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Black Agnes –
“That brawling, boisterous, Scottish wench”
Despite their defeat in 1314 by
King Robert the Bruce at the
Battle of Bannockburn, English forces
returned to Scotland in 1338 intent on conquering those pesky Scots.
On the 13th January they arrived outside the mighty gates
of Dunbar Castle near the fallen town
of Berwick.
This should have
been a reasonably easy castle for them to take as its lord,
Patrick Dunbar, Earl of Dunbar and March,
was away with the Scottish army fighting an English army in the
north.
The castle was under the command of Dunbar’s wife
Lady Agnes Randolph, Countess of Moray,
nicknamed Black Agnes for her dark hair and complexion.
With only a handful of men left behind by her husband Agnes had
pledged herself to defend the castle. In response to a request to
surrender she replied:
‘Of Scotland’s King I haud my house,
He pays me meat and fee,
And I will keep my gude auld house,
While my house will keep me.’
The Earl of Salisbury, the English
commander, opened the siege by hurling huge rocks at the walls of
the castle using great catapults. Between these attacks, and in
clear view of the English, Agnes sent her maids dressed in their
Sunday finest onto the ramparts to dust and clean the marks of the
shot from the walls with their dainty white handkerchiefs.
Salisbury was forced to roll out his secret
weapon. It was a huge battering ram or ‘sow’, with a wooden roof to
protect the men underneath. Agnes was ready for this and signalled
for large boulders to be dropped from the ramparts. They crashed
though the roof splintering it into pieces
sending the surviving Englishmen fleeing in every direction.
picture from The Book of History, Vol. IX
pg. 3919 (London, 1914)
Winter passed into
spring and the siege continued. With the last of the castle’s winter
supplies nearly exhausted Salisbury finally sensed an end and
possible victory. Help for the defenders finally came from the sea when Sir Alexander
Ramsay of Dalhousie arrived with men and supplies in two boats and
entered the castle via a half-submerged concealed doorway.
It is said that the following morning Agnes
sent a freshly baked loaf and with some fine wine to the English
commander and had the ‘gift's arrival proclaimed loudly’.
In desperation Salisbury sent for Agnes'
brother the Earl of Moray. Moray had previously been captured and
was a prisoner of the English. He was brought to within sight of the
castle and forced by Salisbury to call to Agnes to surrender the
castle or he would be killed.
Agnes simply pointed out that should her
brother be killed, who had no children, then she would inherit the
title and become the next Earl of Moray. Salisbury quickly
recognised the flaw in his argument and let the Earl live.
Finally, on 10th
June 1338, after five months of trying, Salisbury realised that he
would never get the better of Agnes. As the mighty conquerors
marched away the men made up a song:
She makes a stir in tower and trench,
That brawling, boisterous, Scottish wench;
Came I early, came I late.
I found Agnes at the gate.
Sir
Walter Scott said, 'From the record of Scottish heroes, none can
presume to erase her.'
More recently, Black
Agnes was voted one of the top 100 Women of the Millennium at
www.women.com !
© HUK
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