The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain by Allan Massie Read Free Book Online Page B

there might be worse to come.
    A conspiracy was formed. Its guiding spirit was Sir Robert Graham, who had been imprisoned by James a dozen years previously. Having escaped, he denounced the King, not without reason, as a tyrant. There were other candidates for the throne if James could be removed: Graham’s nephew Malise was still held in England as a hostage at the King’s request, but his claim might be thought inferior to that of Walter, Earl of Atholl, the youngest and last legitimate survivor of Robert II’s numerous brood. Atholl had been on good enough terms with his nephew the King, but now, though around seventy years old, was persuaded to join the conspiracy, perhaps with the promise of the crown. He may have been influenced by his grandson, Sir Robert Stewart, whose own ambitions extended to the throne. This Stewart was also the King’s domestic chamberlain and as such a key figure in the plot.
    The King had passed Christmas of 1436 at the Dominican abbey in Perth. The building, which no longer exists, stood on the northern edge of the town, beyond the burgh walls, and was protected by a ditch, originally perhaps the moat of the old wooden castle destroyed in a flood some two hundred years previously. Legend has it that James was warned of danger by an old woman with second sight as he journeyed to the town; but such legends are often the creation of chroniclers or ballad-makers eager to make more dramatic a story that is already strong enough. Since James was a hero to Stewart chroniclers, this wise woman may have been introduced into their story in imitation of the soothsayer Artemidorus who warned Julius Caesar to beware the Ides of March. If, however, there was such a warning, James paid no attention to it.
    He remained as a guest of the Black Friars for some weeks – January and February were not inviting months to travel in medieval Scotland. No doubt he conducted business there; he also played tennis energetically, perhaps in an effort to reduce his weight 4 – an ambassador from Rome, Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (later Pope Pius II), had described him a few years before as ‘oppressed by his excessive corpulence’. 5 Irritated by losing tennis balls down a drain that ran from the abbey cellars, the King ordered it to be blocked up. The command would cost him his life.
    On the evening of 20 February, the chamberlain Sir Robert Stewart had word from his fellow conspirators that all was ready. He dismissed the guards on some pretext and drew back the bolts on the outer door of the abbey. Under cover of darkness the assassins laid planks across the old moat and crept up to the door. Towards midnight they made their entry unchallenged and approached the chamber where the King was playing chess. Later legend has it that the bolts from that door too had been removed and that one of the Queen’s ladies, Catherine Douglas, thrust her arm through the staples on the door frame to check the murderers and give the King time to escape. 6
    Early versions of the story tell of how James, alarmed by the sound of his enemies’ approach, tore up some of the floorboards and hid in the vault below, from which ran the drain he had ordered to be stopped. For a little while it seemed that he might escape. The conspirators searched the Queen’s apartments and were apparently ready to retire baffled. James then emerged, too soon, from his hiding place, for his enemies returned to find him climbing back into the room. He was in his nightgown and unarmed; yet struggled bravely before being overpowered and dispatched with – accounts vary – either sixteen or twenty-eight dagger wounds. He was buried in the Charterhouse of Perth, which he had recently given the monks of the Carthusian order licence to establish. His heart was removed and taken on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and then brought back to Scotland by a knight of the Order of St John. This was a piece of theatrical symbolism, linking the murdered monarch to his