Gavin Douglas
Gavin Douglas | |
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St. Giles' |
Gavin Douglas (c. 1474 – September 1522) was a Scottish bishop,
Life and career
Early life
Gavin (or Gawin, Gawane, Gawain) Douglas was born c. 1474–76, at Tantallon Castle, East Lothian, the third son of Archibald, 5th Earl of Angus by his second wife Elizabeth Boyd. A Vatican register records that Gavin Douglas was 13 in 1489, suggesting he was born in 1476. An application had been lodged to award Gavin the right to hold a Church canonry or prebend and enjoy its income. Another appeal to Rome concerning church appointments made in February 1495 states his age as 20.[1]
He was a student at
Early career
Until the Battle of Flodden in September 1513, Gavin Douglas appears to have been occupied with his ecclesiastical duties and literary work. Indeed, all the extant writings by which he has earned his place as a poet and translator belong to this period. After the disaster at Flodden he was completely absorbed in public business.
Before the crisis of 1513, Douglas was a friend and correspondent of many of the internationally renowned men of his age, including
While Provost of St Giles, in 1510 Gavin applied to the Pope for permission to celebrate the marriages of couples who were related within the limits and degrees proscribed by the Church. Gavin argued that these marriages helped to make peace in Scotland, and the long delay in receiving a dispensation from Rome in each case, which was a formality, was inconvenient and unnecessary. Gavin asked to be allowed to conduct ten such marriages over four years.[5]
Career during the minority of James V
After the Battle of Flodden, during the minority of James V of Scotland, the Douglas family assumed a pivotal role in public affairs. Three weeks after the Battle of Flodden Gavin Douglas, still Provost of St Giles, was admitted a burgess of Edinburgh. His father, the "Great Earl", was then the civil provost of the capital. The Earl died soon afterwards in January 1514 in Wigtownshire, where he had gone as justiciar. As his son had been killed at Flodden, the succession fell to Gavin's nephew, Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus.
The marriage of the young Earl of Angus to James IV's widow, Margaret Tudor, on 6 August 1514 did much to identify the Douglases with the English party in Scotland, as against the French party led by the Duke of Albany, and incidentally to determine the political career of his uncle Gavin. During the first weeks of the Queen's sorrow after the battle, Gavin, with one or two colleagues of the council, acted as personal adviser, and it may be taken for granted that he supported the pretensions of the young earl. His own hopes of preferment had been strengthened by the death of many of the higher clergy at Flodden.
The first outcome for Gavin from the new family connection was his appointment to the
Gavin Douglas became heavily involved in affairs of state, seeking a dominant role as one of the
In 1517, in his more settled public position, Douglas was one of the leading members of the embassy to Francis I which negotiated the Treaty of Rouen, but his role in the volatile politics of the period, mainly centring on control over the minority of James V, was deeply contentious. By late 1517 he had managed to earn the enduring hostility of the Queen Mother, a former ally, and in subsequent years became manifestly involved in political manœuvring against the Regent Albany. At the same time he remained ambitious for the St Andrews archbishopric, which fell vacant once again in 1521. His career was cut short when he died suddenly during a brief period in exile in London.
Bishop of Dunkeld
In January 1515 on the death of
On 17 May 1517 the Bishop of Dunkeld proceeded with Albany to France to conduct the negotiations which ended in the Treaty of Rouen. He was back in Scotland towards the end of June. Albany's longer absence in France permitted the party faction of the nobles to come to a head in a plot by James Hamilton, 1st Earl of Arran to seize the Earl of Angus, the Queen's husband. The issue of this plot was the well-known fight of Cleanse the Causeway, in which Gavin Douglas's part stands out in picturesque relief. The triumph over the Hamiltons had an unsettling effect upon the Earl of Angus. He made free with the Queen's rents and abducted Lord Traquair's daughter. The Queen set about obtaining a divorce and used her influence for the return of Albany as a means of undoing her husband's power. Albany's arrival in November 1521, with a large body of French men-at-arms, compelled Angus, with the bishop and others, to flee to the Borders. From this retreat Gavin Douglas was sent by the earl to the English court, to ask for aid against the French party and against the Queen, who was reported to be the mistress of the Regent. Meanwhile, Douglas was deprived of his bishopric and forced, for safety, to remain in England, where he effected nothing in the interests of his nephew. The declaration of war by England against Scotland, in answer to the recent Franco-Scottish negotiations, prevented his return. His case was further complicated by the libellous animosity of James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow (whose life he had saved in the "Cleanse the Causeway" incident), who was anxious to put himself forward and thwart Douglas in the election to the archbishopric of St Andrews, left vacant by the death of Forman.
Death
In 1522 Douglas was stricken by the plague which raged in London, and died at the house of his friend Lord Dacre. During the closing years of exile he was on intimate terms with the historian Polydore Vergil, and one of his last acts was to arrange to give Polydore a corrected version of Major's account of Scottish affairs. Douglas was buried in the church of the Savoy, where a monumental brass (removed from its proper site after the fire in 1864) still records his death and interment.
For Douglas's career see, in addition to the public records and general histories,
Memorials
A Victorian brass plaque to Douglas exists in
There is a bin commemorating Gavin Douglas in Queen's Park, Glasgow.
Works
Palice of Honour
The Palice of Honour, dated 1501, is a dream-allegory extending to over 2000 lines, composed in nine-line stanzas. It is his earliest work. In its descriptions of the various courts on their way to the palace, and of the poet's adventures – first, when he incautiously slanders the court of Venus, and later when after his pardon he joins in the procession and passes to see the glories of the palace – the poem carries on the literary traditions of the
No manuscript of the poem is extant. The earliest surviving edition (c. 1553) was printed at London by
Eneados
Douglas's major literary achievement is the Eneados, a Scots translation of
Other accredited works
Two other poems are accredited to Gavin Douglas, King Hart and Conscience.
Conscience is a short four-stanza poem. Its subject is the "conceit" that men first clipped away the "con" from "conscience" to leave "science" and "na mair"; then they lost "sci" and had nothing but "ens": that schrew, Riches and geir.
King Hart is a poem of doubtful accreditation.[6] Like The Palice of Honor, it is a later allegory, and as such, of high literary merit. Its subject is human life told in the allegory of King Hart (Heart) in his castle, surrounded by his five servitors (the senses), Queen, Plesance, Foresight and other courtiers. The poem runs to over 900 lines and is written in eight-line stanzas. The text is preserved in the Maitland folio manuscript in the Pepysian library, Cambridge. It is not known to have been printed before 1786, when it appeared in Pinkerton's Ancient Scottish Poems.
Modern editions
- Gavin Douglas's Translation of the Aeneid, edited by Gordon Kendal, 2 volumes, London, MHRA, 2011
- Virgil's Aeneid translated into Scottish Verse by Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, edited by David F.C. Coldwell, 4 Volumes, Edinburgh, Blackwood for The Scottish Text Society, 1957–64
- Gavin Douglas: A selection from his Poetry, edited by The Saltire Society, 1959
- Selections from Gavin Douglas, edited by David F. C. Coldwell, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1964
- The Shorter Poems of Gavin Douglas, edited by Priscilla J Bawcutt, Edinburgh, Blackwood for The Scottish Text Society, 1967 (reprint 2003)
- The palis of honoure [by] Gawyne Dowglas, Amsterdam, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum; New York, Da Capo Press, 1969
- The Palyce of Honour by Gavin Douglas, edited by David J. Parkinson, 2nd edition, Michigan, Medieval Institute Publications, 2018.
- The Makars: the poems of Henryson, Dunbar, and Douglas, edited, introduced, and annotated by J.A. Tasioulas, Edinburgh, Canongate Books, 1999
See also
References
Notes
- ^ Bawcutt 1994, pp. 95–96. (Bawcutt is unclear about whether these are "old style" dates.) The 1495 register refers to Douglas as a Glasgow M.A., which may mark a confusion with a namesake, Gavin Douglas, son of the Laird of Drumlanrig.
- ^ Bayne, Thomas Wilson (1888). "Douglas, Gawin". In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 15. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
- ^ a b "The Palyce of Honour: Introduction | Robbins Library Digital Projects". d.lib.rochester.edu. Retrieved 2 December 2020.
- ^ Balfour Paul, vol 1, p. 185.
- ^ Bawcutt 1994, p. 98.
- JSTOR 43626771.
Sources
- Balfour Paul, Sir James (1904). Scots Peerage. 9 vols. Edinburgh: David Douglas.
- Bawcutt, Priscilla (1976). Gavin Douglas: A Critical Study. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP.
- ——— (1994). "New Light on Gavin Douglas". In MacDonald, A. A.; Lynch, Michael; Cowan, Ian B. (eds.), The Renaissance in Scotland. Leiden: Brill. pp. 95–106.
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Douglas, Gavin". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 8 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 444–445. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
Further reading
- Ellis, Henry, ed., Original Letters Illustrative of English History, 3rd Series, vol. 1 (London: Richard Bentley, 1846), pp. 293–303. Letters from Douglas to Cardinal Wolsey.
- Hubbard, Tom (1991), "Chosyn Carbukkill: Virgil's Northern Legacy", in Hubbard, Tom (2022), Invitation to the Voyage: Scotland, Europe and Literature, Rymour, pp. 13–16, ISBN 9-781739-596002
- Maxwell, Sir Herbert. A History of the House of Douglas. 2 vols. (London: Freemantle, 1902)
- Nicholson, Ranald. Scotland: The Later Middle Ages (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1978)