Sir James Sinclair of Brecks

Sinclair of Eday
Sinclair of Warsetter
Sinclair of Finnekumla, Sweden
Sinclair of Toab, Brabster and Sabay

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Both James Sinclair of Brecks and his brother Edward of Strom were illegitimate sons of Sir William Sinclair of Warsetter by the same mother, whose name is unknown. according to the Orcadian historian J. Storer Clouston, she must have been from the family surnamed Cara in South Ronaldsay, as both James and Edward acquired udal lands which had formerly been in the possession of the Cara family. Brecks was also part of the Cara lands in South Ronaldsay.

After their father’s death (sometime after July 1522 and before May 1527), Edward and James effectively ruled Orkney and Shetland between them, with James based in Tankerness in St Andrews, Orkney, and Edward’s main estate at Strom in Whiteness, Shetland. Lady Margaret Hepburn had been granted a continuation of the tack of Orkney and Shetland after her husband Lord Henry Sinclair’s death at the battle of Flodden in 1513 and she held it for the next 27 years.

There were problems when Lady Margaret’s payments to the Exchequer were either in arrears or not paid at all in some years. Historian William P. L. Thomson suggests the Warsetter brothers may have been misappropriating some of the rent they were collecting on Lady Margaret’s behalf. We do know that one of Lady Margaret’s reasons for a shortfall in 1525 was because the islands were ‘completely laid waste’ by the Sinclair brothers. There was an attack on Shetland by the English that same year and the Treasury afforded her an £80 remission of the rent as a consequence.

By February 1526, Lady Margaret’s son, Lord William Sinclair, had begun flexing his muscles and his followers took possession of the Bishops Palace in Kirkwall, until he was subsequently forced by the Lords of Council to hand it over to the newly appointed Bishop of Orkney, Robert Maxwell. A few months later, Lady Margaret granted her son the custody of Kirkwall Castle as Governor, with powers to administer justice; a decision clearly designed to remove the authority of James Sinclair, who had taken over the position of Justice from his father. Lord William duly ensconced himself in Kirkwall Castle, but during the course of those two years he aggravated the islanders to such an extent that one night during Easter 1528, outside the castle walls, James, his brother Edward and their companions set upon Lord William and captured him.

According to Lord William’s version in his later complaint to the King, seven of Lord William’s companions were allegedly killed in cold blood, whilst disarmed and on their knees begging for mercy, including three Sinclairs: John, Nicol and David, described as ‘brether bairns’ or nephews of James and Edward. Lord William was summarily ejected from Orkney and sailed off back to the mainland. There he sought refuge with another cousin, John Sinclair, the Earl of Caithness, and jointly plotted revenge, which was subsequently backed by royal authority. His appeal to the Lords of Council heavily criticised his cousin James and described him as ‘kingis like, as he war ane King in thai partis, and lik as thar wer na law, king nor justice in this realme, in his contemptioun and lychtlying of your Grace’s autoritie, and in evil exempill to utheris to do siclik and this remaine unpunist.’

By the following May, Lord William had received royal letters commanding the Orcadian rebels to surrender the castle and submit to justice, and the Earl of Caithness had been authorised to assist Lord William in enforcing the mandate. A messenger named David Lawrie was sent to Orkney with that mandate but James had him locked up in prison and ignored it. By that point, the invasion force was clearly already assembled, as within a matter of days, they had left Caithness. On 7 June 1529, the Earl, Lord William and 500 men landed on the Orphir coast, marched up the side of the Loch of Kirbister and met the Orkney and Shetlanders, headed by James and Edward at the valley of Summerdale.

In the carnage, according to Lord William’s version in his subsequent complaint, thirty men were killed in the first onslaught, including the Earl of Caithness. Lord William himself was captured, as was his son, also named William, whilst an Orcadian version of the story says the Earl fled and got as far as the farm of Oback, where he hid amongst the farm buildings only to be captured and killed. Then, apparently, his head was sent back to Caithness in defiance. In Lord William’s version, he also says one hundred men died as they tried to reach the safety of their ships. Twenty-two sailors already onboard a transport vessel were brought to shore, killed, stripped naked and their bodies thrown back into the sea. Even twenty days after the battle, thirty men were dragged from the sanctuary of various churches, including St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, stripped and slain in contempt of God and the Holy Church.

William goes on to say that on his brother’s orders, Edward of Strom then went to Shetland and executed without trial another relative, Magnus, the son of Sir David Sinclair of Sumburgh, along with three of his followers, simply because they supported Lord William. For the same reason, Edward apparently also killed seven more of Lord William’s supporters in a barn somewhere in Shetland. Sometime in July, James arrived in Shetland and executed Nicol Hall, the lawman, with his followers, hanged another ‘by his own hand’ and at the same time executed three young boys ‘for malice he had to thare masteris.’ Meanwhile, Lord William, who had been released after the battle, secured a royal letter of authority charging James to release his son, but seemingly James ignored the letter and his son died in captivity.

All in all, Lord William asserted that over 300 men were slaughtered and although the facts he presents are most likely embellished to further his cause for justice, there is equally likely some truth in it. As Thomson says of the gratuitous violence in his history of Orkney, ‘Even in saga times, there had been few battles on this scale.’ The Scottish government seemed to have been at a loss as to how to react to the situation in Orkney. Lord William’s pleas for James to be ‘haistely punist with all rigour’ fell on deaf ears and neither was William reinstated in his appointment as Justice of Orkney, although that did not stop him petitioning the government on four further occasions. Up to 1581, he was attempting to pursue his claim to his great-grandfather Earl William’s conquest lands, but ultimately he failed to get any support from the crown. To quote the historian Peter D. Anderson, ‘The Warsetter Sinclairs had sat down in the conquest lands and the Caithness Sinclairs never forgot or forgave their loss.’

Meanwhile, James once again designated himself ‘Justice of Orkney’ without royal authority as if nothing had changed. In 1533, he ignored a summons to appear before the English Council to answer for the seizure of the cargo of an English ship named Andro and Graith of Kings Lynn, which he had seized in North Ronaldsay. James was also the subject of a complaint to the Scottish crown in 1535 by Thomas Miller, an English merchant who presumably also had his cargo misappropriated. There are records from the early 1400s onwards of Orkney being subjected to raids by English fleets on their way to the fishing waters off Iceland; in 1535 even King James V complained that the inhabitants of the North Isles were being taken as slaves, servants and prisoners, and of course, James’s own ancestor Earl Henry I, apparently died during an English attack on Orkney.

James had elevated his position at the Scottish court by marrying very well; his wife was Barbara Stewart, the daughter of the Lord Chancellor, Andrew, Lord Avondale, who had died at Flodden in 1513. Barbara’s brother, Lord Henry, was the second husband of Margaret Tudor, sister of the English King Henry VIII and, more importantly, the mother of King James V. Surprisingly, on 17 June 1535, James was legitimated along with his brother, David Sinclair of Brugh and his illegitimate son, William, plus James’ own illegitimate sons, James and Henry. He was knighted and, on top of that, he received a contentious feudal grant of the islands of Sanday and Stronsay, plus the ‘holmes’ of North Ronaldsay, Papa Stronsay and Auskerry, for an annual payment of 200 marks. This feudal grant was contentious in that it imposed Scots law on the islands, completely ignored the rights of the existing udal landowners and it also gave Sir James the right to leave the feu grant to a single heir, which was not the custom in Orkney or Shetland at the time.

Given the bloodshed Sir James was personally responsible for both before, during and after the battle of Summerdale, it seems incredulous that he was rewarded rather than punished for having committed murder on a grand scale. Luckily for him, not only was he well connected at court, it is highly likely that a close relation and favourite of King James V, Oliver Sinclair of Pitcairn, had a hand in James’ case; in fact, in 1541, Oliver was himself granted the tack of Orkney and Shetland. The King may have also had reason for concern that Sir James could instigate negotiations with the Danish throne, which still intended to reclaim the islands for itself. He was also aware of Sir James’ popularity amongst the Orcadians and Shetlanders, so perhaps rewarding him was the King’s best option of ensuring his loyalty whilst keeping the peace in the northern isles.

Sir James did not enjoy his new found status for very long, however. Adam Abell, a friar at Jedburgh Abbey, writes a scathing account in his chronicle, named ‘A Riot or Quheil of Tyme’. Coincidentally, the original manuscript of Abell’s work was lost during the Covenanter’s raid on Roslin Castle and Chapel on the night of 11 December 1688. Father Hay mentions in his Genealogie, ‘… I lost several books of note, and amongst others, the originall manuscript of Adam Abell which I had of Lord Tarbat, then [Lord] Register.’ In it, Adam Abell mentions that he knew James well, shortly before the King knighted him. In Abell’s opinion, James should have been hanged for his wicked life and goes on to say that he had apparently been holding court in Orkney with ‘great gloriatioun and arrogance.’ He then describes how in 1536, around the feast of the nativity of St John (24 June), Sir James received a summons from the King, apparently demanding an explanation of his conduct. That same night, James went to bed but could not sleep. He rose at first light, leaving the King’s letter and his ring under his wife’s side of the bed as she lay sleeping, and left his house at Linksness in Tankerness. Abell says James spent some time dancing around the peat stack in the yard, pulling peats out and throwing them back, jumped into ‘a foul, deep dub’ then suddenly threw off his clothes and bonnet, took a run up the nearby headland, leapt into the sea and drowned. No one knows the reason behind this sudden onset of suicidal madness but, as a result, James’s property was confiscated by the Crown on the grounds that he had wilfully slain himself.

A few years later, King James V was once again trying to bring peace between the warring factions of the Sinclair family and, in April 1539, he granted Barbara Stewart the estate which had been forfeited from her deceased husband. In September 1539, both Lord William and Edward Sinclair of Strom were at Falkland Palace, where the King forced them to enter into a bond of manrent – a contract of alliance with each party providing security of £2,000, a huge sum of money in those days – to ensure they both upheld the agreement, whereby all the enmity and feuding between them was to be put aside and that they cooperate as a means of pacifying the islands and restoring good governance there. One of the witnesses to this bond was Oliver of Pitcairn, once again showing his influence with the King and his interest in the affairs of the islands. Two weeks later, Edward of Strom, his half-brother Magnus Sinclair of Warsetter, and thirty other gentlemen from Orkney and Shetland, including six other Sinclairs, obtained a formal respite under the Privy Seal for their part in the slaughter of the Earl of Caithness at Summerdale and also for any crimes they had subsequently committed in the ten-year interval.

James’s sons, James and Henry, although legitimised, were not born of his marriage to Barbara Stewart and moreover, legitimacy only provided lawful means to pass on any land and goods they themselves acquired during their lifetimes. It is not actually known whether James and Henry survived until adulthood; they may have, but there is no record of what happened to them. In the end, James’s daughter Margaret became his only legitimate heiress. Margaret’s daughter, Janet Halcro married a distant relative, a descendant of the Rosslyn side of the family, William Sinclair of Eday. One of their two daughters, Alesone, married a later William Sinclair of Warsetter, leaving three sons. See Sinclair of Warsetter for further information on that family.

Nina Cawthorne

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