Strange tales: the King of Scotland’s claret bill

Alexander III of Scotland was a prodigious drinker of wine and imported a great deal but suffered from the medieval monarch’s habitual tendency to shirk his bills – owing one poor wine merchant the equivalent of £1.7 million when he died.

Scotland was certainly at the outer limit of the medieval world but the tendency to view it at that time as a parochial, rainswept backwater, populated exclusively by unkempt, woad-wearing peasants, a la ‘Braveheart’ is not only misleading but simply wrong.

It is true that Scotland was not as populated nor as prosperous as its larger southern neighbour, England, but its kings and nobility and later the budding merchant classes were just as interested as any of their European counterparts with the acquisition of luxury goods – and especially wine.

Alexander III came to the throne as a boy of the age of seven in 1249. Like many young kings before and after him he came roaring out of the blocks as soon as he reached his majority – aged 21 in 1262 in his case – and went to war with Norway for control of the Western Isles, which he subsequently got, along with the Isle of Man, by treaty in 1266.

He built up trade as well. For many years, indeed going back into the 12^th century, the ever-mercantile Flemings had been building up a presence in Perth and towns along Scotland’s east coast, including St Andrews and Aberdeen, but especially in Berwick.

Today, Berwick-upon-Tweed is the most northerly town in England but for long periods in the Middle Ages it was very definitely Scottish; the area around the Forth and Tweed having been taken over by the Scots during the 10^th and 11^th centuries.

Henry II of England had taken Berwick from Alexander’s grandfather William I in 1174 but Henry’s son, Richard the Lionheart, had then sold the town back to William when the former was fundraising for his coming crusade.

Berwick, as an important depot for supplying the Scottish border castles, became the major trading port in Scotland and was, as one English chronicler in the time of Edward I noted: “A city so populous and of such trade, that it might justly be called another Alexandria, whose riches were the sea, and the waters its walls.”

The principal Scottish exports were raw materials such as wool (from the large flocks in the borders owned by monasteries and abbeys like Melrose), salt, salt fish, herrings, salmon, and hides and live animals such as falcons, greyhounds, horses and cattle which were all highly prized.

A good deal of wood, iron and grain were imported from England (when the two countries were at peace) but other luxury goods such as cloth and silks and armour from Flanders and Italy and wine from the Rhineland, Bordeaux and La Rochelle were high on the list of imports, and Flemish, French and Gascon merchants were quick to respond to the need for the latter.

There is an interesting theory that Loch Fyne, on the west coast of Scotland, got its name from this wine trade. The name in Gaelic translates as ‘vine’ or ‘wine’ and John Carrick in his book on the life and world of William Wallace written in the early 19^th century argues that wine was the main product brought up by French merchants trading around Argyll and Bute. As there is no evidence that grapes were ever grown in the area and it’s extremely unlikely that wine was ever made there, it stands to reason the loch may have gained its name from wine being imported, but it’s only a theory.

The amount of wine being imported into Scotland in the late 13^th century can be seen from the chamberlain’s accounts, again mentioned in Carrick’s book.

In 1263 the accounts show the royal household buying 178 hogsheads (11,214 gallons) of wine for the sum of £439 16s. 8d. and the following year a further 67 hogsheads and a pipe (around 4,347 gallons) costing £373 16s. 8d. Those sums today work out at roughly £379,500 and £322,600 respectively.

Carrick makes the valid point that in 1263 Alexander was likely laying in supplies for the Royal army as he was at that point fighting the Norwegians. Another example of a medieval king supplying large amounts of wine for an army was previously examined by the drinks business in relation to Henry V for the Agincourt campaign.

As for the second batch of wines; one might suppose that they were either of superior quality to the first which is why they cost almost as much for only half the amount or the Second Barons’ War in England at that time added some sort of impediment to trade. Perhaps ships were harder to come by which raised transport costs or even that the vineyards had been hit by a bad frost or other natural disaster which caused lower than usual yields and forced prices up – see how little things can change.

Nonetheless, we can see that medieval Scotland enjoyed lively trading ties with other kingdoms for all manner of goods.

Alexander III though, while by no means the first or last king to encourage the importing of wine to Scotland, does seem to have been more than usually enthusiastic in this regard.

Unfortunately, as with so many medieval rulers, while he had expensive or at least prodigious tastes he did not always have the means or inclination to pay for them.

So it was that he came to owe one Gascon merchant in particular the spectacular sum of £2,197 8s. – a sum that also included some grain shipments but of which wine was a substantial part, around 26,400 gallons (100,000 litres) according to Rod Philip in his recent book on French wine. That sum today has a real price of £1,740,000.

The merchant’s name was John de Masun and Alexander’s chronic late payment eventually prompted Masun to ask his feudal overlord, Edward I of England (and Duke of Gascony), to intercede on his behalf.

The Merchant, a character in “The Canterbury Tales“, a collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century and ‘told’ by a group of pilgrims on their way to the shrine of St Thomas à Becket at Canterbury Cathedral, Kent. This series of illustrations is from “Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales”, edited by John Saunders, publ. J.M. Dent & Co, 1889, and are based on those in the Ellesmere Manuscript. (Now in the public domain.)

In one letter dated 17 May 1284, it is noted that Edward has written to Alexander three times asking him to pay the debt but on Alexander’s suggestion that Masun appear to collect the money owed, Masun later writes he was seized by the king’s men and cast into prison for a short spell.

It seems that Alexander did make some attempt to pay off the debt, George Chalmers in his book on the history of Scotland printed in 1810 says that: “Alexander assigned to him [Masun] the customs of Berwick.”

Whether he granted Masun the entire customs of Berwick is open to question but we do know that whatever he promised, and for however long, by the time of his death in 1286 the debt was still not paid in full. This suggests that while Alexander may have promised the proceeds of Berwick in a bid to get the merchant off his back, he may not have authorised any such thing.

Still being pursued by the dogged Gascon Alexander pulled off the oldest and most foolproof trick in the book for escaping a creditor – he died.

In 1285, then aged 43, Alexander had remarried a French noblewoman, Yolande de Dreux, his first wife, Margaret of England, having died in 1275.

In March 1286 celebrating this new union in Edinburgh Castle Alexander set upon the idea of riding to Fife that night to be with his young queen for her birthday the following day.

The party had been drinking heavily and the weather was worsening. Fife is over 30 miles from Edinburgh, a hard ride at night on bad roads and in bad weather. His nobles advised against it but Alexander brushed aside their concerns and set off anyway. At some point he came separated from his guides and his body was found on the beach the next morning with a broken neck. It is likely that his horse lost its footing or spooked and threw him and his fall down a steep, rocky incline was the end of him.

With no heirs his kingdom lapsed into crisis that would lead to English occupation and Scotland’s wars of independence under the legendary figures of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce.

Poor old Masun meanwhile was still owed money from Alexander and was now forced to petition Edward again to lobby on his behalf.

Sadly the last record there seems to be is from Edward ordering the new Scottish king John Balliol to redeem the debt but whether he did or not isn’t clear.

So if ever a wine merchant feels that they’ve discovered a difficult client who won’t pay their bills, perhaps they should be glad they’re not dealing with King Alexander III of Scotland.