36-547: A makar ( / ˈ m æ k ər / ) is a term from Scottish literature for a poet or bard , often thought of as a royal court poet. Since the 19th century, the term The Makars has been specifically used to refer to a number of poets of fifteenth and sixteenth century Scotland , in particular Robert Henryson , William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas , who wrote a diverse genre of works in Middle Scots in
72-672: A distinctive influence. The first of the Makars proper in this sense, although perhaps the least Scots due to his education predominantly in captivity at the English court in London , is generally taken to be James I (1394–1437) the likely author of the Kingis Quair . Apart from other principal figures already named, writing by makars such as Richard Holland , Blind Hary and Walter Kennedy also survives along with evidence that suggests
108-514: A member of the Stewart of Darnley branch of the House. Lennox was a descendant of Alexander Stewart, 4th High Steward of Scotland , also descended from James II , being Mary's heir presumptive . Thus Darnley was also related to Mary on his father's side and because of this connection, Mary's heirs remained part of the House of Stuart. Following John Stewart of Darnley 's ennoblement for his part at
144-678: A series of conflicts known as the War of the Three Kingdoms . The trial and execution of Charles I by the English Parliament in 1649 began 11 years of republican government known as the English Interregnum . Scotland initially recognised the late King's son, also called Charles , as their monarch, before being subjugated and forced to enter Cromwell's Commonwealth by General Monck 's occupying army. During this period,
180-547: Is the current senior heir. From the Acts of Union 1707 , which came into effect on 1 May 1707, the last Stuart monarch, Anne, became Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Round provided a family tree to embody his essential findings, which is adapted below. Descended from the Stewarts of Darnley (Stewarts of Lennox) Male, male-line, legitimate, non-morganatic members of the house who either lived to adulthood, or who held
216-444: Is usually distinguished from the work of earlier Scottish writers such as Barbour and Wyntoun who wrote romance and chronicle verse in octosyllabic couplets and it also perhaps marked something of a departure from the medieval alliterative or troubador traditions; but one characteristic of poetry by the Makars is that features from all of these various traditions, such as strong alliteration and swift narration, continued to be
252-541: The Battle of Baugé in 1421 and the grant of lands to him at Aubigny and Concressault , the Darnley Stewarts' surname was gallicised to Stuart . Both Mary, Queen of Scots, and Lord Darnley had strong claims on the English throne through their mutual grandmother Margaret Tudor. This eventually led to the accession of the couple's only child James as King of Scotland, England, and Ireland in 1603. However, this
288-583: The Duchy of Brittany ; Alan had a good relationship with Henry I of England who awarded him with lands in Shropshire . The FitzAlan family quickly established themselves as a prominent Anglo-Norman noble house, with some of its members serving as High Sheriff of Shropshire . It was the son of Alan named Walter FitzAlan who became the first hereditary High Steward of Scotland , while his brother William's family went on to become Earls of Arundel . When
324-529: The Stewart court. A high point in cultural patronage was the Renaissance Court of James IV (1488–1513) now principally associated in literary terms with William Dunbar . The pinnacle in writing from this time was in fact Douglas's Eneados (1513), the first full and faithful translation of an important work of classical antiquity into any Anglic language . Douglas is one of the first authors to explicitly identify his language as Scottis . This
360-836: The 12th and 13th centuries. The sixth High Steward of Scotland, Walter Stewart (1293–1326), married Marjorie , daughter of Robert the Bruce , and also played an important part in the Battle of Bannockburn gaining further favour. Their son Robert was heir to the House of Bruce , the Lordship of Cunningham and the Bruce lands of Bourtreehill ; he eventually inherited the Scottish throne when his uncle David II died childless in 1371. In 1503, James IV attempted to secure peace with England by marrying King Henry VII 's daughter, Margaret Tudor . The birth of their son, later James V , brought
396-692: The Crowns . The Stuarts were monarchs of Britain and Ireland and its growing empire until the death of Queen Anne in 1714, except for the period of the Commonwealth between 1649 and 1660. In total, nine Stewart/Stuart monarchs ruled Scotland alone from 1371 until 1603, the last of whom was James VI, before his accession in England. Two Stuart queens ruled the isles following the Glorious Revolution in 1688: Mary II and Anne . Both were
SECTION 10
#1732773160630432-467: The English poets Chaucer , Lydgate and Gower as makaris . The work of the Makar of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries was in part marked out by an adoption in vernacular languages of the new and greater variety in metrics and prosody current across Europe after the influence of such figures as Dante and Petrarch and similar to the route which Chaucer followed in England. Their work
468-453: The House of Stewart into the line of descent of the House of Tudor , and the English throne. Margaret Tudor later married Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus , and their daughter, Margaret Douglas , was the mother of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley . In 1565, Darnley married his half-cousin Mary, Queen of Scots , the daughter of James V . Darnley's father was Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox ,
504-400: The Makars, such as Dunbar, also featured an increasing incorporation of Latinate terms into Scots prosody, or aureation , heightening the creative tensions between the ornate and the natural in poetic diction . The new plane of achievement set by Douglas in epic and translation was not followed up in the subsequent century, but later makars, such as David Lyndsay , still drew strongly on
540-461: The Protestant daughters of James VII and II by his first wife Anne Hyde and the great-grandchildren of James VI and I. Their father had converted to Catholicism and his new wife gave birth to a son in 1688, who was to be brought up as a Roman Catholic; so James was deposed by Parliament in 1689, in favour of his daughters. However, neither daughter had any children who survived to adulthood, so
576-586: The Scottish and English (and later British) throne as the rightful heirs, their supporters being known as Jacobites . Since the early 19th century, when the James II direct line failed, there have been no active claimants from the Stuart family. The current Jacobite heir to the claims of the historical Stuart monarchs is a distant cousin Franz, Duke of Bavaria , of the House of Wittelsbach . The senior living member of
612-516: The Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.133 via cp1102 cp1102, Varnish XID 543650897 Upstream caches: cp1102 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 05:52:40 GMT House of Stuart The House of Stuart , originally spelled Stewart , was a royal house of Scotland , England , Ireland and later Great Britain . The family name comes from
648-543: The civil war in the Kingdom of England , known as The Anarchy , broke out between the legitimist claimant Matilda, Lady of the English , and her cousin who had usurped her, King Stephen , Walter had sided with Matilda. Another supporter of Matilda was her uncle David I of Scotland from the House of Dunkeld . After Matilda was pushed out of England into the County of Anjou , essentially failing in her legitimist attempt for
684-450: The crown passed to the House of Hanover on the death of Queen Anne in 1714 under the terms of the Act of Settlement 1701 and the Act of Security 1704 . The House of Hanover had become linked to the House of Stuart through the line of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia . After the loss of the throne, the descendants of James VII and II continued for several generations to attempt to reclaim
720-517: The existence of a substantial body of lost work. The quality of extant work generally, both minor and major, demonstrates a thriving poetic tradition in Scotland throughout the period. Henryson , who is generally seen today as one of the foremost makars, is not known to have been a court poet , but the Royal Palace of Dunfermline , the city in which he was based, was one of the residences of
756-533: The office of High Steward of Scotland , which had been held by the family progenitor Walter fitz Alan ( c. 1150 ). The name Stewart and variations had become established as a family name by the time of his grandson Walter Stewart . The first monarch of the Stewart line was Robert II , whose male-line descendants were kings and queens in Scotland from 1371, and of England, Ireland and Great Britain from 1603, until 1714. Mary, Queen of Scots (r. 1542–1567),
SECTION 20
#1732773160630792-606: The period of the Northern Renaissance . The Makars have often been referred to by literary critics as Scots Chaucerians . In modern usage, poets of the Scots revival in the 18th century, such as Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson are also makars. Since 2002, the term "makar" has been revived as the name for a publicly funded poet, first in Edinburgh, followed by the cities of Glasgow, Stirling and Dundee. In 2004
828-596: The position of Makar or National Poet for Scotland , was authorized by the Scottish Parliament . Middle Scots makar (plural makaris ) is the equivalent of Middle English maker . The word functions as a calque (literal translation) of Ancient Greek term ποιητής ( poiētēs ) "maker; poet ". The term is normally applied to poets writing in Scots although it need not be exclusive to Scottish writers. William Dunbar for instance referred to
864-402: The principal members of the House of Stuart lived in exile in mainland Europe . The younger Charles returned to Britain to assume his three thrones in 1660 as " Charles II of England , Scotland and Ireland" - with the support of General Monck - but dated his reign from his father's death eleven years before. In feudal and dynastic terms, the Scottish reliance on French support was revived during
900-583: The reign of Charles II , whose own mother was French. His sister Henrietta married into the French royal family. Charles II left no legitimate children, but his numerous illegitimate descendants included the Dukes of Buccleuch , the Dukes of Grafton , the Dukes of Saint Albans and the Dukes of Richmond . The Royal House of Stuart became extinct with the death of Cardinal Henry Benedict Stuart , brother of Charles Edward Stuart , in 1807. Duke Francis of Bavaria
936-504: The royal Stewart family, descended in a legitimate male line from Robert II of Scotland, is Andrew Richard Charles Stuart, 9th Earl Castle Stewart . The ancestral origins of the Stuart family are obscure—their probable ancestry is traced back to Alan FitzFlaad , a Breton who went to England not long after the Norman conquest . Alan had been the hereditary steward of the Bishop of Dol in
972-521: The throne, many of her supporters in England fled also. It was then that Walter followed David up to the Kingdom of Scotland , where he was granted lands in Renfrewshire and the title for life of Lord High Steward. The next monarch of Scotland, Malcolm IV , made the High Steward title a hereditary arrangement. While High Stewards, the family were based at Dundonald, South Ayrshire , between
1008-549: The traditions of the makars have included Robert Garioch , Sydney Goodsir Smith , George Campbell Hay and Norman MacCaig among many others. A position of national laureate , entitled The Scots Makar , was established in 2004 by the Scottish Parliament . The first appointment was made directly by the Parliament in that year when Edwin Morgan received the honour to become Scotland's first ever official national poet . He
1044-564: The work of fifteenth and early sixteenth century exponents. This influence can be traced right through to Alexander Scott and the various members of the Castalian Band in the Scottish court of James VI (1567–1603) which included Alexander Montgomerie and, once again, the king himself. The king composed a treatise, the Reulis and Cautelis (1584), which proposed a formalisation of Scottish prosody and consciously strove to identify what
1080-476: Was a personal union , as the three Kingdoms shared a monarch, but had separate governments, churches, and institutions. Indeed, the personal union did not prevent an armed conflict, known as the Bishops' Wars , breaking out between England and Scotland in 1639. This was to become part of the cycle of political and military conflict that marked the reign of Charles I of England , Scotland and Ireland, culminating in
1116-697: Was also the period when use of Scots in poetry was at its most richly and successfully aureate. Dunbar's Lament for the Makaris (c.1505) contains a leet of makars, not exclusively Scottish, some of whom are now only known through his mention, further indicative of the wider extent to the tradition. Qualities in verse especially prized by many of these writers included the combination of skilful artifice with natural diction, concision and quickness ( glegness ) of expression. For example, Dunbar praises his peer, Merseir in The Lament (ll.74-5) as one Some of
Makar - Misplaced Pages Continue
1152-849: Was announced as the fourth holder of the post. In 2002 the City of Edinburgh , Scotland's capital, instituted a post of makar, known as the Edinburgh Makar. Each term lasts for three years and the first three incumbents were Stewart Conn (2002), Valerie Gillies (2005), and Ron Butlin (2008, 2011). The current incumbent (as of 2021) is Hannah Lavery . The previous Edinburgh makars were Alan Spence . and Shetlandic dialect writer and advocate Christine De Luca . Other cities to create Makar posts include Glasgow ( Liz Lochhead ), Stirling ( Magi Gibson , Laura Fyfe ) Aberdeen ( Sheena Blackhall ) and Dundee ( W.N. Herbert ). Scottish literature Too Many Requests If you report this error to
1188-513: Was brought up in France where she adopted the French spelling of the name Stuart. In 1503, James IV married Margaret Tudor , thus linking the reigning royal houses of Scotland and England. Margaret's niece, Elizabeth I of England died without issue in 1603, and James IV's and Margaret's great-grandson James VI of Scotland acceded to the thrones of England and Ireland as James I in the Union of
1224-440: Was certainly important, the makars drew strongly on a native tradition predating Chaucer, exemplified by Barbour, as well as the courtly literature of France. In the more general application of the term which is current today the word can be applied to poets of the Scots revival in the eighteenth century, such as Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson . In recent times, other examples of poets that have seemed to particularly exemplify
1260-536: Was distinctive in the Scots tradition. The removal of the Court to London under James after 1603 is usually regarded as marking the eclipse of the distinctively Scottish tradition of poetry initiated by the Makars, but figures such as William Drummond might loosely be seen as forming a continuation into the seventeenth century. The Makars have often been referred to by literary critics as Scots Chaucerians . While Chaucer's influence on fifteenth-century Scottish literature
1296-484: Was succeeded in 2011 by Liz Lochhead . Jackie Kay was announced as the third holder of this post in 2016. Before Kay was appointed, it was suggested that the role might now only be referred to as the National Poet for Scotland, because of concerns that the word makar had to be explained outside of Scotland. Kay states that she argued for retaining the Makar name, which is still used. In August 2021 Kathleen Jamie
#629370