Black Patie

We have various schools of history, two in particular: a traditional Whig school and the Marxist school which is class driven. I’ve recently come round to the ‘Scoundrel school’ which posits that whatever school you choose, the scoundrel ultimately comes out on top. Driven to despair by capitalist scoundrels a communist alternative swiftly unleashes scoundrels of its own. The devil and pond scum will out. 

I was thinking of this when reading about ‘Black Patie’ which sounds like something you might find in a delicatessen.

Earl Patrick was an illegitimate cousin of James VI of Scotland (1st of England). In their youth, they had been good friends but there were fault lines. Patrick was over ambitious, reckless and arrogant. He was not known as ‘Black Patie’ for nothing, being both violent and cruel and with a taste for the finer things in life—which he could not afford. His palace, completed in 1606 was taken from him in 1607 by royal decree and given to the bishop of Orkney. 

By this time, Black Patie  was drowning in debt and becoming more desperate as the king turned against him for his ‘monyfauld wrongis.’ These included theft of lands and funds, the oppression of local people, kidnapping, torture and murder. He was just simply bad. In 1596 he married Margaret Livingstone, a wealthy widow. After squandering her fortune, Patrick left her to die in poverty. They had no children, though Patrick was profligate with his seed, spawning several bastards. 

In 1609 he was imprisoned in Edinburgh and later Dumbarton, indicted for treason in 1610 and beheaded in 1615. 

These things happen, but  he did leave behind a rather nice (the finest in Scotland) Renaissance palace in distant Orkney. 

Or as it may have looked then (before the Earl of Caithness's cannon gave it a bit of a bashing in 1614.) Even so, it was a close run thing, as the Earl of Caithness ruefully observed:

The castle was so strong that some of his cannonballs had broken like golf balls and split in two halves —or in his words (cannone billets both brokkin lyk goulfe balls upoune the castelle and clovin in twa halffis). 

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