Photos

This is the Foretower of St Andrews Castle, taken just before sunset and shows one site of intrigue, plotting and execution from the mid-16th Century.

From around 1200 the Castle was adopted as the main residence of the bishops and archbishops of St Andrews. As such, the Castle became the principal administrative centre of the Scottish Church.

During the Scottish Reformation, St Andrews Castle became a centre of religious persecution and controversy. In 1538 Cardinal James Beaton was succeeded by his ambitious and wealthy nephew, David Beaton. Cardinal David Beaton's strong opposition to the marriage of Mary Queen of Scots with Prince Edward, the son and heir of Henry VIII of England, helped to spark renewed fighting between Scotland and England in 1544.

Cardinal David Beaton proved powerful and ambitious but his demeanour was not always that of a man of the cloth: he had numerous mistresses and at least 20 illegitimate children, several of whom he had appointed to well-paid positions in the Scottish Church. He pursued Protestant “heretics” somewhat too hard and, on 1st March, 1546, had the Protestant preacher George Wishart, a mentor of John Knox, burned at the stake in full view of the castle. On the roadway just behind where I was standing to take this photograph, the initials “G.W.” are marked in red stone as the site of Wishart’s execution.

However, the Protestant response was equally savage. At dawn on 29th May, that same year, a group of Protestant lairds from Fife entered St Andrews Castle pretending to be stonemasons. The Cardinal, in bed with his latest mistress, Marion Ogilvy, was dragged out of his bedchamber, stabbed to death, mutilated, then his partially-dismembered body was hung from the upper of the two large windows you can see in this picture, in full view of the town of St Andrews.

The intrigue was to continue......