Knights of The Thistle - History

History

James VII claimed that he was reviving an earlier Order, but this issue is marked by widely varying claims.

According to legend, Achaius, King of Scots (possibly coming to the aid of Óengus mac Fergusa, King of the Picts), while engaged in battle at Athelstaneford with the Saxon King Æthelstan of East Anglia, saw in the heavens the cross of St Andrew. After he won the battle, Achaius is said to have established the Order of the Thistle, dedicating it to the saint, in 786. The tale is not credible, because the two individuals purported to have fought each other did not even live in the same century. Another story states that Achaius founded the Order in 809 to commemorate an alliance with the Emperor Charlemagne. There is some credibility to this story given the fact that Charlemagne did employ Scottish bodyguards. There is, in addition, a tradition that the order was instituted, or re-instituted, on the battlefield by Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn.

The earliest claim now taken seriously by historians is that James III, who adopted the thistle as the royal plant badge and issued coins depicting thistles, founded the Order during the fifteenth century. He allegedly conferred membership of the "Order of the Burr or Thissil" on King Francis I of France.

However there is no conclusive evidence for a fifteenth century order. A French commentator writing in 1558 described the use of the crowned thistle and the cross of St Andrew on Scottish coins and war banners, and added that there was no Scottish order of knighthood. Similarly, John Lesley writing around 1578, refers to the three foreign orders of chivalry carved on the gate of James V's Linlithgow Palace with his ornaments of St Andrew, proper to this nation. Some Scottish order of chivalry may have existed during the sixteenth century, possibly founded by James V and called the Order of St. Andrew, but lapsed by the end of that century.

James VII issued letters patent "reviving and restoring the Order of the Thistle to its full glory, lustre and magnificency" on 29 May 1687. Although the "restoration" in 1687 of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle was accomplished by King James VII & II, the initiative for - essentially - founding this Scottish Royal Order can be attributed to John Drummond, 1st Earl and 1st Jacobite Duke of Melfort, then Secretary of State for Scotland, who together with his elder brother James Drummond, 4th Earl and 1st Jacobite Duke of Perth, then Lord Chancellor of Scotland, were among the eight Founding Knights. Eight knights, out of a maximum of twelve, were appointed, but the King was deposed in 1688. His successors, the joint monarchs William and Mary, did not make any further appointments to the Order, which consequently fell into desuetude. In 1703, however, Anne once again revived the Order of the Thistle, which survives to this day.