This medieval king was hunted down and brutally murdered — and we still don’t know who killed him
The violent death of James III of Scotland in 1488 shocked a kingdom. More than five centuries later, the killer remains unknown
In the summer of 1488, King James III of Scotland was fleeing a battlefield. His army had collapsed at the battle of Sauchieburn, and his teenage son, the future James IV, had joined the rebel nobles who had taken up arms against him in an attempt to eliminate his power by installing a council of regency.
But King James didn’t die on that battlefield.
Instead, he had tried to regroup at Blackness Castle, on the south shore of the Firth of Forth, but fled when rebel forces advanced, and was intercepted near a mill outside Bannockburn. What happened next remains one of the most unresolved and politically resonant royal deaths in Scottish history.
“We just know there was a pursuit to get to a mill and then he's stabbed by someone,” explains historian Gordon McKelvie, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “Some people clearly thought this guy was fleeing. Someone must have seen him and went after him.”
Supposedly, that someone would go on to stab – and kill – the king. Who exactly delivered that fatal wound is still unknown. Arguably more striking is that there was never even an attempt to hold any single person to account.
“There's never been a full investigation,” says McKelvie. “No one is ever found guilty of it. The fact there’s no investigation tells us a lot.”
A king without friends
James’s death may be mysterious, but his unpopularity was incredibly evident, and simple to explain.
Throughout his reign, the king had consistently alienated the powerful men who were meant to support him, and isolated himself from traditional networks of power.
McKelvie notes that James “is someone who is reputed to have not liked the company of his nobles,” and that “he was not universally liked … he’s described as a king who surrounds himself with unpopular favourites”.
That fact – prioritising favourites over the hierarchy of nobles – is a recurring motif in medieval history, and a deadly trap that many of history’s worst monarchs have fallen into.
But it wasn’t just seeking the company of the wrong individuals that ruined James III’s status as king. He had also earned a reputation for turning against those closest to him.
“He also is tainted with potentially killing his wife as well,” McKelvie says. Margaret had died from sudden illness, with potential foul play being suspected. “His reputation generally [was] as someone who will harm members of his own family.”
That included his brother, Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany, whose somewhat death in France during a duel had already cast a long shadow over the king.
This all contributed to a portrait of James as a monarch whose downfall had become increasingly inevitable as he failed to navigate the dangerous terrain of kingship.
The new regime benefited from silence
After James III was killed, the new regime under James IV offered a vague, bloodless explanation: the king had been slain “by a vile person”.
It was, as McKelvie puts it, “as ambiguous as you can get.”
The wording is telling; not only in its evasion, but in what it chooses not to pursue. “Even if James IV didn’t want his father harmed,” McKelvie notes. “He must have known a rebellion that leaves a king alive never succeeds.”
It was in the new king’s political interest to ensure his father didn’t survive the rebellion, and even more so that no one investigated how, or by whose hand, the old king had died. The result was a murder with no trial, no punishment and no clear record of guilt.
King James III, now dead, was simply brushed out of history by his own son.
Flight, fatalism, and a royal ending
What little we do know of the specific circumstances surrounding James III’s death paints a picture of a monarch brought down not by one knife used by a single discontented murderer, but by years of corrosive mistrust and resentment.
His capture and murder weren’t part of a formal execution. They were, more likely, an act of political necessity by the rebels.
No killer was ever named. No one was punished. The new regime moved on, and the question of who killed the king was quietly left behind.
Yet though James’s death remains shrouded in mystery, the causes are anything but. “Even though he didn’t stab himself,” McKelvie reflects, “he was more responsible for his own death than anyone else.”
Isolated, distrusted, and ultimately abandoned, James was a monarch whose murder remains an unsolved mystery not because the truth couldn’t have been discovered, but because no one in power had any inclination to discover it.
Authors
Kev Lochun is Deputy Digital Editor of HistoryExtra.com and previously Deputy Editor of BBC History Revealed. As well as commissioning content from expert historians, he can also be found interviewing them on the award-winning HistoryExtra podcast.