This article forms part of the French section of the Douglas
Archives, but covers more of the history than just in France.
Archibald Douglas, fifth Earl of Douglas and second Duke of
Touraine 1391?-1439, was the eldest son of Archibald,
fourth earl, by his wife, Margaret, daughter of Robert III. In his
father's life he was created earl, or perhaps only lord (dominus), of
Wigton. In 1420 he accompanied his brother-in-law, the Earl of
Buchan, the son of the regent Albany, to France in aid of Charles VI,
fought in the battle of Beaugé, 23 March 1421, and was rewarded by a
grant of the county of Longueville. The French nobles, jealous of the
honours lavished on the Scottish leaders, called them wine bags and
mutton gluttons, but Charles treated their complaints with silent
contempt till Beaugé had been won, and then asked his nobles what they
thought of the Scots now. In 1423, returning to Scotland with Buchan, he
helped to persuade his father to head the reinforcements sent to the
French war, but remaining himself at home in ill-health escaped being
present at the battle of Verneuil, 17 Aug. 1424, where his father,
Buchan, and his brother James lost their lives. A rumour that
he had died in Scotland led to the duchy of Touraine, conferred on his
father by Charles VI, being regranted to Louis of Anjou, then betrothed
to a niece of the French king. Douglas retained the titular dignity, but
never returned to France or got possession of the revenue of the duchy.
He was one of the ambassadors sent to conduct James I home from his
English captivity. One of the first acts of the king was to
arrest Murdoch, duke of Albany, his wife, sons, and the nobles who were
his friends. Among the latter Bower expressly mentions (Scotichronicon,
xiv. 10) Archibald, earl of Douglas, as having been arrested on 9 March
1424. This passage has been challenged as corrupt and inconsistent with
the fact stated by the same author, that on 24 and 25 May of the same
year Douglas was one of the assize who sat on the trials of Walter
Stuart, the son and heir of Albany, Albany himself, his second son,
Alexander, and his father-in-law, the Earl of Lennox. It seems not
improbable, however, that both statements are true, and that in the
interval Douglas had been released, as it is expressly stated that Lord
John Montgomery and Alan of Otterburn, the duke's secretary, had been,
though it is singular that Douglas's release is not mentioned. The
action of James is best explained as an attempt to divide the nobility
implicated in the confederacy of which Albany was the head, and which
must have been formidable indeed when it led to the arrest of twenty-six
of the leading nobles and gentry of Scotland, besides the immediate
relatives of Albany. The alliance of Douglas with Albany was
natural, for he was as closely connected with him as with the king by
the marriage of his sister to Buchan, the eldest son of Albany, who fell
at Beaugé. The whole of James's reign was a fierce struggle between him
and the feudal aristocracy, whose power had become exorbitant owing to
the absence of a king. In this struggle he partially and for a time
succeeded, but in the end failed. The measures which followed or
accompanied the treason trials of 1424, the execution of Albany and his
two sons on the Heading Hill of Stirling, the drawing and quartering of
five of the followers of the third son, James, the Wolf of Badenoch, and
the confinement of their mother at Tantallon, were signs of the severity
necessary to crush the rebellion. To have included the
Douglases in the proscription of the Stuarts would have been more than
the king could have accomplished by one blow. He had to break the power
of the nobles one by one. The charter of 26 April 1425, by which the
barony of Bothwell was regranted on his own resignation to him and his
wife, Euphemia Graham, granddaughter of David, earl of Strathearn, a son
of Robert II, may have been in consideration of his taking the king's
part against Albany, or perhaps was only a resettlement on his marriage.
That marriage to a cousin of the king was another link to bind him to
James I. From this time till 1431 no mention of Douglas appears
on record, but in that year he was again arrested and kept in custody
for a short time, when he was released at the request of the queen and
nobility. He took no part in the tragic murder of James, the principal
conspirator in which was Sir Robert Graham, whose nephew, Malise, had
been deprived of the earldom of Strathearn by the king, on the pretext
that it was a male fief. As Malise was the brother of Euphemia Graham,
the wife of Douglas, the absence of the earl from the plot against
James, and his release at the commencement and close of the reign,
appear to indicate that while his position made him suspected his
character was destitute of the force which would have made him feared.
He differed from the other members of his house in being less inclined
for war, for after the battle of Beaugé, so far as appears, he never
drew sword. On the death of James I in 1437 he was one of the
council of regency. In 1438 he was appointed lieutenant-general of the
kingdom, an appointment probably due to a desire to place the supreme
power in the hands of one of the great nobles whose position and
prestige might control Crichton, the governor of Edinburgh Castle, and
Sir John Livingstone, who were rivals for the custody of the young king
and the government of Scotland. As lieutenant-general he summoned the
parliament which met on 27 Nov. at Edinburgh. On 26 June in the
following year he died of fever at Restalrig, near Edinburgh, and was
buried in the church of Douglas, where a monument with a recumbent
statue was placed to his memory, which recorded the great titles in
France and Scotland he had held: Hic jacet Dominus Archibaldus Douglas
Dux Turonić Comes de Douglas et de Longueville; Dominus Gallovidić et
Wigton et Annandić, locum tenens Regis Scotić. He left two sons,
William, sixth earl of Douglas, and David (both of whom were
executed(1) in 1440, though but youths, so great was the dread of this
powerful family), and one daughter, Margaret, called the Fair Maid of
Galloway, who married her cousin William, the eighth earl, and after his
death the king's cousin John, earl of Atholl.
The character of
the fifth Earl of Douglas would appear from the few facts history has
preserved to have been less vigorous than that of his father; possibly
his illness in 1424 and his death from fever point to a constitution
naturally feeble, or enfeebled by the hardships of the French war. The
panegyric of the family historian, Hume of Godscroft, that his only
fault was that he did not sufficiently restrain the oppression of the
men of Annandale, appears to corroborate this conclusion. But the
absence of records and the confusion of the period of Scottish history
which preceded and succeeded the death of James I, permit only a
hypothetical judgment.
Published: 1888
Notes:
1. Assassinated
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