Qualla: Siege of St Andrews Castle

Siege of St Andrews Castle: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gwen and James Anderson, CC BY-SA 2.0. On the first of March 1546, the Protestant preacher George Wishart was burned at the stake in front of St Andrews Castle. Cardinal David Beaton watched from a cushioned window above. Wishart was thirty-three years old, a scholar who had translated the Helvetic Confession into Scots and preached the Reformation across Fife and Angus. He died slowly, the way fires of green wood always made men die. Eighty-eight days later, on the morning of 29 May, sixteen men forced their way into the castle and stabbed Beaton to death in his bedchamber. Then they hung his body from the same window from which he had watched Wishart burn. The siege that followed lasted eighteen months and broke a country.

Image: Gwen and James Anderson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Siege of St Andrews Castle: The Assassins Inside

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bubobubo2, CC BY-SA 3.0. The conspirators were Fife lairds, well-connected Protestant gentry, some of them friends of the burned preacher, others men who had quarrelled with Beaton over land or politics. They divided into four teams. Norman Leslie, Master of Rothes, slipped in disguised as a mason, explo...

Image: Bubobubo2 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Siege of St Andrews Castle: The Castilians and the Mine

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Scotland_location_map.svg: Eric Gaba, NordNordWest derivative work: Uwe Dedering, CC BY-SA 3.0. The conspirators barricaded themselves inside and called themselves the Castilians. Regent Arran, James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran and Governor of Scotland, could not act immediately because he was busy at Dumbarton Castle. By autumn 1546 the Scottish siege began in earnest. Arr...

Image: Scotland_location_map.svg: Eric Gaba, NordNordWest derivative work: Uwe Dedering | CC BY-SA 3.0

Siege of St Andrews Castle: Knox Walks In

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bubobubo2, CC BY-SA 3.0. In April 1547, during a truce while the besieged waited for a papal absolution that would, on paper, allow them to surrender on good terms, the Castilians invited a man named John Knox to enter the castle. He had been Wishart's bodyguard once. He was already known as a fiery prea...

Image: Bubobubo2 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Siege of St Andrews Castle: The French Fleet and the End

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bubobubo2, CC BY-SA 3.0. The papal absolution arrived in April. The Castilians refused to surrender, saying privately that they would rather have a measure of wheat than all the Pope's remissions. Henry VIII of England had died in January, and the new king Edward VI sent supplies but never the army that ...

Image: Bubobubo2 | CC BY-SA 3.0