Black Agnes

One of the roles of a noblewoman in the medieval world was to manage her lord husband’s lands while he was away at war.

Despite their defeat in 1314 by King Robert the Bruce at the Battle of Bannockburn, English forces returned to Scotland in 1338, intent on conquering the Scots. On January 13, they arrived outside the mighty gates of Dunbar Castle near the fallen town of Berwick, expecting an easy victory. But Black Agnes, Countess of Dunbar and March, thus nicknamed either for her dark hair or her bad temper, was not about to give them one.

The English demanded that Agnes surrender. She had few guards inside the castle to help her, but she sent back this somewhat poetic reply:

"Of Scotland’s King, I haud my house,

He pays me meat and fee,

And I will keep my gude auld house,

while my house will keep me."

The Earl of Salisbury, who commanded the attackers, answered her rebuff by launching stones at the castle walls. As the catapults stopped firing, Agnes sent her maids to dust off the battlements with white handkerchiefs. When Salisbury tried to bring down her walls with a ram, Agnes had huge boulders thrown down to smash the English machinery.

Having previously captured her brother, the Earl of Moray, the English paraded him in front of Agnes’s walls and threatened to kill him unless she surrendered. She simply shrugged and told them to go ahead, as when her childless brother died, she would inherit his lands and title. Salisbury quickly recognised the flaw in his argument and let the Earl live.

The siege dragged on, and after five months of trying, Salisbury realised that he would never get the better of Agnes, so the would-be conquerors marched away.

A depiction of 'Black Agnes' in H E Marshall's 'Scotland's Story', published in 1906.

Sourced from articles by Ben Gazur and by Ben Johnson for Historic UK.