James II

James II (1430–60), king of Scots (1437–60). James II is the first Scottish king of whose appearance we can be fairly certain. An Austrian visitor to the Scottish court in 1458, Jörg von Ehingen, had a portrait made of the king, presumably for the edification of James's sister Eleanor of Austria. King James is portrayed as a confident young man, his hands on a dagger at his belt, with the whole of the left side of his face from forehead to chin disfigured by a livid vermilion birthmark described by the French poet François Villon and the contemporary Scottish ‘Auchinleck chronicler’. The confidence and ruthlessness suggested by this face are an accurate reflection of the king's character and policies. In a short life—he died at 29—and extremely short period of personal rule, he followed the path taken by his father, broke the power of the greatest magnate house, the Black Douglases, secured a sizeable increase in royal power at home and a formidable reputation abroad.

James was the younger of twin sons born to James I and Joan Beaufort at Holyrood in October 1430. (The elder twin, Alexander, died in infancy.) His father's assassination at Perth in 1437 thrust James into the kingship aged only 6 and necessitated a long minority (1437–49), in the first part of which he was controlled by the rump of his father's supporters, headed by the queen. He was crowned (March 1437) by Michael Ochiltree, bishop of Dunblane, a close associate of James I but hardly the premier ecclesiastic in Scotland. The disappearance of many major noble families, either through forfeiture and execution or failure of heirs in the male line, meant that by 1437 there were very few earls left in Scotland; and the political imbalance which resulted from this caused an enormous concentration of power in the hands of the Black Douglas family, with its head, the young William, 8th earl of Douglas, becoming lieutenant-general for James II (probably in 1444) and—together with the Livingston of Callander—using the office to acquire earldoms and other honours for his brothers and allies.

In July 1449 James II married Mary of Gueldres, only daughter of Duke Arnold of Gueldres and niece of Philip the Good of Burgundy (who paid his niece's dowry in instalments). Four of James's sisters had already made prestigious European marriages— Margaret to the Dauphin Louis in 1436, Isabella to Francis of Brittany in 1442, Mary to the Lord of Veere in 1444, and Eleanor to Sigismund of Austria in 1449. Thus the Scottish king threw off the frustration of being under tutelage with confidence and ruthlessness. He arrested and forfeited the Livingstons in 1449–50, driving the young earl of Ross (who was James Livingston's son-in-law) into rebellion in 1451.

However, James II's real target was the Black Douglases. Various motives have been suggested for his attack on the family—royal financial difficulties, linked to the king's determination, from 1451, to secure the Douglas earldom of Wigtown; James II's perception of Douglas weakness in Galloway as a result of the ‘Black Dinner’ of 1440; the bond (probably of friendship) between Douglas, Crawford, and the rebel Ross of 1451–2, bringing together former rivals in a potentially dangerous combination; or simply the issue of authority, with Douglas's predominance at court (in spite of his having relinquished the lieutenant-generalship by 1450) unacceptable to an adult Stewart king. The outcome was an attack on Douglas estates by James II, a policy apparently urged by Chancellor Crichton, Admiral Crichton, and Bishop Turnbull of Glasgow during Earl William's absence in Rome in Jubilee Year 1450. There followed a temporary reconciliation (indicating royal weakness), and the great crime of the reign, James's murder of Douglas at Stirling castle on 22 February 1452, following a two-day conference which Douglas attended under a royal safe conduct.

Civil war followed, with the 9th earl of Douglas pitted against a determined James II. The king was lucky to escape from Stirling with his life when the Douglases arrived to confront him a month after the murder. Thereafter the situation improved. A male heir was born to Mary of Gueldres at St Andrews (May 1452); a royalist Parliament justified the Douglas murder; and the king walked the political tightrope of satisfying his own supporters and negotiating with the Douglases until he was strong enough to deliver the killer punch. Events in England—the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses—assisted James by depriving the Douglases of the possibility of armed support. In 1455 the king's sieges of Abercorn and Threave, and a skirmish at Arkinholm on the river Esk, completed the ruin of the Black Douglases.

James II's five remaining years reveal no let-up in the king's energy and aggressiveness—organizing an abortive attack on the Isle of Man; leading border raids; playing off Lancaster against York; restocking the Scottish peerage with earls, including royal Stewarts; adopting an astonishingly high-handed attitude towards the Danes in his demand for a marriage alliance for his son ceding Orkney and Shetland to Scotland; and receiving from Philip of Burgundy the gift of the huge cannon ‘Mons Meg’ in 1457. James II died as he had lived, the eternal warrior, mortally wounded by the explosion of one of his own guns at the siege of Roxburgh castle in August 1460.

Norman Macdougall

Bibliography

Donaldson, G. , Scottish Kings (1967);
Grant, A. , Independence and Nationhood: Scotland 1306–1469 (1984);
McGladdery, C. , James II (Edinburgh, 1990);
Nicholson, R. , Scotland: The Later Middle Ages (Edinburgh, 1974).