In 1529 there was a small battle on the Island of Orkney, known as the Battle of Summerdale. This was, in the best tradition, a fight about taxation. The Earl of Orkney was at that time a young boy, so the right to collect his taxes had been sold to tax farmers who were widely hated. Two illegitimate half-brothers of the Earl eventually rebelled. They seized control of Orkney and declared 1) they were now in charge; and 2) taxation was eliminated and the tax farmers outlawed. But the friends of the Earl's mother responded by raising a force of 500 men under the command of the Earl of Caithness and invading Orkney. The story:
It was said that when the Earl of Caithness and his troops landed in Orphir, a witch walked before them on the march.
The crone unwound two balls of wool - one blue, the other red. The red ball was the first to run out and the witch assured the Earl that the side whose blood was spilled first would certainly be defeated.
It would appear that the Earl put great faith in the witch's proclamation. So much so that he was determined to slay the first Orcadian he met - man, woman or child - to ensure his victory on the day.
The first person he met was a defenceless young herd boy. The Caithness men fell on the hapless youth and murdered him. Only after the lad lay dead at their feet did they learn from the witch that their victim was no Orcadian - he was a Caithness boy who had taken refuge in Orkney.
Unnerved by this event, the Caithness men quickly broke when the fighting started, casting their weapons into Kirbister Loch and fleeing. Those who did run fast enough were killed.
Oh come now! You left out the best part - how it all ended!
ReplyDeleteThe rightful ruler, William Sinclair, was captured by the rebels, and jailed in his own former castle, which he had been forced to surrender not long before when he fled to Caithness.
King James V of Scotland, who had authorized the attack on the rebels in the first place, finally got involved directly instead of leaving it to his vassals to sort out, and he stepped in to throw his kingly weight around. He formally reaffirmed the rights of Lady Margaret Sinclair (William's mother) to possess Orkney, effectively delivering an unspoken ultimatum to the rebels - if they went against his decree, they'd then be rebelling against the king directly.
You might think this would be sufficient, and that they'd be duly cowed, and that would be the end of it - but it turns out that King James was still a little unsure about Orkney's position as a Scottish holding, as it had belonged to the Norwegians only 52 years prior, and they might seek to regain it - if he pressed the rebels too hard, they might change allegiance to his rivals.
And so he took the extraordinary step of knighting James Sinclair, a man who had rebelled against his rightful lord, on the basis that he demonstrated valor and skill in defending Orkney from outside invasion - nevermind that it was an invasion by the rightful lord wrongfully driven into exile, and which had been given the blessing of the King himself...
All in all, it was a pointless rebellion that achieved nothing of significance, except killing a bunch of people for no reason, and sowing bad blood between the Orkneys and Caithness for centuries to come.
All because a bunch of people didn't want to pay their taxes, and they were emboldened to not do so by an illegitimate member of the rightful ruler's family, who did not stand to inherit and was upset about it, but DID happen to have a lot of money and status in the local community, which he leveraged to try to usurp power for himself.
A rich man, posing as a friend to the poor, works to incite mob violence and lawlessness against the lawful establishment, for the actual purpose of enriching and empowering himself even further, but presents it as patriotism and justice! And at the end of the day, despite engaging in a literal coup, he gets to walk away with no punishment - and in fact, gets rewarded!
The more things change...