History Scotland Magazine: Review - Bloodfeud, The War Between the Stewarts and Gordons in the Age of Mary Queen of Scots

Bloodfeud, The War Between the Stewarts and Gordons in the Age of Mary Queen of Scots

Harry Potter

Tempus Publishing Ltd, Stroud, 2002. ISBN 0 7524 2330 4. 350pp Pb 17.99.

As a boy I had a good Scottish education and it was not for many years after I left my august educational establishment that I discovered that the revered founder of the institution had made his fortune by trafficking in slaves. But prior to this revelation I had been tempted by the kings shilling (but in those days it had increased to half a crown) to follow the flag and be a soldier. My travels took me to distant lands and at one time I had four Germans working for me. Their knowledge of history, including Scottish history, was superior to mine and while I knew the names and fates of the six wives of Henry VIII I knew nothing about Culloden or the Highland Clearances.

Thirty years after I left school, Harry Potter left his and makes the same complaint about the teaching, or rather lack of it, of Scottish history. But instead of just moaning about it he has done something constructive and written a well researched account of the relationship between the great families of Gordon and Moray after 1524, culminating in the murder of the Bonnie Earl in 1592.

According to Tom Johnston in his excoriating polemic Our Noble Families The Gordons were a nest of public robbers whose base of operations was the North-East of Scotland. His opinion of the Stewarts of Doune, aka Moray, is not given but Potter states my sympathies are less with Moray that with the sixth Earl of Huntly. If the scheming Gordon, Earl of Huntly, was deserving of even slightly more sympathy than the man he murdered, then Moray was indeed the blackest of villains. However, before we condemn them too much, we must not judge them by the standards of today but by the standards of their time and let the facts speak for themselves.

The book is divided into four parts with an additional and very valuable introduction entitled The People of the North. This is most useful as it sets the scene for the action which follows, for, even in this age of mass transport there is still a lingering prejudice by the inhabitants of the Midland Belt against anybody living north of Perth. Attempts by the Scottish Executive to move functions and departments away from Edinburgh are met with cries of outrage as if the politicians and their civil servants were being asked to relocate in Siberia! The poor deluded fools; if they only realised the greater freedom of action they would have if physically remote from the centre. No such silly notions entered the minds of the Huntlys. Beyond the mountains their writ ran unchallenged except for the inconvenient neighbour, Moray, who shared their North-East bed.

The Huntlys had been in the bed for generations but the Earls of Moray, who were Stewarts and thus of royal, though bastard, blood were in-comers. The 4th Earl of Huntly the wylest lad that lyved and James Stewart, bastard son of James IV and first Earl of Moray were placed in joint charge of an army sent against the English in 1542. Arguments over tactics led to Moray deserting and returning home, followed by the inevitable defeat of the Scottish army. If this was not the start of the feud between Huntly and Moray, then it certainly did not help.

The Reformation came and the Huntlys, remote in the North, continued in their old ways. The new queen, Mary, tried to steer a path between her religious inclinations to support Huntly and her, somewhat deficient, political instincts, to acquiesce to the views of her nobles who were already waxing rich on the despoliation of the Church. The old lion, Huntly, and the younger Lion, Lord James Stewart, 2nd Earl of Moray and bastard son of James V, clashed at Corrichie near Banchory on 28 October 1562. The Protestant Moray represented the Catholic Queen and Catholic Huntly represented himself. Huntly fell off his horse and died, thus saving much embarrassment all round. The younger Huntlys, however, continued the feud with the Morays.

By the time the 6th Earl of Huntly and the 3rd Earl of Moray were in possession the family feuding was bubbling along nicely; but not only between the old rivals, for the Campbells, enticed from Loch Awe by the opportunity to snap up the lands of Cawdor by means which were legal but by no means respectable, were in the equation and, most importantly, the Campbells had for a long time fallen out with Gordons. On 5 February 1592 the 3rd Thane of Cawdor was visiting his daughter near Oban when a hired assassin put three bullets into his heart. Huntly was suspected of this murder but the hue and cry over this crime was nothing compared to the uproar which followed two days later when Huntly personally assisted in the killing of the Earl of Moray and mutilated his face so that his victim, as he lay dying, is reported to have said ye hae spilt a far fairer face than yer ain!

James VIs situation was ambiguous and he may well have encouraged the deed but the public was whipped up to riot by the Moray faction. Nevertheless, much to the anger of the murdered mans mother, no action was taken against Huntly. In death, through his mothers propaganda aimed at forcing James VI into trying Huntly for murder, the Earl of Moray became the Bonnie Earl of the ballad, and his name is carried by a public house in Elgin. His portrait in death, which was paraded through the streets of Edinburgh to inflame the crowd, survives in the great hall at Darnaway.

The story of this family feud is superbly related by Harry Potter. This somewhat obscure of Scottish earls and their skullduggery is brilliantly told and is well furnished with appropriate illustrations. There are ten appendices and copious notes so that family connections can be easily followed. This is a work of dedicated scholarship and the author has more than compensated for his traditional schooling in Scottish history.

Ian Keillar, Elgin.