The Glorious Twelfth.

Don't worry - I'm not thinking of killing any poor avians. I happened on one of those 'On This Day In History' pages which mentioned the battle of Dupplin Moor: a medieval punch-up twixt us and our dear neighbours. I seemed to remember writing about it at one time but couldn't think where.

Found it eventually. It's only the most popular post in the last three years.

So - as I feel a bit lazy today - here it is again:

                          The story of 'Black Agnes of Dunbar'.

Dunbar Castle today.

Agnes, Countess of Dunbar is well known here in East Lothian for her role in defending Dunbar Castle against an English army in 1338. There's not much left of the castle now but what there is seems to rise fully formed from the red stone of the local area like it's part of the rock itself. In any case what little still remains around the harbour today isn't Agnes' castle of 1338. That earlier stronghold was later 'casttit doune' on order of the king to prevent it falling into enemy hands.

The Celtic Votadini or Gododdin, are thought to have been the first to defend this site, the Brythonic name Dyn Barr, (the fort of the point) is still in use. By the 7th century Dunbar Castle was a central defensive position of the Kings of Bernicia, an Anglian kingdom that took over from the British Kingdom of Bryneich. During the Early Middle Ages, Dunbar Castle was held by an Ealdorman owing homage to either the Kings at Bamburgh Castle, or latterly the Kings of York. In 678 Saint Wilfrid was imprisoned at Dunbar, following his expulsion from his see of York by Ecgfrith of Northumbria. Later, Dunbar was said to have been burnt by Kenneth MacAlpin, King of the Scots. Certainly he is on record in possession of the castle in 879.

Let me describe some background to set the scene that propelled Agnes to her destiny.

By 1338 Scotland was in a chaotic state. Robert The Bruce had been dead almost ten years and his presence no longer blinded its enemies and shadowed the land with confidence, optimism and determination. He'd lived long enough to sign the treaty which recognized him as king of a free country and send it south for an English king's signature and hollow promise of peace in perpetuity. It was carried by a hundred knights on safe-conduct pass to Edward in York, a place they had recently passed through equally safely without such protection. The treaty was ratified by the English Parliament at Northampton but seen by the aristocracy for the capitulation it really was. As part of the peace process, David, The Bruce's five year old son was married to Edward's child sister, Joan, aged seven. Edward too renounced all claim upon Scotland and recognised 'His most dear friend and ally, Lord Robert, by grace of God, King of Scots.' All documents relating to Scotland removed over the previous decades were also to be returned, although it would be 600 years and many sovereigns later before it happened.

{Intriguingly there appears no mention of the Stone of Destiny even though it's hard to believe given its historic importance to Scotlands kings. It would take even longer for that relic to be returned.}

Stone of Destiny under the coronation

throne, Westminster Abbey.

Peace, such as it was, was superficial. It didn't stop cross border raiding by either side. Power in Scotland was in the hands of a Regent - Mar, the young kings cousin - also heir to the throne should the boy-king die. South of the border the exiled King John Balliol's son Edward was receiving tacit royal support and encouragement in his aim of restoration to what he saw as his birthright. He was supported too by those Lords and sons of Lords who had lost lands, titles and influence when Bruce came to power. This eager group, known as 'The Disinherited', were an ideal audience in which to foment rebellion and trouble north of the border to keep the situation unstable and pressure on the troublesome Scots.

The Disinherited and their English allies sailed on 31 July 1332 from several Yorkshire ports to Kinghorn in Fife to get round the terms of the Treaty of Northampton that forbade English forces to cross the River Tweed which at that time marked the border. Moving inland they were met by a Scots force at Dupplin Moor, near Perth. The battle that ensued lasted from dawn until noon and by that time English bowmen, in an early indication of the power and potential of the longbow, had destroyed most of the Scots army, including Regent Mar. . In that gleeful medieval way, it was said that Scots bodies piled up the height of a spear on the field. Victorious Balliol was crowned King at Scone six weeks later, surrounded by the disinherited and many who had previously supported Bruce. He offered the English Edward homage as liege lord and lands in the south which effectively brought England to Edinburgh's doorstep, asking for David's marriage to be set aside so he could marry the young Joan in his place and establish his own dynasty. By December though he was forced to flee half-dressed into the night on an unsaddled horse, back across the border to Carlisle, when a force under Randolph and Douglas, loyal to the boy-king of Scots caught him unprepared at his camp in Annan. King Edward was furious and now openly showed his support for Balliol, claiming the Scots had broken the Treaty of Northampton through their cross border raiding and by raising an English army to invade Scotland once more. Archibald Douglas, younger brother of crusading James, who had thrown Bruce's casketed heart ahead of him before charging to his death among the Saracens en route to bury that same item in the Holy Land, was made new Regent of Scotland until David reached his maturity.

In 1333 Edward came North at the head of an army to take Berwick once again and met the Scots army at Halidon hill, two or three miles north of the town. The Scots had seemingly learned little or nothing from the defeat of Dupplin Moor and now no longer faced the inexperienced boy king who years before had wept in frustration as another Scots army, against overwhelming odds, outwitted him and melted away in the night to live and fight another day. He was now the warrior tactician who, just a few short years in the future, would destroy French chivalric power to win at Crecy, and his army reflected his new understanding of firepower, heavy as it was with men practiced from childhood in the spine crushing discipline of the longbow and the cloth yard arrow, fletched with goose and tipped with steel. The old Scots tactic of the spear tipped 'schiltrom' formation densely packed with men finally proved itself out of time and tragically inadequate.This time Edward had picked an ideal position and there would be no mistakes allowing the enemy to escape. As the Scots ranks attacked in their lumbering hedgehog formations that windy morning they began to slip on the grassy slope even before clouds of arrows were driving into them. It was said that the onslaught of the bowmen was so fierce that the Scots turned their heads as if walking into sleet. When finally they broke and ran, death rode close behind, armour clad with steel mace or sword at the ready. The notion of confidence, of invulnerability, which had been Bruce's hard won legacy was gone.

It had lived less than a lifetime.

Schiltrom fighting

For Edward, it was the kind of victory that his long legged Grandfather would have been proud of. It was vindication of his tactics and bloody rehearsal for victories yet to come. For the Scots it was utter disaster. Those Barons quick enough to find a fast horse and flee the field, quickly sent the boy king and his queen to France and the protection of its king before heading for the hills or throwing themselves at the dubious mercy of Edward and Balliol. Scotland lost 5 Earls, 70 Barons, 500 knights and countless thousands of spearmen. The English lost virtually no-one. Records show their losses at 14, a dozen of them archers. With the loss of its army, Scots resistance returned to the old ways of guerrilla tactics, isolated strongholds and lightning raids from the wilderness. For the next twelve years there would be no peace, but a virtual civil war as Regent after Regent resisted the usurper Balliol in the name of King David.

It was this world that Black Agnes inhabited.

Agnes Randolph, Countess of Dunbar, was the daughter of the Earl Of Moray, one of Bruce's most loyal supporters, who had fought beside his king at the Bannock-Burn and other places. Her husband, Patrick, Earl of Dunbar and March { the border lands were called 'Marches'} was also of royal blood and a supporter of David II. The vulnerable and volatile border lands needed a trustworthy hand and a strong sword arm. The Dunbar's epitomise a loyal and trustworthy pedigree of support for David in the trying times of his exile. In 1338 Earl Patrick was absent from his lands fighting for the cause in the north. Agnes was left in control of the stronghold of Dunbar castle with a skeleton force and her retinue of servants. In those days this was no unusual thing but it is more noticeable for the fact that she was left during such dangerous times. This may be an indication that it was felt Dunbar was the safest place or that there was no-one capable enough, or trustworthy enough, to be left in her stead. History would show that it was indeed fortunate that Lady Agnes and no other was in charge at the time. She's come down the years known as Black Agnes, perhaps from the jet-black of her hair or from the combination with her olive coloured skin. Both were noted. Both are possible, but we don't know for sure. What we do know is that in January of 1338 Lord Montague, Earl of Salisbury, an experienced soldier, arrived at Dunbar with an English army and instructions to take the castle. He was in high spirits and felt sure that he would be a match for the Lady Agnes. In that belief he would find himself sadly mistaken.

Asked to surrender the castle, Agnes declined, reputedly stating,

"Of Scotland's King I haud my house, He pays me meat and fee, And I will keep my gude auld house, while my house will keep me."

Pleasantries over, the siege began in earnest with an extended bombardment by catapults. During three weeks of almost continuous assault, Agnes showed her contempt for Salisbury's efforts by walking the battlements between salvos, her retinue of ladies in waiting dressed in all their finery, all ostentatiously dusting off the damage done by the English missiles with handkerchiefs of white linen to indicate that it was no more than a minor inconvenience. It's easy to imagine Lord Salisbury's reaction. No matter when he attacked, Agnes was prepared, her small force ready to act. This was recorded later in ballad form as if from his own mouth,

"She makes a stir in tower and trench,
That brawling, boisterous, Scottish wench;
Came I early, came I late.
I found Agnes at the gate."

Agnes was an early master of one-upmanship. Faced with her captured brother being brought to the castle by the English, a rope around his neck, she answered their threat to hang him before her eyes by telling them to do so as she would then inherit his lands and titles. {Her brother was not hanged but taken away to custody in England.} On one occasion she narrowly missed capturing Salisbury himself, leading an attempt to gain entry to the castle - having bribed the gatekeeper - who in turn advised Lady Agnes. Instead she sprang the trap too soon and shut the portcullis down on an attendant instead, but sent caustic word to Salisbury later that evening that 'she had hoped to dine with him and was sorry to have missed him.' Salisbury responded by sending for a huge siege engine called 'The Sow', a battering ram with a wooden roof. He attacked the castle entrance only for Agnes to destroy it before any damage had been done by dropping, from the ramparts, a huge rock previously fired into the castle by English catapults. It went through the roof of 'The Sow' killing many of the men who were operating it. In yet another episode she had Salisbury targeted by a bowman at range and only narrowly missed him, striking and killing the man at his side.

Even the English quipped admiringly, "Black Agnes' love-shafts go straight to the heart!".

Salisbury continued to besiege Dunbar for five months by which time things were desperate and starvation was near. Hope came when a small force from the castle on Bass Rock managed to get supplies through the naval blockade by disguising themselves as fishermen returning to port. With typical crushing mockery Agnes sent Salisbury a fresh baked loaf of bread and a bottle of fine wine. By this time Edward's attention was elsewere and he was beginning to cast his eye at France. This new focus caused him to relocate forces in support , leaving Balliol to manage Scotland as best he could. By June 10th Salisbury was ordered to lift the siege and left in disgrace. His nemisis would go down in Scots history as Black Agnes of Dunbar.

Even hundreds of years later Agnes is recognised by many in Scotland as a true heroine and an inspirational leader. Her name and values were used several centuries later to rally support and inspiration in the name of the womens suffrage movement in the early years of the twentieth century.

She was voted in the top 100 in the millenium list of influential Scots.

Sketch of Suffragette Banner

see you later.

Listening to.

Undaunted By Odds, Unwearied In Their Constant Challenge......

Hullo ma wee blog,

Interested in history as I am I cannot let today go past without marking what is known as 'Battle Of Britain Day'. This year is the 70th anniversary of the day when the heaviest fighting took place.

In his political career, our famous wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill made many great speeches but two or three in particular are perhaps remembered most. Two of those relate to the war in the skies. Even today these stand as great examples of oratory and are capable of touching the heart. It's especially interesting to note that these two iconic speeches occured within just two months in 1940, indicating the dire situation facing the country at that time. Especially perhaps on a day such as this, it's worthwhile remembering too, that while oratory remains, it is those individuals and their deeds, which are more transient, which stand behind those words and should be remembered most.

Winston Churchill's address to Parliament June 18th 1940.

"What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say; This was their finest hour."

Winston Churchill's address to Parliament; 20th August 1940.

"The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. All hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day; but we must never forget that all the time, night after night, month after month, our bomber squadrons travel far into Germany, find their targets in the darkness by the highest navigational skill, aim their attacks, often under the heaviest fire, often with serious loss, with deliberate careful discrimination, and inflict shattering blows upon the whole of the technical and war-making structure of the Nazi power. On no part of the Royal Air Force does the weight of the war fall more heavily than on the daylight bombers, who will play an invaluable part in the case of invasion and whose unflinching zeal it has been necessary in the meanwhile on numerous occasions to restrain."

Death of a Prince – Bonnie Prince Charlie

On the south bank of the River Arno in Florence, on a quiet corner of the Via Mazetta in the Piazza Santo Spirito stands the Palazzo Guadagni. This sixteenth century building is lost amongst Florence's incredible Renaissance architecture and most tourists generally pass it by. If like me you're fascinated by Scots history, it's worth paying attention to.  Behind these thick walls and huge wooden doors far from home the Jacobite dream finally ended. Here, Charles Edward Stuart fought and lost his last battles to be recognised as King of Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland. Here too took place a squalid, violent and chaotic marriage with his beautiful and vivacious young wife, Louise de Stolberg.

The marriage of Charles Stuart and Louise was a disaster right from the start. He married for a male heir she never produced; she for a kingdom he would never deliver. He was arrogant and authoritarian with an unshakeable belief in his right to the throne of Britain: she was vivacious, restless and sociable. Demoralised by failure, exile and constant diplomatic and social snubs over the years Charles became embroiled in alcoholism, his health failed and he wallowed in increasing self-pity. Louise would come to despise and then punish him by taking a string of lovers, one of whom – the well-known poet Vittorio Alfieri – she eloped with.

For six years between 1774 and 1780, in private inside the Palazzo Guadagni, and outside in public, Charles and Louise mauled each other with viciousness beyond belief. Florentine society gossiped and sniggered while they watched the marriage to disintegrate in disgrace and spies working for the British government charted and cheerfully reported the downward spiral of the relationship in all its happy detail.

An incredibly romantic and heroic figure in popular Scots history, ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ as Charles Edward Stuart is perhaps best known, is best remembered for his ‘so near and yet so far’ exploits during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 and particularly his flight across the Highlands and Islands after the Battle of Culloden; the tale of Flora MacDonald and the loyalty of the Jacobite clansmen who fought for him. History books often lead us to believe that the story ends there but he still had another 42 years to live. History also forgets he was incredibly right wing, highly conservative and with a staunch belief in his right to absolute rule and it's also conveniently forgotten he was sponsored and manipulated by tyrants for their own political agenda.

 The end of his life was far from romantic, sentimental or heroic.

Louise de Stolberg

In those 42 years though, he never stopped plotting and scheming. He never stopped lobbying European powers to return the house of Stuart to the British throne from which his grandfather, James VII of Scotland and II of England had been driven into exile in 1688.

 Loyal followers of King James were known as ‘Jacobites’ from the Latin for James and after 1745, while his father continued to remain in Rome under the protection of the Pope, Charles stayed in France because the King Louis was his most likely ally. During this time Europe was involved in a struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism that placed France and Britain on opposing sides. The Jacobites therefore were initially highly influential and potentially very useful to France, although the failure of the 1745 Rebellion – mainly due to France's lack of support and Charles’ headstrong naïveté – had significantly reduced their influence with King Louis. By 1749 though  Louis finally lost patience with Charles and the Jacobites and had him move out of the city to Avignon where eventually the local archbishop also lost patience with this impulsive, headstrong ‘Prince of Scotland’. The political worth of the Stuarts had waned and they were now more of a tool in levering advantage in the politics of the day rather than a weapon to attack the throne of Britain.

For more than a decade Charles wandered around Europe plotting and scheming, taking time to father - by his mistress, Clementina Walkinshaw - a girl, Charlotte, his only known child – in October 1753. Always a heavy drinker, he became more and more reliant on alcohol to buoy his mood and perspective on the world.

Then, at the beginning of January 1766, Charles's father, James Stewart, the Old Pretender, died.

Charles declared himself King Charles III of England, Scotland and Ireland while equally swiftly the British royal house of Hanover acted to make sure that nobody else in Europe called him that. The situation in Europe had changed in the intervening years, the Jacobite cause had few advocates and with the exception of Spain and France, no European country wanted anything to do with the defeated and discredited Stuarts while the House of Hanover had ascended in its importance and influence. Charles though was undeterred and found himself rejuvenated. He moved to Rome hoping for recognition from the Vatican, where his brother Henry was a cardinal. Unsurprisingly considering the new political landscape, although the Pope had recognised Charles's father as King, the Vatican refused to recognise Charles in his place. Charles would never forgive the Pope or his cardinals and railed against them for the rest s life.

Charles was determined to play the King in exile, but was thwarted at every turn. He moved into his father's Palazzo in Rome but the Pope ordered the royal coat of arms above the gates removed. When some Jacobites amongst the Scots, Irish and English colleges in Rome began addressing Charles as the monarch they were banished from Rome. Rome and society treated Charles like he was just another aristocrat among many, and a minor one at that. They recognised him as the Count of Albany - never as King Charles III.

Clementina Walkinshaw

Even a pretend, or an unrecognised dynasty, needs heirs and Charles had dynastic ambitions but Clementina Walkinshaw was a commoner and therefore unsuitable to provide the next generation of Stuart royalty. In the early 1770's Charles began to search the European aristocracy for a suitable wife. He eventually he found one. Louise de Stolberg – Gedern, was the 19-year-old daughter of a minor German Princeling killed fighting for the Austrians in 1757. Suitably, she was even distantly related to the Bruce's through her mother's line. Reports came back that blonde, blue-eyed Louise had "a good figure, pretty face and excellent teeth and all the qualities which your Majesty can desire". Who could resist such a recommendation?

Some historians believe Louise to Stolberg was an innocent sacrificed to an older middle-aged drunkard but Louise probably knew what she was doing. She was well educated and calculating and Charles Stuart was a better catch than most of the minor royalty that would come knocking on her door and, even though it was a slim chance, he held the prospect of a Crown. The fact is she was very keen to marry him. They married in Paris, by proxy, on the 28^th of March 1772 and then again in the flesh, on the seventeenth of April in the Marefoschi Palace, Macereta and proceeded to Rome where Charles's brother Henry organised a triumphal procession into the city for the "King of England" and his Queen. The crowds turned out in force to see Charles and his bride arrive in Rome where the couple set up court and began to live the life of European royalty, ‘receiving’guests at court, rarely venturing out to socialise with mere mortals. But in reality they were fooling themselves. The new Pope, Clement X I V, refused to recognise Charles as a King and although Roman aristocracy were happy enough to call on the "Count and Countess of Albany" they could not formally recognise them or address them in the way that Charles so desperately wanted . It must have been torture.

Cardinal Henry Stuart

As the diplomatic and social snubs continued, Charles grew  more depressed and morose and sought refuge in alcohol. By 1773, the Hanoverian spy Sir Horace Mann was reporting that Charles was ‘seldom sober and frequently commits the greatest disorders and his family’, reporting that Charles was drinking a dozen bottles of wine a day.. In those circumstances it is hardly surprising that an attractive, intelligent woman who had eye of many would eventually turn away from husband. Many young aristocrats of the day, doing the fashionable European tour, with pay court to Louise over the next several years, attracted by the glamour and notoriety of the Jacobites and the personality of the woman who had become named "Queen of hearts".

Charles in old age

By the start of 1774 Charles could suffer Rome and its insults no more so he moved his "court" to Florence. The reason for this is not clear because the Duke of Tuscany was just as hostile to Charles and the Stuarts as the Pope and had no intention of upsetting the British by welcoming The Pretender. Also, the British government's chief spy in Italy, Sir Horace Mann, lived only a few streets away from the Palazzo Gaudagni where Charles and his young wife set up residence and he ensured that the "Royal" household was well manned with spies who reported on all the comings and goings and the day to day machinations of the house.

If anything isolation of the family in Florence was even greater than in Rome. The Duke of Tuscany annoyed and embarrassed Charles by having his Royal coat of arms removed from above the box he used at the theatre. Only Jacobite exiles and beggars on the street gave Charles the recognition he felt he deserved. He led a strange existence becoming gradually more and more isolated and more and more demoralised which led to even greater depths of drunkenness and, as a result, even greater disapproval from the authorities in Florence and the Duke in particular. The strong physique of Charles's youth and disappeared as age and years of bad living took its toll. Now he was fat, breathless, his stomach was troubled and he could not control his belching and farting which became a constant source of embarrassment. His legs swelled until he had to be carried everywhere. Dropsy added to his already ample girth and he began to suffer from epileptic fits. Reports from this time describe Charles as vomiting in the corridors of the theatre and opera in plain sight of the general public. By now Louise had come to despise him and their communication deteriorated into bad tempered notes to each other. Their physical relationship seems to have stopped by this time and Louise pointedly threatened to advertise the fact. Despite Charles’s isolation and depression, Louise in contrast was still very much in favour and receiving numerous visitors. Charles was overcome by insecurity and jealousy and would not let her out of his sight. All routes to her rooms, except those that went through his own, were barricaded. It was at this point that Alfieri appeared in Louise's life and soon became her lover.

 The downward spiral of isolation of alcohol continued unabated and increasingly the Duke of Tuscany regarded him with horror and embarrassment. Eventually, he forbade members of Florentine aristocracy to visit Charles, which piled even more isolation onto him and fed his feelings of despair and bitterness. He had lost grip of his political life and his personal one too. It may be that this was the reason for the public disaster that was about to happen. The mounting tension between Charles and Louise exploded into violence on the thirtieth of November 1780. Charles had been drinking heavily and telling his often repeated stories about his escapades during the rebellion. A row developed which escalated beyond the usual raised voices into physical violence. Some say he attacked her, some say he was trying to rape her. Whatever was the literal truth, her screams brought dozens of servants rushing into her bedroom. All of them saw Charles assaulting his wife. The marriage was over.

Helped by Alfieri, Louise fled to a convent nearby. When Charles tried to gain access the Abbess refused to let him in and he stood screaming abuse from the street. Sometime later, supported by an armed guard provided by Cardinal Henry her brother-in-law, Louise left the convent for Rome and the protection of her brother-in-law. Charles and Louise never met again. Louise would spend the rest of her life with her lover until he died in 1803.

Charles tried to restore some dignity and respectability to the household in Palazzo Gaudagni by recognising and legitimising his daughter, Charlotte, by his mistress Clementina Walkinshaw and by inviting her to live with him in Florence. For some time her father was satisfied that she took her Royal duty seriously, insisting that servants and visitors address Charles as "Majesty" and herself as "Highness". She also treated the ailing pretender with a care and affection that his wife had never shown. Charles died, aged 67, in Rome in the early hours of the thirtieth of January 1788. His body was carried to the cathedral at Frascati to lie in state, bedecked in royal robes and with a replica of the English Crown on his head, the sceptre in one hand and the sword of state in the other. His brother the Cardinal said a requiem mass over him and then declared himself to be Henry IX, King of England, Scotland and Ireland.  This would never be recognised officially by the pope or any sovereign state.

Charles was buried in the cathedral at Frascati and later reinterred in St Peter's basilica in Rome beside his father and his brother.

His daughter, Charlotte, his only offspring, died of cancer of the liver a year after her father.

Louise Stuart nee de Stolberg died in 1824. She continued acting the part of Queen of England until she died.

Like the fortunes of the Jacobites, the Pallazzo Gaudagni faded over the years until it was a shadow of its former self. Now it has been restored and is a three star hotel. Its link with Scotland and the Royal House of Stuart is not mentioned on its website.

See you later.

Listening to:

Holding Back The Years.

Hullo ma wee blog,

I have an incredibly positive view of the generations that have gone before me in my family. To me it's something completely natural, born in love and nurtured through my childhood. I daresay some of it is incorrect, seen through the rose tinted glasses of others and myself over time. But it's important to me; helps keep me grounded knowing that I was secure in something good that has continuity from the past and continues today and onwards into the future.


I was made to reflect on that recently when I was watching a program on the BBC I-player. It was a documentary called "My father, the Nazi commandant" which told the story of a woman now in her mid-sixties who has had to come to terms and live with the realisation that her back story was false and that what she had accepted in her childish innocence was based on lies, half-truths, and denial. That would be hard enough for anyone to do but it was made more difficult because this woman had to do it in public after she was confronted with the story of her father's involvement in the mass murder of Polish Jews during World War II. The story was made famous in a film by Steven Spielberg called Schindler's list. Her father was Amon Goethe, the SS commandant of concentration camp Placzow in Kraków. The film was one whose chilling impact affected a generation of moviegoers and rightly earned a host of Oscars for its cast and crew. But a movie, no matter how chilling, is a fiction – an interpretation created for a specific purpose. For Monika, it forced her to confront and try to come to terms with a story in which she had been given a very different account of her father’s role. This would be difficult for anybody, but how much more difficult would it be to have to do this in an environment where there was enormous public interest and emotion about the story and the people involved and where the story concerned such inhumanity.

Monica had been born in 1945. She never met her father. Her mother was Goethe’s lover and as such was portrayed in the film, living with him in complacent luxury in the concentration camp while murder and brutality was the norm for its Jewish prisoners. By the time Monika was born her father was in a mental institution and her mother had returned home to her family to give birth. After the end of hostilities, her father was found in the mental institution and was later tried and executed for war crimes in 1946. Her mother always denied his involvement and ignored or perhaps even approved of the barbarity and the scale of the atrocities Goethe had committed and described him to her daughter only as a loyal soldier serving his country who had died during the war. This was the story that Monica grew up with and accepted without question for a large part of her childhood. It wasn't until she was older she came to realise that there was a great deal of tension between her mother and grandmother who shared her upbringing. This tension revolved around the story of Monika's birth and the circumstances that led to it and it didn't take long for the little girl to begin to ask questions about her father. Probably due to guilt and outright denial she was never given an honest picture of the man who was her father and in those days, in post-war Germany, people simply did not ask or talk about such things. Her father was just one of millions who had died serving his country and the young girl was told that terrible lies had been told about her father. Deliberately deceived by her mother, the child Monika ultimately came to accept that and it became part of the fabric of her being until confronted anew with the story told by Spielberg.

I can only imagine the guilt, anxiety, and turmoil that finding out a more accurate version of her fathers, and therefore her, story under those circumstances would bring and how difficult it must have been to even try to deal with that in the glare of publicity that undoubtedly surrounded her at that time. She had after all been brought up to love her father's memory and perhaps even idolised him in his absence. The impacts of finding that her existence and place in the world was based on a foundation of denial, lies and deliberate misrepresentation around such large scale human tragedy must have been immense and I have no idea how I would have coped with it. Over time, it seemed from the documentary, she did come to terms in some ways but of course in others she continued to struggle to understand and cope with the reality of her family history.

The documentary itself followed Monika, who had identified a survivor from the camp with detailed knowledge of her father as she had served as a child servant in the house of the commandant on camp during the time that her mother and a father had been together there. This woman, now living in America, agreed to an exchange of letters and ultimately agreed to take part in a filmed documentary of their meeting while they both visited the site of the camp. This would be the first time that Monika had seen the place – albeit now completely changed – where her father had committed the atrocities. It was also the first time the survivor had returned and she came accompanied by her daughter for support.

The documentary was careful to ensure that they did not interfere in the burgeoning understanding or lack of understanding and empathy from either party and in doing so I felt it left both these women, struggling with their own private demons, without much obvious support. The two ladies met for the very first time in front of a memorial to those who had died during the camps existence. It was clear to me that Monika struggled emotionally when confronted with the reality of  being there. The documentary continued with a tour of the house overlooking the camp which had been occupied by Goethe while at the camp. The two women were shown walking through the rooms together, each of confronting uncomfortable situations and thoughts. The camp survivor particularly described in harrowing detail the experiences she had suffered, including beatings, at the hands of Monika's father. She also described each room as it had been at the time and the kind of activities that took place; an opulent lifestyle in the midst of disgraceful misery. The lady was visibly greatly upset when she described the view from what had been her bedroom onto the roadway where each day her fellow prisoners were marched to work or to execution and also when the two women visited the balcony of Goethe’s lounge, from where each morning he would shoot one or two prisoners down in the camp. It was heartbreaking to consider the impact of such realities onto these two women, both of whom would always carry a terrible legacy with them.

I felt particularly sorry for Monika in one scene where she tried to describe how her father had been described to her as a child to this lady who had been through so much at his hands. It was clear to me that she was simply trying to describe how she had been misled and wanted the lady to understand that this had had an impact on her as a human being, and the kind of feelings of regret and guilt and shame that she felt, especially as she had been brought up to love her father. It was unfortunate that because of the emotional trauma of the meeting, especially in that place, that the lady could not understand why this woman had any shred of feeling other than disgust and hatred.

The documentary really affected me and made me think about how complicated, how unfair and obscene life can be and how a dreadful legacy canseep down through the years to touch people who deserve better in so many ways. While both women have families and lives and a future ahead of them, their pasts have been terribly marked in this entwined story of people generations,continents  and experiences apart. It's reaffirmed to me that history is people's lives and the connection with and understanding of our own personal history is important if we are to have any chance of understanding our place in the world and indeed, of having any hope of coping with what life may throw at us.

See you later.

Listening to;

Putting Scotland On The Map {Part one}

'The North Part of Great Britain called Scotland.

 By Herman Moll. Geographer, 1714.'

Imagine a time before Scotland; before Britain; before countries. There are no cities. There are no towns. No great castles or villages mark territory or give any hint of habitation; not even the tiniest of hamlets is to be seen.  No bridges span the great estuaries of the River Forth or Clyde and no ships, great or small, make their way up the rivers. There are no roads or railways and the skies are untouched by aeroplanes. No man-made modern light-spill interrupts a view of a night sky filled with a huge vista of stars and planets tracking across the horizon in a slow reassuring pattern that marks the changing seasons,years and centuries.  The only tracks across the land are tiny and infrequent, made by the feet of wild beasts more often than of any man.

 Beneath that double cone of Arthur's seat there's no Edinburgh spilling down to the river. To the east, in the distance, North Berwick Law stands untouched and no lighthouse blinks across the water from the Bass Rock, no ancient tribal citadel can be seen on the crest of Traprain.. The land is covered by heavy deciduous woodland reaching back to dark hills and moors that rise up in the distance. Pine forests exist only far off to the north where the mountains can be seen in the distance, glimpsed from the top of the dead volcanic plugs that will come to be called Traprain or North Berwick Law. Far down the coast where the river becomes the sea and land turns towards the south and the spot I will live thousands of generations in the future, beside a place that will one day be called Dunbar, a slim column of smoke is the only recognisable sign of life.

Here - finally - are signs of man.

Near the sea, between the water and the woods, is a house. It's a small, crude thing to our modern eyes yet it's the culmination of generations of experience and millennia of skill with its walls made from small branches of trees woven together and covered with mud built around a framework of a few solid wooden posts. The roof is pitched and roughly thatched with brush over a small hearth where a fire burns and smoke collects beneath the roof until it finally makes its escape by seeping through the roof. In this smoke hang small pieces of fish and meat strung from the relatively low ceiling.  We know all this because 10,000 years in the future archaeologists will find the post-holes and enough information to reconstruct the building at Skateraw and will name it the oldest house in Scotland. Of course the man who built it and the family who live here have no idea of that. They have no concept of such a timescale and the house is probably only designed to last a few months until they move on to the next place, guided or driven by available food supply and weather conditions.

They are the first people; hunter-gatherers whose life is dictated by the seasons and the availability of sufficient food to sustain them as they comb the shoreline for molluscs or shellfish, or net fish and trap eels in the shallows of the sea or the nearby river using a small round boat constructed of hides stretched over a supple frame of light wood. They are expert in finding nuts, fruit, or herbs in the woods and trapping animals for food and skins. Despite the fact that they are clothed in hides and use many wooden and bone tools we call this the Stone Age simply because their stone artifacts are the most common sign of their passing due to the durability of the material they are made from. While they undoubtedly have many more skills and expertise, the natural materials they use don't survive the ages except in extremely rare and precious circumstances. More often is found the worked stone hand axes or evidence of their ability as flint nappers. Flint, with its ability to be worked and flaked into razor edged cutting implements is found only in a few places, yet traces of its use found widespread across the land shows a degree of organisation and cooperation in finding and trading such a precious commodity. So adept are the people at napping this flint that they can create and use tools so tiny and delicate that they will be called microliths and will be used as an academic point of difference in identifying them from their counterparts across continental Europe who produce tools only of a more substantial size. This skill may tell us that flint was a rarer commodity on this island and necessity has driven the inhabitants to use every scrap of such a precious material.

Beyond a few stone tools and precious few examples of other materials being worked we know almost nothing about these people. We don't know what language they spoke or how they viewed the world they lived in, what kind of society they had or just how far each group roamed in the search of the food they needed to live .We have no image of them on the walls of caves showing them in the midst of a hunt. No record remains of the stories told by their firesides. Their songs are long silenced and their names unknown. Of all the people who will come later the first people leave the lightest trace in the landscape. Beyond the tools they leave behind there are only a few glimpses of the people themselves; a set of petrified footsteps where a small family group of adults and children once crossed an ancient beach; the space left among thousands of flint shards that mark the ancient knee and foot places of the man who hunkered down millenia ago to concentrate on his task.

They first appear at the end of the last ice age having migrated from continental Europe across what is now the North Sea but at that time was one continuous landscape until rising sea levels created the islands of today. The climate they experienced was warmer and more temperate than ours and foodstuffs, especially around the coast and lowland woods filled with larch, birch, oak and hazelnut were plentiful for most of the year, but they also had to contend with the threat of wild animals such as bears, wolves and boars in their never-ending search for sustenance.

In time the first people will become the various tribes of Celtic peoples who live across the land and as such will help shape and name the landscape they live upon and which undoubtedly shapes them in return.

That will be thousands of years in the making, but they have begun the process of putting this little place known as Scotland on the map.

See you later.

Listening to.

Contact.

Hullo ma wee blog,

It's nice to get a comment or two on something you've published. Most comment comes from those readers who're kind enough to regularly share their thoughts or reactions to what's been posted but occasionally I'll get a comment from someone as a new visitor or someone who follows but hasn't commented before. Normally, as is probably the case in your own blogging experience, most readers don't comment one way or the other, which is fair enough.

This week though I had some contact that was a bit different. A lady in New Brunswick in Canada emailed me to say her husband had stumbled onto 'Crivens Jings' while looking for some information about a relative killed in WWII. They'd been hunting for some time with limited success, partly hindered by lack of information about her relative and partly because records weren't available in Canada and gaining access in this country seemed a convoluted rigmarole of red tape. The situation was complicated too by family memory being sketchy on detail so long after the event. They knew he had served in 153 Squadron, that the squadron had been based at Scampton and that he had been lost over Germany in January 1945. Family recollection of the name of the place he'd been killed wasn't matching anything they could find until her husband had found my postings on the history of the squadron set out as a campaign diary across 1945 and found that I had listed the men lost on each operation. The email said she was very excited to see the name of her relative at last and asked me if I could help them. The frustration of the search so far and the hope raised by finding his name in my obscure wee blog was obvious, as was the hope of renewing the connection lost over a generation to someone existing only in family folklore and a few fading photographs. She explained that the man's brother was still alive and had tried to find out what had happened without success over several years. Could I give any more information on the raid? Did I know what position in the crew the man held? Did I have any more information about the man I could give them? Could I give them more information about the aircraft he had been flying in. I think it was this not knowing that struck a chord with me, similar as it was to my own previous lack of knowledge about my late father's wartime experience in the same squadron. These people clearly felt a similar lack of understanding and need to try and fill in the gaps.

 How could I say no?

 That evening I sent her an email giving her a slightly expanded description of the raid on Zietz on 16th January 1945 during which her relative had been lost without trace, giving her some background as to why so much detail is sketchy. I would be happy to check for the information she was looking for. I'd done a lot of work on the squadron history and background research about war in Lancaster bombers in WWII and the material I used is still here. I said I would get back to her within a week and if lucky would be able to give her something solid on her ancestors career in the squadron.

Memorial plaque - Scampton Church.

The next day was a day of dreadful weather here which made me swap my plans for a day outside for a more comfortable day indoors. Unexpectedly I had an opportunity to do a bit of digging into my books and records to see if I could find any trace of this missing airman. I quickly found myself absorbed in the task and had quite a bit of information about aircrew around, so within a couple of hours I could tell when he had joined the squadron, who his fellow crewmen were and that he had been the bomb aimer onboard. He'd been part of a crew made up of two British and five fellow Canadians too which may help with a search for information back in Canada. I was able to tell what flight within the squadron the crew had flown in and therefore who their direct commanding officer was. Luckily the flight commander had also written a book on his experiences as a bomber pilot in his later years and this contained detail about the raid which made it more immediate. With a bit more digging I was also able to track down the number of raids, targets and the dates which were flown. I could tell when the aircraft had been delivered and both its squadron and Avro serial numbers. Later that day I emailed the information I'd found along with some photographs I had of key squadron personnel her relative would have worked with and a contact name for the archivist of the squadron association who might be able to provide photographs of the aircraft and crew.

 153 Squadron graves, Scampton kirkyard

I've been pleased to help someone in this way, delighted that the information I'd researched and posted - mainly for my own coming to terms with bereavement - had provided clues to someone trying to piece together a family story of their own. I'm gratified too that my efforts a year ago have left me in the position to do this quickly and with relative ease.  I've mused over the last couple of days on the power of the web to make connections across continents and generations, to allow complete strangers help attach links and provide clues that will hopefully bring comfort and understanding. I've thought too about how no matter how challenging a prospect looks, chances are that someone somewhere has had those same thoughts or has that missing bit of information which can allow things to fit together.

All we need is the ability to make contact.

Listening to

Hermitage Castle

The valleys of the border hills here have names which trip softly from the tongue and somehow manage to evoke a more idyllic and benign picture than they should of places so remote; Eskdale and Annandale, Liddesdale and Teviotdale, Lauderdale and Tweeddale. These places sound lovely but if they could talk they would tell tales of daring, heartbreak and hopelessness and you can sometimes feel it still as you drive through a border valley shadowed with hills dotted thickly with sheep, or down the side of a rushing river under a scabbard-grey sky. It can be beautiful and at the same time oppressing in its very beauty. It's a strange, fascinating and wonderful place.

These border lands of Scotland are thick with castles. Some have grown from humble beginnings into huge and ornate stately homes for the aristocracy while others have withered and died to become roofless ruins open to the skies, choked with ivy and left mouldering in forgotten corners; a fragment or a wall standing proud on a hillside or glimpsed through the trees across a river as you explore any one of the border valleys. But they first serve as a reminder that there are so many for a reason: these lands were a first line of defence for almost a thousand wild years of our wildest history.

The border between Scotland and England long ago was a moving feast dependant on treaty or whoever had the upper hand of power at the time. The people within came therefore to implicitly understand the need for protection regardless of which side of the border they were on. Borders in any case were often incidental to the families who lived here, linked as they were through affiliation, kinship or enmity. Any undefended site could be attacked by a fellow countryman on the make or a foreign invader, and locals would seek protection from those families able to build defensible positions. From the simple palisaded farmstead, to small thick walled and protective bastle houses to stark tall peel towers or the formidable castle of the wealthy landowner, all were built to protect themselves, their families or followers and above all, their interests. It gave too, to the inhabitants, a particular view of the world. It was a world where the self-seeking, double-dealing and oft underhand behaviours considered normal of the high Lords of the land were played out equally here by those of lower rank and on a more intimate scale. It was, more than any other, a place of bastions and belligerents. It's people were the most headstrong, self willed and defiant of any part of the kingdom and were almost constantly embroiled in conflict together whether through blood feud or blatant opportunism.

Gilnockie - A Border Tower House 

Home of an Armstrong Riever

The land hereabouts is often green and fertile, even in the depths of the hills. It's not the landscape of the highlands, yet it can be just as isolated and just as hostile. These bands of hills which separate Scotland from our southerly neighbours:- The Pentlands, The Cheviots, - famous for the sheep of the same name that would eventually help empty highland glens - the Lammermuirs, the Moorfoots, the Lowther Hills and the lonely Rhinns of Kells far off to the west, can be lonely places even today, but they're no longer the obstacles of ages past which funnelled armies to invade via the flat  'Merse-lands' of the coast to the east or, more occasionally, the west. These river valleys, which fall through hillsides streamed as if with silvery tears, were early routes of trade and commerce, attractive to the prestige of  religious houses with their abbeys and monasteries and their wool-based economies. These were rich pickings for the adventurous and the greedy and so were regularly targeted for looting and plundering by passing armies of both sides desperate to fill royal coffers or replenish war chests. It seems wars fought with God's apparent approval have always been overly rough on His Houses.

Sketch of Hermitage from MacGibbon and Ross'

 'Castellated and Domestic Architecture Of Scotland'

From this lawless medieval wilderness grew 'The Border Reivers', light cavalry skilled in stealth and attack by surprise, masters of the lightning raid and sudden disappearance back into the night. Reiver is an old English word for a raider or looter. It was said of the Reivers that they were Dalesmen by summer and Highlanders by winter, preferring the cold winter nights for their illegal activities, grateful for long hours of darkness and because cattle are better for moving in the winter. Reiver crimes included cattle rustling, theft, looting, arson, blackmail, murder and prison breaking. Reiving was unique in that it was not restricted to a minority group, they came from all classes and lived by the same 'code'. Even Wardens responsible for law and order were at times implicated in personal feuds or raids. Generations of men learnt skills which made them feared by all. Ruthless, implacable and with no allegiance to any other than themselves, they created mayhem and were a sair thorn in the side of Scots and English kings for hundreds of years. Monarchs from both sides of the border would try to use, manipulate or buy them off until eventually they would be destroyed or the best of them incorporated into the establishment as aristocracy. Riever families would become influential in maintaining kings on the throne or in opposing them if the situation was right.

 A Border Reiver

There would be many attempts to limit, to control and to dominate them and this was the purpose of Hermitage Castle.

I first came to Hermitage Castle many years ago on an Autumn day full of heavy showers from a sky pressing down on the land yet seemingly determined to hurry past. The castle itself sits cold and dour in the isolated heart of Liddesdale which is the most bleak, hard and unwelcoming part of the borders. Possibly no valley or glen in Scotland has a more brutal past than Liddesdale even though many might put up strong competition. It's seen armies pass by and stop to brutalise the local inhabitants, seen too those same inhabitants dish out brutalities of their own to the unwary or unfortunate.  It's fitting that local history would indicate such brutality as I find Hermitage to be the most moodily oppressive castle in Scotland. Its very position in the middle of the valley floor of the Liddel Water is aimed not to inspire notions of safety by a lofty position, not to show impressive power or welcome to a weary traveller but to dominate and intimidate, to ensure that all who come near understand that its presence is a stark statement of overwhelming and uncompromising power in the midst - maybe even in spite - of its isolation. I remember its walls, dark with rain and the huge arch gaping like a maw of glistening stone ready to spew forth forces hell-bent on destruction or to close behind souls destined to be lost forever. Several words come to mind as I try to describe it; sinister, malevolent, grotesque, implacable, hostile. Its massively thick walls and high window slits, its crow step gables and its square, squat bulk all remind me of a huge immovable beast sitting there ravenous, sullen and obstinate.

Originally the site was one of a wooden Norman motte and baile castle of the De Soulis family, one of those Normans invited North by a Scots king, who brought with them the feudal system of land ownership and allegiance paid in military service. Given its origins it could have been named after the French 'l'Armitage' for 'guardhouse' though it may also be named for the cell of an Achorite hermit who lived nearby. Later it was changed to a stone castle, prompting the English to protest and raise an army, so dangerous was it thought to have such a stronghold so close to the border of the day, Later still it was transformed into a Kings statement of power and intent with a thousand men quartered in and around its walls. Over the years it has been controlled by De Neville's Maxwell's, Douglas', Dacres', Hepburns' and Scott clans. The Armstrongs too, that most celebrated of reiver families perhaps, also occupied it from time to time when it was not in use by the others, and although the king may have quartered a thousand men here it was noted that the Armstrongs could field three times as many horsemen from the local area, dressed in quilted jacks and bonnets of steel.

It was here while James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell held the castle that Mary, Queen of Scots, made a famous marathon journey on horseback to visit the wounded Bothwell, only a few weeks after the birth of her son, after he had foolishly attempted to take on an Elliott riever on his own. They were to marry shortly after the murder of her 2nd husband Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, despite Bothwell being implicated amongst the conspirators. Later, after Mary's forced abdication, Bothwell fled to Norway and his titles and estates were forfeited by Act of Parliament. Whilst attempting to raise an army to restore Mary to the throne, he was captured by King Frederik, and imprisoned at Dragsholm Castle in Denmark, where he died years later in appalling degradation and lonely insanity.

Floor Plan from

MacGibbon and Ross'

'Castellated and Domestic Architecture Of Scotland'

{online here}

It was also from here that Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, Warden of the western marches, Keeper of Liddesdale, lead the daring and infamous attack on Carlisle Castle to rescue Willie Armstrong of Kinmont.  Armstrong, a notorious reiver, was captured by the forces of the English Warden of the West March in violation of a truce day in 1596, and imprisoned in Carlisle Castle. Walter Scott of Buccleuch, on whose land the arrest had been made, protested to the English Warden, Sir Thomas Scrope, 10th Baron Scrope of Bolton. When Scrope refused to release Armstrong, Buccleuch led a party of eighty men on a daring raid into England and stealthily broke Armstrong out of the castle in the night. The raid on Carlisle created such a diplomatic incident between England and Scotland that war between the two nations appeared imminent until Buccleuch surrendered himself to the English authorities. Tried and found guilty, he was placed in the custody of the English Master of the Ordnance at Berwick, Sir William Selby, and afterwards sent to London. When Buccleuch reached London he was taken before Elizabeth I of England and was asked by the maiden Queen how he dared to undertake an enterprise so desperate and presumptuous.

 Buccleuch is reported to have replied, "What is it that a man dare not do?"

 Unaccustomed though she must have been to such rejoinders from her own courtly nobles, Elizabeth not only did not resent the answer, but turning to a lord-in-waiting, reputedly said,

"With ten thousand such men, our brother in Scotland might shake the firmest thrones of Europe."

Despite the valley of Liddesdale being a bleak and desolate place it's easy to sit by Hermitage Castle and hear in your mind the soft sound of horses breathing, their feet behind you on wet grass as they come ever closer until you almost feel the heat of them as they pass, hear the creak of leather and the gentle rattle of a sword or scabbard as weary men dismount. Easy too to see a frosted Cheviot hill grieve against a bleak November sky and imagine God obsessed voices of Covenanters calling on the wind, or see a stand of leafless border birches slanted against the prevailing wind become the spears of border reivers coming home from a raid. As I left that first time I was caught in another reiving squall. The sky turned instantly dark and sheltering by some trees I listened to the rumble of hard rain on the ground around me and imagined it hammering down on a leather jack or steel bonnet for a few short moments before it disappeared back up Liddesdale as quickly as it had come and I could once think of heading home.

The tracks and paths of the Rievers are grass covered now, gently softened over ages back into the hillsides. Stolen cattle and roving bands of horsemen no longer keep them clear and modern roads take us in comfort and speed where we want to go. Despite this, in my imagination the valleys still echo to the memory of horses hooves and the wary challenge of a watchman from the tower. It's a simple step to understand how isolation gave the Reivers such an independent spirit and how the bleakness of their existence sowed seeds of determination. Their story lives on in the rich folk lore of the region and in the ballads collected by Sir Walter Scott and James Hogg and in the heritage of ballad songs transported across the sea to America. It's easy to hear the same songs sung of old wild west outlaws, living nobly by their own creed until treacherously slain, and transplant the names of one culture for another. The area provided many great men in the generations after the border rievers, men who perhaps had some of the same spirit. Allan Ramsay, Thomas Telford, Alexander Murray, Mungo Park and David Hume all came from the Borders as did a man called Cook, who crossed the border in search of work and who's son became England's greatest navigator. And of course there was that man named Walter Scott. He became a bit of a story teller I think.

Something about The Borders makes me think about these things. It might be the power of landscape or weather on my imagination or the pull of history on the emotions, or any combination of the three, but whatever it is I'm glad that it evokes a reaction like that. I'm glad I live in an area so rich in inspiration and history.

And I'm glad I don't have to live in Hermitage Castle.

See you later.

Listening to

Black Agnes - Dunbar, 1338

Dunbar Castle today.

Agnes, Countess of Dunbar is well known here in East Lothian for her role in defending Dunbar Castle against an English army in 1338. There's not much left of the castle now but what there is seems to rise fully formed from the red stone of the local area like it's part of the rock itself. In any case what little still remains around the harbour today isn't Agnes' castle of 1338.  That earlier stronghold was later 'casttit doune' on order of the king to prevent it falling into enemy hands.

The Celtic Votadini or Gododdin, are thought to have been the first to defend this site, the Brythonic name Dyn Barr, (the fort of the point) is still in use. By the 7th century Dunbar Castle was a central defensive position of the Kings of Bernicia, an Anglian kingdom that took over from the British Kingdom of Bryneich. During the Early Middle Ages, Dunbar Castle was held by an Ealdorman owing homage to either the Kings at Bamburgh Castle, or latterly the Kings of York. In 678 Saint Wilfrid was imprisoned at Dunbar, following his expulsion from his see of York by Ecgfrith of Northumbria. Later, Dunbar was said to have been burnt by Kenneth MacAlpin, King of the Scots. Certainly he is on record in possession of the castle in 879.

Let me describe some background to set the scene that propelled Agnes to her destiny.

By 1338 Scotland was in a chaotic state. Robert The Bruce had been dead almost ten years and his presence no longer blinded its enemies and shadowed the land with confidence, optimism and determination. He'd lived long enough to sign the treaty which recognized him as king of a free country and send it south for an English king's signature and hollow promise of peace in perpetuity. It was carried by a hundred knights on safe-conduct pass to Edward in York, a place they had recently passed through equally safely without such protection. The treaty was ratified by the English Parliament at Northampton but seen by the aristocracy for the capitulation it really was. As part of the peace process,  David, The Bruce's five year old son was married to Edward's child sister, Joan, aged seven.  Edward too renounced all claim upon Scotland and recognised  'His most dear friend and ally, Lord Robert, by grace of God, King of Scots.'  All documents relating to Scotland removed over the previous decades were also to be returned, although it would be 600 years and many sovereigns later before it happened.

{Intriguingly there appears no mention of the Stone of Destiny even though it's hard to believe given its historic importance to Scotlands kings. It would take even longer for that relic to be returned.}

Stone of Destiny under the coronation

throne, Westminster Abbey.

Peace, such as it was, was superficial. It didn't stop cross border raiding by either side. Power in Scotland was in the hands of a Regent - Mar, the young kings cousin - also heir to the throne should the boy-king die. South of the border the exiled King John Balliol's son Edward was receiving tacit royal support and encouragement in his aim of restoration to what he saw as his birthright. He was supported too by those Lords and sons of Lords who had lost lands, titles and influence when Bruce came to power. This eager group, known as 'The Disinherited',  were an ideal audience in which to foment rebellion and trouble north of the border to keep the situation unstable and pressure on the troublesome Scots.

 The Disinherited and their English allies sailed on 31 July 1332 from several Yorkshire ports to Kinghorn in Fife to get round the terms of the Treaty of Northampton that forbade English forces to cross the  River Tweed which at that time marked the border. Moving inland they were met by a Scots force at Dupplin Moor, near Perth. The battle that ensued lasted from dawn until noon and by that time English bowmen, in an early indication of the power and potential of the longbow, had destroyed most of the Scots army, including Regent Mar. . In that gleeful medieval way, it was said that Scots bodies piled up the height of a spear on the field. Victorious Balliol was crowned King at Scone six weeks later, surrounded by the disinherited and many who had previously supported Bruce. He offered the English Edward homage as liege lord and lands in the south which effectively brought England to Edinburgh's doorstep, asking for David's marriage to be set aside so he could marry the young Joan in his place and establish his own dynasty. By December though he was forced to flee half-dressed into the night on an unsaddled horse, back across the border to Carlisle, when a force under Randolph and Douglas, loyal to the boy-king of Scots caught him unprepared at his camp in Annan. King Edward was furious and now openly showed his support for Balliol, claiming the Scots had broken the Treaty of Northampton through their cross border raiding and by raising an English army to invade Scotland once more. Archibald Douglas, younger brother of crusading James, who had thrown Bruce's casketed heart ahead of him before charging to his death among the Saracens en route to bury that same item in the Holy Land, was made new Regent of Scotland until David reached his maturity.

In 1333 Edward came North at the head of an army to take Berwick once again and met the Scots army at Halidon hill, two or three miles north of the town. The Scots had seemingly learned little or nothing from the defeat of Dupplin Moor and now no longer faced the inexperienced boy king who years before had wept in frustration as another Scots army, against overwhelming odds, outwitted him and melted away in the night to live and fight another day. He was now the warrior tactician who, just a few short years in the future, would destroy French chivalric power to win at Crecy, and his army reflected his new understanding of firepower, heavy as it was with men practiced from childhood in the spine crushing discipline of the longbow and the cloth yard arrow, fletched with goose and tipped with steel. The old Scots tactic of the spear tipped 'schiltrom' formation densely packed with men finally proved itself out of time and tragically inadequate.This time Edward had picked an ideal position and there would be no mistakes allowing the enemy to escape.  As the Scots ranks attacked in their lumbering hedgehog formations that windy morning they began to slip on the grassy slope even before clouds of arrows were driving into them. It was said that the onslaught of the bowmen was so fierce that the Scots turned their heads as if walking into sleet. When finally they broke and ran,  death rode close behind, armour clad with steel mace or sword at the ready. The notion of confidence, of invulnerability, which had been Bruce's hard won legacy was gone.

 It had lived less than a lifetime.

Schiltrom fighting 

For Edward, it was the kind of victory that his long legged Grandfather would have been proud of. It was vindication of his tactics and bloody rehearsal for victories yet to come. For the Scots it was utter disaster. Those Barons quick enough to find a fast horse and flee the field, quickly sent the boy king and his queen to France and the protection of its king before heading for the hills or throwing themselves at the dubious mercy of Edward and Balliol. Scotland lost 5 Earls, 70 Barons, 500 knights and countless thousands of spearmen. The English lost virtually no-one. Records show their losses at 14, a dozen of them archers. With the loss of its army, Scots resistance returned to the old ways of guerrilla tactics, isolated strongholds and lightning raids from the wilderness. For the next twelve years there would be no peace, but a virtual civil war as Regent after Regent resisted the usurper Balliol in the name of King David.

It was this world that Black Agnes inhabited.

Agnes Randolph, Countess of Dunbar, was the daughter of the Earl Of Moray, one of Bruce's most loyal supporters, who had fought beside his king at the Bannock-Burn and other places. Her husband, Patrick, Earl of Dunbar and March { the border lands were called 'Marches'} was also of royal blood and a supporter of David II. The vulnerable and volatile border lands needed a trustworthy hand and a strong sword arm.  The Dunbar's epitomise a loyal and trustworthy pedigree of support for David in the trying times of his exile. In 1338 Earl Patrick was absent from his lands fighting for the cause in the north. Agnes was left in control of the stronghold of Dunbar castle with a skeleton force and her retinue of servants. In those days this was no unusual thing but it is more noticeable for the fact that she was left during such dangerous times. This may be an indication that it was felt Dunbar was the safest place or that there was no-one capable enough, or trustworthy enough, to be left in her stead. History would show that it was indeed fortunate that Lady Agnes and no other was in charge at the time. She's come down the years known as Black Agnes, perhaps from the jet-black of her hair or from the combination with her olive coloured skin. Both were noted. Both are possible, but we don't know for sure. What we do know is that in January of 1338 Lord Montague, Earl of Salisbury, an experienced soldier, arrived at Dunbar with an English army and instructions to take the castle. He was in high spirits and felt sure that he would be a match for the Lady Agnes. In that belief he would find himself sadly mistaken.

Asked to surrender the castle, Agnes declined, reputedly stating,

"Of Scotland's King I haud my house, He pays me meat and fee, And I will keep my gude auld house, while my house will keep me."

Pleasantries over, the siege began in earnest with an extended bombardment by catapults. During three weeks of almost continuous assault, Agnes showed her contempt for Salisbury's efforts by walking the battlements between salvos, her retinue of ladies in waiting dressed in all their finery, all ostentatiously dusting off the damage done by the English missiles with handkerchiefs of white linen to indicate that it was no more than a minor inconvenience. It's easy to imagine Lord Salisbury's reaction. No matter when he attacked, Agnes was prepared, her small force ready to act. This was recorded later in ballad form as if from his own mouth,

 "She makes a stir in tower and trench,
That brawling, boisterous, Scottish wench;
Came I early, came I late.
I found Agnes at the gate."
 
Agnes was an early master of one-upmanship. Faced with her captured brother being brought to the castle by the English, a rope around his neck, she answered their threat to hang him before her eyes by telling them to do so as she would then inherit his lands and titles. {Her brother was not hanged but taken away to custody in England.}  On one occasion she narrowly missed capturing Salisbury himself, leading an attempt to gain entry to the castle - having bribed the gatekeeper - who in turn advised Lady Agnes. Instead she sprang the trap too soon and shut the portcullis down on an attendant instead, but sent caustic word to Salisbury later that evening that 'she had hoped to dine with him and was sorry to have missed him.'  Salisbury responded by sending for a huge siege engine called 'The Sow', a battering ram with a wooden roof. He attacked the castle entrance only for Agnes to destroy it before any damage had been done by dropping, from the ramparts, a huge rock previously fired into the castle by English catapults. It went through the roof  of 'The Sow' killing many of the men who were operating it.  In yet another episode she had Salisbury targeted by a bowman at range and only narrowly missed him, striking and killing the man at his side.

 Even the English quipped admiringly, "Black Agnes' love-shafts go straight to the heart!".

Salisbury continued to besiege Dunbar for five months by which time things were desperate and starvation was near. Hope came when a small force from the castle on Bass Rock managed to get supplies through the naval blockade by disguising themselves as fishermen returning to port. With typical crushing mockery Agnes sent Salisbury a fresh baked loaf of bread and a bottle of fine wine.  By this time Edward's attention was elsewere and he was beginning to cast his eye at France. This new focus caused him to relocate forces in support , leaving Balliol to manage Scotland as best he could. By June 10th Salisbury was ordered to lift the siege and left in disgrace. His nemisis would go down in Scots history as Black Agnes of Dunbar.

Even hundreds of years later Agnes is recognised by many in Scotland as a true heroine and an inspirational leader. Her name and values were used several centuries later to rally support and inspiration in the name of the womens suffrage movement in the early years of the twentieth century.

She was voted in the top 100 in the millenium list of influential Scots.

Sketch of Suffragette Banner

see you later.