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MATTHEW, Earl of
Lennox, the hereditary Bailie of the Glasgow archbishopric, appears
on the historic page as one of the least heroic characters among the
venal Scottish nobility of his time. At the Battle of the Butts in
1544 he left his charge at Glasgow to be defended against the Earl
of Arran by his ally Glencairn, and, following the defeat, fled to
England, where he received a bride at the hands of Henry VIII., in
the person of that monarch's niece, Lady Margaret Douglas.
Immediately afterwards he led the English squadron of ten ships in
its attack on the shores of Clyde, where he plundered Arran,
Ayrshire, and Kintyre, and captured Bute, but was refused possession
of his own fortress of Dunbarton by his own vassal, Stirling of
Glorat. [Tytler, vol. iii. ch. i.] For twenty years after that he
had remained an exile in England. Recalled by Queen Mary, he had
seen his son raised to royal state, only to throw every opportunity
away by his miserable folly. After Darnley's murder, and his own
failure to bring the murderers to justice, he had again fled to
England, and it was as Queen Elizabeth's envoy, and at the head of
an English army, that he again returned to Scotland, to avenge the
death of the Regent Moray upon the House of Hamilton.
One English army
under the Earl of Sussex had just devastated Teviotdale and the
Merse, while another under Lord Scrope had burned Nithsdale and the
western border. The business of Lennox was to vent the English
queen's vengeance and spleen by carrying fire and sword still
farther into the country of her rival, Mary. Writing, as he went,
letter after letter of abject submission to Elizabeth's minister,
Cecil, and even stooping to beg the queen to pity his poverty and
send him more money, [MS. Letters in State-paper Office, quoted by
Tytler, v. iii. ch. x.] he had first marched upon Glasgow, where the
Hamiltons were besieging the Bishop's Castle. The garrison consisted
of only twenty-four raw soldiers, unprovided with the necessaries of
defence, but Lennox, with his English force of twelve hundred foot
and four hundred horse, arrived in time to save the place, and the
Hamiltons withdrew. Lennox then proceeded to devastate the country
of his old enemies in Clydesdale and Linlithgowshire, capturing
Cadzow Castle, burning the palace at Hamilton, and bringing the
whole house of Hamilton to the verge of ruin. [Diurnal of Occurrents,
p. 277; Murdin, p. 769; Buchanan, vol. ii. p. 587.] Following these
achievements Lennox was appointed Regent on receipt of letters of
recommendation from the English queen. [Buchanan, ii. 589.]
As Regent, Lennox
showed some energy, capturing Huntly's small garrison at Brechin,
and another placed by the Hamiltons in the town of Paisley. [Ibid.
p. 592.] While at Ayr, shortly afterwards, receiving the submission
of the Earl of Cassillis, he was severely hurt by a fall from his
horse, and it was on returning to Glasgow, to recover from the
injury and an attack of gout, that he had the means of accomplishing
his most cherished purpose placed in his hands. [Ibid. p. 593.]
Dunbarton Castle, the
chief stronghold in the west country, was still held by Lord Fleming
for Queen Mary, and by reason of its access to the sea was specially
valuable for the receiving of succours from abroad. Already in
August, 1569, the towns of Glasgow, Ayr, and Irvine had been taxed
to provide a pinnace with forty hagbutters, to be stationed in the
firth opposite the castle, to prevent supplies reaching the garrison
by sea; and Glasgow, Renfrew, and other places had been prohibited
from sending fishing boats up and down the river or allowing them to
go near the castle ; while, later in the same year, the provosts and
bailies of Glasgow, Ayr, and Irvine had been ordered to pay to the
Earl of Glencairn two successive taxations of nine shillings and
three shillings on every pound land of old extent, for the support
of hagbutters to assist at the siege of the stronghold. [Privy
Council Register, ii. pp. 12, 21, 22, 65, 66.] But what these
various efforts had failed to accomplish was brought about by a very
simple circumstance. The wife of a soldier of the garrison, who was
accustomed to visit him, was accused of theft, and was whipped by
order of Lord Fleming. The man, who was fond of his wife, and deeply
resented the treatment she had been subjected to, deserted from the
castle, intent on revenge. Approaching Robert Douglas, a relation of
the Regent, he offered, if put in command of a small party, to
effect the capture of the place. By Douglas he was passed to
Cunningham of Drumquhassel, and by Drumquhassel to the Regent. By
Lennox the enterprise was entrusted to his stout henchman, Thomas
Crawford of Jordanhill. [Buchanan, ii. 593.]
This intrepid soldier
of fortune was the sixth son of Lawrence Crawford of Kilbirnie. He
had been wounded and made prisoner at Pinkie, had followed Queen
Mary to France, where he served in the Scots Guards. He had returned
with Mary to Scotland, and on her marriage to Darnley had become one
of that young lord's gentlemen. When the clergy took to parting with
their lands he bought the estate of Jordanhill, a few miles west of
Glasgow, which his father had given to the church twenty years
before. He built the first mansion on that estate, and is remembered
to this day as "of Jordanhill." We have seen the part he played at
Queen Mary's visit to her sick husband at Glasgow. From the time of
Darnley's murder he became one of Mary's most active opponents. He
was made captain of a body of men under the Regent Moray, probably
fought against the queen at the Battle of Langside, and, by his
deposition at her trial at York, contributed vitally to her twenty
years' imprisonment and final execution. Finally, on Moray's return
from his arraignment of Queen Mary before Elizabeth at Westminster,
and his betrayal of the Duke of Norfolk to the English queen, and
when yet another victim was necessary to restore him to favour with
that sovereign, it was Crawford who appeared before the Privy
Council at Stirling, and, in the name of the Earl of Lennox,
denounced Maitland of Lethington as one of Darnley's murderers.
[Diurnal of Occurrents, pp. 147-8 ; MS. Letter, State-paper Office,
quoted by Tytler, vol. iii. ch. ix,]
For the capture of
Dunbarton Castle Crawford laid his plans well. A truce with the
garrison expired at midnight on 30th March. On the evening of that
day Crawford sent Cunningham forward with some horsemen to cut the
approaches and prevent any news of the attempt reaching the
garrison, while he himself followed with the foot soldiers. Sometime
after midnight he was met at the foot of Dunbuck Hill, a mile from
Dunbarton, by Cunningham, with the scaling ladders, and the news
that all was quiet. Only now were the soldiers informed of their
enterprise. Crawford showed them the guide, who had promised to
ascend the rock first, and assured him and the others of high
military honours in the event of their success. Having rested a
little, they moved forward, and reached the foot of the rock a
little before daybreak.
So negligent and
secure had the garrison become that numbers of them were in the
habit of spending the night in the neighbouring town of Dunbarton
"in wanton revellings," and the watch on the walls must have been
careless enough. At
first the sky was
clear, with stars, but a mist came down at the moment of attack, and
hid the summit of the crag. The assailants were hindered, first by a
broken bridge, and then by a sudden flame which they took for a
signal that they were discovered, but which turned out to be merely
a marsh will-o'-the-wisp. Next, when they set the ladders up, one of
them with the men on it, fell. Then, higher on the rock, one of the
men on a ladder was seized with a fit. He was tied to the spars, the
ladder was turned round, and the others ascended over his body. It
was not till they topped the wall that the scaling party was
discovered. As three of the guard gave the alarm, and rushed to the
attack, Alexander Ramsay, followed by two others, leapt into the
fortress. The old wall crashed down after them, filling up the
inequalities of the rock, and, as the whole party poured in, with
the shouts of "A Darnley! A Darnley!" the astonished garrison fled
in all directions. Lord Fleming escaped by sliding down a
precipitous rock and making off in a small boat; but his wife was
seized, as well as John Hamilton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, and
others.
Lennox, arriving
before noon, consoled Lady Fleming by restoring her plate, wardrobe,
furniture, and one of her husband's estates; but the Archbishop he
hurried off to execution, and he was hanged in his episcopal robes
on the 6th of the month at Stirling. [A circumstantial account of
the whole enterprise is furnished by Buchanan in vol. ii. pp.
593-9.] For his services Crawford received the lands of Bishop's
Meadow, Blackstone Barns, and Mills of Partick, with a pension of
£200 Scots. [Great Seal Register, iii. 578, No. 2199.] He also,
shortly afterwards, bought for a town house the manse of the Parson
of Glasgow [Gibson's Hist. of Glasgow, p. 59; see also infra, p.
40.] in Limmerfield or Drygate Lane east of the Bishop's Castle.
[Old Ludgings of Glasgow, p. 32.] There with his wife he lived a
good deal; but his warlike exploits were not yet over. In 1573, when
the capture of Edinburgh Castle was resolutely determined upon,
Captain Crawford was one of the two commanders in the attack, and,
after the storming of the Spur, it was they who were secretly
admitted to receive the surrender of the fortress. Crawford became
provost of Glasgow in 1577, as a substitute for a later Earl of
Lennox. It was he who is said to have saved the cathedral in that
year when the rabble wished to destroy it, by saying he was quite in
favour of "dinging down the Hie Kirk, but not till they had built a
new Kirk in its place." [See, however, infra, p. 158.] He also built
the bridge over the Kelvin at Partick, which stood till 1895,
bearing his arms and a shrewd motto. And he represented Glasgow at
the Convention of Estates in 1578. In the end the old soldier of
fortune, long a substantial citizen, died in his bed in 1603. |
