Pre-Reformation St Andrews

Chapter 1 Pre-Reformation St Andrews By modern standards sixteenth-century St Andrews was a small place. The city was focused around three main streets (North Gait, Mercat Gait, and South Gait) perched upon a wedge-shaped hill on the east coast of Fife.1 The settle- ment was bounded to the north and east by the sea, and to the south by an artificial stream leading to the Abbey Mill.2 At its widest point the built up area was just under 1.4 kilometres from east to west, and about 640 metres from north to south. There are no reliable population estimates for sixteenth- century St Andrews; however, extrapolations from the burgh stent rolls suggest that in 1618 the city had about 2,500 residents.3 If the sixteenth-century population was similar, St Andrews would have been comparable in scale to middle- rank English cathedral cities such as Ely, Lichfield and Winchester (which are thought to have had early modern populations of between two and three thou- sand), but would have been under half the size of northern England’s great ecclesiastical centre of York (which by the 1520s had a population in excess of 6,000).4 In a Scottish context, St Andrews was probably about a fifth of the size of Edinburgh (which in 1560 had approximately 12,000 residents).5 Yet St Andrews had an importance disproportionate to its size. Writing in the late sixteenth century, Bishop Leslie of Ross described St Andrews as the ‘cheif and mother citie of the Realme’.6 Jean de Beaugué, a French soldier who fought in the Rough Wooing of the 1540s, regarded it as one of the best 1 Derek Hall, ‘Introduction’, in M.J. Rains and D.W. Hall, eds, Excavations in St Andrews (Glen- rothes, 1997), p. 2. 2 The layout of early modern St Andrews is clearly shown on the Geddy Map of c.1580. This is the only surviving sixteenth-century plan of St Andrews. A digital version of the map is available at: http://maps.nls.uk/towns/rec/215 [Accessed 20 December 2016]. 3 Geoffrey Parker, ‘The “Kirk by Law Established” and the Origins of “The Taming of Scotland”: St Andrews 1559–1600’, in Leah Leneman, ed., Perspectives in Scottish Social History (Aber- deen, 1988), p. 24. 4 Charles Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1979), p. 12. 5 R.A. Houston and I.D. Whyte, eds, Scottish Society, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, 1989), p. 5. This fig- ure refers to the burgh of Edinburgh itself, rather than the wider conurbation encompassing the Canongate and Leith. 6 E.G. Cody and William Murison, eds, The Historie of Scotland: Wrytten First in Latin by Jhone Leslie and Translated in Scottish by Father James Dalrymple (2 vols. Edinburgh, 1888–1895), vol. 1, p. 37. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��9 | doi:�0.��63/978900434799�_003 <UN> 10 Chapter 1 towns in Scotland (‘une des meilleures villes d’Escosse’).7 Meanwhile Hector Boece rather more conservatively stated that ‘There are a number of notewor- thy towns in Fife, of which by far the principal one is that called St. Andrews, famed for its public University… and for its archbishop’s see’.8 Throughout the early sixteenth century St Andrews enjoyed close ties to the Scottish crown. It was a frequent stop in the itinerary of the royal court and the scene of notable national events.9 In 1538 James v chose St Andrews as the place to welcome his new bride, Mary of Guise, to Scotland.10 The couple went through a religious ceremony in St Andrews Cathedral ‘with mese [mass] son- gis and playing on the organis’, before enjoying several weeks of ‘princlie game and pastyme’.11 Two years later James and Mary’s short-lived eldest son was born and christened in St Andrews.12 The regularity with which James v visited the city is shown by the fact that at least 125 of the royal charters issued during his reign were dated at St Andrews.13 The only sites associated with more charters were the royal centres of Edinburgh, Stirling and Falkland. Remarkably, despite the Scottish court’s links to the city, St Andrews did not have a permanent royal residence. (The royal family generally stayed ei- ther at the bishop’s castle or in buildings associated with the cathedral.)14 Furthermore, St Andrews was technically not a royal burgh until the early sev- enteenth century.15 Instead the archbishop of St Andrews had lordship over 7 W. Smith, ed., Histoire de la Guerre de Ecosse: Pendant les Campagnes 1548 et 1549. Par Jean de Beaugué (Edinburgh, 1830), p. 85. 8 The Latin reads: ‘In hac insignes plurimae sunt civitates, quarum facile princeps quae vocatur Sancti Andreae gymnasio publico…atque archiepiscopatu celebris’. Translation and Latin are from Dana Sutton’s online edition of Hector Boethius’ Scotorum Historia, available at: http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/boece/ [Accessed 20 December 2016]. 9 Andrea Thomas, Princelie Majestie: The Court of James v of Scotland, 1528–1542 (Edinburgh, 2005), pp. 50, 245–246. 10 Ibid., p. 194. Carol Edington, Court and Culture in Renaissance Scotland: Sir David Lindsay of the Mount (Amherst, 1994), pp. 35–36. 11 A.J.G. Mackay, ed., The Historie and Cronicles of Scotland From the Slauchter of King James the First To the Ane Thousande Fyve Hundreith Thrie Scoir Fyftein Zeir: Written and Col- lected by Robert Lindesay of Pitscottie (3 vols, London, 1899–1911), vol. 1, pp. 379, 381. 12 Thomas, Princelie Majestie, pp. 198–199. 13 Peter McNeil and Hector MacQueen, Atlas of Scottish History to 1707 (Edinburgh, 1996), p. 182. 14 Between 1543 and 1545 Cardinal David Beaton’s granitar (Master Robert Auchmouty) had to spend £45 hiring additional beds to accommodate the Queen, the Earl of Arran, and their servants at St Andrews Castle, and at the episcopal palace of Monimail. Rober Kerr Hannay, ed., Rentale Sancti Andree: Being the Chamberlain and Granitar Accounts of the Archbishopric in the Time of Cardinal Betoun, 1538–1546 (Edinburgh, 1913), p. 202. 15 StAUL, B65/23/402; B65/23/414. <UN>.

Load more