Fyvie Castle and the British Civil Wars (1639–55)

Commonly, and erroneously, referred to collectively as the ‘English Civil Wars’, the British Civil Wars (1639–55) unleashed bloody conflicts across all of Ireland and the British Isles. A less known fact is that they began and ended in Scotland. Fyvie Castle witnessed several phases of the conflicts, as Aberdeenshire became one of the key battlegrounds in the Scottish theatre of war. The castle was garrisoned by both Covenanter and Royalist forces and provided the backdrop to a battle in 1644. However, before discussing these events, it is useful to remind ourselves how ‘the world turned upside down’, as one English ballad put it.

Following the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, James VI of Scotland inherited the Tudor thrones of Ireland and England (the latter included Wales during this period). Unlike the Union of 1707, which would merge the British kingdoms into one United Kingdom, the Union of the Crowns brought the ‘Three Kingdoms’ together under a single ruler, but not a single government. Scotland, England and Ireland retained their own systems of governance and churches. Despite James’s attempts to oversee greater uniformity across his dominions, the Three Kingdoms remained independent and distinct.

In Scotland, the Scottish Parliament’s authority persisted, and the Scottish Kirk retained its Calvinist identity that it had embraced following the Scottish Reformation in 1560. While James thought better of using his newfound authority to enforce widespread reform across his kingdoms, he did famously quip that he could rule Scotland by his pen. Despite his promises to visit every three years after setting up his new court in London, James only returned to Scotland once, in 1617.

From England, James oversaw the full revival of episcopal governance within the Scottish Kirk – ie the rule of bishops. While the church remained firmly Calvinist in outlook and temperament, the return of royally appointed bishops (which had been repudiated during the Reformation due to their lack of basis in scripture) granted the Crown the means to influence the Kirk’s decision-making. Similarly, while the Scottish Parliament remained the formal means through which the king was to govern the kingdom, it could only meet upon summons from the Crown. After 1603, James called upon the Scottish Parliament just four times – in 1609, 1612, 1617 and 1621. Instead, James’s Privy Council – a handful of leading nobles and bishops to whom he granted powers to oversee the running of the kingdom in his absence – provided a more amenable mechanism through which to rule Scotland. Importantly, James’s tight control over parliament and the Kirk denied his critics a platform to voice their concerns, restricting the legitimate means by which their grievances could be presented to the king. A shrewd politician, James maintained this control while preventing any dissent from boiling over for the remainder of his reign. His successor was less adept.

Charles I succeeded his father upon James’s death in 1625. Initially, the accession of the young prince (who, as an infant, had lived at Fyvie Castle for a time) was seen as a new dawn across the Three Kingdoms. As Prince of Wales, Charles had regularly attended parliament in Westminster; he had been a vocal supporter of Protestant forces fighting in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), and his peaceful accession signalled the stability of the dynastic union which held the kingdoms together. A committed Protestant who had married a French Catholic princess, Charles was seen by both sides of the confessional divide as someone who could be sympathetic to their cause. Thus, few could have predicted what would unfold in the following decades.

Disastrous military interventions at Cadiz (1625) and La Rochelle (1627–28), unpopular fiscal reforms, a developing disdain for parliaments and a growing attachment to English Anglicanism dampened much of the enthusiasm of 1625, especially in Scotland. Moreover, despite having been born in Scotland, Charles did not deign to return for his Scottish coronation until 1633. Controversially, the coronation service was carried out in Anglican style. To add further insult to injury, although the king called parliament to meet, he vetted all motions, limited debate and threatened dissenters.

This momentum may have dissipated if the king had not gone any further, but Charles and his new archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, became convinced that the Scottish Kirk needed to be reformed and brought into line with the English Church. When an Anglican-style book of canons and book of common prayer were released in 1636 and 1637 respectively, they sparked widespread opposition, both within and outwith the Church. Orchestrated riots broke out in Edinburgh and Glasgow after the ministry attempted to use the books during their services. This was followed by a petitioning campaign, again overseen by the dissenters, which argued that the ‘Laudian innovations’ were contrary to law and ‘the true religion’.

In the face of this opposition, Charles doubled down. The king defended the reforms and declared that any further hostility would be treated as treason. Backed into a corner, forced to either relent or defy their king, the leading dissidents met at Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh to discuss their options. At that meeting they decided to band themselves together in a new confession of faith: the National Covenant of 1638.

The Covenanters, as they became known, quickly set about organising armed resistance against the Crown and collecting subscriptions to the Covenant. While they swore to maintain the king in his rights, they argued that the true religion was under threat and should be defended by force of arms if necessary – even against the Crown. Most Scots were sympathetic to the Covenanters’ religious complaints, but there were those who believed that taking up arms against the king was rebellious and could not be justified. Indeed, some accused the Covenanter leaders of using religion as a pretext to usurp political power and wage an unjustified war.

These fears were exacerbated following the Covenanters’ seizure of the General Assembly (the national body of the Kirk) in late 1638 and their establishment of their own parallel parliamentary system in 1639 (the Convention of the Estates), which they used to outlaw bishops, revoke the king’s reforms and tighten their control over the kingdom.

Despite their initially precarious position, it was the Covenanters who emerged victorious from the opening bouts of the civil wars, known as the Bishops’ Wars (1639 and 1640). Humiliated and defeated, Charles was forced to recognise the Covenanter regime’s legitimacy. However, this was not the end of the crisis. Having refused to call the English Parliament, for fear of emboldening his English critics, the king had been forced to levy taxes through his personal authority and creative accounting, in order to support his wars in the north.

Shortly after signing peace terms in 1641, a pro-Catholic rebellion broke out in Ireland. Bankrupt, Charles was finally forced to recall the English Parliament to secure fresh taxes to finance an army to put down the Irish rebellion. When the king faced opposition from English parliamentarians, he tried to forcibly dismiss them, but was himself forced to flee the capital. The English Civil War erupted the following year.

The Covenanters quickly intervened in Ireland, viewing the Irish Catholic Confederacy as a threat to Protestantism, but in 1643 they also pledged their support for the English parliamentarians who had risen up to oppose the king. The Solemn League and Covenant, which formalised this political and religious alliance, outraged Scottish Royalists who saw it as a betrayal of the 1641 peace treaty. This prompted them to petition the king to authorise the renewal of civil war in Scotland. Thus, in 1644, all three of Charles I’s kingdoms found themselves engulfed in warfare.

The local laird of Fyvie, John Gordon of Ardlogie, had raised men from the surrounding area in 1639 to fight for Charles under the lord lieutenant of the north, George Gordon, Marquis of Huntly. Following the Royalist defeats during the Bishops’ Wars, Ardlogie and other Royalist supporters were forced to lay low as the Covenanters strengthened their position. However, the rekindling of war in 1644 ensured that Aberdeenshire, where there was strong support for the king and covenant, became a key battleground.

Between 1644 and 1646, the Scottish Royalist army was led by James Graham, Marquis of Montrose. Following a less than auspicious start, when a Royalist rendezvous was abandoned due to delays and miscommunication, Montrose finally unfurled the king’s banner in Blair Atholl on 30 August 1644.

Montrose was joined in Blair Atholl by local volunteers and enlisted men from Badenoch and Perthshire. However, the largest body of troops came in the form of the so-called Irish Brigade: three musket-armed regiments raised in Ulster by Randall MacDonnell, Earl of Antrim. They were sent to aid Montrose, led in the field by Alexander Mac Colla Ciotach MacDonnell (Alasdair MacColla MacDonald). MacColla and around 40% of his men were Scottish refugees from the west coast and Western Isles, many of whom had already experienced warfare in Ireland before 1644. Antrim’s regiments provided the small Royalist army of around 3,000 men with a hardened and experienced core.

Huntly had planned to raise his men again and join them, but he had not heard of the delays which beset MacColla and Montrose, and raised his Standard to find himself alone in arms. He promptly disbanded his men and fled to Strathnaver to avoid reprisals from the Covenanters. Despite this setback, the speed at which the Royalists managed to pull together an army caught the Covenanters by surprise. All the regime’s best troops were deployed in Ireland or the north of England, so the Committee of Estates quickly sent orders for a new army to be raised to engage Montrose’s Royalists.

When the two sides met on 1 September 1644 at Tippermuir, just outside Perth, the Covenanter army was soundly beaten and routed. After pillaging the surrounding area for much-needed supplies, the Royalists advanced to Aberdeen, where they dispatched another hastily assembled Covenanter army on 13 September. The burgh, which had been a bastion of Royalist support during the Bishops’ Wars, was sacked by Montrose’s men for three days before the army was brought back under order. They then marched north to Strathbogie, arriving in mid-October, where the general hoped to rally the Gordons to his banner.

Alarmed by defeat at Tippermuir, but unwilling to compromise the Covenanter armies in Ireland and England, the Committee of Estates ordered Archibald Campbell, Marquis of Argyll (and de facto head of the regime) and William Kerr, Earl of Lothian to assemble another army at Stirling to pursue the Royalists. They reached Aberdeen on 18 September, where they remained for several days to resupply and muster more men. Meanwhile, Montrose’s efforts to recruit the Gordons proved largely unsuccessful. With Huntly in hiding and his heir, George Gordon, Lord Gordon, serving in the Covenanter army, many were unwilling to enlist without the consent of their liege lords.

Nevertheless, some answered Montrose’s call, including Nathaniel Gordon, son of Ardlogie. Around 150 Gordon horsemen joined the Royalist army, which helped offset the temporary loss of MacColla and most of his men, who were sent west to levy fresh troops from the MacDonald lands. Montrose had also granted many of his men leave to return to their homes to deposit their loot and see to their affairs. In all, this reduced his army to around 1,500 men.

Unaware of the advance of Argyll and Lothian, Montrose intended to remain in Strathbogie for a while, establishing a headquarters and sending parties out to gather supplies. However, Argyll and Lothian had marched to Inverurie, where they received word of the Royalists’ presence to the north. By the time Montrose heard of the Covenanters’ approach, they were only 2 miles away with an army double the size of his, including around 500 cavalry.