James V of Scotland - Reign and Religion

Reign and Religion

His first action as king was to remove Angus from the scene. The Douglas family were forced into exile and James besieged their castle at Tantallon. He then subdued the Border rebels and the chiefs of the Western Isles. As well as taking advice from his nobility and using the services of the Duke of Albany in France and at Rome, James had a team of professional lawyers and diplomats, including Adam Otterburn and Thomas Erskine of Haltoun. Even his pursemaster and yeoman of the wardrobe, John Tennent of Listonschiels was sent on an errand to England, though he got a frosty reception.

James increased his income by tightening control over royal estates and from the profits of justice, customs and feudal rights. He also gave his illegitimate sons lucrative benefices, diverting substantial church wealth into his coffers. James spent a large amount of his wealth on building work at Stirling Castle, Falkland Palace, Linlithgow Palace and Holyrood and built up a collection of tapestries from those inherited from his father. James sailed to France for his first marriage and built up the royal fleet. In 1540 he sailed to Kirkwall in Orkney, then Lewis, in his ship the Salamander, first making a will in Leith, knowing this to be, "uncertane aventuris." The purpose of this voyage was to show the royal presence and hold regional courts, called "justice ayres."

Domestic and international policy was affected by the Reformation, especially after Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church. James V did not tolerate heresy and during his reign, a number of outspoken Protestants were persecuted. The most famous of these was Patrick Hamilton, who was burned at the stake as a heretic at St Andrews in 1528. Later in the reign, the English ambassador Ralph Sadler tried to encourage James to close the monasteries and take their revenue, so that he would not have to keep sheep like a mean subject. James replied that he had no sheep, he could depend on his god-father the King of France, and it was against reason to close the abbeys which, "stand these many years, and God's service maintained and kept in the same, and I might have anything I require of them." (Sadler knew that James did farm sheep on his estates.)

James recovered money from the church by getting Pope Clement VII to allow him to tax monastic incomes. He sent £50 to Johann Cochlaeus, a German opponent of Martin Luther, after receiving one of his books in 1534. On 19 January 1537 Pope Paul III sent James a sword and cap symbolising his prayers that James would be strengthened against heresies from across the border.

According to 16th-century writers, his treasurer James Kirkcaldy of Grange tried to persuade him against the persecution of Protestants and to meet Henry VIII at York. Although Henry VIII sent his tapestries to York in September 1541 ahead of a meeting, James did not come. The lack of commitment to this meeting was regarded by English observers as a sign that Scotland was firmly allied to France and Catholicism, particularly by the influence of Cardinal Beaton, Keeper of the Privy Seal, and a cause for war.