Rothesay Castle and the Island of Bute.
Professor Richard Oram.
When James I’s grandfather, Robert Stewart, succeeded to the Scottish throne in 1371 as King Robert II, he was already lord of a great heritage that was scattered from the Firth of Clyde in the west to East Lothian and the Borders in the east, and north into Highland Perthshire and Strathspey. As king, these so-called ‘Stewartry lands’ remained in his and his successors’ possession and provided them with a reservoir of manpower and wealth upon which they could draw.
The island of Bute, administered from the thirteenth-century castle at Rothesay, was a key component of the Stewartry. The Brandanes, as the folk of Bute were called, provided their lords with a staunchly loyal fighting force, while their island was a source of supplies – fish, cattle and grain – from which they fed their royal household. Rothesay, as the symbol of Stewart lordship in Bute, was enlarged and modernised under the early Stewart kings.
Although the castle continued to be an important royal centre and occasional residence until the early sixteenth century, its heyday was in the 1390s and early 1400s under James’s father, Robert III. When King Robert lost his grip on the day-to-day government of his realm to his younger brother, Robert, earl of Fife and Menteith, he had withdrawn to the Stewartry lands and spent much of his time at his mainland castle of Dundonald or at Rothesay.
The royal apartments at Rothesay were heavily remodelled in the 1490s by King James IV, but they seem to have been extensively altered a century earlier by his great-great-grandfather, Robert III. The inner half of the upper floor of the gatehouse range (to the left of the area of scaffolding in the picture) appears to have been remodelled as a great chamber for the king, where he could still display his royal status despite his loss of power. It was to Rothesay that he had withdrawn in March 1406 following the collapse of his attempt to reassert his personal authority as king and it was in the bedchamber-cum-business room of his great chamber that he died on 4 April 1406, days after receiving news of James’s capture at sea by English pirates.