Lethal Dowry of the Bonny Earl
April 2001
by Ian Olson
Everyone knows the tragic ballad about the Bonny Earl o’ Moray, who ‘micht hae been king’, ‘played at the ba’, ‘was the queen’s true love’, and who was murdered by the wicked Earl of Huntly, to the lamentation of his lady and of the king.
Few people realise that its mournful tune is a Victorian fake, written in 1885 for an amazing parlour compendium of Songs of the North. A surprising amount of what we think of as Scottish song comes from this influential London book, including such gems as The Skye Boat Song, (written by the Englishman Harold Boulton, 200 years after Prince Charlie was in his grave).
The murder took place in 1592, but no tune appears in print until 1733, a wonderful, haunting air. (Listen to Isla St Clair singing it on her Murder and Mayhem CD from Highland Classics, 2000, and marvel).
Not many people know, forbye, that this Victorian book printed only a sawn-off version of half a dozen verses of the original ballad, for the full version went missing for almost 250 years. It was discovered in 1931 by an enterprising American collector, James Carpenter, a hardy soul who braved the North-east winters in an open-topped Austin car by wearing multiple sets of thick woolly combinations. The singer was a Mrs Watson Gray, of Fochabers, who had learned the ballad in Glenlivet over 50 years before. The story she sang shed a surprising new light on the death of the Earl of Moray.
Walter Scott, cheerfully creating Scottish history, gave the account everyone knows in his Tales of a Grandfather in 1827 – and history books right up to the present day simply repeat it.
How one dark February day in 1592 the Earl of Moray was suddenly besieged in his mother’s house of Donnibristle on the north side of the Forth estuary by fire-raisers led by his rival, the Gordon Earl of Huntly.
How Moray fled the burning house but was betrayed amongst the rocks by the shore by his burning helmet tassel. How Huntly mutilated the dying Moray, who spat back: “You have spoiled a better face than your own”.
How King James VI had unfortunately commissioned Huntly to arrest Moray, without, perhaps, recollecting the hostility between the rival earls.
Nothing could be clearer – yet Mrs Gray’s song tells a different story, of how Huntly was in fact invited peacefully into the house, but then later went to Moray’s bedchamber, ‘and wie a sharp rapier, he stabbit him dead’.
Now the interesting thing is that there are in fact no contemporary eye-witness accounts of what happened. Huntly did not wait around, but fled with all but one of his men, the seriously wounded Gordon of Buckie (they solicitously removed his clothes, boots and valuables first; waste not, want not).
Moray’s formidable mother, Margaret Campbell, herself slowly dying of smoke inhalation, had Buckie resuscitated and shipped across to prison in Leith the next day. Despite protests he was whipped off by special warrant into Edinburgh Castle and executed swiftly without any ‘tryell in law’, especially a public one.
Why did the Crown silence him so quickly? What was the king trying to hide?
The dying but still formidable Margaret Campbell, however, had done one other important thing – she had Moray’s body painted in full and gory detail (and refused to let it be buried until justice was done). This Death Portrait lay wrapped up in the Charter Room at Donnibristle until the beginning of the last century, when it was hung on display. It tells an interesting story.
It shows three lead ball wounds on the chest and upper belly, together with numerous right-sided slash wounds to the head, neck and right leg.
It is the corpse of a man shot from the front, who has then curled up on his left side to avoid sword cuts from the right and above. It is certainly someone who had been wearing no armour – such as a man surprised in bed.
The standard body armour of the time, worn by king and commoner, was a sort of flak jacket lined with plates of metal, called a jack or brigantine. Any lead ball which managed to pierce it would be splayed like a dumdum bullet and cause a large messy entry wound. The entry holes depicted in the portrait are round and neat.
If, however, the raid had developed as Scott describes, over a matter of hours, there would have been ample time for Moray to have put on such simply-donned protection? What did happen? Was he killed in his bed?
Let’s recap for a moment in an attempt to get back to the origins of this sordid affair. It’s 1592. Scotland has reformed as a Protestant nation (following the harsher Calvin, rather than Luther) some 30 years earlier, with the aid of John Knox and company. The romantic but politically foolish Mary, the Catholic Queen of Scots, has fled to England to be judicially murdered by the Protestant Elizabeth Tudor. Mary’s son, James, is on an uneasy throne. The kirk wants presbytery control of a king-in-parliament; the king wants to plant bishops answerable to himself. There is no police force, armed or otherwise, and no standing army. If the king wants action (or protection) he has either to pay for it himself (and he has just spent the royal funds on the equivalent of nuclear deterrent submarines, his superb fleet), or ask the powerful nobles.
But which nobles? Who can be trusted?
George Gordon, sixth Earl of Huntly, patient and slow-moving, remains loyal to the Catholic cause and makes no bones about it – but at least you know where you are with him (and he rarely acts without the king’s approval). James likes that.
Young Moray is a different kettle of fish, even though he is a leading Protestant noble with a Campbell mother (a clan virtually never on the losing side). By marrying the first Earl of Moray’s daughter, Elizabeth, Countess of Moray, he has gained the earldom – but with it a lethal dowry – a longstanding feud with the earls of Huntly.
Much is expected of Moray, who is very tall, powerfully built, handsome, golden-haired, and admired (probably at a distance, to be honest) by James’s air-headed bride, Anne of Denmark. He is, however, at the age of 17, as the English spies note, ‘but lyttle proof’, i.e., as yet untried.
He has been foolish enough to reopen the Huntly feud, harrying the Gordon lands and scheming against one of the most powerful (and violent and dangerous and unforgiving) families in the land. No need to hold your breath; he has asked for it and he is going to get it one of these days. If that is not enough he has stupidly taken up with the frightening Earl of Bothwell, a suspected wizard whose unpredictable behaviour terrorises both the king and the capital.
James has brought both earls to Edinburgh to stop the whole business, but it is far too late. He can hardly hold them prisoner (the castle is full of such ‘royal guests’ and Holyrood in no state of repair).
Huntly is allowed home first and harries Moray’s lands. Moray returns north and open warfare breaks out. The king makes a final attempt at reconciliation and invites them back to Edinburgh. Huntly comes down, and so does Moray – but only as far as his mother’s house, safely on the other side of the Forth.
The king meanwhile commissions Huntly to arrest the Earl of Bothwell – and his associates. Has James really forgotten that this includes Moray?
Huntly certainly hasn’t; he commandeers the Forth ferries and appears before the House of Donnibristle at the end of a dark, cold, February day, with a party of horsemen well armed with ‘jakkis, steilbonettis, lange Gunnis, hagbuttis, pistolettis, swords and utheris wapinnis’. It is ‘nocte being ane [de]fenceable nor strenthe houss’, with only a yard for protection.
What happened next? Huntly’s version (largely supported by ‘official’ accounts) was that he arrives peaceably, knocks on the door, and asks Moray nicely in the king’s name to accompany him to Edinburgh.
Some fool then discharges a firearm from a window, severely wounding one of Huntly’s men. Naturally, all hell breaks loose, and the house goes on fire in the process. Out charges Moray (well known for his impetuosity) roaring blue murder, and when the smoke clears – there he is, killed stone dead, alas, while resisting lawful arrest.
It might have worked, but the populace will have none of it, for something very suspicious is going on. There appears to be a hit list of nobles that are to be eliminated by Huntly’s faction (which includes the king’s chancellor). Moray’s ally, John Campbell of Cawdor has been similarly eliminated three days before. Moray was merely number two; who is next? When is all this murder and mayhem going to end?
What is the king’s part in all this? He pretends to be away out hunting when the raid occurs, but is forced back to Edinburgh by public outrage. His lamentations over Moray, and this ‘terrible mistake’ convince nobody, and his authority and position are severely weakened.
Four months later the kirk pushes through parliament the ‘Golden Act’ ratifying and extending Presbyterianism, ejecting anything of a popish nature, and guaranteeing general assemblies, synods and presbyteries. (The barren old queen down in London can’t last much longer; if James is invited down to become King of England, just see if he ever comes back again).
The outrage was expressed in sermon, slanders and songs. There is a strange idea fixed firmly in the Scottish mind that the kirk was against popular music and song, but in fact it had no objection to these in their proper place, such as the home. It especially encouraged the people to sing in church (Catholicism had kept them as silent observers behind the rood screens), psalms, moreover, often set to old ballad tunes. It would have been a matter of moments to reinforce the tirades from the pulpit by promulgating propaganda ballads accusing the Earl of Huntly of ‘hamesucken’ (the old Scots crime of premeditated felonious seeking and invasion of a home for purposes of assault), of ‘crewall murthour, fyreraissing’ and ‘other hayneous’ crimes – all punishable by death.
Is it significant that he is also accused of ‘treason under tryst’? Did Huntly gain entry to Donnibristle by waving a royal warrant? Had he been given to understand by the king, or his chancellor Maitland, that it would be very convenient if Moray never saw Edinburgh again alive? Did he suddenly turn on Moray in his bedchamber, then, say, set the house on fire and then dump the body by the shore – ‘layd him on the green’?
We shall probably never know unless the record of the silenced Gordon of Buckie’s interrogation or secret trial (if indeed he ever got either) is found. Whatever the truth of the matter, the people (and later historians) were in no doubt that the king had taken the opportunity of eliminating a danger to his person, the stability of his kingdom (and if the romantics are to be believed, his marriage).
But why did this explicit ballad, accusing Huntly of the greatest abuse of trust by murdering his host in his bed, vanish for over three hundred years? Other ballads of terrible treachery such as occurs in The Baron of Brackley – which took place the same year – have been sung until the present day. On closer examination, however, these all recount crimes against the Gordons.
It was not long before Huntly was pardoned without standing trial, and was even created marquis. In other words he was soon not only back in favour, but back in town. Anyone hawking or singing The Bonny Earl o’ Moray would have required a sudden change of repertoire when the Gordons returned as cocks of the walks in both town and countryside.
IAN OLSON is a retired doctor who writes about Scottish traditional culture and history, especially of the North-east. From 1986 – 2000 he edited the Aberdeen University Review.
This is an article from the April 2001 edition of Leopard Magazine. To read much more like this every month, see our subscription details.