STEWART, King James II

1430 - 1460  (29 years)  Submit Photo / Document

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• Name	STEWART, James
  Prefix	King
  Suffix	II
  Birth	16 Oct 1430	Perth, Perthshire, Scotland
  Gender	Male
  _TAG	Reviewed on FS
  Death	3 Aug 1460	Roxburgh, Roxburghshire, Scotland
  Burial	Aft 3 Aug 1460	Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland
  Headstones	Submit Headstone Photo
  Person ID	I46070	Joseph Smith Sr and Lucy Mack Smith
  Last Modified	19 Aug 2021

  
  

  Father	STEWART, King James I ,   b. 25 Jul 1394, Dunfermline Palace, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland Dunfermline Palace, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotlandd. 21 Feb 1437, Blackfriars, Perth, Perthshire, Scotland (Age 42 years)
  Mother	BEAUFORD, Queen Joan de ,   b. 27 Dec 1402, Beaufort Castle, Goudet, Haute-Loire, Auvergne, France Beaufort Castle, Goudet, Haute-Loire, Auvergne, Franced. 15 Jul 1445, Dunbar Castle, Dunbar, East Lothian, Scotland (Age 42 years)
  Marriage	2 Feb 1423/2 Feb 1424	Southwark, Surrey, England
  Family ID	F24050	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	SCOTLAND, Queen Mary ,   b. 17 Jan 1433, Grave, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands Grave, Noord-Brabant, Netherlandsd. 16 Nov 1463, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland (Age 30 years)
  Marriage	3 Jul 1449	Holyrood, Midlothian, Scotland
  Family ID	F24051	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	24 Jan 2022

  
  

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• Notes

  Married place unmarried - Holyrood, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland Twin. James II was born on October 16, 1430, one of twins. The other twin died in infancy leaving James as heir. There may have been other problems with the birth because James had a vermilion birthmark on his face which led contemporaries to call him “Fiery Face”. This would also be looked upon as an outward sign of a fiery temper. His father was King James I of Scotland and his mother was Joan Beaufort, the grand-daughter of John of Gaunt and Kathryn Swynford. Little is known of James’ early life. James father was murdered at Perth on February 21, 1437. His mother acted quickly, avenging her husband’s death and securing custody of her young son. They took refuge in Edinburgh where James was crowned King on March 25 at Holyrood Abbey. James lived with his mother and five of his six sisters at Dunbar until 1439. Joan was barred from any workings of the government when she married again in that year. The regency of the young king is murky and incomplete but a few powerful personalities emerged. One was Sir William Crichton and the other was Sir Alexander Livingston of Callendar who had possession of the boy king as governor of Stirling Castle. Livingston had the king’s mother and her new husband under house arrest in August of 1439. Livingston released the dowager queen only after she agreed to put the king into his sole custody. Livingston and Crichton wrangled for power over the land and got involved in a rivalry between the king and the Douglas family. Archibald Douglas was a cousin of King James II who had married a great grand-daughter of the former King Robert II. Douglas’ sons William and David therefore had a claim to the throne when their father died in 1439. William in particular was a mischief-maker. Acting on the king’s behalf, Crichton invited the two young Douglas’ to visit Edinburgh in November 1440. They stayed for a fortnight. On one night, after a feast, the head of a black bull was placed on the table. Everyone knew this was a sign of death. William and David tried to escape but they were captured by armed men and subjected to a mock trial where the king begged for mercy. The boys were condemned to immediate execution. They were taken to the court of the castle and beheaded. This incident became known as “the Black Dinner”. The Douglas’ and the Livingston’s continued their rivalry creating civil strife in the land. When James was fourteen, the council declared his minority was over. He didn’t have complete control of his government but this alarmed those who were in power. Crichton was dismissed as chancellor in 1445. Livingston took advantage placing his relatives in government. He also managed to arrange a brilliant marriage for James. In 1447, Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy recommended his niece Mary of Guelders as a suitable bride and gave her a huge dowry. Negotiations began and were concluded in September 1448. The marriage was celebrated on July 3, 1449 at Holyrood. Many Flemings from Mary’s entourage remained in Scotland and the ties between the two countries became strong. James and Mary were to have six children, four boys and two girls. The succession was secured and James could begin the process of his own emancipation. Almost immediately he had all Livingston officials in the government arrested and imprisoned. About this same time, William Douglas, the new earl, was exercising his power in the realm and aligned himself with John MacDonald, 11th Earl of Ross and Lord of the Isles. This alliance was threatening the King’s position and Douglas was openly defiant to the King. On February 22, 1452, James invited William Douglas to dine at Stirling Castle and asked him to break his alliance with Ross. William refused and rebuked the king for ruling weakly. James became enraged and stabbed Douglas in the neck and then the lower part of the body. Other court officials in attendance joined in the bloodbath with one of them hitting Douglas in the head with an axe. The murder did nothing to stop the civil strife with the Douglas’ which lasted from 1452 to 1455. The Douglas’ made an alliance with King Henry VI of England, driving James into taking sides in the War of the Roses. He played one noble house against the other without winning any decisive battles. Eventually, by giving away Douglas lands, titles and offices the tide began to turn in his favor. James finally crushed the Douglas’ in May of 1455 at the Battle of Arkinholm. The Parliament of Scotland permanently annexed all the Douglas lands, finances and castles to the crown. James was now in complete control of his kingdom. From 1455 to 1460, James was a power to be reckoned with and highly respected. He revoked many agreements that had been made during his minority and removed hereditary entitlements. He took castles and land outright from many nobles and made them crown property. He had consolidated his power and wealth, raising himself above the nobility. He could concentrate on becoming the ideal Renaissance prince. He updated many laws and introduced new ones. He regulated dress and improved education. Glasgow University was established in 1451 at James suggestion. He was popular with commoners whom he socialized with often. He was a singularly successful king. During the fighting with the Douglas’, James had enthusiastically adopted the use of the latest artillery technology, the cannon. He had imported large quantities of cannon from Flanders through his wife’s connections. Existing fortresses at the time could not withstand the bombardment. James had begun a siege of Roxburgh Castle which had been in the hands of the English for generations. On August 3, 1460, James was standing near a cannon, either to show it off or to fire it in honor of a visit from his wife. Upon firing of the bombard, one of the wedges used to tighten the iron bands round the barrel broke loose, flying through the air and striking the King, killing him. He was buried, age 29, at Holyrood Abbey. His nine year old son succeeded him as James III. https://thefreelancehistorywriter.com/2012/09/27/king-james-ii-of-scotland/ James I was assassinated on 21 February 1437. The Queen, although hurt, managed to get to her six-year-old son, who was now king. On 25 March 1437, the six-year-old was formally crowned King of Scots at Holyrood Abbey. The Parliament of Scotland revoked alienations of crown property and prohibited them, without the consent of the Estates, that is, until James II's eighteenth birthday.[1] He lived along with his mother and five of his six sisters (Margaret had left for France, where she had married the future Louis XI of France) at Dunbar Castle until 1439.[1] From 1437 to 1439 the King's first cousin Archibald Douglas, 5th Earl of Douglas, headed the government as lieutenant-general of the realm. After his death, and with a general lack of high-status earls in Scotland due to deaths, forfeiture or youth, political power became shared uneasily among William Crichton, 1st Lord Crichton, Lord Chancellor of Scotland (sometimes in co-operation with the Earl of Avondale), and Sir Alexander Livingston of Callendar, who had possession of the young king as the warden of the stronghold of Stirling Castle. Taking advantage of these events, Livingston placed Queen Joan and her new husband, Sir John Stewart, under "house arrest" at Stirling Castle on 3 August 1439. They were released on 4 September only by making a formal agreement to put James in the custody of the Livingstons, by giving up her dowry for his maintenance, and confessing that Livingston had acted through zeal for the king's safety.[1] In 1440, in the King's name, an invitation is said to have been sent to the young 6th Earl of Douglas and his brother, eleven-year-old David, to visit the king at Edinburgh Castle in November 1440. They came, and were entertained at the royal table, from which they were treacherously hurried to their doom, which took place by beheading in the castle yard of Edinburgh on 24 November. Three days later Malcolm Fleming of Cumbernauld, their chief adherent, shared the same fate. This infamous incident took the name of "the Black Dinner". Struggles with the Douglases[edit] In 1449 James II reached adulthood, yet in many ways his "active kingship" differed little from his minority. The Douglases used his coming of age as a way to throw the Livingstons out of the shared government, as the young king took revenge for the brief arrest of his mother (a means to remove her from political influence) that had taken place in 1439. Douglas and Crichton continued to dominate political power, and the king's ability to rule without them remained arguably limited. But James did not acquiesce with this situation without argument, and between 1451 and 1455 he struggled to free himself from the power of the Douglases. Attempts to curb the Douglases' power took place in 1451, during the absence of the Earl of Douglas from Scotland, and culminated with the murder of Lord Douglas at Stirling Castle on 22 February 1452. The main account of Douglas's murder comes from the Auchinleck Chronicle, a near contemporary but fragmentary source. According to its account, the king accused the Earl (probably with justification) of forging links with John Macdonald, 11th Earl of Ross (also Lord of the Isles), and Alexander Lindsay, 4th Earl of Crawford. This bond, if it existed, created a dangerous axis of power of independently-minded men, forming a major rival to royal authority. When Douglas refused to break the bond with Ross, James broke into a fit of temper and stabbed Douglas 26 times and threw his body out of a window. His court officials (many of whom would rise to great influence in later years, often in former Douglas lands) then joined in the bloodbath, one allegedly striking out the Earl's brain with an axe. This murder did not end the power of the Douglases, but rather created a state of intermittent civil war between 1452 and 1455. The main engagements were at Brodick, on the Isle of Arran; Inverkip in Renfrew; and the Battle of Arkinholm. James attempted to seize Douglas lands, but his opponents repeatedly forced him into humiliating climbdowns, whereby he returned the lands to James Douglas, 9th Earl of Douglas, and a brief and uneasy peace ensued. Military campaigns ended indecisively, and some have argued that James stood in serious danger of being overthrown, or of having to flee the country. But James's patronage of lands, titles and office to allies of the Douglases saw their erstwhile allies begin to change sides, most importantly the Earl of Crawford after the Battle of Brechin, and in May 1455 James struck a decisive blow against the Douglases, and they were finally defeated at the Battle of Arkinholm. In the months that followed, the Parliament of Scotland declared the extensive Douglas lands forfeit and permanently annexed them to the crown, along with many other lands, finances and castles. The Earl fled into a long English exile. James finally had the freedom to govern as he wished, and one can argue that his successors as Kings of Scots never faced such a powerful challenge to their authority again. Along with the forfeiture of the Albany Stewarts in reign of James I, the destruction of the Black Douglases saw royal power in Scotland take a major step forward.[2] Energetic rule[edit] Between 1455 and 1460 James II proved to be an active and interventionist king. Ambitious plans to take Orkney, Shetland and the Isle of Man nonetheless did not succeed. The king travelled the country and has been argued to have originated the practice of raising money by giving remissions for serious crimes. It has also been argued that some of the unpopular policies of James III originated in the late 1450s.[3] In 1458 an Act of Parliament commanded the king to modify his behaviour, but one cannot say how his reign would have developed had he lived longer.[4] James II is the first Scots monarch for whom a contemporary likeness has survived, in the form of a woodcut showing his birthmark on the face. Marriage[edit] In 1449, Mary of Guelders was recommended by Philip the Good as a suitable bride for James. The negotiations began in July 1447, when a Burgundian envoy came to Scotland, and were concluded by an embassy under Crichton the chancellor in September 1448. Philip settled sixty thousand crowns on his kinswoman, and her dower of ten thousand was secured on lands in Strathearn, Athole, Methven, and Linlithgow. A tournament took place before James at Stirling, on 25 February 1449, between James, master of Douglas, another James, brother to the Laird of Lochleven, and two knights of Burgundy, one of whom, Jacques de Lalain, was the most celebrated knight-errant of the time. The marriage was celebrated at Holyrood on 3 July 1449. A French chronicler, Mathieu d'Escouchy, gives a graphic account of the ceremony and the feasts which followed. Many Flemings in Mary's suite remained in Scotland, and the relations between Scotland and Flanders, already friendly under James I, consequently became closer.[1] In Scotland the king's marriage led to his emancipation from tutelage, and to the downfall of the Livingstones. In the autumn Sir Alexander and other members of the family were arrested. At a parliament in Edinburgh on 19 January 1450, Alexander Livingstone, a son of Sir Alexander, and Robert Livingstone of Linlithgow were tried and executed on the Castle Hill. Sir Alexander and his kinsmen were confined in different and distant castles. A single member of the family escaped the general proscription—James, the eldest son of Sir Alexander, who, after arrest and escape to the highlands, was restored in 1454 to the office of chamberlain to which he had been appointed in the summer of 1449.[1] Death[edit] James II enthusiastically promoted modern artillery, which he used with some success against the Black Douglases. His ambitions to increase Scotland's standing saw him besiege Roxburgh Castle in 1460, one of the last Scottish castles still held by the English after the Wars of Independence. For this siege, James took a large number of cannons imported from Flanders. On 3 August, he was attempting to fire one of these cannons, known as "the Lion", when it exploded and killed him. Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie stated in his history of James's reign that "as the King stood near a piece of artillery, his thigh bone was dug in two with a piece of misframed gun that brake in shooting, by which he was stricken to the ground and died hastily." [5] The Scots carried on with the siege, led by George Douglas, 4th Earl of Angus, and the castle fell a few days later. James's son became king as James III and his widow Mary of Guelders acted as regent until her own death three years later. Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy was always interested in making international alliances. The most common method for making these types of agreements would be through diplomacy, treaties and marriages. Most princes in the fifteenth century had sisters or daughters for this purpose but Philip didn’t have any daughters. Consequently, he utilized the various nieces in his family network. Mary of Guelders was one of Philip’s great-nieces and she had lived at the Burgundian court since she was twelve years old under the tutelage and guidance of Philip’s third wife, Isabel of Portugal. As early as 1447, a marriage between Mary and James II, King of Scots was considered with the blessing of King Charles VII of France. A commercial treaty was negotiated first and then a marriage treaty was signed in April of 1449. Philip paid the dowry and for the ships to take Mary to Scotland. She sailed from Sluis on June 12 at 4:00 in the morning and with favorable winds, arrived on the Isle of May a week later. From there she came ashore in Scotland at Leith. Mary and James were married at Holyrood Abbey on July 3. Immediately after the wedding ceremony, Mary was dressed in purple robes lined with ermine. A French chronicler remarked about the unusual and peculiar style of the robes. Mary returned to the altar of the abbey to be duly anointed and crowned queen. Then followed a magnificent wedding feast. The French chronicler D’Escouchy describes it: “When the king and queen were seated, the first dish to be brought in and presented to them was a boar’s head, which had been painted and stuffed, on a huge plate. Round the head were a good thirty-two banners, with the arms of the king and the other lords of the country. Then, the stuffing was set on fire, to the great joy of everyone in the room. Next, a fine and beautifully-made ship was brought in, which had a forecastle, masts with a top, and cords of silver. Then the earl of Orkney entered, with four knights, followed by the meat course, comprising various dishes. Each dish was brought in by some thirty to forty people, all carrying plates…and, as each plate was set down, the waiter knelt until the person served had started eating….. At another table, a patriarch, three bishops, an abbot and other clerics, were merrily celebrating their king’s wedding. These five prelates were drinking heavily from a huge wooden goblet, without pouring anything back; for wine and other drinks seemed in as plentiful supply as sea-water. The same thing happened at the table of knights and squires of Scotland. This feast lasted four or five hours, during which time a very large number of dishes were served.” Oh to have witnessed this scene! It must have been colorful and noisy with delicious aromas and it sounds like the clergy was having a great time. To top it off, this turned out to be an exceptionally suitable marriage. Share this: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Written by Susan Abernethy found on https://thefreelancehistorywriter.com/2017/08/11/the-wedding-feast-of-james-ii-king-of-scots-and-mary-of-guelders/