Falkland Park

Re-connecting people with the hills

Historic Landscape

IntroductionJust after 6am on a lovely sunny morning on Tuesday 5 August 1600 James VI went hunting fallow deer in Falkland Park. He was seen, dressed for hunting, leaving the palace and walking down through the remains of the old castle to the stables across from the tennis court. There the duke of Lennox, 12 or so courtiers and some Englishmen were waiting for him. Just as James was about to mount his horse he was waylaid by Alexander Ruthven with a tale that he had found a man burying a pot of gold outside Perth. He wanted James to come at once to his brother’s house in Perth to see it. James refused to go as he was looking forward to the

hunt but when he rode out past the stables and through the gate into the park Ruthven followed him still hoping to persuade him to leave the hunt. James rode through a meadow in the park and up on to a small hillock above a small wood where he could watch the hunt begin. The hounds were used to raise the buck from the coppice where it had been sheltering overnight. As it broke cover the king and the other hunters joined in the chase. They pursued the deer for about three hours without stopping until finally it turned at bay and was killed about 200 metres from the park gate. Instead of waiting for the formal ceremony where the dogs

Falkland Palace with the area of the park beyond.

were rewarded with some meat from the kill James rode off with Alexander Ruthven to Perth.

We know about this hunt because it was the forerunner to what became known as the Gowrie Conspiracy in which two of James’ opponents in religious matters, Alexander Ruthven and his brother the earl of Gowrie, were killed. The details of the conspiracy do not concern us here but what does matter is that Parliament questioned all the witnesses about the events of the day including the hunt and James himself wrote his own version of events. This evidence lets us see that the purpose

of Falkland Park was to let the king or queen spend leisure time hunting with a few companions away from affairs of state. But what was this park? How old was it? What did it look like? How was it run and how did the Stewart monarchs like James VI and his mother Mary Queen of Scots hunt there when they were in residence?

The Origins of the Park

Medieval ParksA park was:

1) an area of private land held by the lord and not rented out to anyone else.

2) enclosed by a wall or by a bank with a fence or hedge on top often with an internal ditch. The bank and fence were called the pale. A pale also meant one of the vertical planks on the picket-like fence.

3) intended mainly to keep animals, usually fallow deer, captive inside.

4) created either inside or outside a forest.

The origins of the park are rather vague. Before1100AD Falkland and the Lomond Hills were probably a royal hunting area but between 1160 and 1162 Malcolm IV, King of Scotland, granted the royal estate of Falkland to Duncan II, Earl of Fife. The earls of Fife probably set up this hunting area as a hunting forest in which they decided 1) who could hunt deer and boar. which they called the venison, and 2) who could cut wood and graze animals on the vegetation, called the vert.

Within this forest the earls of Fife in the 13th century decided to create a park. This was revealed by the discovery of 13th-century pottery in the bank surrounding the park during an excavation in Cash Wood in 2016 led by Oliver O’Grady. It is not known which earl of Fife ordered the building of the park but whoever it was probably

A park-like enclosure on the mid-15th-century seal of George Douglas, Earl of Angus. The pale is constructed with wattle fencing with a curved opening like a pen or a trap.

realised, as others had done before him, that it was a lot easier to control the vert and venison in a small enclosed park rather than in a large unenclosed forest.

In the 14th century the earls continued to manage the park and the forest and sometime between 1340 and 1353 Duncan IV, Earl of Fife, appointed John del Grene, who was a cleric, as forester of Falkland and keeper of Cupar Castle. Clerics or priests who could read and write made effective administrators. They were often from noble families and were well able to manage a lord’s castle and hunting reserves.

In 1425 James I forfeited the earls of fife and granted Falkland to Walter Stewart, Earl of Atholl, but in 1437 he too was forfeited and James II finally took over the running of the park. There is no reference to the forest after 1371 which tells us that the park gradually replaced the forest as the best place to hunt in the area.

In the Middle Ages a forest¹ meant a hunting reserve, an area where the holder controlled the vert and venison. This enabled the lord, the holder of these forest rights, to control wood-cutting, ploughing, the growing of crops and grazing of cattle and sheep since all these activities could damage the habitat of the deer. In practice he usually permitted these activities on the payment of a fine or a fee. There were no such allowances when it came to hunting deer or boar in the forest.

Forests were not recognisable features in the landscape. They were simply a set of rights or rules imposed over an area of land held by its lord who could be a baron, king, bishop or abbot.

Woods often survived better in forests and so gradually by the 16th century in Scotland the word came to mean a wooded area as it does today. The old meaning, however, still survives on today’s maps in the names of various former Scottish deer forests, for example, the Forest of Atholl, the Forest of Alyth and Ettrick Forest.

¹‘Forest’ is used throughout this guide to mean a hunting reserve and ‘forest’ to mean a wooded area.

Medieval Forests

Reconstructed remains of the castle of the earls of Fife at Falkland.

Falkland Park Place-NamesPlace-names marked with a (G) are from Gaelic and were probably formed from the 10th to the 12th centuries and place-names marked with (Sc) are from Scots which is a form of Medieval English and were probably formed any time from the 12th century onwards. A name printed in italics no longer survives on today’s maps.

Alleris alders (Sc)Blaeshangie place of the narrow estate (G)Bowingtrie bending tree (Sc)Cash steep place or rising ground (G)Darnoe place of black thorns (G)Devillie place difficult to farm (G)Falkland hidden land, land of heavy rain (G)Inchallamone boggy low-lying land beside water (G)Kilgour church of the goat burn or the Gabor burn (G)Nochnary hillock of the shieling or cattle station (G)Redmyre red or reed moss (G)

The Royal Parkat times red deer and boar were also kept. There were also swans, geese and herons as well as other wild fowl. Over the years the Stewart monarchs did make additions and reductions to the size of the park which, as a result, varied from around 450ha (1200 acres) in the 15th century to 650ha (1600 acres) during the 16th century and the size of the fallow deer herd probably varied from about 300 to 500 deer.

The excavation of 2016 showed that when the park was made the area was enclosed with an earthen bank with a fence on top and with a shallow internal ditch. The fence would be like a tall picket fence, not necessarily solid, and the whole pale, as it was called, would be about 2 ½ to 3 metres from the bottom of the ditch to the top of the fence, high enough to keep semi-tame deer inside. The game animals kept in the park were mainly fallow deer but

Parks were a visible sign of a lord’s power. People could see the park pale and they could see that the lord controlled this area and all the activities inside it. They could see that common folk and their activities were excluded. They could see the exclusive deer whose meat they were not allowed to buy or sell, let alone eat. Not only that, the park could be used both to enhance the appearance and setting of the castle and to provide pleasant views from the castle of enclosed meadows and coppices with fallow deer grazing contentedly around them.

Parks could be put to a variety of uses. In the 16th century the Stewart monarchs held parks at Stirling and Doune castles and at Holyrood,

Linlithgow and Falkland palaces. Stirling, the oldest of the royal parks, was used for hunting deer, for grazing cattle and for providing hay. At Doune there was some hunting but when James VI enclosed the wood there with a large bank it was earmarked for producing wood and timber. Holyrood was mainly used for cattle and sheep farming and Linlithgow mainly for grazing horses and providing hay. Falkland was used to produce hay and graze cattle but its main purpose was as a hunting park for the Stewart monarchs.

Map by James Gordon of Straloch in 1642 showing the park pale. The pale is shown to be made of individual planks or pales. © National Library of Scotland.

Woods and MeadowsFalkland Park was not just an open area of grassland. It contained stands of oak called the Easter and Wester Woods through which deer and horsemen could move. There were also alder and probably hazel woods which were managed to produce rods and poles for wattle fences, logs for fuel and poles for implements or weapons. The small wood where James VI watched the hunt begin on that day in August 1600 was probably a coppice being managed to produce wood for fences or fuel.

There were named meadows in the park. The Forester and Michael’s meadows lay to the north and Falkland and Captain’s meadows to the south. These meadows were harvested every year at the king’s expense to provide hay which was essential fodder not only for the king’s horses but also for the deer. The hay was stored in the hay yard which lay close to the king’s stables near the tennis court. The meadows would be enclosed temporarily in the spring and early summer to prevent the grass being eaten by the deer and cattle before harvesting.

It may seem odd that cattle were allowed to share the grazing with the deer but deer and cattle do in fact go well together since the cattle eat the longer grasses and leave the shorter grass for the deer. The king and queen held the main herds in the park but the forester also was allowed to graze a few cattle there. Records show that cattle were driven to the park to be fattened

up and then moved on to other royal parks and killed as required to supply the royal court. In 1460 Marjory Baty (Beaton) who worked in the park had to see to the shoeing and blood-letting of the queen’s cattle. This sounds rather puzzling but cattle did need to be shod before making long journeys, a practice well known in the 18th century. As for the blood, to go by later practice, it was usually taken from the barren cattle in the summer, mixed with meal and boiled into an early form of black pudding.

Despite the presence of these valuable commodities in the park there was no attempt to turn a profit by selling cattle, hay or wood or by renting out grazing. This park was not seen as a money-making exercise. It was all for royal use and was an expensive luxury.

Fallow deer in Charlecotte Park.

Fallow deer in Charlecotte Park.

Managing WoodIn medieval Scotland wood was needed for everything from spoons to cathedral roofs. Trees could be left to grow into timber for large construction or if a regular crop was needed for fencing or fuel the trees were often coppiced (cutting the tree at ground level at regular intervals) or sometimes pollarded (cutting branches every so often at head height so that animals could not eat the young shoots).

Woodland was used for grazing whenever possible and so young growth had to be enclosed so that deer or other livestock could not eat it. In these coppices the stump of the tree from which the coppice shoots grew was called a stool.

After 6-8 years the coppices would be big enough to be opened up for grazing again. These temporary enclosures could be made by placing a wattle fence or piles of thorns and branches called dead hedges round the wood both of which could be removed when required.

FalconryCourtiers, both men and women, enjoyed hawking both on foot and on horseback. Their prey could be any kind of wild fowl, partridges, pheasants, cranes, herons, plovers, wild duck and geese. When hawking they flew either falcons which were long-winged hawks like the peregrine falcon or short winged-hawks like the goshawk, sparrow hawk and buzzard. The long-winged hawks flew in open spaces and killed their prey by flying to a great height and then diving down in a ‘stoop’ to stun or kill it with a glancing blow. Short–winged hawks were flown in

WEST

WOODWOOD

EAST

Easter Cash

Wester Cash

Kilgour Arraty Burn

Ballingall Burn

A l l e r i s

Forester Meadow

Michael’s Meadow

D e v i l l i e

Queen’s Seat

D a r n o e

Falkland Meadow

Captain’s Meadow

Darnoe

Bowingtrie

Stables and Hay Yard

Nuthill House

Maspie Burn

The Trenches

Falkland

Falkland Palace

Part of Darnoe was used for grazing does by James V from 1538-42

River EdenRaecruik

Palingback

Grazed by does and mares from 1507. Emparked by James V from 1539-42 and again by James VI in 1606

Part of James V’s extension 1539-42

KEYPark Boundary certainPark Boundary UncertainArea of the parkWater courses, woods and roads are modern

Alleris

Contains Ordnance Survey Data © Crown copyright and database right 2015

NochnaryStrathmiglo

1km

1 mile

Falkland Park at its largest extent in the reign of James V around 1540.

wooded areas and killed by overtaking their prey in a short sprint and sinking their talons into it. Both types of birds were common at the Scottish court. James IV favoured the peregrine falcon but he also flew goshawks which were considered to be the more efficient killers. Wild fowl could be killed by using crossbows with blunt-headed bolts but later in the 16th century firearms came into use. Since hawks could be carried and released when suitable game appeared or was raised by beaters hawking could be enjoyed while on the move.

Park Expenses [Prices in brackets are estimates. Prices are given in old money:- 12d = 1s and 20s = £1. d = penny and s = shilling. Nowadays a shilling would be 5p but to get the equivalent worth it would be necessary to multiply the 16th century sums by 1200 or more. The estimated value of payments in cereals is given in brackets.]

Maintenance costs:- July 1503 – July 1504 Cost/Value

To repair banks, ditches and pales of the park £2 3s 4d

To maintain banks and ditches round meadows £2

Compensation for grazing in the ward now annexedto the park £4 4s

For mowing and storing hay £12 13s 4d

To feed boar in Falkland - 1 boll 2 firlots 2 pecks of malt [7s]

To feed 5 boar, 3 swans from 5th Oct to 25 Dec - 1 chalder 15 bolls of oats [£3 2s]

To maintain banks, ditches and pales of the park - 2 chalders of oats [£3 4s]

To repair ditches/banks round meadows of Falkland - 1 chalder of oats [£1 12s]

Total (approximate) £28 5s 8d

HuntingThe Chase

In the medieval period there were two ways of chasing deer.

1) Par Force HuntingThis method of hunting was introduced to Britain by the French in the 11th and 12th centuries and meant hunting by force of hounds. In a par force hunt three or four relays of hounds were set out in advance along the expected course of the hunt. A relay was two or three couples of hounds with huntsmen who would join the hunt as it passed adding fresh impetus to the chase. In this type of hunt scenting hounds or rauchs were used to find the deer and then to raise it or unharbour it at the start of the chase. Near the end of the hunt faster hounds, such as greyhounds like Scots deerhounds which hunted by sight might be released to hunt in pairs to bring down the deer.

2) Coursing Coursing had been practised in Scotland at least since Celtic times. When coursing, a deer would be raised but it would be chased throughout by greyhounds with no relays being added in.

There is no clear record of how deer were chased in a park but it seems likely that both these methods would be combined. The deer would be raised and then either hunted by scenting hounds or by greyhounds depending on whether the hunt was to be more like a par force hunt or a course. However,

in a park it may have been necessary to use hounds to stop the hunted deer disturbing the rest of the herd or entering a meadow. If these dogs were released to join in the hunt it would be a par force hunt but if they were kept on the leash then it would be more like a course.

The Drive

The drive was the traditional style of hunting in Scotland throughout the medieval period. In this type of hunt deer were driven towards the hunters. Sometimes the chief hunters would be involved in driving the deer but sometimes others called a stable or a tinchell would drive the game to the hunters. The size of these drives could

Opp page: Chasing deer par force from an early-15th-century French manuscript of the Livre de Chasse by Gaston de Foix. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France. Livre de Chasse ms Français 616.

vary from a small quiet affair to a large show hunt such as the king might have held in Glenfinglas in the Trossachs or Glen Artney in Perthshire where considerable numbers of deer would be driven to the waiting hunters. The place where the hunters waited to kill the deer with crossbows or short hunting bows or at a later date with guns was called a seat and this gave rise to the name Queen’s Seat in Falkland Park. In addition the place-name, Bowingtrie, in the park may record the well-known custom whereby the hunter stood awaiting the driven game with his back to a tree so that the game did not see him. In a park it would normally just be a small number of deer which were driven since the herd would soon be destroyed if hundreds of deer were killed in a drive.

Left: A Drive from an early-15th-century manuscript of the Livre de Chasse. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France. Livre de Chasse ms Français 616.

Alternatively, as happened in France and England in the 16th century, selected deer might be driven into a fold or pen and then released singly either for a greyhound to course or for the hunters to shoot with bows or crossbows as they passed their seat. Stalking

Stalking is recorded in Scotland from the Celtic period onwards. It was the cheapest and simplest method of hunting but could also be the hardest. It was a waiting game hiding beside a known deer track or behind some sort of mobile camouflage. Alternatively the hunter could follow the deer on foot sometimes using traps or nets to snare the quarry though the use of nets when hunting was usually frowned upon by noble society.

Hunting at Falkland with the Stewart MonarchsJames II (1437-1460) and Mary of Gueldres (1449-1463)

James II married Mary of Gueldres in 1449. Two years later she received Falkland and its park as part of the marriage settlement. Mary had come from Gueldres in Holland and had been brought up at the court of the wealthy and powerful duke of Burgundy in north-east France. There she had acquired the culture of the court and seen at first hand the operation of some of their deer parks such as the famous park at Hesdin in northern France which the Scots had visited when negotiating her marriage to James. As a pawn in a system of dynastic and economic alliances she was whisked off to far away Scotland and not surprisingly tried to create some memories of home in her Scottish surroundings. She seems to have influenced building works in the castle, appointed a regular gardener and had two ponds constructed in the hay yard. It was at this time that a start was made to redesigning the park by enclosing the meadows and some of the woods. The park was being compartmentalized so that different activities such as grazing cattle, hunting deer and producing timber and fuel could all co-exist efficiently. Falkland Park started to fall into the European pattern seen at Hesdin where one progressed from the castle to the domesticated space of a garden and

then to the park with its meadows, wilder woods and watery spaces, perhaps even with an area at the far end for open air celebrations.

In an age when noble women led a secluded and enclosed life a park was one of the few places where they could go out, hawk and hunt and move around freely. It is also worth noting that another woman, Marjory Baty, was helping the park keeper, George Bannatyne. Although never called the forester she was in effect acting as the forester in charge of the herd of cattle, enclosing the woods and meadows, maintaining these enclosures and delivering fuel from the park to Mary of Gueldres’ chamber in the castle.

Mary and James kept 40-50 horses in the park, perhaps as a stud, but very little is known about their use of the park for hunting. A contemporary portrait of James which shows a fallow buck in full antler sitting beside him on the ground suggests that he did keep fallow deer but tells us nothing about Falkland in particular. What is known is that he and Mary had hounds with them when they visited Falkland and shortly before Mary’s death in 1463 boar were introduced to the park.

James II aged 27 from the diary of Georg von Ehingen who visited Scotland in 1458. This is a contemporary portrait. Source: Stuttgart Württembergische Landesbibliothek. Cod. Hist. qt. 141, fol. 97.

James IV (1488-1513)

James III seldom went to Falkland but, so far as the surviving records tell, his son, James IV, made a series of short visits between 1488 and 1508. He started to develop the palace to the south of the castle and longer stays of about a week did occur during the buck and stag-hunting season in July 1489 and May and September 1501. In January 1504 he stayed for a week just after the death of his younger brother James, Archbishop of St Andrews. After 1508, however, he seems to have visited seldom if at all.

James’ enjoyment of falconry is suggested in a copy of a contemporary portrait which shows him holding a peregrine falcon on his left hand and a bow perch in his right. James would often be found hawking when on his travels and he hawked at Falkland in December 1490. Because Falkland and the River Eden were a good area for this sport he based four of his team of falconers at Falkland, Dandy Doule, John Man, John Baty and Donald Falconer, while others rented lands elsewhere in Fife. In 1504 he had a new loch built in the park which was stocked with pike but which would have provided a habitat for certain wild fowl suitable for hawking.

As a Renaissance prince James was not averse to innovation and in January 1508 he bought a new-fangled gun, a culverin, which was small enough to carry. After practice he went stalking deer in Falkland Park in May in the company of John Methven

James IV with a peregrine falcon on his left hand and a bow perch on his right. He would normally have worn a hawking glove to protect his left hand. This is a copy by H.H.R. Woolford in 1955 of a painting by Daniel Mytens c. 1600. Mytens' painting is a copy of the original © The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

Transporting Live DeerAt first sight it might appear rather odd to transport deer alive but in an age before refrigeration it was a means of providing fresh venison to hang for the royal table wherever it was required. It also enabled royal parks to be restocked with deer as at Stirling when it was being renewed in the early 16th century.

At Falkland there seem to have been two people mainly in charge of the arrangements for transporting live deer. The first was Andrew Matheson, the deputy keeper of the palace, who organized and financed the capture and transport of live deer as well as transporting deer himself. The second was Master Edmund Levisay, an usher in Margaret Tudor’s household, who would have been in charge of security and access to the queen’s chambers. In addition he seems to have been an expert in capturing and carrying live deer, a practice which had been common in England since the13th century. Within three months of his arrival in Scotland he was to be found at Falkland catching deer for the king and using ropes and nets to so do. This was ‘business hunting’ to provide for the larder, not ‘leisure hunting’. There would be no question of hunting the deer par force or coursing them. They would have been captured as simply and easily as possible.

Live deer, usually fallow deer, were transported in a litter carried between two horses one behind the other. This rather resembled a sedan chair but in this case a box or crate of some sort would have been attached between the poles and within this the deer would be secured. Certain horses trained especially for this duty were known as litter horses.

but the outcome of their stalk is not recorded. Another likely innovation was associated with his marriage to Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII, on 8th August 1503. While Margaret travelled north from England James prepared for the wedding festivities. In July he organized a stalker and two servants to take stags and other game

in Falkland Park for the wedding at Holyrood. By using oats as a lure eight red deer stags were captured in a fold, a small animal enclosure, in the park and were duly sent live to Edinburgh. This is the first record in Scotland of the transport of live deer, a practice which continued for at least the next four years of James reign.

By transporting deer to other parks and no doubt hunting deer himself James placed quite a strain on the deer herd. In 1507, for example, at least 37 deer were taken from the park, 12 live and 25 dead. In medieval deer parks which had a cropping rate of around10% this would have needed a herd of at least 370 deer. This size of crop seems to have required that James increase the size of the herd. He, therefore, made two extensions to the park, firstly into the ward of Falkland in 1503 and then into the area of Cash in 1508 in order to provide extra grazing. Throughout the 16th century compensation had to be paid to the previous users of these

Year Number of deer transported Destination1504 15 Stirling1505 6+ Stirling1506 22+ Stirling, Edinburgh1507 11+ Stirling, Edinburgh, Linlithgow

areas. In the latter case the grazing was designated specifically for does and mares thus providing, perhaps, an area which could have remained undisturbed when he was hunting bucks in the main park. He also restocked the park in 1505 by sending John Balfour into the surrounding countryside with rauchs, scenting hounds, to drive deer to the park and into the hay yard which had been specially prepared to receive them. It has also been suggested that the earthworks called the Trenches to the west of Falkland may also have been involved in catching and sorting deer to restock the park but after recent excavation this now seems unlikely.

The Trenches are in the centre. The view is looking north towards the area of James V’s extension of the park.

The Renaissance façade of Falkland Palace.

James V (1513-42)

James V’s personal reign began in 1528 when he escaped from the clutches of his stepfather, Archibald Douglas Earl of Angus. In 1530s when James started to turn his father’s residence into a truly Renaissance style palace he frequently stayed at Falkland. In 1539 and 1541 he spent almost a quarter of the year there staying for anything from one to four nights at a time but on occasions for two weeks or more - plenty of time to supervise the building works and to go hunting in the park. When James did not have the time to travel to his favoured hunting areas in Glen Tilt,

Glenfinglas, Balquhidder and Glen Artney in the Highlands and Megget in Ettrick Forest in the Borders Falkland was close at hand.

When James was 16 he plotted with his mother Margaret to break away from the control of the earl of Angus. She was resident in Stirling Castle and had by this time fallen out with Angus and divorced him. James rode from Edinburgh to Stirling at the end of May with the Great Seal of Scotland and set up his own government there. However, the story told by the contemporary

The Guidman of Ballengeich

Many tales were told about James V travelling the country in disguise as the ‘guidman of Ballengeich’ to find out what people’s lives were really like. Since James spent a lot of time at Falkland several tales grew up relating to his wanderings in that area. In one of them James was out hunting fallow deer and became separated from the other hunters. The 18th-century song written about this tale continues

‘As he was hunting his fair fallow deerAnd of all his nobles he freely gat clearIn search of new pleasures away he did rideTill he came to an ale-house just by a road-side.”

There James met a tinker (a travelling workman), called John of the Vale, and sat down to drink with him. The tinker confided in James that he longed to see the king while he was out hunting. James, saying that he could arrange that, took him on his horse to join the royal hunting party. The tinker fell off the horse in surprise when he realised that his drinking companion had been none other than the king himself. James then made the tinker a knight with an income of £300 per year. And was this tale true? On 17 April 1540 20s had to be paid to an ale house in Cash ‘quhar the kingis graice drank he beand at the huntyn.’

chronicler Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie was much more colourful and is worth repeating here since Pitscottie claimed that Andrew Fernie , the hereditary forester of Falkland at the time was one of the sources for his chronicle. At Easter 1528 James Beaton, Archbishop of St Andrews and a former keeper of Falkland Palace, entertained James V, the earl of Angus and other Douglas nobles in St Andrews. James spent his time hunting and hawking on the River Eden but when Angus and most of the nobles left to attend to their own affairs he moved to Falkland to hunt deer in the park there. Only James Douglas and

100 men were left to guard him. James saw his chance to escape. He plotted with Andrew Fernie and got him to summon neighbouring lairds with their speediest dogs to come to Falkland Wood the next day at 7.00am to slay ‘a fat buck or two’. James then had supper prepared for himself and ordered breakfast for 4am the next morning. He told James Douglas that he would be hunting in the morning and went to bed. During the night he disguised himself as one of the stable hands, went to the stables, saddled a horse and rode off with two servants to Stirling.

James V aged 24 when he visited France in 1536-7. Style of Corneille de Lyon from the Corridor at Polesden Lacey, © National Trust Images/ Derrick E Witty.

James often hunted and hawked along the River Eden and, according to Pitscottie, shortly after his marriage to Mary of Guise in June 1537 in St Andrews he went to Falkland where he, and presumably Mary, hunted fallow deer for a few days. The de Guises were a well-known hunting family in France and in 1550 Mary’s brother, Francis, would be appointed Grand Chasseur (Grand Hunter) by King Henry II. When James visited France in 1536-7 to arrange his first marriage to Madeleine he stayed at Chinon in late October 1536 and hunted boar there with Francis I, the Dauphin Henry and the king of Navarre. Henry was seriously injured when the boar charged him but the king of Navarre saved him.

Several years later in 1541 James imported boar from France and had them brought to Falkland where he had a special fold built for them in the park. James, however, had learnt form his experience in France and made sure he was equipped with a specialized boar spear which had a cross bar about 30cms from the point so that the boar when it charged onto the spear could not get too close.

With his regular visits to Falkland and the park James was taking many more deer out of the park than his father had done. He had seen French palaces with their large parks and heavily wooded forests and he clearly was trying to replicate their facilities in Scotland. In 1538 he incorporated Darnoe in the park as extra grazing for does and then in 1539 he decided to make a larger extension to the west and ordered

Andrew Fernie to construct the pale around the extension and to take measures to improve the woods within it. However, after James’ death in 1542 Mary of Guise did not maintain these extensions. She rented out Darnoe and ran into problems with the larger extension. James had taken the land from William Scott of Balwearie, a local laird, in a peremptory fashion without consulting the royal council. Balwearie claimed he had lost £10,000 worth of woods and went to court to reclaim the land, a claim which the Court of Session upheld.

During James’ reign Falkland Palace and the park made a favourable impression on all who saw it. Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, a tutor and close friend of James, wrote a poem called the ‘Last Testament of the Papingo’ (the Dying Statement of the Parrot) in which the dying parrot gives the king advice and then takes farewell of his favourite palaces including Falkland.

Fare weill Faulkland, the fortrace of FyfeThy polite [elegant] park under the Lowmound lawSum tyme in the I led ane lustie [merry] lyfeThe fallow deir to see them raik [graze] on raw Court men to cum to the, they stand greit awSayand, thy Burgh bene [cosy], of all burrowis bail [sorrowful],Because in the thay never gat gude aill.

Clearly the palace and the park made a much better impression in the sixteenth century than the ale-houses.

Mary Queen of Scots(1542-1567)

After the death of James V at the age of 30 in 1542 Mary of Guise acted as regent since their daughter Mary was only 6 days old. To secure an alliance of France and Scotland Mary of Guise arranged a marriage for her daughter with the dauphin of France. In 1548 Mary was sent to France to be brought up in the manners and culture of the French court and it was there, in the parks surrounding the various French châteaux where she stayed such as Amboise, Blois, Chambord and Châtellerhault that Mary learnt to hunt and hawk.

As a teenager she was keen to follow the ladies of the court, such as Diane de Poitiers and the queen, Catherine de Medici, when they hunted in the

Hunting in FranceOne of the most popular methods of hunting in the French court at this time was the par force hunt, the chasse à la courre (running hunt) as the French called it. Also popular at the court of Henry II of France was the chasse aux toiles (hunt with screens) in which long panels of canvas or other material were set out to enclose a large area which contained deer or boar. The screens were also set out so that the game could be channeled into a smaller enclosure or killing zone which the French called an accoure or a parc – not to be confused with the normal hunting park where deer were kept permanently. Deer or boar would then be driven into the channel and released into the killing zone as required. The king or other hunters would confront the game on foot and kill it in a kind of gladiatorial combat which spectators could watch from outside the screens. On at least one occasion Queen Elizabeth of England is recorded using a version of this type of hunt where a stand was built for her beside the killing enclosure.

Mary Queen of Scots dressed in mourning white in 1560 after the death of her father-in-law Henry II and her mother Mary of Guise. Artist: Unknown after Francois Clouet. Title: Mary Queen of Scots 1542-1587. Reigned 1542-1567 (in white mourning). © Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

neighbouring heavily wooded forest. While Mary presumably learnt to hunt in a variety of ways she seems to have preferred to hunt par force. According to the English attachés to the French court Mary liked to ‘run the hart’ and was keen to ride geldings (castrated horses) since they were fast across country, up

hill and down dale and easier to control than stallions. Hunting par force or à la courre was not without its dangers and Mary suffered a hunting accident near Blois in December 1559 when she rode into a branch and was knocked off her horse as other courtiers galloped past without seeing her.

The Louis XII façade of the château of Blois built c1500.

In Falkland Mary probably hunted much as she would have done in a French park by chasing deer in a combination of par force hunting and coursing as described earlier. She may well have employed a version of the chasse aux toiles where deer were released from a fold to run past a stand where the hunters shot the deer or where they sat on a hillock and watched deer being chased or coursed by greyhounds when they were released from the fold. There were several hillocks in the park which could have provided such vantage points one of which was used by James VI in the Gowrie-conspiracy hunt in 1600.

In the first four years of her reign Mary visited Falkland for a total of one to two weeks each year usually around Easter time. In 1562 she started her visit to Fife in early March spending about two weeks in St Andrews which was her favourite residence in Fife. On 21 March she rode to Falkland via Cupar and on 30 March she was out hunting in the

park on horseback chasing a deer with Thomas Randolph, Queen Elizabeth’s resident at the Scottish court. While they were hunting, a servant brought a letter to Randolph to give to Mary from the young and slightly mad James Hamilton, third Earl of Arran, who was obsessed with her. His letter warned Mary of a plot to kidnap her organized by James Hepburn, fourth Earl of Bothwell, the same Bothwell who would eventually become her third husband. The point here is that the plot rested on the fact that Mary was known to hunt almost daily in the park with only a small retinue. In this the plotters were particularly well informed because the court’s household accounts tell us that the main part of her household was still in St Andrews.

Mary returned to Fife in 1563 and was in St Andrews on 22 February for the execution of a French courtier who was infatuated with her and had smuggled himself into her bedroom in Rossend

A 16th-Century print by the German engraver Virgil Solis showing a par force hunt in progress. Notice in the centre of the frieze the lady riding pillion sideways behind the gentleman. Notice also the relay, the huntsman with his hound hiding behind a tree on the left.

Castle in Burntisland eight days previously. News arrived on 15 March of the assassination of her uncle Francis, Duke of Guise. Randolph saw this as the beginning of the ‘Queen’s sorrows’ and wrote that Mary ‘has taken pleasure to ride up and down hawking and hunting daily from place to place.’ On 20 March she went to Falkland, escorted by Randolph who recorded that she felt destitute of friendship. Mary left the main part of her retinue at St Andrews or Falkland and conducted a circuit of loyal lairds in Fife, hunting and hawking as she went and returning to Falkland every so often. Mary spent three months in Fife dealing both with the problems

Ladies on HorsebackMary Queen of Scots preferred to hunt riding astride as ladies had done throughout the medieval period since it let the rider have far better control of the horse when riding at speed. At this time, when riding, ladies wore either a wider looser skirt or a form of split skirt called a devantière. Sometimes even breeches or thick serge stockings were worn.

Since the second half of the 14th century women had also ridden horses on a sideways facing seat but to hunt like this they depended on riding pillion behind a male rider onto whom they clung for safety. This was probably considered a more decorous riding style for ladies than riding astride but it was extremely difficult. It was still used, however, in the 16th century and an illustration by the German engraver, Virgil Solis, shows a lord and lady hunting in this manner.

Catherine de Medici, the wife of Henry II, King of France, is credited with introducing to the French court the more practical side-saddle where the lady’s right leg was hooked round a pommel on the saddle. The huntress could then face forward, control the horse but still hunt in what was considered to be a more becoming style.

of being a young queen in a fractious male court and with her sadness at the news of the death of her uncle. She spent her time on the sporting activities which she enjoyed most and when in her house in St Andrews she tried to forget the responsibilities pressing in on her by playing the bourgeois housewife till she felt once more that she had the strength to be the queen.

James VI (1567-1625)

Of all the Stewart monarchs James VI was the one who spent most time hunting in the park at Falkland. After his marriage to Anne of Denmark in 1589 James granted her Falkland Palace as part of her dowry. He hunted daily in the park when he was in residence and particularly liked to hunt bucks because of their antlers or ‘spekinges’ (spikings) as he called them. He killed so many bucks that in 1586 he had to appeal to Elizabeth of England for a shipment of fallow bucks to restock the park. They duly arrived at Musselburgh and James had them transferred to Leith for the crossing to Fife. He then escorted them personally into the park. When in 1591 he once more over-hunted the park he again appealed to Elizabeth for 70 fallow bucks to be sent north but due to difficulties in catching the deer alive with nets called buckstalls none were ever sent. It was, therefore, all the more important that James did all he could to preserve what game there was in the park.

In 1580s David Murray of Gospetrie, the king’s Master of the Stable, replaced William Fernie as hereditary forester. James encouraged Murray, to be much more proactive in maintaining the park and the game within it. He had to feed oats to the deer in the ‘stormis of winter’ as well as taking care of the royal stud. He was urged to remove all the cattle which did not belong to the king and to arrest, try and fine anyone caught cutting trees or hunting and killing game without permission. In 1594 he forbad anyone to kill deer within 6 miles

James VI aged 20 attributed to Adrian Vanson, court painter to James VI. Image used with permission of the National Trust of Scotland.

of royal palaces including Falkland. In 1600 herons had not been nesting in the park and so when they started to nest again he ordered that no one should hawk or shoot herons anywhere in a broad swathe of Scotland between Strathearn, Fife and the Carse of Gowrie in order to give their numbers a chance to increase.

James’ finances were in bad shape and Falkland Palace suffered as a result. When Fynes Morrison visited Falkland in 1599 he said that the king was there ‘to follow the pastimes of hunting, for which this ground is much commended. But’, he wrote, ‘the Palace was of old building and almost ready to fall having nothing in it remarkable.’ The exchequer had tried to get James to increase the livestock which he kept in his parks and forests but at Falkland, at least, James resisted these moves. Deer remained the top priority and he continued to spend a month at a time in Falkland pursuing his sport. The park was still used as a source of game for the royal table and in 1577 the regent, James Douglas, Earl of Morton, had ordered William Fernie, the keeper of the park and palace, to send him two barren does (female fallow deer without calves) for the wedding of James Stewart with Lady Buccleuch in Edinburgh.

As we have seen, James liked to hunt by chasing the deer and he was keen to improve his techniques for par force hunting. He sought help from English horsemen and kennelmen in 1586 and in 1600 they or their successors may have been the unnamed Englishmen who hunted with him in August. After he became king of England in 1603 he did not forget Falkland. In 1606 he finally confirmed that Easter Cash was part of the park and had it properly enclosed. When he made a return visit to Scotland in 1617 he spent two weeks in Falkland. Prior to his visit he had asked for certain parts of the park pale to be broken down so that the deer could get used to the gaps and so would run through

them when they were being hunted, thus providing better sport. Despite this visit James’ departure south in 1603 marked the end of the heyday of Falkland as a royal hunting park.

The Impact of the Park

Showing the burgh around the palace.

Over the centuries the park had a mixed effect on the local population. Neighbouring lairds benefitted from the regular presence of the court in Fife by receiving patronage and preferment from the crown. The inhabitants of Falkland and local farmers benefitted from the market opportunities of supplying the palace and housing the overflow of courtiers and their servants when the court was in residence. They also enjoyed the benefits of the trading monopoly conveyed when Falkland was made a royal burgh in 1458.

On the other hand the local population were excluded from the resources of the park and no doubt suffered when deer escaped from the park or were hunted outside the pale. No one could hunt or kill a deer which escaped from the park even if it was on their own land. To judge by parliamentary enactments and by James VI’s instructions to David Murray poaching in parks had been a problem since the 15th century but the first specific reference to poachers in Falkland is in 1605 when Alex Morrison and William Haig, servants to one of the local lairds, were exiled from Fife for poaching a deer in the park.

Later HistoryThe park struggled on after James VI’s departure south but in the absence of regular royal visits poaching increased, the pale was broken down and the deer were not tended. Under Cromwell in 1652 some of the wood was cut, reportedly for a new citadel and barracks in Perth and troops were stationed in the park in 1653. After John, second Earl of Atholl, was granted the estate, including the park, in 1662 he started to rent out the lands of the park as small holdings. When Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, visited in 1708 the pale survived only ‘here and there’, the oak trees had gone and much of the land was under the plough. The present appearance of the park is the result of the agricultural improvements and enclosures started in the late 18th century by the Skenes of Hallyards, keepers of the palace and owners of the estate in 1787

and continued enthusiastically by the Bruce family when they bought the estate and became keepers in 1820. Walls were built, water courses re-channeled and a new drainage system constructed. Woodlands were planted in various places throughout the park: the spinneys or the hillocks to the east of the Dunshelt road, Lawson’s Knowe, Cash Wood and Cash Loch. In 1871 advice on planting and woodland management was given to Col. Hamilton Tyndal-Bruce’s factor, Major William Wood, by the well-known forester, James Brown. The mixture of species found in these woods today still shows signs of his work. These improvements continued throughout the 19th century and by 1900 the park had very much taken on its present appearance.

Falkland Palace and Park painted c1639 for Charles I. Artist: Alexander Keirincx. Title: Falkland Palace and the Howe of Fife. © Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

1) The Stables (NO2540760)2

In the time of James V and VI the stables lay across the road from the building presently called the stables. This was where the hunt met before heading out into the park and the park gate must have been more or less where the present gates to the palace now are. James V had quite a sports complex here with tennis court, archery butts, and the ‘nethir chow’, probably an area for a stick and ball game of some sort.

2) Spinneys and hillocks to east of Dunshelt road (NO258081)

It was on one of the small wooded mounds to the east of the Dunshelt road (B 936) that James VI watched the hunt begin in August 1600. In the 19th century these hillocks were unsuitable for agriculture either because they had been quarried or because of their hilly terrain and so they were planted with trees sometime between 1821 and 1830. They have been altered by cutting and planting since then.

3) The palace from the park (NO257088)

From the Darnoe track the view south towards Falkland shows how the palace and castle nestled in at the foot of the Lomonds and how the park could have set off the view of the castle to best advantage at the end of a long vista between woods.

2 Grid references relate to the Ordnance Survey Maps of the area.

Site of Stables at Falkland Palace.

The Park Today

Four hillocks/spinneys in middle distance.

Looking southwest from the park to the palace at the foot of the Lomond Hills.

4) The Queen’s Seat (NO252093)

In 1919 the field to the north of the most northerly wooded spinney to the east of the Dunshelt road was called the Queen’s Seat. Often field names can tell us about the earlier history of the area and this name may refer to the spot where one of the queens of Scotland, perhaps Mary of Gueldres, Mary Queen of Scots or Mary of Guise, waited for deer to be driven to her or where she watched deer being released from a fold and coursed by greyhounds. The last wooded hillock to the north (NO253087) would have made an ideal viewing point.

5) The Dunshelt Earthwork (NO246102)

This iron age earthwork is surrounded by three ditches which are clearly visible and is a reminder that this area was occupied long before the creation of a hunting forest and park. The earthwork seems to have been included within the park pale and its entrance which can still be seen as a level track across the ditches faces north into the park. One wonders if Mary of Gueldres may have used this earthwork for open-air feasts perhaps linked to hunts just like the wooden banqueting hall which was constructed at the far end of the park of Hesdin. Interestingly, a similar earthwork close to Stirling castle and within the park was thought of in the 14th century as King Arthur’s ‘round table’.

Strathmiglo

Wester Cash Easter Cash

River Eden

Cash WoodBallingall Burn

Pillars of Hercules

ChancefieldKilgour

Maspie Burn

Arraty Burn

Cash Loch

Woodmill

Lawson’s KnoweFalklandwood

Dunshelt

Raecruik

Nochnary

Darnoe

Falkland Palace

Falkland

2

3

1

4

5

6

7

8

Contains Ordnance Survey Data © Crown copyright and database right 2015

Queen’s Seat

1km1 mile Tour of Falkland Park

6) Cash Loch Wood (NO242094)

Cash Loch was probably made in the second half of the 17th century or thereafter to supply water to the Wood Mill which was used by the earl of Atholl’s tenants in the park.

The wood on the north side of the loch contains some very old alder stools which may go back as far as the 18th century. They may be descended from alder trees which once grew in the park and which in the late 16th century gave the name Alleris or Alders to the south western third of the park. In the 19th century horse chestnut and hornbeam were planted to improve the wood and a hawthorn hedge the remains of which can still be seen was planted to mark the northern boundary.

7) Cash Wood (NO237087)

The remains of the park pale can be seen running along the eastern edge of the wood. Excavations in 2016 led by Oliver O’Grady found that there had been an internal ditch which was filled in when ploughing started in the park in 17th and 18th centuries. Remains of a post-hole for the fence on top of the bank were also found. The discovery of 13th-century pottery in the bank and ditch dated the construction of the pale to the 13th century. There is a section of walling on the east side of the pale which may have been added in the early 17th century when Charles I approved a plan to put a wall round the park. It has been suggested that the hollow running on the west side of the bank might have been a track used by the park keeper’s servants when they were working

The park pale in Cash Wood looking north. The park lay on the right of the bank.

Dunshelt Earthwork.

Cash Loch Wood.

on the pale but the 2016 excavations showed that this feature or track is post-medieval and not directly connected with the park pale.

8) The Trenches and the Arraty Burn (NO234079) This large earthwork is a genuine puzzle. The trenches make the shape of a large V with two smaller V’s inside it. They are about 2.5 to 3 metres deep and 220 metres long. Originally they stretched about 45 metres farther east.

Satellite imagery which penetrates through vegetation to the ground shows that these earthworks are the remains of an old trackway. Such tracks are often seen when carts or animal hooves break the surface allowing water to erode the ground underneath. As one track becomes boggy or impassable traffic moves to a nearby track. At the Trenches traffic is concentrated towards a suitable crossing of the Arraty Burn to the west. Similar features exist in the woods on the other side of the burn where traffic carried on north to Perth and west to Kinross.

Community excavation, the Big Dig of 2016 financed by LLLP and led again by Oliver O’Grady, showed that one of the tracks had been maintained by cutting through the rock and by regularly shovelling out earth and sand which washed into it. The excavation also showed that the track had been used from approximately 1100AD to 1700AD.

After it had been replaced by a new route further south it might have been used as a system to guide deer into a kill zone just as elricks had been used elsewhere in Scotland. Intriguingly two place-names, first recorded in the 18th century, suggest that the Trenches had something to do with hunting. A gully running north off the Lomonds towards the south east of the Trenches was called Grewhound Den (Greyhound Den) and the field across the Arraty Burn at the foot of the Trenches was called Deerends which suggests that deer were killed there at some time. If this earthwork was ever used for this purpose - and it does seem unlikely - it would need to have been after it had ceased to be used as a trackway and when deer could still be found in the area.

The Trenches.Excavation of the Trenches in 2016.

Further ReadingJ. G Harrison, The Creation and Survival of some Scots Royal Landscapes, available online at www.johnscothist.com.

J Gilbert ‘Falkland Park to c1603’ in the Tayside and Fife Archaeological Journal vol 19 – 20 ( 2013-2014) at pp 78-102

S. Lasdun, The English Park, Royal Private and Public (1991) Andre Deutsch, London.

J Fletcher, Gardens of Earthly Delight, The History of Deer Parks (2011) Windgather Press, Oxford.

AcknowledgementsThe author is indebted to the Living Lomonds Landscape Partnership, Falkland Stewardship Trust, Ninian Crichton-Stuart and Helen Lawrenson for their generous support and assistance in producing this publication. Thanks also go to Claire Hubbard for her excellent work in the setting and designing of the booklet and to Marietta Crichton Stuart for reading the draft and offering helpful comments. The author has also depended on the work of John Harrison on royal parks, Simon Taylor on place-names, Peter Quelch and Coralie Mills on the history of the woods in the park (funded by LLLP), John Fletcher on the Trenches and on the behaviour and management of deer and Pamela McIlroy on the history of the Falkland Estate. Finally the contribution of the archaeologist, Oliver O’Grady, who excavated both the park pale and the Trenches has been invaluable. Nonetheless any errors remaining and the views expressed are the responsibility of the author alone.

Author: John M. Gilbert (2015)