Daughters of the North

Jean Gordon and Mary, Queen of Scots

Jennifer Morag Henderson

• Editorial: Sandstone Press
• Año: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781913207762
• Categoría: Historia
• Categoría: Biografías históricas

Longlisted for the 2022 Highland Book Prize Mary, Queen of Scots' marriage to the Earl of Bothwell is notorious. Less known is Bothwell's first wife, Jean Gordon, who extricated herself from their marriage and survived the intrigue of the Queen's court. Daughters of the North reframes this turbulent period in history by focusing on Jean, who became Countess of Sutherland, following her from her birth as the daughter of the 'King of the North' to her disastrous union with the notorious Earl of Bothwell – and her lasting legacy to the Earldom of Sutherland.

 

 

 

 

PART ONE

 

The Marian Years

CHAPTER ONE

The King of the North’s Daughter: 1545–15611

When she was born in 1545, Jean was the youngest daughter of the most powerful man in Scotland: ‘the Cock o’ the North’, George Gordon the 4th Earl of Huntly. The House of Huntly controlled much of the north-east, but their powerbase extended around the blue and white coast, across the fertile Aberdeenshire and Moray farmland, and up to the peat browns and windswept skies of Sutherland and the Far North.

Huntly Castle was where Jean Gordon grew up.2 It was only one of several dwelling-places owned by her father Huntly, but it was his main base, and he had spent the last few years developing and re-decorating the castle. Huntly had accompanied Mary of Guise when she had visited France in 1550 to see her daughter, and he had been inspired by the richness of the French court. Huntly Castle was an outpost of French design and opulence in the middle of rural Aberdeenshire. Jean was living in luxury.

When Jean Gordon was about ten years old, she and her family were visited by Mary of Guise, the mother of Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary of Guise and her retinue rode up from the south of Scotland through striking scenery, the close mountains made even more dramatic by the constantly changing weather. As they came ever further north, the Frenchmen and women who accompanied Mary of Guise felt like they were riding backwards into the past, on into a savage, foreign wilderness: after the splendour of the French court or of Paris, with its half a million inhabitants, even Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, was tiny, with a population of only about 15,000.3 Now in the north of Scotland they really were in the middle of nowhere.

They were truly astonished, then, to see Huntly Castle looming up before them.

The castle was really a collection of buildings: the original tower house was opposite the newly remodelled three-storey tall palace, with other domestic buildings such as a bakehouse and brewery making up a square around a central courtyard with stabling. It was a well-established stronghold, and the mound of an old motte from 400 years before rose off to one side of the palace.

After their long journey through farmland, woods, scrubland and mud-tracks, Mary of Guise and her retinue now came onto a cobbled path leading up to the castle entrance,4 where they were met by a guard of honour of 1,000 Gordon men. Jean lived at Huntly Castle with her family, surrounded as well by their kinsmen and women, cousins and ‘cadet’ Gordon families, i.e. the huge clan-like grouping of the House of Huntly. The Earl could call on large numbers of followers and supporters from the surrounding countryside, as he was landlord and chief of a vast swathe of territory in the north and north-east. There were between 52 and 150 families with the name Gordon in the area over time, linked to Jean’s family by blood or allegiance.5 It was as if Mary of Guise was being welcomed into another royal household.

Jean’s father, the Earl of Huntly, was an enormous mountain of a man, whose large powerbase was matched with a large physical presence. He held various titles at different times in addition to his Earldom, and was at this time Lord Lieutenant of the North, and had been or was to be the Sheriff of Inverness, Sheriff of Aberdeen, Privy Councillor, Lieutenant of the Borders, Provost of Aberdeen and recipient of the French order of St Michel.6 In addition to his official titles Huntly had the unofficial nickname ‘Cock o’ the North’. He was the unquestionably the most powerful man in the north of Scotland, and the most powerful Catholic nobleman in the country. In England he was described as ‘King of the North’ – and later the ‘Terror of the English’.7

By his side was Jean’s mother, Elizabeth Keith, Countess of Huntly. She was from another powerful north-east family, but although their marriage was certainly a sensible one in terms of local politics, the Earl and Countess of Huntly were also well-matched in personality. Elizabeth was a strong, resourceful woman who was equally capable of bringing up her large family and running the estate, and she never wavered in her loyalty to her husband and the promotion of Gordon-Huntly interests. Literate and well-educated, she handled the Huntly business correspondence, and had frequently written to their guest Mary of Guise.

Huntly and Elizabeth Keith had 11 living children. Their heir and eldest son Alexander had recently died, leaving the well-thought-of George, now around 20 years old, ten years older than his sister Jean, as the successor to the title. Jean had seven other tough Gordon brothers as well as two older sisters, Margaret and Elizabeth, to make up the close-knit family.

Welcomed into the heart of the Huntly Castle complex, Mary of Guise could see the surroundings where Jean and her siblings had grown up. Huntly was delighted to show off the improvements he had made to the palace. There was plenty of room for the lowlier members of Mary of Guise’s retinue, who would have been sent either to the stables, domestic rooms such as the kitchen, or the basement rooms (next to the castle’s prison). The male and female members of the house were separated, as was common at the time, and the Earl and Countess each had one floor of the palace set aside for their use. These had been arranged by Huntly in the fashionable ‘piano nobile’ (principal or noble floor) style which he would have seen used by James V at Stirling Castle, with public rooms in descending order of size and privacy.8 Both the Earl and Countess had a Hall where general followers were settled, and where the company ate. The leading members of Mary of Guise’s retinue could then be brought into the smaller Great Chambers, where more private discussions could take place. The most important visitors of all were admitted into the bedrooms. Sixteenth-century bedrooms were also used as public rooms, with the great four-poster beds covered with wooden velvet-covered tabletops during the daytime, and they were not private rooms for an individual, but a place where many people slept: the Countess in the four-poster would be joined in the room by her daughters or trusted servants, or younger members of their entourage on smaller truckle beds.9 The sense of everyone living together as family or clan was very strong.

When Jean saw Mary of Guise in her mother’s apartments she saw a striking tall Frenchwoman with pale skin and auburn hair of around 40 years of age, dressed in mourning black for her two lost husbands and three lost sons – but she would not have been overawed, because Jean also saw a distant relative by marriage. The Huntlys were related to the Scottish royal family, and Jean was secure in her place as daughter of a rich household.

Each of the public rooms in Huntly Castle were fantastically decorated. To keep the warmth in, the stone walls of the castle were lined: on one wall of the public rooms was a huge tapestry in five panels, depicting birds and “greit leiffis of treis” – great leaves of trees – and there was another stunning panel of gilt leather in what become known as the ‘Leather Chamber’.10 In Huntly’s Hall there was a crimson satin cloth of state embroidered with gold fixed to the wall behind Huntly’s seat, which was, as later events would show, literally fit for royalty.11 There were velvet cushions to sit on, and in the bedrooms there were yellow, violet, blue, green and red velvet and silk coverings and curtains for the beds. It was common to paint intricate decorations on wooden panelling on the walls, or have a painted ceiling. Lit by candlelight, the colours could be richer than the pale walls of a modern house lit with blank electricity, and at a time when sumptuary laws limited the use of certain materials and colours to nobility, Huntly Castle was a vividly colourful home designed to make an impression.

Dinner was served in the Hall, where Huntly and his wife feasted their guests, serving elaborate meals every day for a week. Mary of Guise was astonished at their lavishness: she knew that entertaining a royal party was an expensive affair, and, after a few days, she offered to move on. Huntly replied that it was not a problem. The royal party could stay as long as they liked, he said expansively, and, to prove it, he took them on a tour of his store-rooms: they were absolutely crammed with supplies of food and drink. This demonstration did not have quite the effect that he had hoped for. Mary of Guise’s French followers began to mutter among themselves, and, once they had finally left the castle, the mood began to turn against Huntly. The “wings of the ‘Cock of the North’,” they said, “should be clipped”.12

Huntly had really wanted to impress Mary of Guise, as she was taking control of the Regency of Scotland for her baby daughter. Huntly had been at the centre of power since his childhood, when he was brought up at the Scottish court alongside the future King James V. He had remained one of James V’s closest companions and had effectively been in control of the whole country of Scotland twice already: he himself had been trusted as Regent when James V went to France to collect his first bride, and he had been appointed Governor of the Realm after King James V died. James V had turned his face to the wall and died shortly after the disastrous Scottish defeat at the Battle of Solway Moss in 1542, while his second wife Mary of Guise lay recovering from childbirth. The baby Mary, Queen of Scots, succeeded to the throne when she was only six days old. As Mary of Guise regained her strength, the Earl of Arran had stepped in and taken over as Regent. Arran’s alliances fluctuated, and he switched allegiances more than once, moving in his ‘godly fit’ from Catholic to Protestant, from French-supporting to English-supporting, and back again. His actions were always tempered by his knowledge that should the baby Mary, Queen of Scots die, Arran himself was next in line to the Scottish throne. Jean’s father Huntly had maintained close ties with Arran, and his eldest son Alexander was married to Arran’s daughter – and, after Alexander’s unexpected early death, the Huntly-Arran link was later maintained when Jean’s brother George was married to Arran’s third daughter.13

With Scotland undergoing another royal minority and religious upheaval upsetting the balance of power, the English king, Henry VIII, had pursued his own interest in the Scottish throne, and battered the south of the country in an attempt to force an alliance between his son and the infant queen. ‘We like not the manner of the wooing,’ said Jean’s father Huntly, ‘and we could not stoop to being bullied into love’ – giving rise, much later, to Walter Scott’s coining of the phrase ‘Rough Wooing’ to describe this period.14 The Scots resisted the English attacks, turning to the French for help – but at the same time many Scots were drawn to the new Protestant religion that had taken hold in England and mistrusted the Catholic French who wished to use Scotland as a tool in their own battles with the English and Spanish. People changed sides and allegiances, and the political and religious landscape was constantly shifting.

The accession of Edward VI to the English throne and Scotland’s disastrous defeat at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh in 1547 marked another punctuation in developments. Jean’s father Huntly, fighting on foot and wearing a fantastic massive suit of gilded and enamelled armour, was taken prisoner at Pinkie. The Scots tried to negotiate a ransom for him, but the English refused, saying he was such a deadly foe he must stay prisoner until there was peace. The Scots then suggested that Huntly should be allowed the comfort of his family, and that Lady Huntly, Jean and her siblings should be allowed to travel to see him. This too was refused, but it was agreed that Huntly might be moved to the north of England so his wife could visit him occasionally. The English pressed Huntly to support them, returning him his hawks and greyhounds in exchange for his professed support, but Huntly was secretly laying plans for escape. After his move to the north of England, he gained some of the trust of his captors, engaging them in a card game. After a brief moment of danger when Huntly inadvertently spoke his thoughts aloud, he tricked the friendly captors by sneaking out to the toilet while they were busy. Bypassing the facilities, Huntly and his servant ran to a pre-arranged meeting-point and their friends, and rode hard north to Edinburgh where Huntly was ‘joyfullie and honorablie received’ by his wife and friends.15 Jean’s father did not keep any of his promises to the English, but had returned instead to help Mary of Guise. Huntly wanted Mary of Guise to know that he was one of her allies – and he expected that he and his family would be rewarded for being her ally.

Mary of Guise’s policy was to keep the throne safe for her daughter at all costs, and to do this she wanted to maintain and strengthen the links between her home country and Scotland. She saw Scotland as a minor player on the European stage, which would do well to ally with Catholic France against England and against Protestantism. She took advice from her brothers, the powerful Ducs de Guise, who were busy working their family’s own way closer to the French throne. Mary of Guise spent years charming the noblemen of Scotland while aiming towards her goal of taking over the reins of power to hold the kingdom for her daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots. After more than a decade of political manoeuvring, Mary of Guise was finally made Regent in 1554. Along the way she had made many promises, and now Huntly and others were waiting for her to deliver.

Jean Gordon’s family were effective rulers over a huge part of north-east Scotland. The Huntly area of influence spread over the north-eastern coast, down to Aberdeen and along to Elgin. They had interests in Inverness-shire as well, and family links in Sutherland: their world centred around the coastline of the Moray Firth. This territorial link was to be a key and recurring theme throughout Jean Gordon’s life; it was an idea central to her thinking from an early age, and she spent much of her life travelling back and forth around this coast. Some of this area was not fixed on the Earl of Huntly though: the Earldom of Moray was officially a crown title, one not solely hereditary, as the Earldom of Huntly was, but which could be given as a favour by the King or Queen. Huntly wanted ultimate control of Moray. If he ruled Moray, that would link his territory in the east with Inverness, where he held the sheriffship, and enable him to strengthen Gordon links with the Far North as well. Moray was also particularly covetable as it was good, fertile land.

Mary of Guise had indicated to Huntly tha...

Índice

• Acknowledgements
• List of Illustrations
• INTRODUCTION
• PART ONE
• CHAPTER ONE
• CHAPTER TWO
• CHAPTER THREE
• CHAPTER FOUR
• CHAPTER FIVE
• CHAPTER SIX
• CHAPTER SEVEN
• CHAPTER EIGHT
• CHAPTER NINE
• CHAPTER TEN
• INTERLUDE
• PART TWO
• CHAPTER ELEVEN
• CHAPTER TWELVE
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
• CHAPTER NINETEEN
• CHAPTER TWENTY