Bring Back the King! But Find Him First!

Some kings are not supposed to lie easily in death. Take Mary Queen of Scots.  At first she was put to rest, if not ignominiously, then without full honours, in Peterborough Cathedral.  When her son became James I of England, nothing less would do than to give her the full, symbolic honour of reburial in Westminster Cathedral.

   The monarchs of Scotland who have met their end in England have not been lucky with their ultimate resting places.  Worst of all was King James IV who, after his death at the Battle of Flodden in 1513, was wrapped in lead and conveyed to Berwick and then to Newcastle.  The Queen of England (Catherine of Aragon) wanted to ship the corpse to her husband Henry VIII who was fighting in France.  But the idea seemed a bit un-English, not to say impractical, to the commanders in the north of England.

Death steals the crown of King James IV (from contemporary woodcut)

Then came an almost comic tussle over the Scottish king's remains.  Bishop Ruthal of Durham had already nabbed some keepsakes of the king for his cathedral and wanted James's body as the centrepiece of his collection.  But the victor of Flodden, the Earl of Surrey, would not have it.  So the corpse was conveyed south.  After this the tale gets a bit muddy.  A story that the corpse was displayed naked on horseback in the streets of London is almost certainly untrue. The corpse was in fact stored in a lumber room in a monastery at Shene in  Surrey while Henry VIII deliberated what to do with it.  Then it was forgotten by most.

   Yet even that  was not the end of the indignity.  Queen Elizabeth's glazier, a rogue named Lancelot Young, took it upon himself to remove the king's head and use it as a football.  It was later given a, sort-of decent burial in a London churchyard.  The rest of the body, it seems, lies buried in the ruins of Shene, perhaps where peaceful Richmond Park is now.  In the light of the recent discovery of King Richard III in a carpark in Leicester, calls have been made to seek out the remains of the Scottish monarch.  Will it actually be done?  I doubt it.

   History is full of could- have/would-have be's.  Perhaps the best chance of a dignified end for the king's remains would have been if Ruthal had his way and the body remained - for a time at least - at Durham.  At least there he would have been within restful distance of Scotland.  There would have been a chance of eventual repatriation for the body too. After all the marauding Malcolm Canmore was at first interred in Tynemouth Abbey, but then brought home to Scotland by his son, Alexander.

   Is there hope for the return of James IV still?

The Afterlife of King James IV, to be published by Chronos Books, April 2019

                                                                   

Canmore - Who Was Bighead?

The head that wears the crown has to be large. But what exactly does this mean - symbolically big, physically huge, an appellation with mystical connotations? Severed heads loomed large in several strains of Celtic legend and the cult of the severed head was an attested reality in pagan times. The most famous survival in literature, thanks to his starring role in the Mabinogion, is Bendigeidfran, Brân the Blessed, whose separated head entertained his comrades as they journeyed back from campaign in Ireland and was interred on the White Hill in London to protect the Island of the Mighty being invaded by foreigners.

   Also in the Mabinogion - in the tale of Pwyll Pendefig Dyfed - there is a character named Pendaran who teaches Pryderi. This name is a compound of pen and taran and seemed to mean 'big headed'. T. F. O' Rahilly (in Early Irish History and Mythology, p. 515) also highlights the Irish name Condollos 'Great-headed' (cennmór), which he states 'would have been [an] appropriate [appellation] of the Otherworld deity. . . and such appellatives were frequently used as names of men.’ In the year 580 the Irish annals record the death of 'Cennaleth, king of the Picts' (alternately called Cindaeladh, Cennalath). Nothing is known of this person, albeit that he reigned during the time of Aedan mac Gabran of Dal Riada and was perhaps an oppenent of his. H. M. Chadwick (Early Scotland, p. 14) states that the name seems to be Gaelic and then speculates that, 'Perhaps it was a nickname, denoting “head-warrior” or “speckled-head”.'



   All of which brings us to the most famous Big Head of them all, Malcolm Canmore. King Malcolm III ruled from 1058 to 1093, dying on campaign in Northumbria where he focussed much of his warfare. Otherwise known in Gaelic as Máel Coluim mac Donnchada, his alternative designation by later historians was King Malcolm III Canmore. Putting aside the puzzle of whether Canmore in his case was an indicator of a physical characteristic, or a nickname applied to the primacy of his chieftainship, or even a quasi-pagan name steeped in antiquity, the historian A. A. M. Duncan stated that the name did not relate to this Malclom at all, but to Malcolm IV, otherwise known as the Maiden, who reigned from 1153 until 1165 (at the age of 24).

   In The Kingship of the Scots (2002, pp. 74-75), Duncan points out that the nickname was not used by contemporaries of Malcom III, but was only entered into later written histories.  Moreover, there is a record by the chronicler William of Newburgh that suggests that the notoriously ailing Malcolm IV may have been afflicted with a condition that would have well matched the soubriquet 'big head'.  William states that the young king suffered from severe pains in the feet and head for several years before his death.  This, according, to Duncan shows that: 

Malcolm IV suffered from Paget’s disease, osteatis deformans. . . whose hallmark is “excessive and disorganized resorption and formation of bone”, particularly observable in the tibia and the skull...Those with such pronounced symptoms experience pain, even severe pain, in the affected bones, but, even before modern treatments, the disorder was itself not rapidly fatal unless bone sarcoma, signaled by rapidly worsening pain, set in.

   He adds that the Annals of Ulster noted his demise by stating that  Maelcoluim Cennmor son of Henry, highking of Alba, died, and it was only later that the name became fixed to the previous King Malcolm.  He then cites transference of nicknames in other dynasties, such as 'the legend of Kyffhäuser which arose after the death of Emperor Frederick II in 1250 and was later applied to his grandfather, Frederick I.’  But of course there is still the possibility that it was wrongly ascribed by the Annals of Ulster to the wrong ruler.

   Whatever the truth, the name Canmore has a mysterious resonance still, and we are unlikely to ever pinpoint the exact relevance of its meaning.

X-Ray of skull affected by Paget's Disease