Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hepburn, Patrick (1512?-1556)
HEPBURN, PATRICK, third Earl of Bothwell (1512?–1556), was the only son of Adam, second earl of Bothwell, by his wife Agnes Stewart, married in 1511, natural daughter of James, earl of Buchan, uterine brother of James II. His father having died on the field of Flodden, 9 Sept. 1513, he was brought up under the protection of Patrick, master of Hailes, Patrick, prior of St. Andrews [q. v.], and James, bishop of Moray. On 20 April 1528 the young earl, along with the Master of Hailes, and other Hepburns, received remission for their treasonable assistance of Lord Home. Though Bothwell declined the hazardous honour of leading an army against the Earl of Angus [see {sc|Douglas, Archibald}}, sixth Earl of Angus], he nevertheless, on 28 Jan. 1528–9, after the flight of Angus into England, received a share of his forfeited estates, including the lordship of Tantallon (Reg. Mag. Sig. ii. entry 738). The same year he was arrested along with other border noblemen for protecting marauders on the borders, and after six months' confinement was released, on his friends entering into recognisances for 20,000l. to bring him back to durance when required. On 20 March 1529–30 he appeared before the king, and again undertook the defence of Liddesdale. Being, however, dissatisfied with the insecurity of his position in Scotland, he in December 1531 entered into communication with the Earl of Northumberland. On the 29th he and others had an interview during the night with Northumberland at Dilston, near Hexham, when Bothwell represented that he had been cruelly wronged by the Scottish king, and that he was credibly informed that the king, should he get him and his colleagues together in Edinburgh, intended to execute them all. To revenge himself on the Scottish king he desired to become the subject of the king of England, and to serve against Scotland with one thousand gentlemen and six thousand commoners (Earl of Northumberland to Henry VIII, 27 Dec. 1531, in Cal. State Papers, Henry VIII, v. 609). Northumberland described Bothwell in very flattering terms, and recommended that his offer should be accepted. Nevertheless the negotiations do not appear to have gone further. About June or July 1533 Bothwell and James Beaton, archbishop of St. Andrews [q. v.], were shut up by the king in the castle of Edinburgh (Northumberland to Henry VIII, 26 July 1533, ib. vi. 895). No more extreme measures were taken, and his imprisonment was probably short. On 31 July 1538 he received a grant of various lands in the barony of Crichton, which belonged in conjunct fee to Robert, lord Maxwell, and his wife, Agnes Stewart, countess of Bothwell, and were in the king's hands by reason of non-entry (Reg. Mag. Sig. ii. entry 1814). In September of the same year he was compelled to resign the lordship of Liddesdale into the king's hands, and, according to Lindsay of Pitscottie, he and other gentlemen ‘were banished aff Scotland for certain crimes of lese majesty’ (Chronicles, ed. 1814, ii. 359). Bothwell is stated to have gone to Venice. He returned soon after the death of James V in 1542, and was present in the parliament 15 March 1542–3, when he successfully issued a summons of reduction of a pretended assignation of the lordship of Liddesdale and castle of Hermitage. When Sir Ralph Sadler arrived in Scotland on a special embassy, he found Bothwell in possession of Liddesdale. Sadler appears to have been specially directed by the king to secure Bothwell's support, but Bothwell was indisposed to the match between the infant Mary and Prince Edward of England, and was devoted to the French interest. Sadler describes him as ‘the most vain and insolent man of the world, full of folly, and here nothing to be esteemed.’ Bothwell joined the party opposed to the English interests who met at Perth to concert measures of resistance against the policy of the governor and the Douglases. A message for a compromise was sent to their opponents, but they obeyed the summons of a herald-at-arms sent to charge them to disperse on pain of treason. An alliance with England and a treaty of marriage between the Princess Mary and Prince Edward of England was agreed on at the ensuing parliament. Shortly afterwards Cardinal Beaton [see Beaton, David, (1494–1546)], who had for some time been under arrest, received his liberty on Bothwell and others becoming hostages for him (Lesley, Hist. Scotl., Bannatyne edit., p. 68), and at Beaton's instigation Bothwell and other catholic lords mustered their followers for the protection of their faith and the defence of the independence of the kingdom. Concentrating their forces with great rapidity they marched on Linlithgow, and brought the queen-dowager and the infant queen in triumph to Stirling.
Bothwell was one of those who assembled at Leith on 3 May 1544 to oppose the landing of the Earl of Hertford, but on account of the superior forces of the enemy he and his friends retired to Edinburgh. In June he signed the agreement to support the queen-dowager, Mary of Guise, as regent instead of the Earl of Arran [see Hamilton, James, second Earl of Arran and Duke of Châtelherault]. He now appeared at court as the rival of the Earl of Lennox [see Stewart, Matthew, fourth Earl of Lennox] for the queen-dowager's hand. Both earls strove to excel in the magnificence of their retinue and in courtly games, but Bothwell found the expenditure greater than he could afford, and ultimately left the court (Calderwood, Hist. i. 166; Herries, Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots, p. 6).
In order, doubtless, to play this part of suitor Bothwell had, previous to November 1543, been divorced from his wife, Agnes Sinclair, lady of Morham, whom he married about 1535. The lady's mother was Margaret Hepburn, probably third daughter of Patrick, first earl of Bothwell [q. v.] (grandfather of the third earl), though some have supposed her to have been the first earl's sister. The excuse for the divorce was doubtless some prohibited degree of consanguinity. This seems confirmed by the reported statement of the son James, fourth earl [q. v.], at the Craigmillar conference, that the divorce of his father and mother had not injured his title or estate. Shortly after his retirement from court a summons was issued against him for entering into a treasonable correspondence with the king of England against James V in 1542, for a treasonable understanding with the Earl of Hertford when he landed at Leith, and for imprisoning the Bute pursuivant; but on 12 Dec. he was assoilzied in parliament from the summons.
According to Knox, Bothwell in 1543 threatened the Earl of Arran, governor of the realm, with deposition for befriending the reformers (Works, i. 100). When George Wishart [q. v.] in 1546 went to Haddington to preach, the people of the town and neighbourhood were inhibited by Bothwell, as sheriff of East Lothian, from hearing him. Notwithstanding, about a hundred persons assembled, but the same night Ormiston House, where Wishart was staying, was surrounded by a small force under Bothwell, who obtained the custody of Wishart on the promise that he would save him from Cardinal Beaton. Knox states that the bribes of the cardinal and the persuasions and flatteries of the queen-dowager were too much for Bothwell's constancy (ib. p. 143); but it would appear from the ‘Register of the Privy Council’ that to induce him to deliver up Wishart threats had to be employed as well as promises. On 19 Jan. he bound himself to deliver up the reformer before the last day of the month, and meantime to answer for him under ‘all the highest pain and charge’ (Reg. P. C. Scotl. i. 20). Wishart was burnt as a heretic (1 March 1546–7).
After the surrender of the castle of St. Andrews in July 1547, Bothwell's name was discovered in a register of the names of Scottish noblemen and gentlemen who had secretly bound themselves to the service of England. Bothwell, on condition that he married the Duchess of Suffolk, aunt of Edward VI, agreed to surrender his castle of Hermitage and renounce allegiance to the Scottish government. He was sent to prison, but was released shortly after the battle of Pinkie on 10 Sept. 1548. On the 17th he waited on the Duke of Somerset, the invading general. He was then described as a ‘gentleman of a right cumly porte and stature, and heretofore of right honourable and just meaning and dealing towards the King's majesty’ (Somerset, Expedition, ed. Dalzell, p. 77). In August 1549 he signed a bond of fealty to the king of England; and an instrument, dated at Westminster 3 Sept. 1549, sets forth that King Edward had taken him under his protection, granting him a yearly rent of one thousand crowns and one hundred light horsemen for his protection, and, in case of his losing his lands in Scotland, guaranteeing him lands of similar value in England (Bannatyne Club Miscellany, iii. 410–11). On 3 May 1550 Bothwell was summoned before the Scottish council to answer the charge of high treason, but there is no record of further proceedings against him, and probably he had already fled to England. There he remained till 1553, when in November he was induced by the queen-dowager to return to Scotland (letter of Bothwell to the queen-dowager, printed in Chalmers, Memoirs of James, Earl Bothwell). On 26 March following he received from the queen-dowager a remission for all his treasons. Soon after he joined the convention at Stirling, at which the agreement between the Duke of Châtelherault and the queen-dowager, by which the former resigned the regency, was ratified (Lodge, Illustrations, i. 195). He also signed the indemnity to the duke in the parliament which assembled at Edinburgh on 10 April. Shortly afterwards Bothwell was made by the queen-dowager her lieutenant on the borders. He is usually stated to have died in exile, but according to the ‘Diurnal of Occurrents’ (p. 67) his death took place at Dumfries in September 1556. Dumfries is also specified as the place of his death in the process for proving the consanguinity of his son with Lady Jane Gordon.
In Douglas's ‘Peerage’ his wife's name is given as Margaret Home of the family of Lord Home. She was, as above mentioned, Agnes Sinclair, daughter of Henry, lord Sinclair, and by her he had one son, James Hepburn, fourth earl of Bothwell [q. v.], and one daughter, Jane. The latter married, on 4 Jan. 1561–2, John Stewart, prior of Coldingham, a natural son of James V, by whom she had a son, Francis Stewart Hepburn [q. v.], fifth earl of Bothwell. Her first husband died in 1563, and in 1567 she married John Sinclair, master of Caithness, after whose death in 1577 she took for her third husband Archibald Douglas, parson of Glasgow (fl. 1568) [q. v.]
[Letters of Patrick, Earl of Bothwell, in Bannatyne Club Miscellany, iii. 403–23; and Letters of Assedation of Agnes, Countess of Bothwell (ib.), pp. 273–312; Reg. Mag. Sig. Scot.; Reg. P. C. Scotl.; Cal. State Papers, reign of Henry VIII; Sadler's State Papers; Acta Parl. Scot. vol. ii.; Lindsay of Pitscottie's Chronicles; Histories of Lesley, Buchanan, Knox, and Calderwood; Lodge's Illustrations; Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), i. 226–7.]