Nicola Royan

Some conspicuous women in the Original Chronicle, Scotichronicon and Scotorum Historia

This piece argues that female characters in late medieval and early modern Scottish historiography can have a function beyond their individual identities. This function may be to represent the realm, particularly when under attack or in pursuit of justice; or, alternatively, to figure and to contain rebellion and dissent. Through selected examples from three narratives, the article explores the various emphases placed by different writers and suggests the significance of this for the wider interpretation of the historiography under consideration.

The Scottish Identity of Gavin Douglas

In The Buke of the Howlat, Richard Holland presents the Douglas kin as “of Scotland the werwall.”1 Of all literary discussions of the Douglases, The Howlat is probably the most extreme in its identification of the Douglases with the service of the Scottish cause and the preservation of the Scottish realm, largely in the face of English attack. The description begins with the assertion that “That word [of the Douglases]…synkis sone in all part / Of a trewe Scottis hart / Rejoisand us inwart / to heir of Douglas” (386–90); it also presents the Douglases as winning their lands “fra sonnis of the Saxonis” (577). Yet within ten years of the poem’s completion, the Douglases, together with Holland himself, had sought refuge in English lands, driven into exile by James II.2 Sixty years later, another poet, Gavin Douglas, would also find himself in exile in England after his nephew in particular outraged the rest of the Scottish political establishment.3 Douglas was also concerned with defining his nation and origin, and—although much less aggressively—in opposition to English practice. This chapter will explore Douglas’s expression of patriotism in the contexts of both his wider kin identification with the realm and the apparent inconsistency of his exile in England.