Huntly Castle is a ruined castle north of Huntly in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, where the rivers Deveron and Bogie meet. It was the ancestral home of the chief of Clan Gordon, Earl of Huntly. There have been four castles built on the site that have been referred to as Huntly Castle, Strathbogie Castle or Peel of Strathbogie.
Location Huntly Castle was built on the crossing of the rivers Deveron and Bogie, north of Huntly and roughly 40 miles from Aberdeen. The original wooden castle was built on a motte. The second castle, made of stone, was built on the northern end of the bailey. The third and modern castles were built to the east of the original, at the southern end of the estate.
History The castle was originally built by Duncan II, Earl of Fife, on the Strathbogie estate sometime around 1180 and 1190. The castle became known as the Peel of Strathbogie.
The Earl Duncan's third son, David, inherited the Strathbogie estate and later, through marriage, became earls of Atholl around 1204. During the Strathbogie family's time at the estate, Robert the Bruce was a guest after falling ill at Inverurie. The family was loyal to him and when he got better, Robert the Bruce went on to win the battle of Bannockburn. However, around 1314, David of Strathbogie shifted his support to the English right before Robert the Bruce won the battle of Bannockburn. Robert the Bruce saw this as treachery and granted the castle and estate to Sir Adam Gordon of Huntly because he was consistently loyal. In 1506, the castle was officially renamed Huntly Castle.
Reign of James IV Although the castle was burned to the ground, a grander castle was built in its place. In 1496, the pretender to the English throne, Perkin Warbeck, was married to Lady Catherine Gordon the daughter of George Gordon, 2nd Earl of Huntly, witnessed by King James IV of Scotland at Edinburgh. James IV came to Huntly in October 1501 and gave gifts of money to the stonemasons working on the castle. In October 1503, James IV came again and played in a shooting contest at a target called a "prop".James Balfour Paul, Accounts of the Treasurer of Scotland, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1900), pp. xlix-l, 124, 401, for "prop" see 'Prop', Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue He came back again in the following October, on his way south, accompanied by four Italian minstrels and an African drummer known as the "More taubronar".James Balfour Paul, Accounts of the Treasurer of Scotland: 1500-1504, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1900), pp. 462-4: Imtiaz Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500-1677 (London, 2008), p. 29. James IV played cards at the castle on 10 October 1505 and gave a tip to masons working on the building. These visits were part of his annual pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Duthac at Tain.Accounts of the Treasurer of Scotland: 1506-1507, vol. 3 (Edinburgh, 1901), pp. 165, 168. Architecturally the L plan castle consists of a well-preserved five-story tower with an adjoining great hall and supporting buildings. Areas of the original ornate facade and interior stonework remain. Wings were added to the castle in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Reign of Mary, Queen of Scots William Mackintosh was executed on 23 August 1550 at "Castle Strathbogie", as a conspirator against the Earl of Huntly, the queen's lieutenant in the North.E. G. Cody, Historie of Scotland by John Leslie, 2 (Edinburgh, 1895), p. 334.James Balfour, Annals: The Historical Works of James Balfour, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1824), 297: Chronicle of the Kings of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1830), 92. It is said that Elizabeth Keith, Countess of Huntly gave the order.Alison Cathcart, Kinship and Clientage: Highland Clanship 1451–1609 (Brill, 2006), pp. 185–187.James Toshach Clark, Genealogical collections concerning families in Scotland by Walter MacFarlane, 1 (Edinburgh: SHS, 1900), pp. 212–214, 223, 228–231. Regent Arran came to Huntly in 1552.Amy Blakeway, Regency in Sixteenth-Century Scotland (Boydell, 2015), p. 175. When the Earl of Huntly wrote to Mary of Guise from the castle in August 1553, he dated the letter from "your grace's place of Huntle".Annie Cameron, Scottish Correspondence of Mary of Lorraine (Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 1927), p. 367. Mary of Guise visited in 1555 or 1556.Jennifer Morag Henderson, Daughters of the North (Whittles, 2025), pp. 15–19, 327 fn. 12. According to Robert Gordon of Straloch, Mary of Guise was impressed with the quantity of food stored in cellars and larders at the castle, supplied by the earl's distant retainers, but the French diplomat Henri Cleutin advised the earl was too powerful.Miscellany of the Spalding Club, 4 (Aberdeen, 1849), p. li.
The English diplomat Thomas Randolph stayed two nights in September 1562,John Guy, The Life of Mary Queen of Scots (Fourth Estate, 2009), p. 163. and wrote that the castle was "fayer, beste furnishede of anye howse that I have seen in thys countrie."CSP. Foreign, Elizabeth, vol. 5 (London, 1867), nos. 648, 688, 718, 823: CSP. Scotland, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1898), p. 652. Mary, Queen of Scots decided to take the castle, giving as a cause that the Earl withheld from her a royal cannon lent to him by Regent Arran.David Hay Fleming, Mary Queen of Scots (London, 1897), 77. She sent her half-brother John Stewart, Commendator of Coldingham to arrest the George Gordon, 4th Earl of Huntly at Huntly Castle in October 1562. On the day William Kirkcaldy of Grange and the Tutor of Pitcur arrived first and surrounded the house. While Kirkcaldy was talking to the castle porter, the castle watchman on the tower spotted Coldingham and the Master of Lindsay and their troops a mile off. He alerted the Earl, who ran without "boot or sword" and hopped over a low wall at the back of the castle and found a horse before Pitcur could stop him. Elizabeth Keith, Countess of Huntly then welcomed the queen's men and gave them a meal and showed them around the place. She still had her chapel furnished for Roman Catholic worship.Joseph Bain, Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1898), pp. 654-5, 657-8.William Forbes-Leith, Narratives of Scottish Catholics under Mary Stuart and James VI (London: Baker, 1889), p. 87–88.
Mary made plans to come to Huntly Castle in person at this time, and another half brother, Lord James, Earl of Moray, who was in Aberdeen, sent invitations to the laird of Kilravock and others on 21 October 1563. This meeting of her "lieges of Moray and Nairn" did not take place.Cosmo Innes, Genealogical deduction of the family of Rose of Kilravock (Aberdeen, 1848), pp. 76, 237-238.
George Gordon, 4th Earl of Huntly died after the Battle of Corrichie on 28 October 1562, and the castle was garrisoned for Queen Mary by Charles Crawfurd and twenty soldiers. Furnishings including beds and 45 tapestries were carted to Aberdeen and shipped in barrels to Edinburgh for the royal collection and refurbishment by Servais de Condé.Accounts of the Treasurer, vol. 11 (Edinburgh, 1916), p. 214, 217: Michael Pearce, Michael Pearce, '"Beds of 'Chapel" form in sixteenth-century Scottish inventories: the worst sort of beds', Regional Furniture, vol. 27 (2013), pp. 78-91 After the surrender of Mary, Queen of Scots, at the battle of Carberry Hill, the Earl of Bothwell came north to meet George Gordon, 5th Earl of Huntly at "Stawboggye", and moved on to Spynie Castle after Huntly deserted his cause.Margaret H. B. Sanderson, Mary Stewart's People (James Thin, 1987), p. 41: Joseph Stevenson, Selections (Glasgow, 1837), p. 217. In July 1570, after the Rising of the North in England, the exiled Earl of Westmorland found refuge at Huntly and the Countess of Northumberland at Pluscarden.Jade Scott, The Life and Letters of Lady Anne Percy (Catholic Record Society, Boydell, 2024), pp. xxxix-xl: William Boyd, Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 3 (Edinburgh, 1903), p. 274 no. 370.
John Gordon, Earl of Sutherland John Gordon, 11th Earl of Sutherland and his wife Marion Seton were poisoned at Helmsdale Castle in 1567 by Isobel Sinclair, the wife of Gordon of Gartly.Fraser, William, ed., Sutherland Book, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1892), pp. 121-4, 127-9 Isobel Seton's own son also died, but the fifteen-year-old heir of Sutherland, Alexander Gordon was unharmed. He was made to marry the Earl of Caithness' daughter Barbara Sinclair. In 1569 he escaped from the Sinclairs to Huntly Castle and remained at Huntly until he came of age in 1573. Barbara Sinclair died, and on 13 December 1573 Alexander Gordon, now Earl of Sutherland, married Jean Gordon, former wife of the Earl of Bothwell, who had also found a refuge at Huntly Castle.Margaret Sanderson, Mary Stewart's People (Mercat Press: Edinburgh, 1987), pp. 42-3.Robert Gordon, Genealogical history of the Earldom of Sutherland (Edinburgh, 1813), p. 168.
A fatal football match An early description of the death of George Gordon, 5th Earl of Huntly in 1576, transcribed or copied down by Richard Bannatyne as "The Maner of the Erle of Huntlies Death", gives some details of how the castle was used,John Graham Dalyell, Journal of the Transactions in Scotland, by Richard Bannatyne (Edinburgh, 1806), pp. xviii, 483-492.Robert Pitcairn, Memorials of the Transactions in Scotland by Richard Bannatyne (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1836), pp. xxvii, 333-338. and has been examined by historians including Charles McKean and Jenny Wormald.Charles McKean, The Scottish Chateau (Sutton, 2001), 109: Jenny Wormald, "How Different it was in Scotland: Three Earls, a Football and a Ghost Story", ", Benjamin Thomson & John Watts, Political Society in Later Medieval England: A Festschrift for Christine Carpenter (Boydell, 2015), 231–244. The Earl of Huntly was a healthy man and had been out hunting hares and a fox at Winton's Wood. After returning to Huntly, he suffered a stroke after dinner, or a collapse caused by food poisoning, while playing football outside the Castle on the Green.Jennifer Morag Henderson, Daughters of the North (Whittles, 2025), p. 157.
The Earl was given his cloak, and began to stagger as he approached the castle's outer gate, falling in a puddle. He was helped by the Master of Huntly to his own bedchamber in the round tower of the palace block, which was then called the "New Warke of Strathbogie." The tower room was adjacent to the "Grit Chalmer", the Great Chamber. After the Earl died, his brother Adam Gordon arranged for his body was laid out in the "Chamber of Dais", another name for the Great Chamber, and his valuables in boxes in coffers were secured in the same chamber and the outer chamber door of the suite was locked.Jennifer Morag Henderson, Daughters of the North (Whittles, 2025), p. 158: Robert Pitcairn, Memorials of the Transactions in Scotland by Richard Bannatyne (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1836), p. 335.
After the Earl's steward left the castle, a number of alleged supernatural events occurred beginning with the sudden collapse of one of the servants who had gathered in the "Laich Chalmer", Low Chamber. This "Laich Chalmer" was in another part of the castle, under a stair, opposite the "Auld Hall." On the following day, a servant went up to the Gallery at the top of the "New Warke" a room where valuable spices were stored (near the room where the Earl's body lay). This servant and two companions also collapsed and when revived complained of feeling cold.Robert Pitcairn, Bannatyne's Memorials of the Transactions in Scotland (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1836), pp. 335–336.