Gone Medieval - James II and the Deadly Black Dinner

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

What would you do if a royal feast turned into a death sentence before dessert was served? Step into Edinburgh Castle as the boy-king James II looks on in horror, and the Douglas brothers are dragged from candlelit feast to shadowed courtyard.Dr. Eleanor Janega is joined by Professor Michael Brown to dissect the Black Dinner of 1440 - often cited as the inspiration behind the "red wedding" in Game of Thrones - and ask how far will powerful nobles go to secure their grip on power? From sewer-assassinated kings to exploding cannons and murderous uncles, this episode unpacks the ruthless politics that forged late medieval Scotland.MOREThe Real Lady Macbeth with Val McDermidListen on AppleListen on SpotifyScotland's Stone of SconeListen on AppleListen on SpotifyGone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. Edited and produced by Amy Haddow and Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanorianica and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades.

We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were. And how we got here. For Scotland, 1437 was a year when nobles who had once sworn fealty to the crown crept from the battlefield and over the threshold of the king's chambers with sharpened blades. King James I, anointed by the Almighty, was cut down. down in the dirt and squalor of a sewer. For the new King James II, a six-year-old boy, the lesson was clear. Though a king may be chosen by God, he is not spared the daggers and blades forged by the greed of men. This is a lesson he would be forced to learn again, not three years later.

The Black Dinner is often said to be the inspiration behind the Red Wedding and Game of Thrones. If George R. Martin is mining it for plot ideas, you know it has to be dark. So get ready for feuds, regicides, and potentially more than one murderous uncle. Edinburgh Castle, Tuning Tower. God grant you sink for sin. And that's even for the black dinner. Earl Douglas got therein. It was a cold November night in 1440, as the Douglas boys made their way through bristling crowds and narrow,

towards Edinburgh Castle. The House of Douglas had long entwined its fortunes with those of good King Robert the Bruce. Ever since the famous victory against the English at Panicburn, the Douglas lineage had spread, each branch extending its influence over the realm. On the surface, they maintained a steadfast fealty to the descendants of Bruce, while their own ambition for land and power threatened the very crown

for which they had once taken up arms. Called to meet the new King James, the Earl Douglas and his brother processed towards the Great Hall. Like the king himself, Earl Douglas and his brother were just boys themselves, prematurely placed in a position of power following the death of their father.

At 16, the eldest, William, the sixth Earl of Douglas, drew closer to his birthright and, in doing so, renewed the shadow of threat that his house cast over the crown and, above all, the king's councillors. Sir William Crichton, custodian of the young king, was displeased that Earl Douglas did not have a yielding disposition. Though cloaked in courtesy, the summons to dine with the king and his council carried weight beyond mere ceremony. The King's Council had orchestrated this meeting with the Douglas Boys. For their part, mindful of their house's ancient service to the crown,

they received it with the quiet confidence of those accustomed to the king's table, little suspecting the peril that awaited them. As the dinner commenced, James sat on his throne, a banquet laid out in front of him. A boy of ten, his legs swung from his chair, scarcely reaching the floor below. He looked over the dinner held in his name, as great men, servants only in name, whispered with poisonous anticipation over and around him. King, Earl, and Air sat, breaking bread as trays of steaming food were brought out of the kitchens. As the door opened for a final time, a silver tray made its way towards the Douglas Boys.

It was a peculiar sight for the young king, who had never before. forcing a dish like it. The Douglases shared the same unease. Their confusion soon transformed into horror. It was the severed head of a black bull. Its dead, glassy eyes fixed on the Douglas brothers. Before the boys were able to take in the horror of the scene, strong arms violently grasped them. James watched the events unfold. unable to stop these nobles dragging more lives into the fray. In a flurry of velvet, steel, and blades, the boys were drawn into darkness, never to be seen again.

The Black Dinner of 1440 stands as one of the most dark episodes that marked the reign of James II of Scotland. Ascending to the throne at just six, James ruled during a period in which powerful nobles, driven by relentless ambition for land and influence, played a decisive role in shaping the kingdom. To explore this turbulent chapter of Scottish history, I'm joined by Professor Michael Brown of the University of St. Andrews.

Together, we'll look at the complex political society of medieval Scotland and the fraught relationship between the crown and the aristocratic lordship of the time. Well, Michael, welcome to go on medieval. Well, thank you for having me. I am absolutely delighted to have you because I think that this is probably one of the more dramatic medieval episodes that ever happened that we get to delve into today. But I don't want to get ahead of myself. Before we get into James II, the entire situation, I think it's probably best to set the scene. What did Scotland look like when he came in to power?

because he was king at about six years old as a result of his father being murdered, right? So what happened there? Well, I mean, it's almost a second generation of an ongoing, as a process of quite violent or at least forceful change. So Scotland's a country which is undergoing quite radical redrawing in the years around James II's birth, mostly the work of his father, rather unimaginatively named James I, who has spent a lot of time in England. He's been a prisoner there and has grown up in England. And I think comes back to Scotland with a different set of, I suppose, concepts about how kingdom should operate and how kings should be, if you like, respected and their authority, if you like, responded to. So it's a kingdom

him in flux, I suppose we're one way of putting it. And James has been responsible in a way that previous Scottish kings haven't been for, I suppose, forcefully confronting members of his nobility to the extent of the execution of his first cousin, his closest, if like, male relative at the time, and that cousin's family. And that has a legacy as well. Servants of his cousin are amongst those who kill him in 1437. So it's a king with an agenda and people amongst the great noble families pushing back against that in a violent way. I suppose that makes sense.

This is one of those ongoing medieval stories. We see it over and over again kings coming in, especially kings who are raised in other courts. They come home and they have different ideas about how royal kingship can work. and they try to get a lot of power underneath the throne very specifically, which the nobility are not used fans of, I think, by and large. Is this when James is killed, would you classify this as an actual conspiracy, or is this a case of things just getting a little bit too rowdy at a point in time and James being at the wrong end of things?

I mean, it's a conspiracy. It's a real revolutionary act in its own right. Right, you can overplay how, if you like, low-key Scottish politics tend to be in the sense that you don't have the kind of things that you get in England in, say, the reign of Edward II or the reign of Richard II, where kings are being confronting nobles, having them tried for treason and executed, and then themselves being deposed. Scotland doesn't have that backstory. So what's happening in James I reign is something quite new in terms of the king executing great nobles. and in a way his assassination, I think, is a recognition that, for some people, that is unacceptable, and there's no way of dealing with him except to kill him. You've had previous Scottish kings being sort of sidelined and maintaining the royal title,

being formerly head of government, but their powers being curtailed. You can't really do that to someone like James I first, who's relatively young, incredibly active, and as a personality, I think is quite forceful. So if you have to confront him, you have to kill him. And the kind of way in which violences will see becomes a kind of indoor thing. I think he's quite interesting in this period. You're not seeing civil wars being played out on a huge scale in the way that you do in, say, contemporary England or France. You're seeing violence or coercive acts taking place inside.

Maybe the weather, I don't know. Well, this is two incredibly interesting points because one, this idea that there almost is a traditional way for Scotland to deal with royalty when they get a little out of hand. And James has just blown past this. And the second point there that you've made, I think it is really interesting because, you know, arguably that's kind of the better option. I mean, if you are an ordinary person, say you're one of the peasants in Scotland, much nicer for you if the royalty and nobility decide that they're just going to stab one another. in a castle somewhere and then you don't get dragged into it and it's not your crops being trodden upon. So it's interesting because obviously we look at this and we have ideas about

honor and clearly I'm not here to tell you that I think that murder is good. But to an extent, this is quite politically expeditious, if absolutely nothing else. And it's good for the little people. It may be, though, as we'll see, there's quite a lot of crop trampoline that goes on anyway. They're not getting away. I know. Scott-free, you might say. And an interesting one of James the first messages as king is that he's here to protect the little people. Kingship is about cutting through the ties of lordship and, if you like, a special pleading amongst the nobility and saying the law is there for everyone and it's the king's law.

So James is talking to those people. Whether he's delivering for those people, I think is a slightly different question. He's certainly a large-scale taxer. So people are having to pay for that kind of kingship. But that's his selling point to the clergy, to the townspeople. And I think to, if you like, lesser landowners, the richer peasantry in the countryside as well. So there's something going on there, I think. It's not simply egos clashing.

I think there is an understanding that kingship, as James I first presents it, is offering a different kind of Scotland. And that's the message of his son, as we'll see what we'll pick up on as well. So James is murdered in 1430. Can you talk us through what happens in this instance? I mean, the terrible thing about Scottish history is it's just such good stories that they tend to dominate everything else. So it's a great story. So James I first is staying in a friary, in a Dominican friary on the outskirts of Perth. That's where he lives when he goes to Perth.

There's no castle there. So he lives in the kind of guest houses, which turned into a palace at the Black Friars to the north of Perth. It's not fortified. and the conspiracy involves people in his household who leave and deliberately break the locks allowing access to the royal apartment for a gang of murderers, assassins who then burst in. A very, well, a really reasonably contemporary account

goes into extensive detail about James hiding from them. He's in his wife's apartments, so he's in the Queen's apartments. He rips up the floorboards and climbs into the drain, the privy running underneath the Queen's chamber. He can't get out because he's had it blocked up because his tennis balls keep going down the outlet for the drain. So he blocks up the exit. So it's kind of like a judgment on him for his English sporting habits,

probably, that he's brought back with him. So the assassins find him there. They leap down one of the time. He wrestles two to the ground, but when the third one leaps in, he's able to kill him. So fantastic story. The assassins then talk about whether they should kill the Queen, and they say she's but a woman.

And of course, the Queen there is, responsible for rounding up and executing the assassins. So it's a moral tale on multiple levels and ripping yarn as well. This is an incredible yarn, yes, in a show that is going to be full of such things. Who is responsible for this very dramatic killing? Well, there are two people, I think, who certainly Scott's regard as responsible. So the man in the background is James I first's uncle, Walter Stewart, the Earl of Athel, a near, whose lands are kind of concentrated quite nearby. And should James I first die, leaving behind a child to succeed, Athel, his uncle would be the closest male relative, maybe the natural regent. Chronicles suggest he would then

kill the young Prince James and take the throne for himself. So he's a kind of eminor's grieves behind it, he's in his 80s, and people talk about having a life of evil doing, this old serpent of ancient days. But there's another perhaps more interesting figure of Robert Graham, the leader of the actual assassins who's been educated at the University of Paris. And in this kind of quite dramatized contemporary account, he's given several speeches in which he accuses James I first of tyranny for his taxation, for his execution of his close kinsman. And so you're getting the kind of glimpses of perhaps what the assassins are arguing that this king is not a legitimate ruler. He's a tyrant. So those are the two figures, Graham and Athel, who seem to

catch the imagination. I, of course, though immediately fell in love with Joan Beaufort upon hearing this story. Yes, she is but a woman, but oh, man, did these guys really underestimate her? Can you tell us a little bit about what she does following her husband's death? Well, I mean, she essentially masterminds the royal counterattack, if you like. She's at Perth and she and the King's council has immediately ride from Perth to Edinburgh, so about 50 miles southwards to get control of the young heir to the throne, James, and to acclaim him as king and to start to plan for his coronation. She then mobilizes people to go. back north to Perth, to seize control of the borough, and to take the fight to the king's killers.

And it seems a pretty one-sided encounter, if you like. The killers are arrested and handed over by various lords from the area. So people who perhaps they thought they were sheltering with, turn up and hand them over in return for being rewarded with lands and pensions, which is how we know who's handing over which rebels, because you have the records of what their rewards. are. So Joan, I think, is both the figurehead and probably the kind of central focus. I mean, you think about queens in 15th century Europe. They are the other unimpeachably royal figure in the kingdom. They have a coronation. They have that status. And Joan is clearly using that and using the idea that she's protecting her son as the justification for her action and avenging her husband.

And James is the idea that James is a martyr that his assassination has been, his death has been for the defence of the common good of the kingdom. And they have a papal legate in the kingdom who is made to kind of pronounce that and to kiss the king's wounds and things. So it's being presented as a very much moral crusade against these criminals. And that's the way the kingdom regards it. Their executions in Edinburgh are absolutely brutal. And again, this contemporary source called the death of the king. of Scots goes into enormous detail about the kind of two-day execution of Robert Graham, which is very graphic.

Well, this is also quite an interesting point because I suppose it shows us that she is very much feeling the precarity of her situation, getting the papal legate's involved right away, making sure that there are gruesome public executions, because she's got to be feeling at least somewhat marginalized at this juncture. We're talking about a woman here who is English. You know, her husband's just been killed for being a little too English. You know, I do think that you need to kind of move decisively to assure that your place and that of your son is recognized in these circumstances. I mean, again, this is sounding a lot like I'm justifying murder, right, etc.

But, you know, I do see where she's coming from here. Yeah, I think the other thing is that whilst there are a group of people who clearly closely associated with James I first and there are the people who killed him, there are a lot of people waking to see what's going to happen. So a lot of people who have, amongst a higher nobility, who have been uncomfortable under James's rule, who have suffered displays of his, well, I suppose temper or judgment, depending on how you look at it. and therefore may not be too sorry the king's dead, but are not going to commit themselves one way or another until they see what's happened. So the queen acting quickly to stamp this out is a way of telling those people, okay.

So you might think that, but you cannot say it. You know, you have to side with the idea that the king's death was a horrific crime. It was the worst type of treachery and to, if you like, sign up to that message. Well, so, I mean, she plays a blinder in terms of the propaganda game here. And her son very much is recognized as the king.

So how does James II then grow up? How is it that he comes to understand his role as king? That's a really interesting question. And I mean, I think his succession, Scottish royal dynasties, and perhaps particularly the lessons of a century and a half ago, where the royal line fails and the kingdom is then involved in a kind of existential struggle with England over, you know, what Scotland is and whether it

should be a sovereign kingdom. That lesson leads people to think the succession of the king has to be secured. But who is going to run the kingdom while the king is growing up is a separate question. And equally, as you say, there's a question running through that, which is, who's going to educate the king? Who's going to give him the lessons to take forward as he grows older? And we have some glimpses of that, whether they're from people who are actually able to get their message to the king or are just articulating what they'd like the king to learn. We particularly have a man called Walter Bauer, who's the author of the perhaps the greatest medieval Scottish Chronicle called Scottish Chronican. And he uses his final book 16 to talk directly to James II. It's introduced by the chronicler speaking to James and using James.

the first as a model of kingship for his son to follow, and then spending a lot of time at the end, idealising James I first, listing his good quality, showing how he'd performed so well for the realm in his short rate, and lamenting the disrespect, the treachery of certain of his subjects against him. So it's a very, on one level,

very direct message to James II to be like his father. Within it, there are kind of coded messages that suggests Bauer maybe had a few doubts about the way James I first could behave. But he's not saying that, and I think that's interesting, you know, that the line has to be in the 1440s. We need this kind of king. And if you're Bauer, who's a churchman, and he's talking about the daily acts of tyranny that he sees in the oppression of the peasantry in his local area,

which is Western Fife, usually a relatively peaceful part of the kingdom, he sees the tyrants not as James I first, but of the members of the nobility who use the weakness of the crown to, if you like, oppress their own tenants or their neighbours. So he has a kind of very clear message that in a sense almost transcends what he himself experienced under James I first rule. He thinks it's actually much more important to tell this story about James I first rather than the sort of reveal or dig too deeply into the doubts that I have. about his execution of members of his family, for example. Who's really running the kingdom during James II's minority? Is it his mother? Is it these noble families?

What are we looking at in terms of who's running things at court? The consistent thing, I think, is the idea of a council. There's always a council made up of a shifting group of individuals who are there formerly in troll of government. At the beginning, the Scott to do what they've done in previous periods of royal absence or royal incapacity, and there have been a lot of those in the previous century, which is to appoint a single man as lieutenant general, and I say man. Because I think, as we were talking about, Queen Joan clearly has a degree of status and also political acumen in the aftermath

of James I's death. But when the estates meet, when the kingdom gathers, they don't choose her to head the government. They choose instead the head of the, I suppose, is the next greatest noble house, the Earl of Douglas, archibald, Fifth Earl of Douglas, and he becomes lieutenant. It's the kind of decision that Scots' governments have traditionally made. And I think, to a degree, I think it would have worked, but Douglas dies of the plague in the summer of 1439,

and it's then that things start to fall apart, because there's no sort of replacement figure that everybody can agree on as the left. tenant in that point. So that's when things start to change and the cracks start to open up. Well, can we dig a little bit into the Douglases? Because they're one of these incredibly powerful houses at the time. Can you tell us a little bit about who they are and where they hail from? Yeah, I mean, I have a long history with the Douglases, so stop me if I go too far. I mean, the Douglases are the kind of epitome of late medieval Scotland in some way.

Is there a family which, though it goes back to the 12th century, based around Douglas itself in South Lanarkshire, so in southwestern Scotland. But it's really their service to Robert Bruce, the hero king, if you like, almost the sort of secular saint of late medieval Scotland at the beginning of the 14th century, that boosts them in terms of their reputation, also in terms of their landholding and power. And they build this image of being the, I suppose the archetypal defenders. of Scotland against the English in the 14th and 15th century. There's a poem written for members of the family, the book of the Hulet, the book of the owl in about 1450, which talks about them as the Balmicanan bar to Scottish blood. So the outworks, the defences of Scottish blood,

the war wall of Scotland. So the image of the family is militaristic. It's dominating in the borders in particular. And it's using that role as, if you like, military defenders of Scotland, to justify a kind of special status within the kingdom, beneath the king, but not necessarily, if you like, wholly dependent on the king's will. And I think that's a tension that runs in the ideology of the family relative to that of the crown. In the poem, the Douglas arms are described at length, and it sits next to the sovereign sign.

So next to the king's arms. It's the Douglas family arms. That is provocative. I love this. I'm so interested in families in general who are using literature to basically put forward an argument for their own power. I love this form of propaganda. It's wonderful, mostly because then I get to read poetry. Fantastic. But it is interesting because these are clearly people who have a real understanding of how

familial myths are made. You know, much, much is made, of course, to these connections to Robert the Bruce. I think that is incredibly smart in terms of presenting yourselves, especially if you're kind of a younger noble family. I mean, for us, 200 years seems like a long time, but not to medieval people. They're sort of like, oh, upjump, kind of a thing. They're also sometimes referred to as the Black Douglases, right? Is there a reason for that? I mean, there are different branches of the family is one thing.

So it's a way of distinguishing yourself, but it's particularly, it's the senior line by this stage, perhaps not initially, and they're claiming direct dissent from Bruce's sidekick, James Douglas, known by the English as the Black Douglas, known by the Scots as the Good Sir James. So they're deliberately, if you like, prioritising the kind of scary reputation

that English chroniclers give to the, Douglas is. He's a person who mutilates English prisoners. He's the person who mothers use to frighten their children in Northern England. So it's using that kind of ogre figure as the totem of their families. I think that's where the Black Douglas idea comes from. They're the line that descends directly from him rather than from other members of the family. So there's a Red Douglas branch as well. He would have their own scary stories. But at this point, they're the junior branch, really. Michael, I'm afraid you're going to have to stop introducing good stories because we're never going to get through this.

I can't. It's too many. It's too many. It's too much. Okay. All right. Listen, let's get down to brass tacks. We're getting up to 1440. Who are the key characters that people should keep in mind who are going to be involved in the black dinner? Well, the ones we haven't mentioned are the, I suppose they're the counselors of the old king. So the people who've sat close to James I first, who've helped him in his actions and who the king has clearly entrusted with key roles within the kingdom. They tend not to be great landowners in their own right. They are people whose position is dependent on their access to royal resources. And in particular, I think we have to look at William Crichton, the not-so-admirable Crichton, you might call him. He's the Chancellor of the

kingdom. So in a sense, he's the head of the Royal Administration. He's the first layman to have that role in Scotland. So before that, it's always gone to bishops. So to appoint this man, I think, is saying something about the way James I first and the way William Crichton see the government of the king as being something more politically directed in a way that previous kings have less routine, less bureaucratic, more political, I think. And Crichton is also the keeper of Edinburgh a castle, so one of the Great Royal Strongholds. So combination of things in his hands, his counterpart, who's less prominent under James is a man called Alexander Livingston, who's the constable of the other great royal

fortress at Sterling. So they are both, if you like, have similar interests, but are also, as we'll see, rivals. And a third member of that group, slightly, I suppose, foot in both camps, is a member of the Black Douglas family, James Douglas. James Douglas of Balveni, also called James the Gross, because he's very, very large, possibly very, very fat. And he's the uncle and then great uncle of the elders of Douglas. So he's like a junior member of the family who's had to make his own career. He's not got a big inheritance, so he's had to work with James I first. So that triumvirate, I think, of royal councillors are sitting there,

and they need to continue to exercise influence in royal government. if they lose that access, then their importance drops away, if you like. So that's their interest. And on the other side, I suppose you've got the queen, the queen mother, Joan Beaufort, an English noble woman, as we've seen, clearly able, clearly energetic and forceful as an individual, like a lot of the Beaufort family who are major players in the Wall of the Roses. It's her family in England who are, if you like, a big element in the factionalization that's going on there. you've also got members of the clergy, so the bishops of Glasgow and St. Andrews, who are part of that group.

And a third person or a third individual is the new Earl of Douglas, who's a teenage boy, probably 16, maybe 16, 17 years old. William, William the 6th Earl of Douglas, who succeeded when his father dies, as we were talking about. So it's complex, but on one side you've got, if you like, established powers in the bishop, the greatest earl, the queen mother. On the other side, you have a group of royal counsellors. Okay, well, oh, we love it. A very young Earl of what could possibly go wrong at this point. I mean, what can we say about his influence,

even though he is quite young? I mean, is this a young man who's really stepping into his role as Douglas or is this a 16-year-old? Well, part of the problem with the Black Dinner is our best juiciest accounts are all, about 100, just under 100 years later. And those accounts present him as someone who's gone off the rails, who present him as a kind of adolescent joyrider, if you like.

So someone who's allowing his retainers to cut loose and to ravage property. I suspect a lot of that is black propaganda, is something which is being used to portray him in a particular light, and to make general complaints about the Douglas family, which re-emerge in the next decade or so. So it may be that he is less, if you like, disorderly than some of the traditional accounts say, there are those signs that he's starting to be politically active.

He's starting to appear in charters that he's giving. He's granting lambs to people. He's appearing as a witness to royal documents too. So he's clearly acting as an adult figure. And 16, 17, you know, it's an age where, if formerly in legal terms, you're not considered adult quite often, kings and great lords coming out of minority periods, will be active at that point,

see with James II himself. I can't imagine, though, that he's very active on the Royal Council or anything at this time. I don't think it makes quite as much sense. I think we have to think of these people as heads of corporations themselves. So just as there are people who are looking at the Royal Council and thinking, my best way of accessing and influencing power is through my membership of the Royal Council, there are similar people who are coming round the Earl of Douglas and are telling him what to do, are using him in that way.

And again, he's an individual. It's who he listens to. It's whose advice he takes. So whether or not he's really making good decisions or whether or not he's, if you like, initiating things, he's a focal point for other groups within the kingdom. And he's the son of the lieutenant general. He's also through his grandmother, the first cousin of the king,

so a close male relative of James II, And he's someone, therefore, who has a claim to a significant role in the kingdom, possibly even claiming to be the lieutenant general or the regent for James II. And I think that may be an issue. There are people who think the Queen Mother, the Earl of Douglas, they have a better right to be running the kingdom than this group of counsellors. You know, if you think about the natural order of things, yeah. All right, okay.

So here we are. We're in Edinburgh Castle. it's 1440. Can you set the scene for us? Who's there? Where are they from and why are we here in the first place? Well, it's late 1440, it's November 1440 and interestingly the Royal Council has been at Crichton Castle, which is a fabulous castle just south of Edinburgh. I advise people to go and visit it. It's up on the edge of the hills. And the Council unusually is met in a baronial castle and then has moved to Edinburgh. And we don't know what goes on at Crichton. We don't know. know the planning behind the scenes. They're very careful to keep as far away from the deed as possible. But what the accounts tell us is that the Earl of Douglas and his younger brother, David, are both present in the Great Hall of Edinburgh Castle. We know at least one of the people who've

come with them, which is an important baron from the same area of the kingdom, from the Valley of the Clyde called Malcolm Fleming. And he's there with him. He may be one of those advisors that I was just talking about. Clearly there isn't an expectation of anything untoward happening. And the narratives tell us the young king, William Crichton, sitting down to dinner with the Earl of Douglas and his brother David. And during the meal, the head of an animal, I think a black bull's head is favourite. Some accounts say a black boar's head is brought and placed on the table. And it's recognized as a symbol of treason. So by bringing that out, you're making a tacit approval of treason. The Earl leaps to his feet, but is then arrested. He and his brother are taken out into the

castle yard and immediately executed. Three days later, after some kind of trial, Malcolm Fleming is then executed. The Earl of Douglas is given no kind of trial. It's a kind of, it's an assassination. It's a murder, more than any kind of judicious act, but it's being done in front of the king. And I think it is a shocking, deeply shocking event for people. In the 17th century, a historian of the Douglas family talks about there being a rhyme, which says Edinburgh Castle, Tower and Town,

God grant you sink for sin, even for the black dinner Earl Douglas got within. And this is supposed to be a kind of ditty that people chant to each other. So the kind of penetration into the pop If you like, consciousness is clearly something which is quite strong during the next century, two centuries. People don't forget this event. In an era in which such things are recurring, the black dinner seems particularly shocking,

possibly because of the age of the two people. Can we talk a little bit about the differentiation of what we think the history is and these narratives? Because as you say, you know, we've got rhymes. We have, you know, was a boar's head or a bulls had served, to me that seems a little bit, let's say a bit of poetic license, you know, these sorts of things. And granted, you know, it is shocking. It is absolutely wild to execute dinner guests. Obviously, this is a story that ends up reaching really far as a result of some interesting

propaganda. Yes, and it's hard to know, it's hard to project back from the later accounts to say this is what happened, this is what they're telling us. We have a contemporary account which is more or less three lines long, which simply says that they are beheaded at Edinburgh Castle on this date and three days later Malcolm Fleming was executed. Interesting, what we then have are Malcolm Fleming's family's efforts to, if you like, recover their estates because they've actually been forfeited. So they are going to various people and getting statements from them that they had no part in it. They had no part in Fleming's death or his forfeiture.

So the people they go to are Alexander Livingston and James Douglas. They don't go to Crichton. I think that's quite interesting. So Crichton is being left as the person who is seen as responsible for the act. And as the constable of Edinburgh Castle, in a sense it's happening on his patch. it's his responsibility that he's responsible for the safety of guests within the castle. So he has clearly been isolated. There are political reasons why that's happening a few years later.

But I think it may also tell us what people at the time thought, that he was the architect of the killing. And what he is doing is removing people who could ease him off the council, who could remove him as chancellor, take his offices away from him. He's very vulnerable to someone like the Earl of Douglas, he become lieutenant general. So he has a strong motive in doing that.

James Douglas, the other counsellor, is the man who inherits the Douglas Estates. So he has a very strong motive for the, not simply the Earl, but his younger brother being executed. It leaves him as the heir. So all these people have got, they're guilty in some respect. They're certainly guilty in benefiting from the act. But there's very little material

from the next few decades. It's really only when you get past 1500 that people are telling these much more elaborate, dramatized stories, which is actually unlike the other killings of the period where we have more contemporary evidence. And I think the Black Dinner may be just too difficult to deal with. It's too shocking and too many people are implicated, including the young James II.

You know, he is there. And, of course, the later accounts say how shocked he is about this. But, you know, we don't know exactly. what the 10-year-old James II would have known or learnt from this event. Well, you know, a little dose of medieval PTSD. That'll age him up really quickly, you know, kind of ready to rule. So many bad things that James I witnesses as a child,

which may have a psychological effect, as we'll see. But eventually this story gets out of even Scotland, you know, there are European chronicles that talk about this. Is that correct? The Douglas family are known in Europe. The grandfather of the Earl killed at the Black Dinner has fought in France for Charles Ives Evans, as indeed the Earl's father has done as well.

They've got French titles, and they actively try and keep that French connection going, France being Scotland's main European ally during this whole period. So the French are interested in that. There are also any stories about a king being killed. So the murder of James I first is being recounted in French and Burgundian chronicles quite widely and some of the murderers flee to the continent. So news goes that way as well.

And I think quite often those continental chronicles then move from the murder of James I first straight to the black dinner. I mean, why wouldn't you see these two events as I suppose linking together and encapsulating the same kind of issues? So the killing of James I first and then killing of the Earl of. Douglas, it's just, God, you know, what's next kind of thing? So, yeah, I think people like murder stories in the 15th century, same as we do now. And particularly the killing of kings and princes are, you know, they're not, they're shocking and unusual events, which make people reflect on their own political situations and their own rulers.

I mean, to be fair, as we've been saying repeatedly, and I'm not going to stop saying it, it's a cracker of a story, right? And I mean, this is, we are repurposing it even now. also one of the big inspirations for the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones. So, you know, it's something that still really intrigues us. It's still something that culturally we just think this is wrong. There is something about tricking people into coming to a dinner and then killing them that we just cannot really stomach, I think. And I think that is quite interesting. I mean, granted, we have very different sets of moral. ideals than medieval people do. But I think this is one that we can all come together on and say it's

a bit off, right? Yeah, I think the culture of hospitality is very strong in medieval society. The idea that when people come into your house, whatever it is, that they are to a degree under your protection, whether or not you've guaranteed that directly yourself. So it's transgressing against all kinds of rules. And also, you know, it's a, we don't know what. the deal of Douglas alike, but you imagine a dashing young prince being brutally cut down by cynical older figures. And the red wedding is, you know, you can see exactly where that's drawing upon to get to the black dinner, you know, the influence one to the other. One way or another, you know, let's fast forward nine years. And here it is, James II has reached

his majority. Yes, miraculously, yeah. I mean, yeah, against all odds, it really has to be said. But do we know anything about what he was like personally, what he looked like when he comes to the throne? There's a depiction of him in the later 1450s by a visiting Austrian knight who goes around the European courts and then he does these paintings of various rulers. And of course, the striking thing about James II is the fiery face. He has a red birthmark that covers half his face. It's depicted on that drawing. He looks young, athletic, slightly sinister, all in black, clutching a dagger. I mean, just good sense, really.

And it's hard not to read that into some of his actions. He's a king who, I think, learns the lessons of his father's reign in all sorts of ways, but also has a deep personal interest in warfare and in taking the field in person, which his father does campaign, but it seems less, I suppose, personally, interested in those facets of kingship. So those might be lessons from a minority where you've been continually placed in positions, not when perhaps you're in personal danger, but where you're kind of being moved around, swapped between different custodians. You've seen your mother arrested. You've seen the Earl of Douglas killed. It's just a kind of personal insecurity and sense of menace

going around, I think. There must be an element to that. I think we may be a can overplay that. But it's got to be an element in James II's experience of use and his education. Yeah, just call me Sigmund Freud, but I do think seeing your mother arrested and watching a couple of people get killed in front of you at the age of 10 might have an effect. I mean, I don't know where I'm getting that from, but it's a lot. Yeah. And I mean, he goes out of his way to reward someone who's clearly a junior member of the royal household for trying to defend his mother. So 10 years later, he remembers that that's been done, and specifically gives him this land and says that's why he's doing it. So it's something which is clearly not being forgotten by the young

James II. Why would it be? I mean, what's his rule like? I mean, we've got a man who's out on the he's out on the battlefield. He's avenging his mother. These don't seem like hallmarks of a guy who is particularly peaceful ruler. I mean, you're not going to be surprised. if I say, there's a significant element of internal and external warfare that goes on. So he marries in 1449 to a princess from Gelder's in the low countries, Mary of Gelder's. It's a very prestigious and beneficial marriage financially. And in a sense, I think that empowers James to seek to impose his authority on the kingdom. But again, given what we've been saying, not surprisingly, the family which proves the most

obstructive to that are the Black Douglases. So the first five years of his personal rule through the early 1450s are a series of clashes between himself and the Earls of Douglas, so the leaders of this family. So the minority in one sense continues, but now the king is very clearly the leader of one party. Interesting with his principal, psychic William Crichton, the Chancellor, who had been told. talking about the great survivor of Scottish politics during this period in many ways. And of course, I suppose, the defining point of the reign. And again, a kind of return to the events of the Black Dinner in some ways is a meeting

at Stirling in February 1452 where William Earl of Douglas, the 8th Earl of Douglas, turns up with a safe conduct from the King, the two men argue. And James stabs Douglas in the neck, and then his servants, his household guards pile in and essentially cut De Oler Douglas to pieces and Q a major civil war, but also Q are quite a crisis in terms of what you do with a king who's committed murder in person

and one of his principal subjects. It's a very tricky point. And James I second in some ways is quite lucky to survive it. I think that's a really important point. because we do have this tendency to look at kings as though they have undisputed power or that it's totally unimpeachable. I think that's a very modern outlook. You know, the idea of the king as having a specific God-given right to do whatever he wants is something that is invented in the early modern period. Medieval people think that there are rules that kings have to abide by,

And one of the big rules is you don't go around killing nobles willy-nilly, right? You know, or what are you going to do? You know, these are incredibly wealthy, powerful people. You can't just kill them because you get kind of annoyed. Yeah. I mean, I suppose two sides of looking at. I think if the Earl of Douglasi's family get hold of James II, in the weeks that follow the killing of the Earl, they will kill him. There's any doubt about that.

And then they'll deal with the consequences. On the other hand, I think, you could argue that for a wide cross-section of Scottish nobility and the wider community, there's a problem. James II is the king. Does anybody want to have that role on their hands? They remember what happened to the killers of James I. Against that, ironically, is the fact that James II's queen, Mary of Gelders, has just given birth to a son in St. Andrews' castle where she's been sent for safekeeping. So there is an alternative king if you can get hold of the young prince. He's a baby and we all know infant mortality is pretty high in the 15th century, but there is an alternative. So I think, you know, James II can't be

confident that people won't see his actions killing in hot blood rather than cold calculated murder and people are making that differentiation. But it's still an act that requires him in a sense to be exonerated by Parliament. Parliament meets and issues this long justification about how the Earl of Douglas had asked for it, even though he was under the King's safe conduct. Oh, I love this. I got getting Parliament to say, well, he shouldn't have put you in the position where you had to kill him. Wow. I guess it is good to be King. That's not so bad. I think by that stage, the crisis has kind of passed. I mean, I don't think you do that until you can, you've counted the vote before you get them in the chamber, really. And the Douglases are

outside and they're nailing letters to the door, accusing the king of being and the king's councillors of being traitors and enemies of the kingdom. So there's a kind of propaganda war going on in the streets of Edinburgh in 1452 in terms of the king inside the parliament building justifying things and people outside the parliament sending out other messages. That's interesting, right, because obviously this is incredibly shocking to people. We're having to call parliament. Propaganda is being created in order to get a head of this. But fundamentally, this is just kind of hit after hit. We've got death after death. We've got assassinated kings. We've got people being killed at dinner. At this point in time,

I mean, to a certain extent, this is why you have to have that guarantee of safety before you go hang out with James a second, because everybody knows that at this point in time, you never know you might get stabbed 26 times, you know. Yeah. I think the stabbing is going to be. a bit of a shock. But even if you look at the reign of James I first, James I first arrest people at his court. People come to Parliament or people come to the royal court

and they find themselves being arrested and the king sending officials to take custody of their lands. It's a tactic that he uses. And again, it's that indoor thing. People are coming to meetings with the king and are paying a price. You get a safe conduct, but

it turns out actually it's not really worth the paper it was written on. or parchment it was written on. So it's difficult. And not surprisingly, after 1452, the Douglasus won't meet James II. They negotiate with him through intermediaries. They don't attend Parliament. Even when they've been reconciled, they clearly, there's clearly no, for obvious reasons, trust between them.

Well, good for them. I can't say that I blame them there. I know that. But, okay, so they have, they've negotiated enough of a piece that they're able to, take care of their lands back home, but they're not coming into Parliament. I will grant them that. In a sense, they, that the king is having to deal with them as rivals, as not exactly equals, but they're making the kind of agreements that nobles make with each other to bring about these peace settlements, which is quite revealing. So, James II can't simply now talk to them as subjects

because of that act. I mean, part of it they say, we forgive you for the killing of the Earl of Douglas, but it's a bond between two individuals. It's a private agreement rather than, if you're like, a statute or a royal writ or something like that. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm sorry, I'm not going to trust a private agreement at this point from James the second. We all know what those are going for. I think both sides know, yeah. I think both sides know this is probably a temporary sort of suspension of hostilities rather than anything.

permanent. And, you know, in 1455, and it's hard exactly to see who starts the conflict, but a full-scale civil war blows up between Douglas and James II. But this time James 2nd has been very careful about the level of support he has. He also isn't at that point being stigmatized for anything he's done. So he can use the powers of king, kingship and the mobilization of the royal army, the use of the king's artillery train and things like that. And quite systematically he dismantles the Douglases in their areas of power across southern Scotland in particular. So he gets his ducks in a row, I guess, in the three years between 1452 and 1455 and quite skillfully dismantles them at a point when, you know, the Douglases are looking to

support from England through this crisis. Their lands are in the south, all that stuff about being the defenders against the English, well, if it's going to work, we'll get English support and they'll keep us in the manner which we're accustomed. But James II is able to combine his attacks exactly when a period of English political discord is breaking out. And the first Bachelor of St. Albans in the spring of 1455, the lead-up to that is exactly when James II targets the Douglasus. And whether that's deliberate or accidental, it's hard to say, but I think there is a degree of conscious reading of English politics and recognizing the Douglases are not going to get. any help from across the border. Oh, that's good ruling.

I mean, what can I say? You know, he's in many ways living the royal dream. Yeah, it's happening. Yeah. I mean, you can see James I second in a sense learning lessons as he goes along. And I mean, he is a, it's not a man you'd want to spend much time over dinner with

for obvious reasons, but he is certainly effective as a king. He is successful. He creates a degree of unanimity behind him, even bringing back families who have supported the Douglases until very late on, finding ways to lure them in so the Douglas is essentially a left isolated, ultimately in English exile, while their supporters are brought back into the fold. And I think that's good politics for a king, rather than having a kind of blanket attempt to forfeit people and to

drive them out of the kingdom, picking off the kind of key figures from the opposing faction, if you like. And part of that, I think is that James is able to go directly from attacking and the Douglases to launching an attack on Berwick, a Scottish borough, which is still in English hands, and turning the struggle into, if you're like, a patriotic war, giving inverted commas there, between the Scottish and English kingdom with the old enemy. And the Douglases are very much on the wrong side of that conflict.

So James is using those kind of old messages about what Scottish kings are for, and ironically what the Douglases were supposed to be doing and saying, well, look, I'm defending you against England now, there on the other side. So that's, I mean, James likes war, that's clear, but also James knows how to use war against England at a point when England is quite weak as a way of, if you like, building consensus behind his authority. Well, okay, we're not going to call it a pretty rule, but it seems like he's a fairly effective king for the rest of his reign. Yeah, I think he's a smart cookie in like 1450s. He's won the difficult conflicts. and then in a sense both internally and externally can play the kind of games he wants. Well, we've got time for one more good story, Michael.

Let me guess. How does James the second die? Well, it's the way he'd have wanted to go. I suppose this is what we can say. I mean, he's, so the English hold two strongholds within Southern Scotland, the whole barrack, which is a town, and it's quite hard to take, and the Scots try and besiege it and fail. The other throngholies, Roxburgh Castle, near Kelso, it's more isolated.

It doesn't by this stage have a town outside the walls. And James, I think, starts to focus on that as something which he can capture as a demonstration of his, if you like, recovery of the final lost territories lost in the wars of independence to the English and the borders. And he exploits again a period of English civil war. So the wars of the roses really starting in earnest in 1459 to 60. And James will deal with anybody in that conflict. He deals with the Yorkists. And then when they win, he immediately starts to look to the Lancastrians. Because the losers are all going to offer you more.

The winners are sitting in position and they're going to want to defend the English Kingdom. So he just moves between different camps. And during the kind of period of turmoil in summer 1460, he takes a large army south to Roxburgh with the Royal Artillery train and is supervising a very much hands-on way, the siege. and unfortunately one morning before he's heard mass, as we're told by the Chronicles, he goes to see one of his great guns firing the gun bursts, as is quite common in 15th century artillery,

and a fragment of metal strikes the king in the leg, I think probably severing his artery and he bleeds to death. So interestingly, and I suppose it's the way what he'd have wanted, that the army stays in place and captures Roxburgh and then moves on to take other castles in Northern England. So in a sense, you know, it's a kind of posthumous legacy is that he takes the castle posthumously. And there's a, again, of course, there's a later reference to a prophecy that Roxburgh will only fall to a dead man. So, hurrah.

But nobody mentions that prophecy before James is killed. Of course. So it's that over, I mean, you know, more interested in guns and became a king. you know, it shouldn't be leaving this, it leads this to the kind of tradesmen. But James obviously wants to see the guns he's paid good money for do their job. Well, he died doing what he loved, violence.

He did indeed. All right, well, okay, we talked a bit at the beginning of the episode, the sort of Scotland that James II had entered into in his minority. What was the kingdom that he left to James the third? Like? I think it's one.

in which he's largely, you could argue, completed the program that his father had begun. And I suppose one obvious demonstration of that is that you have a nobility whose sense of itself is in relation to their service to the king. So he's created a group of new earls, all of whom have been the people who've, if you like, most closely backed him in the previous part of the reign. And the nobility in general, I think, look to the royal court and the royal household as the route by which they progress their careers. Now, in many other kingdoms, that kind of goes without saying. But I think it's something which going from a period in 1424, when personal kingship has been, or forceful or effective, personal kingship has been relatively rare in the previous century to 1460 is.

one where that kingship is seen as the norm. And if we think about what happens in James the third's minority, because again, James II dies, he's only 30 and his son is eight, so it's back to where you were and you have another minority. But in James the third minority, you don't have those kind of deep fractures between groups within the kingdom. There is a sense of, as opposed to council working quite coherently together, during what turned out quite difficult times. And interestingly, the Queen, Mary of Gelder's, the Queen Mother, is the person who people accept as the head of that council until her death in 1463. So unlike Joan Beaufort, who's kind of squeezed out of power, Mary, and I think because Mary is that royal

personage, she is Queen by the grace of God, she steps into that role. And I think, again, the fact that they're willing to serve under the Queen in that way is indicative of a greater unanimity and recognition of, if you like, the need to maintain stable royal administration as being the principal priority of these people. So that's a big change from what we're seeing in the 1440s. Well, I suppose it just goes to show you can't underestimate what can be achieved through unlimited violence. Yeah, you kill enough people you're going to get to some kind of solution eventually, I suppose. Might be one of them. If you kill the right people, I suppose. They're called Douglas, particularly, yes.

Get rid of those troublemakers. Michael, what an incredible time I've had speaking with you. Thank you so much for coming along to talk about one of the more ridiculous series of events in medieval history. It's been my pleasure. Thanks to Professor Michael Brown and to you for listening to Gomdevil from History Hit. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV. documentaries, including my recent film, The Trials of Joan of Arc, and add-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com forward slash subscription. Remember, you can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify,

where you can leave us comments and suggestions or wherever you get your podcasts. Until all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.