Mary vs Huntley - 1562        from History of Scotland John Hill Burton Historiographer-Royal for Scotland Vol IV pages 47-53

Mary as painted on the mural of the Museum of Antiquities

The family of Huntly possessed estates on,, the east coast, estates cultivated by the most industrious among the Lowland tenantry. From these they drew a goodly revenue. This enabled them to keep high court, and strengthen their rule over the vast Highland territory to the north and west ; for over all the district now beyond the Caledonian Canal and the lakes it unites, the "Cock of the North" was supreme in one shape or other. He princely state in his Castle of Strathbogie ; and events kept afterwards revealed that its sumptuous furnishings shamed those of the royal palace. He had the flourishing town of Aberdeen, with its university and cathedral, by way of capital. Here he seems to have had a small fleet, with which he kept up foreign communications, as little under restriction from the Court of Holyrood as those of the King of Norway or Denmark might be. The Earl of Huntly of that day was an accomplished man and a politician. He frequented the Court of France, where he received the decoration of St Michael, and would probably rank with the sovereign of any secondary German or French state. What he might be doing in strengthening himself by alliances, or surrounding himself by troops, was not easily to be discovered by those outside of his own dominions. The Government in Edinburgh could but guess at them, as our rulers in India might at the doings of some native prince who professes to hold by British protection in a distant inaccessible territory. He had been playing some deep game with the Lords of the Congregation. It seemed to them at one time that they had him, having bought him with a price - a large share in the ecclesiastical estates so profusely distributed. But there is little doubt that he determined to stand forth as leader in a great contest for the old faith, and had made arrangements accordingly, treating with the Guises, and organizing the People under his own banner. Murray, when his followers jostled those of Huntly's ambassador in the village of Vitry, must have come to the knowledge that Huntly, had deep projects. Whether or not he knew exactly that an army of twenty thousand men had been offered to the queen, he knew enough to tell him that he must crush Huntly ere the power he yet held as head of the Congregation slipped from his grasp. Murray had further and personal motives for trying his strength with Huntly. The estates belonging to his own new earldom were in Huntly's hands, whether under any regular title or by mere occupancy, and would not be got for him who owned them under a crown charter, except by force.

It was determined that the queen and Murray should make a royal progress northwards, and visit Huntly. Ostensibly the court was to do him honor; but he had his own reasons for suspecting that something of another kind was in view. Matters at Strathbogie Castle were not in a condition to be inspected by eyes like Murray's. Incidentally we know that the vestments and treasures of the Cathedral of Aberdeen-the monuments of idolatry, as they would be called-were deposited in Huntly's stronghold, that they might be restored to the Church in its day of triumph. These things might be hidden out of sight, to be sure; but it would be impossible to obliterate all testimony that here were the headquarters of the enemy.

An incident that seemed in itself of little moment connects itself with this affair. A quarrel which Huntly's son, Sir John Gordon, had with Ogilvy of Findlater, broke into a bloody conflict on the streets of Edinburgh. Gordon was seized, and put in prison; but the Scots prisons were ever notorious for their unretentiveness of prisoners of his rank. This Sir John, who was not the heir of Huntlyl.but only his fourth son, was among the countless lovers with whoin Queen Mary's name is mixed up. The historian of the earldom of Sutherland says he was " a young gentleman, very personable, and of good on, whom she loved entirely."

Soon after this affair, the queen with her brother took their royal progress northwards. They started in August I562. To have gone without a sufficient force, would have been a folly of which Murray was not likely to be guilty; and Huntly felt by no means satisfied with the form in which his sovereign approached him. Wisely keeping at a distance himself, he sent his wife, as a sort of ambassador and spy, to meet the queen at Aberdeen, and try to discover whether she came in peace or war. She was courteously invited to the earl's fortress-palace at Strathbogie. She declined, however, to countenance the house of Huntly while one of its members was a fugitive from justice, and demanded that Sir John Gordon should "enter himself in ward" again -that is, go back to prison. It appears that he went so far southward with the intention of doing so, but changed his mind. The royal party ran some risk. Murray, had he fallen into the hands of the Gordons, would not have been spared ; and they would have had little hesitation in keeping the queen herself in pledge for their lives and fortunes. It appears that when sojourning in the stronghold of the Leslies of Balquhain, of which a battered tower still remains, about twenty miles from Aberdeen, the queen and Murray both made a narrow escape from seizure. They passed on to Inverness, where, desiring admission to the castle, it was closed against them. This was all the more audacious an act, that the castle was not a strength attached to Huntly's own dominions; it was nominally a royal castle, Huntly holding it as hereditary sheriff of the district. A siege was begun. In this conflict with royalty, some of the clans which had submitted hitherto to the iron rule of Huntly found that they had an opportunity of deserting with the merit of loyalty. The Clan Chattan remembered how their chief had, a few years before, been beheaded before the gate of Strathbogie Castle; and with the Frasers and Monros, they abandoned the banner of Huntly. The castle was taken, and the governor hanged.

On returning, the queen's party were taught to expect an attack at the crossing of the Spey. They passed it unassailed, but on the occasion the queen was in the full sense of the term exposed to the casualties of war, for it was not in the overwhelming strength of the royal force, but the large body that had passed over from Huntly to from a battle lay; and Randolf had an opportunity in reporting the affair to Cecil, of moralizing on the desperate blows that would have been given when all fought in the sight of so noble a queen and so many ladies.

When the queen and Murray approached Aberdeen, Huntly, who seemed to think that his best chance of avoiding ruin was in war rather than submission, followed them, designing some bold stroke. There was a fight called the battle of Corrichie, a long flat hill from fifteen to eighteen miles west, of Aberdeen. Huntly's force, which had dwindled down, was easily defeated. The earl was found dead 6n the field - smothered, as it was said, in his armor. His body was brought to Edinburgh, that doom of forfeiture might be pronounced on it; and there is extant the record of certain payments to an adept for treating it with vinegar, aqua vivae, powders, odors, and other necessaries, to prevent it from putrifying. Sir John Gordon was convicted of treason, and beheaded at Aberdeen, where the queen attended his public execution.

When Huntly was in the flush of power he found convenient capital for his principality in Aberdeen, though it is not certain that he exercised his powers there with the full concurrence of the citizens. At all events, they gave their queen a loyal and hospitable reception. "She was honourably received with spectacles, plays, interludes, and other things as they could best devise." "They presented her with a cup of silver 500 crowns in it; wine, coals, and as will serve her during her being here."

The power of the house of Huntly was thus broken, and the event, though in the ordinary phraseology of the suppression of a rebellion and the punishment of its leaders, was an important national revolution. The breaking and dispersal of so great a fabric of power by a single day's events afforded to the Reformed clergy a great occasion for addressing their hearers on the vanity and uncertainty of human greatness, and the punishment which in due time visits those who lift themselves up against eternal power. One of them-no doubt it was Knox himself-in pointing, for the benefit - of Mary's courtiers, the moral of the event, affords a curious personal sketch of the public deportment of the great earl: "Unto you do I say, that that same God who from the beginning has punished the contempt of His word, and has poured forth His vengeance upon such proud mockers, shall not spare you, yea, He shall not spare you before the eyes of the same wicked generation, for the pleasure whereof ye despise al ' 1 wholesome admonitions. Have ye not seen ane greater than any of you sit picking his nails, and pull down his bonnet over his eyes, when idolatry, witchcraft, murder, oppression, and such vices were rebuked ? Was not his common talk, I When the knaves have railed their fill, then they will hold their peace'? Have ye not heard it affirmed in his own face, that God should revenge that his blasphemy even in the eyes of such as were witness to his iniquity ? There was the Earl Huntly accused by you as the maintainer of idolatry, and only hinderer of all good order. Him has God punished even according to the threatenings that his and your ears heard, and by your hands hath God executed His judgments. But what amendment in any case can be espied in you? Idolatry was never in greater zest-virtue and virtuous men were never in more contempt-vice was never more bold, and less feared punishment. And yet who guides the queen and Court ? Who but the Protestants ? 0 horrible slanderers of God and of His holy evangel I better it were unto you plainly to renounce Jesus Christ, than thus to expose His blessed evangel to mockage."

That the queen should have dealt so hardly with the champion of that faith to which she was ever devoted, and of which we shall find that she was working for the restoration, has been felt as one of the mysteries of history. She not only did what had to be done, but seerned to do it with heart and will. The solernn Randolph tells how, while the contest was yet undecided, and Huntlv rnight intercept her at the Spey, "in all these garboils I assure you I never saw her merrier, never dismayed, nor never thought that so much to be in her that I find. She repented nothing; but - when the Lords and others at Inverness came in the morning from the watch - that she was not a man to know what life it was to lie all night in the fields, or to walk on the causeway with a jack and knapschalle, a Glasgow buckler, and a broadsword,"