The Battle of Philiphaugh which was fought 380 years ago today, was a catastrophic defeat for the Marquess of Montrose and his Royalist army. It brought to a sudden end his string of victories that had seemingly set aside Covenanter power in Scotland and looked to return the kingdom to the authority of King Charles I.
Coming as it did almost exactly three months after the English Royalist were defeated at Naseby it left the King’s fortunes in a much more precarious state than they had been in the earlier part of the year.
The battle itself was fought on the southern edges of Selkirk when the Montrose forces were surprised by the Covenanter army who had retuned to Scotland from campaigning in Northumberland. Montrose himself was in Selkirk and unable to effectively join the battle until it had already begun. His escape almost certainly saved him for another day.
Less fortunate were Montrose’s Irish troops who, along with their families and followers, were massacred. A number of leading Royalist officers and the King’s Secretary of State, Sit Robert Spottiswood, who were captured in their flight after the battle. They were to suffer what might well be seen today as “show trials” at Glasgow and St Andrews and were beheaded on the ‘Maiden’. In many ways their fates were a vindictive continuation of family feuds, and not dissimilar to those of leading figures captured in the battles of the Wars of the Roses and similar Scottish conflicts in the preceding two centuries.
Effective political power in Scotland returned to the Committee of the Estates representing the Scottish Parliament, and very much under hardline Presbyterian influence
Wikipedia has an account of the battle at Battle of Philiphaugh
It also has biographies of some of those involved at James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, at Robert Spottiswood, and of the Covenanter commander at David Leslie, 1st Lord Newark
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