Castles, Fortified Houses and Family Homes ~ a Distinction Without a Difference

By Linda Root

When is a Castle not a Palace?

Recently I circulated a photograph taken by my colleague Ron Morrison showing his wife Maryanne, our mutual friend Ian Lumsdaine, and me approaching Ferniehirst Caste, located on the east bank of the Jed Water near Jedburgh. My friends from the MarieStuartSociety gifted me with a visit there, knowing it was the number one destination on my Bucket List. One of my friends who saw the picture in an email replied, ‘You must have been sorely disappointed. It is so plain.’

I could not disagree with my friend’s assessment. Ferniehirst was designed not to attract visitors but to repel them. [1] In those days, Ferniehirst was strategically placed at the top of a steep ravine, on land so heavily forested that invading English forces often did not see it until pikes tossed from the battlements pierced their armor. Its defenders were known for their ruthlessness-- a trait celebrated in Laidlaw's poem, the Reprisal. The invaders were not always English. From time to time, the Kers of Ferniehirst squared off against their Cessford cousins. In spite of their service to the Scottish crown and relative success in policing the Borders, at heart, the Kers were among the most feared surnames among the Reivers. They had their share of enemies.

The castle is arguably the best preserved of the Border fortresses along the Middle Marches, and presently owned and occupied by indirect descendants of the Kers of Ferniehirst, who built it on what may have been a Roman ruin. It exists much as it appeared after its reconstruction by Sir Andrew Ker of Ferniehirst in 1598, five years before James VI of Scotland became James I of England and declared the Borders ‘pacified.' It was James who had leveled it a few years prior when Sir Andrew Ker of Feriehirst aligned himself with the king’s rebellious cousin Lord Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell. In the transpiring four hundred years, the woodlands above the Jed have been deforested, and a modern visitor sees Ferniehirst as a castle built on fertile farmland, not as the 16th Century fortress from whence a mighty band of reivers rode.

'Queen Mary's House - Jedburgh

The Kers were known for a statistically improbable degree of left-handedness. The stairways at Ferniehirst were counterclockwise, to give the advantage to the Kers in a close-quarters fight. At least a segment of one of them survives. Other examples of the counterclockwise stairs exist at the residence the Laird of Ferniehirst maintained in Jedburgh known as Queen Mary's House. Marie Stuart stayed there when she visited Jedburgh for the Assizes held in the fall of 1566. She fell ill during her stay there and nearly died. In spite of its name, Marie Stuart never owned the house but leased it when the Spread Eagle Inn where she had been lodged suffered a suspicious fire. There is speculation Marie Stuart may have stayed at Ferniehirst, but no evidence to support it other than the strong ties she had to Sir Thomas Ker and his son Andrew, who remained her loyal supporters long after she was forced to abdicate.

As it stands, Ferniehirst remains much as it was at the time of the Union of the Crowns in 1603. And yes, it lacks the elaborate façade and mullion windows of a northern palace like Linlithgow or Sterling. It was a formidable Border Tower, not a palace. One of the beauties of Ferniehirst is the castle’s integrity with its past. Thus, my answer to my friend is, ‘No. I am not the least disappointed in Ferniehirst, and I thank the later generations of Kers for resisting any urge to embellish it with the trapping of a palace. [2]

Hogwarts/Alnwick?

Unlike Ferniehirst, Alnwick Castle (pronounced ah-nick) in Northumberland is very much a tourist destination. For an armchair historian to enjoy it, one must squint and imagine it as it was. For tourists unaccustomed to turnabouts and vehicles with right-hand steering and the roads to match, the easiest way to access the ancestral seat of the mighty Northern Earls of Northumberland is by tour bus. My point of embarkation was a coffee house in Old Town Edinburgh, and the tour was ideal. For the price of a ticket to the gardens and the castle, one could wander about at will for three hours. For someone already familiar with the castle’s history, this is indeed ideal.

The difficulty with Alnwick is navigating the hordes who come to visit Hogwarts or the rooms at Downtown Abbey. But, like Ferniehirst, the Alnwick of Marie Stuart’s reign and that of the early Stuart kings of England was also a fortress. In my novel In the Shadow of the Gallows, my protagonists approach it from the direction depicted in this photograph, which shows how strategically it was placed.

It was a mere 25 miles from Flodden, and 32 miles from the Tweed at Coldstream. Unlike the Alnwick in my novel, the actual castle was largely uninhabited from 1572 until the 18th century. Except for the more than one-hundred-year hiatus, it has been a residence for the Percys from 1309 to the present. Its basic structure has not changed significantly since the12th Century, but the castle has been embellished and renovated many times. It retained a significant military flavor until the Borders were actually pacified. During the Civil War, Cromwell used it to stable horses and as a Prisoner-of-War camp. The Earl of Northumberland, Algernon Percy, served as guardian of ill-fated Charles I’s children, who lived with the Percys at Warkworth and later, at Syon House in Metropolitan London. The present castle’s interior has largely been redesigned in a palatial style credited to Anthony Salvin, who in 1852 began a large-scale restoration of Alnwick, removing the Strawberry Hill Gothic interior created a hundred years earlier by Robert Adam, replacing one of the towers, and creating the present exquisite interior.

During Victoria’s reign, interior rooms opened to the public were given an Italianate flair by architect Luigi Canina. Thus, unlike Ferniehirst, the present Alnwick may structurally resemble the original border castle to one who has studied it, but it lacks the austerity of a military structure such as Ferniehirst.

There is a seductive link between Ferniehirst and Alnwick tempting to any historical novelist captivated by the Border Lore that evolved during the days when steel-bonneted Reivers ruled the Marches, and later romanticized by Sir Walter Scott. ‘Every valley has its battle, and every stream its song,’ he wrote in a letter to a friend. Students of Border politics during the latter Sixteenth Century will recall the existence of a body of law unique to the Borders, and not especially centered on such concepts and nationalism and sovereignty. Thus, it is not surprising that the leaders of the ill-fated Northern Rebellion of 1569, the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland and their ladies, fled to the Borders just ahead of Elizabeth Tudor’s army. When the powerful Armstrong Border family considered betraying the fugitives to the English if the price was right, Sir Thomas Ker of Ferniehirst rescued both of the countesses and the Earl of Westmoreland. The entire affair went against the Reiver’s Creed, in which political fugitives entering the Borders were given sanctuary. Lord and Lady Ferniehirst gave them safe haven at Ferniehirst Castle, and eventually orchestrated their escape to the Low Countries.

The Earl of Northumberland, who was not as canny as the others and had more derring-do than his situation warranted, fell into the clutches of the Scottish Earl of Morton, an act which enraged most Borderers and ultimately contributed to Morton's fall. In 1572 when Morton was the Scottish Regent, he traded Northumberland to Elizabeth as part of a deal in which she sent her siege guns to dislodge forces loyal to the Queen of Scots from Edinburgh Castle. Tommy Ker of Ferniehirst was among the great castle’s defenders whose life was spared, but to punish him for aiding and abetting men whom Elizabeth considered traitors, he was forfeited and sent into exile, and Ferniehirst was leveled. After Sir Thomas died, his son Andrew Ker had barely restored it when it was reduced to ruin again in 1593, the third time in a century when Ferniehirst was reduced to a rock pile. And yet, the castle stands, a sentinel on the east bank of the Jed.

Across the Border to the South, the Percy stronghold of Alnwick ranks among the top English historical homes open to tourists. The 12th Duke of Northumberland, Lord Ralph Percy and his family live in a portion of the castle not open to the public.

Neither Ferniehirst nor Alnwick is a fairytale castle the likes of Mont San Michel on the French Coast or Neuschwanstein in Germany, but they have the unique distinction of not only remaining habitable but pridefully occupied by descendants of those who defended them nearly five hundred years ago. 

Notes:

[1] Ferniehirst is not a tourist destination in the wider sense. It is a private residence of Lord Ralph Kerr,(the modern spelling of the name), heir presumptive to the Marquisate of Lothian, (a title held by the Ancrum Kerrs)  whom I had the pleasure of meeting.  Its cultural significance is in the able hands of its curator, Bob Lawson. The site is open for tours Tuesday through Sunday during the month of July, and are hosted by the curator.  His stage presence and knowledge of the topic make it well worth the price of the 5GBP ticket.

[2]  Two excellent sources on Ferniehirst and Kers include 1) Lawson, Bob, The Kerrs of Ferniehirst 1205-1692, a limited edition publication available from the author, and 2) Kerr, Anthony, Ferniehirst Castle, Scotlands Frontier Stronghold, Kelso, 1985, currently out of print.  Thankfully, I have two copies

For a deeper understanding of the evolution of the early keeps to the versatile British fortified houses and beyond, 

see: Emery, Anthony (1996), Greater Medieval Houses of England and Wales, 1300–1500, Volume I: Northern England, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-49723-7

This is an Editor's Choice from the #EHFA Archives, originally published August 10, 2016.
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Linda Root is an author of historical novels set in Marie Stuart's Scotland or during the reign of her son James VI and I. She is a retired major crimes prosecutor living in the hi-desert above Palm Springs. She also writes fantasy fiction under the name of J.D. Root, of which The Green Woman, set at Ferniehirst, is her debut. Her historical novels can be found on Amazon.

Lady Jean Scott, the Link Between King James VI and the Queen of Scots

by Linda Root

Reiver  Raid on Gilnockie Tower,
from an original by G .Catternoll (PD Art) 

During the latter half of the 16th century, a favored means of anger management between feuding Border families was the institution of arranged marriages. There was no better example than the union of a Ker of Ferniehirst and a Scott of Buccleuch.  

But the result of the wedding of Lady Jean (Janet) Scott to Sir Thomas Ker of Ferniehirst after his first wife Janie Kirkcaldy died yielded results extending beyond arresting a half-century long border feud.  It was Lady Ferniehirst who opened the line of communication between King James VI and his imprisoned mother Marie Stuart, Queen of Scots, and even that was not the only accomplishment of this influential lady. As historians begin to look  closely at prominent 16th century Scottish women, she emerges as a person who kept the Marian cause alive in Scotland, and who gave the maturing king an entirely different insight into his mother’s policies and politics. And she managed to do it during her firebrand husband's frequent periods of exile.

Under the guise of seeking his rehabilitation, she became a familiar figure at the Jacobean court, and thus gained the ear of  the king. What makes her even more exceptional, as pointed out in the excellent treatise Politicking Jacobean Women: Lady Ferniehirst, the Countess of Arran and the Countess of Huntly, c.1580~1603,  Ruth Grant,Chapter Eight, Scottish Women, 1102-1750, the scarcely known Lady Ferniehirst did it with a velvet glove and thus escaped the enmity that neutralized her more aggressive sisters such as  the Countess of Arran, who were less effectual because they stepped outside the limits of what was propitious for an aristocratic woman of the time.

As reviewers of my historical novels set in Marie Stuart’s Scotland are  anxious to announce, there are so many characters of the same or similar names in early Stuart politics that it is impossible to keep them straight. Just as there are several James Stewarts, there are several Jean/Jone Scotts. But according to most authorities on the Scottish peerage, the Jean Scott who is the heroine of this story was the child of Sir William Scott the Younger of Kirkurd and Buccleuch. Some sites say she was a daughter of his marriage to Grizel Bethune, but other sources list her separately from Sir William and Grizel's other children, inferring that she may have had a different mother.Thus, we are uncertain of her pedigree and totally unenlightened as to her birth date and the circumstances of her childhood.

What we do know is that Jean Scott’s  grandfather ‘Wicket Wat', the first Sir Walter Scott of Branxholme, third laird of Buccleuch who had been knighted on the battlefield at Flodden, was murdered on the High Street in Edinburgh in 1552 by a companion of a group of Kers of Ferniehirst. It was claimed to be an ambush in retaliation for a twenty-year-old murder of a prominent Ker by a prominent Scott, and it rekindled an old feud between the Scots on one hand and both the Cessford and Ferniehirst Kers on the other, who briefly ceased killing one another and focused on a common enemy.

At the time, the Regent James Hamilton, Earl of Arran /Duke of Chatellerault was having enough troubles of his own filling a role way beyond his capacity, and to simplify matters for himself, he chose to make an example of the miscreants. He ordered approximately four hundred Kers and their retainers deported to France and threatened to ward any potential troublemakers among the Scotts of Buccleuch in Edinburgh Castle. Seeking relief from such harsh penalties, the warring factions sat down and worked out a scheme of intermarriages designed to quell the enmity, but which for some reason never materialized—all except the one between Jean Scott and Thomas Ker, and it did not occur until much later. The tumultuous reign of Marie Stuart Queen of Scots intervened.

Although the Kers of Cessford sided with the Regency when the Queen of Scots was forced to abdicate in favor of her son in 1567, the Ferniehirst Kers and Buccleuch Scotts were steadfast Marians. They had marched with the Queen and Darnley in the Chaseabout Raids, and later with the Queen and Bothwell at Carberry where she surrendered to the rebels.  The following year they fought for Marie Stuart at Langside before she fled to England.

In retaliation for their loyalty to the Queen, their villages were raided and their castles plundered. In 1568  their leaders who had been captured at Langside were taken to Edinburgh Castle and placed  in the custody of the infant King’s most celebrated soldier, Sir William Kirkcaldy, Knight of Grange, who had become the Castle's governor.

In 1569, in retaliation for the Ferniehirst's support of the rebellion of her northern earls, Elizabeth Tudor had Ferniehirst Castle leveled. The Ferniehirst were without a Border fortress and were living in the Castle under the protection of its governor, who was Lady Ferniehirst's father.  It was restored in 1598 by Jean Scott's stepson Sir Andrew Ker of Ferniehirst, who later became Lord Jedburgh.

Walter Baxter
Creative Commons, Wikimedia Commons

But then, the unpredictable Knight of Grange took umbrage of the manner in which the Queen of Scots had been betrayed and the terms of her abdication perverted and switched sides, leaving him in control of Edinburgh Castle and its environs. His erstwhile Marian prisoners thus became his allies, the castle’s new defenders. After Dumbarton Castle fell to the Regent's forces, the Castilians, as they were called, became the last Marian holdouts in Scotland.  Somewhere in this time frame, Janie Kirkcaldy died and  Lady Jean Scott and Tommie Ker of Ferniehirst formalized the new alliance between Kers of Ferniehirst and Scots of Buccleuch with a marriage.

Unfortunately the most complete analysis of Lady Ferniehirst's political career does not contain information as to her life before her marriage to Sir Thomas Ker, which historians generally characterize as a peacemaking effort, which is perhaps an over-simplification. The Scots and the Ferniehirst branch of the Kers had been mending fences from the time they joined together in the Marian cause.  

Again, we are thwarted by the lack of historical records and the shortsightedness of vindictive men like the Scottish Regent James Douglas, Earl of Morton who destroyed the family records of his enemies when Edinburgh Castle fell. Unfortunately, we do not know when the Ferniehirst wedding occurred, or even when Sir Thomas Ker's first wife Janie Kirkcaldy died. (See note#1, below).

Sir Thomas Ker was likely  taken prisoner with the other defenders of the castle when it fell and briefly detained at Blackness Castle until he was sent to France in exile, although some sources suggested that he fled to France before the castle fell when his retainers deserted. There is evidence that Ker was married to Jean Scott at about that time, and during one of his on-again off -again periods in France, she was with him in Paris and was later chastised  by the Council of the Kirk for having participated in the mass. However, she did not remain in France during his several periods of absence, but returned to Scotland to protect his interests.

 In any event, Sir Thomas  remained in exile until the meteoric rise of Esme Stuart, first cousin once removed of the  affection-starved adolescent King. However Lady Ferniehirst was back at court in Scotland before the arrival in 1579 of the man who nearly turned Scottish history upside down. Esme Stuart, son of Darnley’s uncle John Stuart, a naturalized Frenchman who had been a valued  friend of Henri II, was a a well-known French courtesan and a protege of the powerful Guises, Marie Stuart's French kinsmen, who may have instigated Esme's controversial relationship with their cousin James.

Before 1579, the Regent Morton and the young King’s harsh tutor and overseer George Buchanan had considered the correspondence between Esme and the King to be harmless, but they were wrong.  They should have intercepted and  read the letters. The King was so infatuated with the notes  he received from the sophisticated French courtesan that he offered him his dead grandfather Lennox’s earldom, and to encourage Esme to come to claim it in person, he made Esme Stuart a duke.

Buchanan and Morton were no match for flamboyant Esme. The new Duke of Lennox conspired with Captain James Stuart of Ochiltree and made quick dispatch of the Earl of Morton, who was first deprived of the Regency and later introduced to the Maiden, a primitive guillotine that he himself  has imported from Halifax.

Halifax gibbet, aka the Maiden
Russ Root (c) 2012

During the ascendancy of Esme Stuart, restrictions barring Ferniehirst’s return to Scotland were at last removed.  Jean Scott took an active part in this endeavor, and she and her husband enjoyed prominence during Esme Stuart and his henchman Captain James Stewart's virtual control of the King. Not only had she  been managing her husband’s finances during his absence, she had become a familiar face at the Stuart court, vociferously and successfully championing her husband's quest for reinstatement of his lands and titles.

However, the victory did not last long. When enemies of Esme Stuart ousted him from power, Ferniehirst was back in France again, and Lady Janet remained at home in Scotland, exercising his Power of Attorney. She was also writing to his supporters and his creditors in a capacity uncommon to a woman, even an aristocrat.
'
By the end  of 1583 when the King  had a firmer hold on his crown, through her machinations Thomas Ker of Ferniehirst came home for good, his itinerary and travel arrangements orchestrated by his wife who had been at Court in Falkland for months  brokering the terms of his return.

In her correspondence with her husband, she took liberties unusual for a wife.  She instructed him not to travel with Esme Stuart’s son and heir Ludovic Stuart, but to come alone and land in Glasgow, and to stay with the Earl of Huntley in the north until his affairs were sorted out.  Once he was in Scotland, she assisted him in gaining favor in the government formed by the new Earl of Arran,  Esme’s former henchman Captain Stewart, who had risen to become Chancellor. Arran was considered an upstart and even more despised than Esme had been.

Near the end of 1585, Arran was ousted  but not before the Ferniehirsts had secured a marriage between their son Sir Andrew Ker, Master of Fernieirst and  Arran's sister Lady Anne Stewart of Ochiltree, a politically advantageous move.  

Arran had barely settled into a quiet retirement before he was murdered by the Earl of Morton’s nephew, but his demise did not bring down the Fernieirsts. By then the King of Scots had come of age and was beginning to exert his own judgment, an event that brought Lady Ferniehirst’s role in history sharply into  focus.

By 1586, Jean Scott's prominence at the Stuart court was independent of that of her husband, who had managed to get himself in hot water with Elizabeth at a time when James was looking covetously at the English throne. A border incident that resulted in the death of one of Elizabeth Tudor's friends while Ferniehirst was warden of the Scottish West Marches made him the target of Elizabeth's rage at a time when the King of Scots was anxious to accommodate her. Thus, the flamboyant Marian reiver Tommy Ker of Ferniehirst spent the last year of his life under house arrest in Aberdeen.

Apparently his banishment did not extend to his wife. During his confinement, Lady Ferniehirst remained a liaison between the beleaguered Queen of Scots and her son during the last years of Marie Stuart's life. At her urging he read and answered his mother's letters. Lady Ferniehirst also opened lines of communication between Marie Stuart and the remnant of the Marian faction,  most notably with the young Earl of Huntley, George Gordon and other of the powerful northern earls who adhered to the auld religion insofar as they were able to get away with it.  She sponsored  those of the younger generation who sought to profit from the imprisoned Queen's favor and covertly sought to undermine the bias against the Queen of Scots instilled in James by men like George Buchanan, whom he had grown to loathe.

George Buchanan
by G. Brounckhhorst, PD-Art

When her husband died in March 1586 and his barony passed to his son by Janie Kirkcaldy, Sir Andrew Ker of Fernieirst ( later Lord Jedburgh), the dowager Lady Ferniehirst continued to assert herself at court, and to manage her husband's holdings for herself and to the benefit of her several children and step-children.  By then those with whom she did business were used to dealing with her and continued to do so after her husband's death. While her influence did not induce the ambitious King to intercede with Elizabeth to save his mother's life, it certainly inspired him to rehabilitate her after her death.  

Among those who rose to great power when James VI succeeded Elizabeth as James I was Lady Ferniehirst's youngest son Robert Carr, who had Anglicized the spelling of his name and became the controversial Earl of Somerset.

Much of the credit for the King’s change in attitude toward his mother and his tendency to reward the remaining Marians with positions in his government both before and after he went to London in 1603 is given to his Catholic Chancellor of Scotland Alexander Seton, Lord Fyvie. That, too, is testimony to the successful management style of Lady Ferniehirst who operated behind the scenes.  She had an uncanny ability to exert political influence devoid of any hint of  pressure likely to be viewed as inappropriate to her sex.  In male dominated Scotland she presented a public image of a loyal and long-suffering wife, a devoted mother and stepmother, and a true if sometimes misguided Scotswoman.

In summary, when Jean Scott wrote to the imprisoned Queen, she enclosed letters from those who wished to show friendship to the Queen, and she made personal recommendations as to who might deserve Marie Stuart's favor. She promoted those same people in her dealings with the King.  

After the Queen was executed, she continued to actively present to James VI  a view of his mother he had not been allowed to see when he was younger.  In essence,she was Marie Stuart’s secret agent at the court of James VI, and perhaps even more than Alexander Seton, it is she who inspired the king's new-found reverence for the Queen of Scots manifested in the tomb in Westminster that James VI commissioned  to commemorate his mother, a display which conspicuously outshines the one he erected for Elizabeth Tudor.

In the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press,2014, Rosalind K. Marshal reports that there is no information as to how or where Lady Ferniehirst died and the only clue is in the only extant portrait of Jean Scott painted in 1593.  Doctor Marshal writes, “Above her head is the inscription ‘Ubi amor, ibi fides’ (‘where there is love there is faith’). Like many women of her time, she had supported her husband in both public and private life, finding genuine love and contentment in her arranged marriage….ROSALIND K. MARSHALL.

I am tempted to go one step further and suggest that Lady Ferniehirst may have been the cannier of the Ferniehirsts, and that her achievements are independent of those of her husband Sir Thomas Ker and endured long after his death.  Her friend and correspondent Henriette Stuart, Countess of Huntly, Esme’s daughter, is credited for covertly delivering Queen Anne of Denmark to Catholicism,  and that may well be true.  But in the same spirit and in employing the same subtle techniques, Lady Jean Scott of Ferniehirst made a Marian of King James I of England.  His mother would have been greatly  pleased.

Thank you for joining me in my introduction of this impressive woman.  ~LINDA ROOT

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Note One:  Regarding Janie Kirkcaldy's death- Some place her death as early as 1569 (Rosalind K. Marshall, for example) and other sources, primarily English,  place it in London during the Lang Siege (1570-1573), probably in 1571 or 72. In my novels I elect the later date because it meshes with the role Lady Ferniehirst, presumably Janie Kirkcaldy,  is believed to have played in the Northern Rebellion of 1569 when Elizabeth's rebel earls took refuge in her house, and it makes more sense in light of the number and presumptive ages of Janie Kirkcaldy's several children and the fact that Jean Scott's oldest son Lord James Ker of Crailing was not born until 1577.

Note Two: When the Earl of Arran was indicted during the Gowrie  Regime  (circa 1585) his wife Elizabeth, Countess of Arran, was described as "a vile and impudent woman, over famous for her monstrous doings, not without suspicion of the devilish magical art."  No one ever advanced such a criticism of Lady Jean Scott.