Agnes Randolph, countess of Dunbar: "from the record of Scotland's heroes, none can presume to erase her"

Agnes Randolph, "Black Agnes," countess of Dunbar (siege of Dunbar Castle begins 13 January 1338)

When Agnes Randolph is remembered today, it is often for her soubriquet, "Black Agnes," which adds a bit of mystery or a hint of danger, even though it refers only to her dark coloring. More important than her complexion is her five-months' long defense of Dunbar Castle against besieging English forces under the command of William Montague, first earl of Salisbury. 

The ruins of Dunbar Castle
(from The Castles of Scotland)

Agnes Randolph was the daughter of Thomas Randolph, created first earl of Moray by his uncle, Robert I of Scotland ("Robert the Bruce"). Randolph fought in the Scottish wars of independence, attended his uncle's coronation in 1306, was taken captive by the English at the battle of Methven, was recaptured by the Scots in 1307, commanded troops at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314, and was regent of Scotland (1329-1332) for Robert I's son, David, who at the age of five succeeded his father on the throne. Through her father, then, Agnes was a grandniece of Robert the Bruce.

Agnes's mother was Isobel Stewart of Bonkyl, the daughter of Sir John Stewart and Margaret Bonkyl, the daughter of Sir Alexander of Bonkyl. 

Although the exact date is unknown, Agnes Randolph seems to have been born about the year 1312. A papal dispensation for her marriage to Patrick de Dunbar (b. c. 1285), ninth earl of Dunbar and second (or fourth, but whose counting, huh?) earl of March, was dated 13 August 1320. (The dispensation was needed because Agnes and Dunbar were related "in the fourth degree.") A second dispensation, dated 16 January 1324, was issued, but the two had already married by that time; according to the dispensation, they could remain married, and any children, whether born or yet to be born, were legitimate. 

But there had been no children, nor would there be. If a woman's principal duty was to provide her husband with a son and heir, Agnes failed Dunbar (who, however, had a son by his first wife, though that boy, John, seems to have predeceased his father).

Though she may have had no children, Agnes Randolph served her husband well. Rather than providing him  with a child, she preserved his castle. 

Although Dunbar had given sanctuary to Edward II after the battle of Bannockburn (1314) and helped the defeated English king escape Scotland, he was reconciled with the Scottish king, supporting him, fighting for him, and asserting Scottish independence from the English. After the battle of Halidon Hill (1433), however, he paid fealty to the English king, Edward III. Dunbar's castle was razed, and he was compelled to rebuild it at his own cost and to garrison English soldiers there.  

But Dunbar soon renounced his (coerced?) support of the English, and by the end of 1434, he rejoined Scottish forces. 

And so, in January 1438, when the English laid siege to Dunbar Castle and Dunbar way away fighting, the castle's defense was up to Alice Randolph. I love Sir Walter Scot's account in his Provincial Antiquities of Scotland: 

This stronghold was left by the earl under the command of his heroic countess, Agnes Randolph. . . . This heroine, at a time when almost all the fortresses in the south of Scotland were subdued by the enemy, defended Dunbar with a zeal and magnanimity worthy the illustrious blood which flowed in her veins. . . . Dunbar, being of the utmost consequence to both parties, the English laid close siege to it, under the command of a renowned leader, Montague, Earl of Salisbury. But he met with a more than equal adversary. . . .

Scott's account of the siege of Dunbar castle is filled with delightful anecdotes about Alice Randolph's defense, but these incidents are repeated in more sober accounts as well, such as the entry on her in the Dictionary of National Biography and in Ben Johnson's essay at Historic UK.

Among her other acts of defiance, Agnes ridicules her adversaries by sending out young women with handkerchiefs to dust off the walls of the castle at the end of every day's battering by the English. She crushes a huge siege engine brought to the castle by dropping a giant bolder onto the machinery and smashing it. And when her captive brother, the earl of Moray, is brought before the castle and the besiegers threaten to hang him unless Agnes surrenders the castle, she tells them to go ahead--if they kill her brother, she will then inherit the earldom, becoming countess of Moray. Salisbury tries to bribe the gatekeeper to gain access by trickery, and he attempts to starve out the defenders, without success. 

Fanciful accounts of the siege or not, the English withdrew after the castle was relieved by Sir Alexander Ramsay, who avoided the blockade of the harbor and was able to resupply it. The English siege of Dunbar Castle ended on 10 June, when Salisbury and his army withdrew.

After the siege of Dunbar Castle, we lose sight of Agnes Randolph--or, at least, I haven't been able to locate much information at all about her life after 1338. When her brother--the one who had been threatened with death at the siege of Dunbar Castle--died in 1346, the earldom reverted to the crown, but Agnes and her sister, Isobel, inherited significant properties, including "the Isle of Man, the lordship of Annandale, the baronies of Morton and Tibber in Nithsdale, of Mordington, Longformacus, and Dunse in Berwickshire, of Mochrum in Galloway, Cumnock in Ayrshire, and Blantyre in Clydesdale." 

Interestingly, however, Dunbar seems to have claimed the title of earl of Moray in his wife's right. According to James Balfour's The Scots Peerage, "Some time after 1346 the Earl assumed the title of Moray, in addition to that of March, and he appears as Earl of March and Moray in Parliament, on 31 August 1358." In a 1359 charter, Dunbar is referred to as earl of Moray, and we see the same reference in a charter dated 24 May 1367: "Patricius de Dunbar, Comes Marchie et Morauie." 

Agnes Randolph's seal, 

from Rachel Meredith Davis,

"Material evidence? Re-Approaching 

Elite Women’s Seals and Charters 

in Late Medieval Scotland"

(Proceedings of the Society

of Antiquaries of Scotland)

To this same document is appended the seal of Agnes Randolph, described in detail by Rachel Meredith Davis:

The slightly damaged seal features four shields arranged crosswise, coming to a point at the centre of the seal. The seal bears the arms of [Agnes's] natal and marital lineages. Reading the seal from the top, clockwise, it features the arms of Scotland, a lion rampant within a double tressure; the arms of Randolph (Moray), three cushions within a double tressure; and the arms of March and Dunbar, which were the same, a lion rampant in a border charged with eight roses, represented on two distinct shields. The legend is damaged, but reads "…GNETIS CO[M]ITISSE MAR…ET MOR…" which suggests that the legend corresponded to the way in which she was named in the charter as "Agnes Countess of March and Moray [Agnes comitissa Marchie et Moravie]."

As Davis also notes, "The claims to Moray were perhaps exaggerated, as she was the daughter of the Earl of Moray but she did not have possession of the earldom."

This seal is the last documented reference to Agnes Randolph. Fiona Watson's entry for Patrick Dunbar in the online Dictionary of National Biography indicates that Agnes Dunbar died in 1369, at about the time her husband died.

During her life, she spent some time at Mordington House, owned by her father, and it is claimed that she is buried in a vault there. 

The description of Agnes Randolph in the title of this post ("from the record of Scotland's heroes, none can presume to erase her") comes from Sir Walter Scott.

There is an extended account of the siege of Dunbar Castle in John Parker Lawson's 1839 Historical Tales of the Wars of Scotland And of the Border Raids, Forays and Conflicts. Click here (this link takes you to the 1849 edition, available to read at Google Books).

There seems to be no book about Agnes Randolph, not even a work of fiction--if anyone deserves a historical novel, she does . . . 

Saint Isabel of Aragon, queen of Portugal

Isabel of Aragon, queen of Portugal and Catholic Saint (born 4 January 1271*)

Isabel of Aragon, born in Sargossa in 1271, was the third child of the Infante Peter of Aragon--after the death of his father in 1271, he became Peter III of Aragon and Valencia. Isabel's mother was Constance of Sicily, who inherited her father's claim to the throne of Sicily, a throne later claimed by Peter in his wife's right. 

A sixteenth-century painting of

Isabel of Aragon, queen of Portugal,

artist unknown

(Museu Nacional de Machado de Castro)

In addition to their daughter Isabel, who was to become queen of Portugal, the couple had five other children. 

Three of Isabel's brothers would become kings: Alfonso, who became king of Aragon and Valencia after his father's death in 1285; James, who became king of Sicily after his father's death in 1285 and king of Aragon and Valencia after his brother Alfonso's death in 1291; and Frederick, who was regent of Sicily for his brother James (after James became king of Aragon) and who then, in 1296, became king of Sicily (after James was willing to cede Sicily to France in a treaty, and the Sicilians refused to be ceded). 

Isabel's younger sister, Yolande, married Robert of Naples, but Yolande died before she could become queen when Robert became king of Naples in 1309; after his death in 1343, he was succeeded by his granddaughter, Joanna I of Naples. 

Isabel's youngest brother, Peter, never became king of anything--he eventually married Guillemette of Béarn in 1291, but he died in 1296, just twenty years old.

Isabel's father also had a number of illegitimate children with two different women. His children with  Maria Nicolau were born before his marriage, those with Ines Zapata during his marriage. 

So, that was Isabel of Aragon's family. As for Isabel herself, she was named for her great aunt, Elizabeth of Hungary, who had been canonized in 1235. Elizabeth of Hungary's sister, Yolande, had married to James I of Aragon and was the mother of Isabel's father, Peter. The name was appropriate for Isabel, who received "a strict and pious education." According to the brief entry on Isabel of Portugal in the Catholic Encyclopedia, she "led a life of strict regularity and self-denial from her childhood."

That "childhood" did not last long, however--Isabel was married by proxy in February 1282, when she was just twelve years old: "I, [Isabel], daughter of the Most Illustrious Don Pedro, by the grace of God king of Aragon, hereby bestow my body as the legitimate wife of Dom Dinis, king of Portugal and of the Algarve, in his absence as if he were present. . . . " By June, she was in Portugal, the wedding celebrated in the city of Trancosa on 26 June 1282.

This rather awkward full-length portrait of

Isabel of Aragon and her husband, 

Dinis of Portugal, dating to the 

mid-seventeenth century, hangs in the 

Sala dos Capelos in the University of Coimbra

In Portugal, Isabel fulfilled her most important duty as queen, giving birth to two children. Her daughter, Constance, was born in 1290, her son Afonso, in 1291. Constance would eventually become queen of Castile, marrying Ferdinand IV of Castile in 1302, while Afonso would succeed his father as king of Portugal in 1325. 

In addition to her reputation for piety, Isabel played a role in politics, acting as something of an intermediary in the negotiations between her husband and Ferdinand of Castile in 1297, and then between her brother James and Ferdinand in 1304. She also had to intervene in the deadly feud between her husband and her son, Afonso, during a civil war that pitted father against son between 1322 and 1324. Years later, in 1336, she would once again be needed to intervene in politics when her brother, now king of Portugal, went to war with Ferdinand of Castile's son, Alfonso, who had succeeded his father as king of Castile. For her diplomatic efforts, she became known as "the Peacemaker."

Isabel of Portugal died on 4 July 1336, shortly after her successful intervention in the conflict between her brother and Alfonso of Castile. As recounted in the Catholic Encyclopedia, "the exertion brought on her final illness; and as soon as her mission was fulfilled she died of a fever, full of heavenly joy, and exhorting her son to the love of holiness and peace."

Isabel of Aragon, queen of Portugal, was buried in the Convent of Santa Clara in Coimbra, which she had "re-founded" and to which she had devoted herself after the death of her husband. Known for her faith, piety, and good works during her life, she was credited with miracles by the faithful after her death. (One of these miracles is virtually identical to the "miracle of the roses" for which Elizabeth of Hungary is known.) She was beatified in 1516 by Pope Leo X and canonized in 1626 by Urban VIII. Her feast day is now celebrated on 4 July.

In 1677, because of frequent flooding at the convent, her body was transferred to the Convent of Santa Clara-a-Nova, also in Coimbra, built to replace the older convent. 

 

*Isabel's exact date of birth is not always cited--for the purposes of this post, I'm going with the date provided by the Vatican's Dicastery for the Causes of Saints (Dicastero delle Cause dei Santi).