Kirkcaldy of Grange

by Louis A. Barbé

When the last day of the truce arrived, no step towards the pacification of the Kingdom had been taken. The King’s party continued to make demands which the Castilians, hopeful of help from the King of France, absolutely refused to entertain, and the resumption of hostilities was inevitable. On the 1st of January, at six o’clock in the morning, Kirkcaldy ‘warned all men to take heed to themselves, by a shot of a piece out of the Castle.’ A little later in the morning, ‘the war began by shot of arquebuss, but did no harm.’ Next day the Castilians fired eight rounds at the steeple of St Giles’s. No one was hurt in the church itself, but some shot that missed it, having broken down the neighbouring chimneys, one poor man was killed and two were wounded by their fall. If Killegrew’s reports to Burghley are to be believed, either the Castle gunners must have been poor marksmen, or Grange must at first have instructed them to discharge their artillery rather in the hope of frightening the citizens than for the purpose of causing them serious loss or injury. One despatch states that on the 16th of January they fired eighty-seven cannon and culverin shot at the town, ‘but did no more harm but killed one dog going to the Regent’s house.’ Men, women, and children, the writer asserts, walked quietly in the streets, as though there were no shot; and even went to the church, which had been fenced in with a rampart of turf, faggots, and other stuff. One of the chroniclers, on the other hand, presents a wholly different picture. ‘None,’ he says, ‘might walk safely on the streets of Edinburgh for shooting out of the Castle.’ The truth may not improbably be that the gunners could fire effectively enough when it was thought there was occasion for it.

Before the end of the first month the besieged were already beginning to suffer from want of water. On the 25th, Killegrew informed Burghley that they had found it necessary to get their supply by sallying out of a postern beside St Cuthbert’s Church and drawing it from St Margaret’s well, hard by. The besiegers, noticing this, poisoned the well with white arsenic and new lime stones, and filled it up with dead carrion. The garrison then devised a plan for drawing water out of a ditch near the Castle; but before it could be put into execution, the Regent was informed of it by a deserter, and drained the ditch. In the same communication, Killegrew stated that the surveyor of Berwick and Mr Fleming, the master-gunner, had been with the besiegers for the last week, and were helping Morton to lay out the trenches, of which the works were progressing apace.

It was not to open warfare alone that Kirkcaldy’s enemies trusted to force him into subjection. Even before the resumption of hostilities, Morton had begun negotiations with the Queen’s Lords in other parts of the country. One after another, the Captain’s former associates fell away from him. Sir James Balfour was the first, Argyle, Huntly, Chastelherault, and the Hamiltons followed; and their submission made it hopeless and useless for the lesser men to stand out alone. By the beginning of April, the Privy Council was able to announce that ‘good peace was restored over all the country, the Castle of Edinburgh excepted.’

From another quarter too, there fell an unexpected blow. Through the treachery of his own wife, James Kirkcaldy, who had hitherto successfully acted as his brother’s agent with the Court of France, was captured, together with a considerable sum of money, which Mary had supplied from her dowry, and on which the Castilians were depending. Within the Castle, Maitland was as firm and uncompromising as the Governor himself; indeed, his enemies attributed the obstinate resistance of the soldier to the ‘enchantment’ cast over him by the statesman. But though the Secretary’s mental vigour was undiminished, his bodily health was so shattered that, when it was intended to discharge the heavy ordnance, he had to be carried down into the low vault of ‘David’s Tower,’ as he could not ‘abide the shot.’

For all this, there was no wavering on the part of Kirkcaldy. He felt the fullest confidence as to his ability to hold out, so long as he had Morton alone to deal with; and he believed that fear of irritating the French Court, and unwillingness to incur the heavy expenses of sending a siege train to Scotland might yet deter Elizabeth from lending active assistance to the Regent. In spite of the besiegers’ utmost efforts to prevent him, he continued the work of fortifying the Castle with earth, stone, and timber; and indeed, in his determination to ‘give the Earl of Morton and all his men of war enough to do to wait upon him,’ he omitted nothing that experience could suggest or courage carry out, to add to the natural strength of the fortress.

Unfortunately for the Captain, the six or seven score fighting men that made up his garrison were not all animated with the same spirit. Not one of them had ever stood a siege before, and the hardships which they had to undergo were beginning to tell on them both morally and physically. Obliged, with but little intermission, to fight their guns by day, and by night to repair the damage done to their outworks, and having to subsist on the one pint of water and the scant rations of salt-beef that Lady Kirkcaldy distributed to them daily, ‘they were all ill-like in the face with over-working or watching.’ They were beginning to feel too that there was no remedy or recompense to be looked for at Grange’s hands; and some of them, indeed, were already anxious to make terms for themselves. As the Captain’s increasing watchfulness left them no opportunity of communicating directly with the enemy, they cast a letter enclosed in a glove over the walls, trusting to the finder to take it to those for whom it was intended. It contained a request that, if there were any hope of mercy for the garrison, a certain sign should be made in a certain place, and they would come forth. On the part of Morton, nothing was left undone to foster this spirit of mutiny; and his secret agents were not only authorised to promise a free pardon in his name, to such as were already planning to desert from the Castle, but also to bribe the others, by distributing two thousand crowns amongst them.

The discontent that was spreading amongst his men did not escape the Captain’s vigilance. Calling them together, he asked if any amongst them wished to abandon the cause. Lord Home’s resolute reply, that he would serve as a private soldier, both by day and night, ‘stopped the mouths of the meaner sort,’ though, according to Killegrew, they meant to make a very different answer, and though many were anxious to come away, if only they might well get forth.

In the meantime, the negotiations which had been dragging on between the Regent and the English Court, had effected a definite result. On the 13th of April, a proclamation issued in the name of King James, announced that the assistance of England had been secured, with a view to putting an end to the Civil War, and that a body of English troops would soon arrive to reinforce the besieging army. Twelve days later, an English contingent, under Sir William Drury, arrived in Edinburgh, and a final summons was sent to Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange, and the other holders and retainers of the Castle of Edinburgh, to surrender it, with the artillery, munitions, and household stuff; and to remove, devoid, and rid themselves, their wives and servants forth of it, within six hours. Being intended for the wavering soldiers, and not for their resolute leader, this summons was not delivered to the Governor in writing, but was publicly proclaimed by a herald. To drown his voice Kirkcaldy ordered his drums to beat; and the only reply he vouchsafed to make was, that he wist not what the messenger had declared.

The ordnance sent from England was disembarked at Leith, on the 26th of April. Next day, besides running up the Scottish Queen’s standard, the Governor of the Castle hoisted ‘a banner of red colour, denouncing war and defiance, upon the chief tower of the Castle called King David’s Tower.’ Including ‘both tag and rag,’ there were at that moment one hundred and ninety-two persons within the Castle. Forty-two of them were women, and thirteen were boys. That left a hundred and thirty men, not all soldiers, besides the Governor himself; and of these according to Killegrew’s information, eighteen of the best would fain have been out.

It took much longer than had been anticipated to get the ordnance into position. By the 5th of May, of twenty-four pieces of battery and four mortars, there were but six planted; and the month was half through before ‘the artillery of England was placed about the Castle of Edinburgh in this manner. On the north side of Mr John Thornton’s lodging on the Castle Hill lay the cannon royal, and two other cannons; on the crofts of the Grey Friars, lay three great culverin; at the Scots crofts lay six great culverin; above the west side of St Cuthbert’s Kirk lay two Scottish iron pieces; at the north side two Scots great culverins, and my Lord Argyle’s cannon, with four pott pieces; at the lang gait on the east side of the said pott pieces lay three small pieces, with strong and deep trenches in all parts.’ At length, on Sunday, the 17th of May, at one in the afternoon, ‘some of the pieces began to speak such language that it made them in the Castle think more of God than they did before.’ When the first ‘tier’ of ordnance was discharged, the women within the walls uttered a great and lamentable cry, ‘terming the day and hour black.’ ‘The soldiers, however,’ says Drury, ‘showed themselves in no small companies here and there, but especially they showed many on the top of St David’s Tower, with great pride displaying two ensigns, and shooting at every advantage they saw.’ To what good effect the Castilians plied their guns may be learnt from Birrell’s Diary. ‘Ther wes,’ he says, ‘a very grate slaughter amongst the English canoniers, sundries of them having ther legges and armes torne from their bodies in the aire by the viholence of the grape shot.’