A Medieval Dinner Betrayal
The Black Dinner featured another murderous betrayal of guests by their hosts. While not as bloody as the Glencoe Massacre in that it had fewer victims, it was just as dramatic. In 1437, King James I of Scotland was assassinated, and was succeeded by his six-year-old son, James II. Scotland was governed by a regent, Archibald Douglas, 5th Earl of Douglas, until his death in 1439. The regency was then split between three noblemen, William Crichton, 1st Lord Crichton, Sir Alexander Livingston, and James Douglas, Earl of Avondale and a kinsman of the Earl of Douglas. All three resented the Earls of Douglas, Scotland’s most powerful aristocrats at the time, and conspired to bring them low.
So in 1440, Crichton, Livingston, and James Douglas, invited the late earl’s son, sixteen-year-old William Douglas, 6th Earl of Douglas, and his younger brother to dine with the ten-year-old King James I at Edinburgh Castle. In the middle of the dinner, a black bull’s head – which symbolized death back then – was placed in front of the young earl. In a betrayal of the rules of hospitality, William Douglas and his younger brother were then seized and dragged outside. There, they were accused of treason, given a mock trial, and beheaded. As George R. R. Martin put it when he discussed how the real life Black Dinner and Glencoe Massacre inspired the fictional Red Wedding: “No matter how much I make up, there’s stuff in history that’s just as bad, or worse“.