret and in right fair and soft wedder (weather)," six
horsemen would scour the countryside two miles roundabout for intruders. Poets
wrote their own nursery rhymes for James and advised him on royal behavior. As
a youth, his education was in the care of University
of St Andrews poets such as Sir David
Lyndsay. William
Stewart, in his poem Princelie
Majestie, counselled James against ice-skating:
To princes als it is ane vyce,
To ryd or run over rakleslie,
Or aventure
to go on yce,
Accordis
nacho to thy majesty.
In the autumn of 1524
James dismissed his regents and was proclaimed an adult ruler by his mother.
Several new court servants were appointed including a trumpeter, Henry Rudeman.
Thomas
Magnus, the English diplomat, gave an impression of the new Scottish
court at Holyroodhouse on All
Saints' Day 1524: "trumpets and shamulles
did sounde and blewe up mooste pleasauntely." Magnus saw the young king
singing, playing with a spear at Leith, and with his horses, and he was given the impression
that the king preferred English manners over French fashions.
In 1525 Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, the young king's
stepfather, took custody of James and held him as a virtual prisoner for three
years, exercising power on his behalf. There were several attempts made to free
the young King Ð one by Walter Scott of Branxholme and Buccleuch, who ambushed the
King's forces on 25 July 1526 at the battle of Melrose, and was routed off the
field. Another attempt later that year, on 4 September at the battle of Linlithgow Bridge, failed again to relieve the
King from the clutches of Angus. When James and his mother came to Edinburgh on
20 November 1526, she stayed in the chambers at Holyroodhouse, which Albany had
used, James using the rooms above. In February 1527 Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, gave James twenty hunting
hounds and a huntsman. Magnus thought the Scottish servant sent to Sheriff
Hutton Castle for the dogs was intended to note the form and fashion
of the Duke's household, for emulation in Scotland. James finally escaped from
Angus's care in 1528 and assumed the reins of government himself.
According to legend
James was nicknamed "King of the Commons" as he would sometimes
travel around Scotland disguised as a common man, describing himself as the
"Gudeman of Ballengeich" ('Gudeman' means 'landlord' or 'farmer', and
'Ballengeich' was the nickname of a road next to Stirling
Castle Ð meaning 'windy pass' in Gaelic).
James was also a keen lute player. In 1562 Sir Thomas Wood reported that James had
"a singular good ear and could sing that he had never seen before" (sight-read),
but his voice was "rawky" and "harske." At court, James
maintained a band of Italian musicians who adopted the name Drummond. These
were joined for the winter of 1529/30 by a musician and diplomat sent by the Duke of
Milan, Thomas de Averencia de Brescia,
probably a lutenist.
The historian Andrea Thomas makes a useful distinction between the loud music
provided at ceremonies and processionals and instruments employed for more private
occasions or worship; the music fyne
described by Helena Mennie Shire. This quieter music included a consort of viols
played by four Frenchmen led by Jacques Columbell. It seems certain that David Peebles
wrote music for James V and probable that the Scottish composer Robert
Carver was in royal employ, though evidence is lacking.
As a patron of poets
and authors James supported William
Stewart and John Bellenden, the son of his nurse, who translated the
Latin History of Scotland
compiled in 1527 by Hector Boece into verse and prose. Sir David Lindsay
of the Mount, the Lord Lyon, head of the Lyon Court
and diplomat, was a prolific poet. He produced an interlude at Linlithgow
Palace thought to be a version of his play The Thrie Estaitis
in 1540. James also attracted the attention of international authors.
The death of James's
mother in 1541 removed any incentive for peace with England, and war broke out.
Initially the Scots won a victory at the Battle
of Haddon Rig in August 1542. The Imperial ambassador in London, Eustace
Chapuys, wrote on 2 October that the Scottish ambassadors ruled out
a conciliatory meeting between James and Henry VIII in England until the
pregnant Mary of Guise delivered her child. Henry would not accept this condition
and mobilised his army against Scotland.
James was with his
army at Lauder
on 31 October 1542. Although he hoped to invade England, his nobles were reluctant.
He returned to Edinburgh, on the way writing a letter in French to his wife
from Falahill mentioning he had three days of illness. The next month his army
suffered a serious defeat at the Battle
of Solway Moss. He took ill shortly after this, on 6 December; by
some accounts this was a nervous collapse caused by the defeat, and he may have
died from the grief, although some historians consider that it may just have
been an ordinary fever. John Knox later described his final movements in Fife.
Whatever the cause of
his illness, James was on his deathbed at Falkland Palace
when his only surviving legitimate child, a girl, was born. Sir George Douglas of Pittendreich brought the news of the
king's death to Berwick. He said James died at midnight on Thursday 15
December; the king was talking but delirious and spoke no "wise
words." According to George Douglas in his delirium James lamented the
capture of his banner and Oliver
Sinclair at Solway Moss more than his other losses. An English
chronicler suggested another cause of the king's grief was his discomfort on
hearing of the murder of the English Somerset
Herald, Thomas Trahern, at Dunbar.
James was buried at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh.
Before he died he is
reported to have said "it came wi a lass, it'll gang wi a lass"
(meaning "It began with a girl and it will end with a girl"). This
was either a reference to the Stewart
dynasty's accession to the throne through Marjorie
Bruce, daughter of Robert
the Bruce or to the medieval origin myth of the Scots nation,
recorded in the Scotichronicon
in which the Scots people are descended from the Princess Scota.
James was succeeded
by his infant daughter Mary. He was buried at Holyrood
Abbey alongside his first wife Madeleine
and his two sons in January 1543. David Lindsay supervised the construction of
his tomb. One of his French artists, Andrew
Mansioun, carved a lion and an inscription in Roman
letters measuring eighteen feet. The tomb was destroyed in the
sixteenth century, according to William Drummond of Hawthornden as early as 1544, by the
English during the burning of Edinburgh. Scotland was ruled by Regent Arran
and was soon drawn into the war of the Rough
Wooing.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_V_of_Scotland
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