Andrew Mansioun, or Mentioun or Manschone or Manson, (d. 1579) was a French artist who worked at the court of James V, King of Scots. He was the master carpenter of the Scottish artillery for Mary, Queen of Scots and James VI of Scotland. [1]
Andrew Mansioun, or Mentioun or Manschone or Manson, (d. 1579) was a French artist who worked at the court of James V, King of Scots. He was the master carpenter of the Scottish artillery for Mary, Queen of Scots and James VI of Scotland. [1]
Andrew is recorded carving decorative wood-work, engraving metal, making moulds for cast-iron decorations, and gun-founding. He may have worked on the surviving 34 'Stirling Head' oak medallion portraits c.1540 at Stirling Castle with John Drummond of Milnab and other furnishings. [2] His projects included; the fittings of the royal suite on the yacht Unicorn; an engraved brass for the tomb of David Beaton's parents at Markinch in 1541; [3] and a carved lion and a Latin inscription for the tomb of James V in 1542. He made a cradle for Prince James, the short-lived son of James V and Mary of Guise, [4] and a bed for Regent Arran. [5] Andrew made moulds for use in the gun-foundry at Edinburgh Castle, for placing the royal arms and ciphers on cannon barrels, and also engraved ciphers and dates on the guns. He was appointed a gunner in the Scottish artillery on 3 August 1543 with a monthly salary of £3. [6]
On the basis of the commission for Cardinal Beaton at Markinch, the historian David McRoberts raised the possibility that Mansioun was responsible for the carved oak "Beaton panels" now in the National Museum of Scotland, which carry the Cardinal's heraldry. [7]
The Stirling Heads, the portrait roundels made for the ceiling of the King's Presence chamber at Stirling Castle in 1540, were carved from oak grown in forests in Poland. They were originally painted, and traces of blue-grey paint made with indigo which depicted the steel armour of some figures were identified by conservators. Some similar carvings, in stone, can be seen on the facades of Falkland Palace. The stone medallions at Falkland may have been the work of Nicolas Roy. [8] The subjects depicted may relate to the ancestry of the Stewart kings, classical mythology, and Bible stories. For the restoration of the palace at Stirling in 2010, a new set of medallions were carved by John Donaldson, and they were painted by a team led by John Nevin and Graciela Ainsworth. [9]
During the examination and conservation of the Stirling Heads a drawing made by one of the original carvers was discovered by a conservator-restorer on the reverse of one medallion (a woman in masque costume (STC029), depicting a baluster flanked by mermaids holdings masks, a typical renaissance design. This drawing may have been the work of Andrew Mansioun. [10]
Carved roundels with the coats of arms of Mary of Guise, Henry II of France, and Regent Arran decorated a house in Blythe's Close on the Castlehill, the upper stretch of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. It is thought the house may have been a lodging used by Mary of Guise. [11] These carvings were acquired by the National Museums of Scotland in 2021. [12] [13] Perhaps in 1558, similar roundels were carved for the audience chamber of Holyrood Palace. [14] These armorials were originally painted with bright colours using orpiment and azurite. No documentation survives to name the carvers of the Edinburgh armorials. [15]
Andrew Mansion made moulds or patterns for six cannon with lion heads and fleur-de-lys, cast under the direction of Hans Cochrane in December 1540. [16] James V employed French, Flemish, Danish, and German gunners. A French master of ordinance, Christopher Grandmaseaw, was sent to France and other countries in 1541 to buy equipment. [17]
The gun foundry was in Edinburgh Castle. The Treasurer's accounts detail Andrew Mansioun's work engraving the royal cannon in March 1542 in these words;
Gevin to Andres Mensioun for graving of the Kingis grace armes with unicornis, thrissillis, and flour de lyces upoune the samin piece, and graving of the dait of yere upoune the mouth thairof, and upoun ..., sindry utheris pieces sett in task by Johnne Drummond to him, £13-6s-8d. [18]
Four Scottish falconets with 'IRS' (Iacobus Rex Scotorum) royal ciphers were captured by the English at the battle of Solway Moss, [19] and another was recovered from Castle Semple Loch and is now in the collection of Glasgow Museums. [20]
Andrew Mansioun also worked for Edinburgh town with an annual retainer of 10 merks. He made stools for St Giles Cathedral and in 1554 he completed the quire stalls and a new door to the quire. During this work Mansioun had a team of three carpenters working for him, described as his servants, and the town employed two labourers, Home and Hainslie, to fetch and carry for him. [21]
The gunners' expertise with ropes lifting cannon was also used by the town council. On 22 February 1555, Andrew and two Flemish colleagues from the royal artillery met the town's master wrights to discuss how the new timberwork of Tolbooth belfy and steeple would be hauled into position. The following Monday the work began, and in the next week the framework of the belfry, called a "brandrauth" was raised by 28 men "by force at once." [22]
In the autumn of 1555, Mansioun was based on the island of Inchkeith where he was in charge of horses and winches during the building of a fortress designed by a Siennese architect Lorenzo Pomarelli for Mary of Guise. [23]
In May 1559 Mary of Guise had a new altarpiece installed in the Chapel Royal at Holyrood House. [24] Exchequer documents show that she ordered paintings from Flanders for the altarpiece, and Andrew Mansioun contributed to making the frame. [25]
On 28 December 1561, Mary, Queen of Scots made him 'Master Wrycht and Gunnare ordinare' for life. [26] For this, Andrew had a monthly salary of £8-6s-8d. In August 1579, on his death, the position was given to his son Francis. [27]
The queen is known have had the configuration of some of her beds altered. [28] It has been suggested a payment of £120 Scots to Mansioun in May 1566 was for making a cradle in expectation of the birth of Prince James at Edinburgh Castle. [29]
Mary, Queen of Scots had her own French carpenter or upholster in her household to make and mend her furniture, beds, coffers and palace fixtures, Nicolas Guillebault. He was described as a valet de fourriére and menusier. His companion was Pierre Somville or Domville. There are several payments to "Nycolas Guillebank" in the treasurer's accounts, which show that he did some upholstery, but they do not give much detail of his work. [30] Guillebault upholstered chairs, stools, and a close stool in October 1566. [31] He was paid for upholstering a chair for James VI at Stirling Castle with blue velvet in October 1567. [32]
Little is known of Andrew's origins, but the Scottish exchequer records consistently describe him as French. As one of the royal gunners, Andrew was hurt defending Edinburgh Castle from the English invasion of 1544 that opened the war of the Rough Wooing. [33] One of his own cannon had backfired, and in June 1544 he was given 44 shillings to pay for treatment to his hand. Later, his salary or pension was increased to compensate him for his hand's lameness. [34]
Andrew stayed in Edinburgh, where he had his own workshop (a buith), and the terms of his pension or retainer of 10 marks in 1544 mention his sons. He joined the Edinburgh incorporation of masons, wrights, glaziers, and painters. From September 1555 he was one of four master craftsmen who judged the assay pieces of tables or dressers made by carpenters who wanted to become free masters of the craft. [35] He was also resident in the Canongate, at that a time a separate jurisdiction to Edinburgh, where he was an elder of the kirk in August 1567 and served on the Canongate burgh council in 1568. [36]
He was paid his royal pension of £16 in January 1579 and a further £29 in April and this is last record of him. [37] Another royal gunner, Robert Robertson, made furniture for James VI, including a table in September 1579. [38]
Several descendants continued as carpenters (called wrights). Francis, who took his place as a gunner at Edinburgh Castle in August 1579, [39] was probably the eldest son. Francis Mansioun was the official of the trade organisation in Edinburgh as 'Deacon of the Wrights' in 1595, and as such he was asked to comment on the repair of St Giles Cathedral. Francis made an oak pulpit for the Kirk of Falkland in August 1602. [40] Joshua and Isaac Mansioun, probably siblings, were also Deacons of the Wrights in Edinburgh, and John Mansioun married to Barbara Kello was also a wright in Edinburgh in 1603. [41]
James Rokno, the son of Mansioun's Flemish colleague Tibault Rokno, also stayed in Edinburgh and became a gunner of the royal artillery. James Rokno was made master wright and gunner as his "guid-father" James Hectour had been in 1584, and Rokno's old position was given to David Selkirk. [42] In 1589 he was the gunner on the James, the ship that took James VI to Norway to meet his bride Anne of Denmark. [43]
Stirling Castle, located in Stirling, is one of the largest and most historically and architecturally important castles in Scotland. The castle sits atop an intrusive crag, which forms part of the Stirling Sill geological formation. It is surrounded on three sides by steep cliffs, giving it a strong defensive position. Its strategic location, guarding what was, until the 1890s, the farthest downstream crossing of the River Forth, has made it an important fortification in the region from the earliest times.
William MacDowall was a Scottish priest and Master of Works to Mary, Queen of Scots, her mother Mary of Guise, and James VI of Scotland. The title 'sir' was used in Scotland by a priest without a master's degree. The name appears variously as McDowgall, McDougall, McDowall etc., in printed records, he signed accounts MAKDOUELL.
The Scottish royal tapestry collection was a group of tapestry hangings assembled to decorate the palaces of sixteenth-century kings and queens of Scotland. None appear to have survived.
John Drummond of Milnab was a 16th-century Scottish carpenter in charge of the woodwork of the palaces, castles and guns of James IV of Scotland and James V of Scotland.
The Burning of Edinburgh in 1544 by an English sea-borne army was the first major action of the war of the Rough Wooing. A Scottish army observed the landing on 3 May 1544 but did not engage with the English force. The Provost of Edinburgh was compelled to allow the English to sack Leith and Edinburgh, and the city was burnt on 7 May. However, the Scottish artillery within Edinburgh Castle harassed the English forces, who had neither the time nor the resources to besiege the Castle. The English fleet sailed away loaded with captured goods, and with two ships that had belonged to James V of Scotland.
John Chisholm was a 16th-century Scottish soldier and the chief officer, Comptroller and Prefect of the Scottish artillery for Mary, Queen of Scots and James VI of Scotland. He was also keeper of the King's Wark in Leith. Chisholm was a supporter of Mary, Queen of Scots in the years after her exile in England.
The Royal Court of Scotland was the administrative, political and artistic centre of the Kingdom of Scotland. It emerged in the tenth century and continued until it ceased to function when James VI inherited the throne of England in 1603. For most of the medieval era, the king had no "capital" as such. The Pictish centre of Forteviot was the chief royal seat of the early Gaelic Kingdom of Alba that became the Kingdom of Scotland. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Scone was a centre for royal business. Edinburgh only began to emerge as the capital in the reign of James III but his successors undertook occasional royal progress to a part of the kingdom. Little is known about the structure of the Scottish royal court in the period before the reign of David I when it began to take on a distinctly feudal character, with the major offices of the Steward, Chamberlain, Constable, Marischal and Lord Chancellor. By the early modern era the court consisted of leading nobles, office holders, ambassadors and supplicants who surrounded the king or queen. The Chancellor was now effectively the first minister of the kingdom and from the mid-sixteenth century he was the leading figure of the Privy Council.
Servais de Condé or Condez was a French servant at the court of Mary Queen of Scots, in charge of her wardrobe and the costume for masques performed at the Scottish royal court.
Sir William Hamilton of Sanquhar was pursemaster for James V and the Captain of Edinburgh Castle during the Regency of Regent Arran.
Michael Gardiner was a Scottish artilleryman based at Stirling Castle. The surname also appears as Gardner and Gardenar.
Jacques de Bousie was a Flemish confectioner known as a "sugarman" working in Edinburgh, Scotland, employed by James VI and Anne of Denmark.
Robert Anstruther was a Scottish soldier in the service of Mary of Guise and Mary, Queen of Scots.
Marie Pieris, Lady Seton was a French lady in waiting at the Scottish court.
James, Duke of Rothesay was the first of the two sons and three children born to King James V of Scotland and his second wife, Mary of Guise. From the moment of his birth James was Duke of Rothesay and heir apparent to the Scottish throne.
The baptism of James VI was celebrated at Stirling Castle in December 1566 with a masque, fireworks, and a staged assault on a mock fortress. The entertainment was devised by George Buchanan and Bastian Pagez.
Jerome Bowie was a servant of James VI of Scotland as a sommelier and Master of the Wine Cellar, in charge of the purchase and serving of wine.
Nicolas Roy was a French stone mason who worked in Scotland for James V and his second wife Mary of Guise.
James Barroun or Baron was a wealthy Scottish merchant based in Edinburgh and supporter of the Scottish Reformation.
Furniture and furnishings in early modern and late medieval Scotland were made locally or imported, mostly from Flanders and France. Although few pieces of furniture survive from the early part of the period, a rich vocabulary and typology is preserved in inventories and wills. This documentary evidence in the Scots language details the homes of the wealthy and aristocratic. Textiles and beds belonging to Mary, Queen of Scots are very well documented. Scottish wooden furniture was often carved with the initials of married couples.
Drinksilver was a kind of tip or gratuity given to artisans in Early Modern Scotland, a sum of money suitable for buying drinks and celebrating. Records of payments give insights into labour, service, and patronage.