IT was during the 4th Century that Regulus, or St Rule, first came to these shores accompanied by eight hermits, three virgins, two deacons, a priest and a partridge in a pear tree. He had left Patras in Greece a considerable time before, having had a dream that told him to travel far to the west where God would give him some sort of sign. He took with him what might today seem like a curious cargo, basically a casket containing a bone from an arm, three fingers of a right hand, a tooth and a kneecap. These were all genuine, authenticated and bona fide relics of St Andrew, who had been martyred in Patras, and St Rule did not wish the relics to disappear into Byzantium, now Istanbul (and not Constantinople, as the They Might Be Giants ditty reminds us). St Rule and his party did not know where they were going exactly until God showed them a sign – a fierce storm that wrecked their ship and cast them onto a bay in the East Neuk of Fife. They were met on the beach here by the local Pictish King.
“We come in peace,” said St Rule, in his own language, holding up Andrew’s bones before adding, “He comes in pieces.”
The King looked at his own holy man and asked, in Pictish, “What did he say?”
“Don’t know,” said the advisor, “It’s all Greek to me. Let’s kill them.”
“Sounds good to me,” replied the king and ordered his men to attack. But before they could heft their first spear, a white X appeared in the blue sky and stopped them. Andrew had been crucified on an X-shaped cross, so this was a sign from heaven and the king decided it was a good time to convert to Christianity.
And that was how Scotland took the white cross on the blue background as its flag. At least according to Fifers, who snort in derision at a conflicting story of the battle of Aethelstaneford.
Anyway, St Rule established a settlement, making St Andrews a centre of religious life in Scotland. Later, in 1411, it would become the first Scottish town to have its own university. It is also the official home of golf, boasting the oldest club in the world.
In 1457, the game was becoming so popular, at the expense of archery, that the Scottish Parliament decreed that “futeball and golfe be utterly cryit doun.” But 100 years later, the Archbishop of St Andrews said that every citizen had the right to tee off on the town’s links. That’s tee. Don’t make the mistake of substituting a ‘p’ or ‘w’. They could also shoot, play futeball and cut the links up if they wanted. Let’s see them try that now.
Fifty years later, at the end of the 16th Century, the church was less enamoured with the game because parishioners were thinking more of holes in one than Holy Ones, so fines were introduced as punishment to anyone who missed services.
But the church – both Catholic and Protestant – had more to worry them than golf. Over 800 years ago they decided to build St Rule’s Tower as a monument to the man who founded the settlement and apparently a giant tried to knock it down with a huge boulder. In other parts of Scotland, it’s the Devil who usually tried this sort of activity but he was presumably b busy elsewhere, perhaps making advance plans for reality TV.
The Cathedral itself was begun in 1160 and took 150 years to complete. Then, in 1304, along came Edward Longshanks to steal the lead from the roof, presumably when the local bobby wasn’t looking. A fire all but destroyed the place later that century, while wind and weather did further damage. Finally, John Knox’s reformers reformed the hell out of the place while in 1649 the town used the huge stones to protect itself against Cromwell’s troops. The cannibalisation of the material continued from then on as locals picked up whatever they needed from the ruins to build their own homes, byres and pavements.
The cathedral was the site of some most un-Christian behaviour over the centuries. In the early 15th Century a prior, Robert of Montrose, was stabbed to death there by Canon Thomas Plater. The prior was buried in state but the canon went to his rest in a dunghill.
St Andrews may be a quiet, bookish sort of town now but years ago it was quite different, for religious differences boiled over here into open warfare, while leaders tried to keep a lid on things by burning whoever took their fancy. Paul Crawar, a doctor from Bohemia, was burned in 1432 under orders of James the First who did not like him preaching free love and an early form of socialism. The most common method of execution in St Andrews was the axe but he was burned at the stake in the market place, a brass ball wedged into his mouth to prevent him from spouting any more hair-brained ideas. An X marks the spot in the cobbles.
The next notable execution was that of Patrick Hamilton. By the reign of James the Fifth, the New Religion was making its mark and the Roman Catholic hierarchy was growing worried. Hamilton was a great-grandson of James the Second but his part of the family had been born on the wrong side of the blanket. He had studied under Luther himself in Wittenberg, and had been sent back to Scotland to do what he could to further the cause of the Reformation. He brought with him a Lutheran Bible, some fiery words and some red kryptonite, which Luther gave him in case he had to fight Superman (I know it’s a different spelling, give me a break).
The young preacher was an immediate hit – too big a hit, in fact, for the authorities. In 1528 they had him arrested in St Andrews and he was sentenced to burn in front of the university. On 29 February he was tied to the stake but the fuel refused to burn properly and so some gunpowder was thrown on to speed things along. That exploded and injured his left hand. The flames burned slowly and so Hamilton suffered an excrutiatingly painful six hours before finally dying. While he slowly roasted, the crowd urged him to convert back to Catholicism but he told them, “You are late with your advice. If I had chosen to recant I would not be here.”
A bale of hay was thrown onto the flames but this only caused a jet of flame to reach out and burn a monk’s cowl. When a spectator asked Hamilton for a sign that he still clung to his reformatory beliefs, he raised three fingers of his injured hand and held them there until he died. Two fingers, I think, would have been enough. His initials were also laid in the cobble stones, outside the entrance to St Salvatore’s College.
Patrick Hamilton’s death was designed to make people think twice about embracing the new religion, but it had the opposite affect, for the dust of his burned body carried the spirit of Protestantism into the winds and spurred more people into rejecting Catholicism. As one noble said to the Bishop of St Andrews afterwards, “If ye burn any mair, let them be burned in the cellar for the reek o’ Patrick Hamilton has affected as many as it blew upon.” John Knox later commented that Hamilton’s death caused many men “to call in doubt that which before they held for certain verity.”
But the local religious leaders did not learn anything from this martyrdom. Knox himself often acted as the bodyguard to George Wishart, a former student of St Andrews who also began to preach the doctrine of reform. He had been sent by Henry the Eighth to help speed up the process of marrying off the young Mary to his son Edward. But his preaching angered the Scottish authorities – and Cardinal David Beaton in particular, who opposed any idea of such a marriage bitterly. In 1546 Wishart was implicated in a plot to assassinate Beaton – probably falsely, for over the centuries the Scottish authorities have fitted up more people than Burton the Tailor. When they came to arrest him, Knox was ready to draw his sword in defence of his master but Wishart, who appeared to be looking forward to his imminent death, said, “Return to your bairns and God bless you. One is enough for sacrifice.”
His subsequent trial was swift and unsurprisingly he was sentenced to death. He was tied to a stake and burned, although unlike Hamilton they showed some mercy by strangling him first. Cardinal Beaton, a cruel and vicious man, watched from the window of his apartments in the castle. He was unmoved by the spectacle and unaware that this fresh martyrdom had lit a fire that would never be extinguished – and would soon scorch even him. For the torch of reform had now passed to Knox and similarly minded men – and peaceful martyrdom was not their idea of forcing change.
Meanwhile, the site of George Wishart’s death – below the windows of Beaton’s palace – is marked by his initials in cobblestones.
Beaton’s apartments were part of St Andrews Castle, which perches on the coastline above the beach. In May 1546, three months after Wishart’s death, three men disguised as workmen entered the castle. They pretended to be part of the small army of masons and labourers who were refortifying the stronghold against any future attack by Henry’s forces. Later more men arrived at the castle gate and demanded to see the Cardinal, who was at the time sleeping the sleep, if not of the just, then certainly of the just after, having spent the night with his mistress Marion Ogilvy. More armed men arrived and the gate keeper was killed, his body tossed into the moat. With the aid of the three men already inside, the armed party stormed into Beaton’s room. What they wanted was for him to show some remorse for the execution of George Wishart. What they got was the petulant prelate telling them to leave him alone because he was a priest, which was probably not the wisest thing to say under the circumstances. The angry men killed him immediately, hanging his body over the battlements by an arm and a leg to let the angry locals see him dead. John Knox said the murder was “a godly act”, justifying it by suggesting that not only was Beaton the lover of Queen Mary of Guise but also that he conspired with her to poison to King James the Fifth after the rout at Solway Moss.
Beaton’s body was dumped into the castle’s infamous bottle dungeon, and salted “to keep it from stinking”, said Knox. The dungeon is so called because, believe it or not it is shaped like a bottle. Hewn out of solid rock, this horrendous pit is 24 feet deep and 15 foot wide. It is perhaps fitting that Beaton should lie here for this was where his other victims had been thrown prior to execution or mysterious death – George Wishart being only one.
But now the castle was in the reformers’ hands. Henry, who naturally supported their endeavours, sent provisions, cash and good wishes but no men. They held out for a year until Mary of Guise, who was then Regent with the Earl of Arran because her daughter Mary was yet a child, came with a French army. During that time, Arran had tunnelled from the other side of what is now the roadway to very nearly the base of the fore tower. When the Protestants heard of this they, humming Irving Berlin’s “Anything You Can Do”, dug their own tunnel to intercept Arran’s human moles. Their plan thus scuppered, the beseigers retreated, although their mine and the defenders’ counter-mine can still be viewed today, making it one of the most unique attractions in any Scottish castle.
When Mary of Guise arrived with her French fleet, the Protestants realised that all was lost and with a cry of “Bonjour Matelot’ surrendered. Knox and his fellow leaders were arrested but mercy was shown, for they were sentenced to 19 months in the French galleys. It was not to be the last Scotland – or us for that matter – would hear of John Knox.
