Siege of St Andrews Castle (1546–1547)
Who Fought
History & Significance
The siege of St Andrews Castle (1546–1547) followed the killing of Cardinal David Beaton by a group of Protestants at St Andrews Castle. They remained in the castle and were besieged by the Governor of Scotland, Regent Arran. However, over 18 months the Scottish besieging forces made little impact, and the Castle finally surrendered to a French naval force after artillery bombardment. The Protestant garrison, including the preacher John Knox, were taken to France and used as galley slaves.
St Andrews castle was the residence of Cardinal David Beaton and his mistress Marion Ogilvy. Beaton's strong opposition to the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots, with Prince Edward, later Edward VI of England, the son and heir of Henry VIII of England, had led to the war of the Rough Wooing with England.
In 1546, David Beaton imprisoned the Protestant preacher George Wishart in the castle's Sea Tower, then had him burnt at the stake in front of the castle walls on 1 March. Wishart's friends included a group of well-connected Protestant Fife Lairds, some of whom had previously conspired with Henry VIII and his ambassador Ralph Sadler either to capture or assassinate Beaton.
On Saturday 29 May 1546, the lairds formed four teams. Norman Leslie, Master of Rothes, and three men, perhaps by disguising themselves as masons when some building work was in progress, got into the castle. James Melville and his companions got in by pretending to have an appointment with the Cardinal. William Kirkcaldy of Grange and eight men gained entry to the castle at the drawbridge and when they were joined by John Leslie of Parkhill, they overpowered the porter Ambrose Stirling, stabbed him and threw his body in the ditch.
The genuine masons and the garrison supervised by Kirkcaldy left at the castle gate, where the Cardinal's mistress Marion Ogilvy had recently exited. Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie wrote that Peter Carmichael stabbed the Cardinal in his chamber, or on the spiral stair, in the east blockhouse tower. To deter the Cardinal's supporters in the town led by the Provost, James Learmonth of Dairsie, from attempting a rescue, they hung his body in public view from his window or from the parapet at the front of the castle.
The son of the Governor of Scotland, James Hamilton, 3rd Earl of Arran, and second after his father in line to the crown of Scotland, was already in the castle as Beaton's hostage: now he was the pawn of the Fife lairds. John Knox wrote that the defenders covered Beaton's body with salt, wrapped it in lead, and buried it in the Sea Tower of the castle. David Lyndsay made the Cardinal's ghost voice this detail in his Tragedie of the Cardinall; "Thay saltit me, syne cloist me in a kist."
The ground they fought on
The site of Siege of St Andrews Castle (1546–1547) lies on Strathclyde Group, bedrock that formed in the Visean. The rock here is sedimentary rock cycles, strathclyde group type.
Perhaps the most striking detail to survive from the siege is the fate of Cardinal Beaton's body after his murder. According to John Knox, the defenders covered the Cardinal's corpse with salt, wrapped it in lead, and buried it in the Sea Tower of the very castle over which the subsequent siege was fought. The poet David Lyndsay, a contemporary observer, gave dramatic voice to this detail by making the Cardinal's own ghost describe it in verse: the ghost declares that his killers salted him and then closed him in a chest. The castle thus served simultaneously as Beaton's palace, his prison for Wishart, the scene of his killing, the resting place of his salted body, and, within months, the stronghold of his murderers as they defied the whole power of the Scottish crown and its French allies.
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- Siege of St Andrews Castle · Wikipedia
- St Andrews Castle · Wikipedia