Janet Douglas 1537

The story of Janet Douglas, Lady Glamis, is a tragic tale of vengeance against an innocent young woman, meted out by the king of the time, James V, and achieved by accusing her on a baseless charge of witchcraft and poisoning.

Janet was the daughter of George Douglas, Master of Angus (heir, at that time, to the Earldom of Angus) and Elizabeth Drummond, daughter of the first Lord Drummond, and was born around 1505. She married John Lyon, sixth Lord Glamis, and they had a son, who they also called John.

When Lyon died in 1528, the young widowed Janet went on to wed Walter Campbell of Skipness. Janet was also the sister of Archibald Douglas, sixth Earl of Angus, and it was this family relationship that was to be her downfall.

So why did James hates the Douglases? James V was just a child when his father, James IV, was slain with the flower of Scottish nobility at the disastrous Battle of Flodden in 1513. James IV’s widow, Margaret Tudor, went on to marry the Douglas Earl of Angus and, as stepfather to the young king, Angus virtually controlled the kingdom by having possession of the king.

When James V came of age, he escaped from Falkland Palace and Angus’s clutches and asserted his power. Angus fled Scotland after being besieged in Tantallon Castle in 1528, but James went on to pursue vengeance against his family. Janet was widowed the same year that her brother fled Scotland; James had forfeited the Earl of Angus, seizing his lands and property. 

Janet was summoned on a charge of communicating with her exiled brother, but she failed to appear and was then forfeited herself. She and her family were besieged in Glamis Castle and then seized and brought to Edinburgh.

Although a women of impeccable character, she was accused of trying to poison James and also of witchcraft, although it took torturing Janet’s servants and friends to find any evidence against her on these charges (she may well have been guilty on the original charge). 

She was imprisoned with her husband Walter Campbell and her son John in a dark dungeon of Edinburgh Castle. Although nearly blind from her jail, Janet made an eloquent speech in her defence at her trial, but it was to no avail and she was convicted, along with her son. Campbell managed to escape from the prison but he was killed, falling from the castle rock.

Unfortunately nothing could save Janet and on 17 July 1537, on what is now the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle, she was burned alive; her son was forced to watch. She was described as ‘in the prime of her years, of a singular beauty, and suffering through all, though a woman, with a man-like courage’.

John, her son, was also sentenced to death but, fortunately for him, he was not yet of an age when he could be executed; that was reserved for when he reached eighteen.

In the meantime, James V took all his lands and houses, including Glamis Castle, and plundered them. Luckily for John, James died in 1542 before he could be executed, and John was subsequently pardoned and became seventh Lord Glamis and recovered his property.

Glamis Castle is said to be haunted by the ghost of Janet Douglas, an apparition known as the Grey Lady, and reputedly seen on many occasions in the chapel of the old stronghold.

Janet’s ghost is said to haunt the spot where she died on the esplanade outside Edinburgh Castle, but also reputedly returned to Glamis. The story is that her apparition, known as the Grey Lady (although possibly also the White Lady; however this may be an entirely different ghost), has reputedly been seen in the castle chapel as well as in the clock tower. Glamis Castle is open to the public and the chapel may be visited.

Hammering and banging, believed to come from her execution, are also said to plague the building. One account of 1880 relates:

  ‘A lady, well known in London Society, an artistic and social celebrity, wealthy beyond all doubts of the future, and what is called very cultivated and instructed, but clear-headed, and perhaps slightly matter-of-fact woman, went to stay at Glamis Castle for the first time. She was allotted very handsome apartments, just on the point of the junction between the new buildings – perhaps a hundred or two hundred years old – and the very ancient part of the castle. The rooms were handsomely furnished: no gaunt carvings grinned from the walls; no grim tapestry swung to and fro, making strange figures look the stranger by the flickering firelight; all was smooth, cosy, and modern, and the guest retired to bed without a thought of the mysteries of Glamis. In the morning she appeared at the breakfast-table quite cheerfully and self-possessed. To the inquiry how she had slept, she replied: ‘Well, thanks, very well, up to four o’clock in the morning. But your Scottish carpenters seem to come to work very early. I suppose they put up their scaffolding quickly, though, for they are quiet now.’ This speech produced a dead silence, and the speaker saw with astonishment that the faces of members of the family were very pale.

    She was asked, as she valued the friendship of all there, never to speak to them on the subject again; there had been no carpenters at Glamis Castle for months past. This fact, whatever it may be worth, is absolutely established, so far as the testimony of a single witness can establish anything. The lady was awakened by a loud knocking and hammering, as if somebody were putting up a scaffold, and the noise did not alarm her in the least. On the contrary, she took it for an accident, due to the presumed matutinal [morning] habits of the people. She knew, of course, there were stories about Glamis, but had not the remotest idea that the hammering she had heard was connected with any story.’

One sunny day, Lady Granville, the aunt of the then Earl and sister to the Queen Mother, saw the ghost in the chapel, kneeling at one of the pews. She could see the figure and dress quite clearly but the sun shone through the ghost, making a pattern on the floor. Timothy Patrick, the sixteenth Earl of Strathmore, also saw the Grey Lady at a different time, kneeling in the chapel, and he then withdrew and left her alone. A further detail is that a guide taking visitors round the castle noticed that people visiting the chapel never sat on one particular pew, as if it was already occupied.

A further account has the Grey Lady being seen on the day that James ‘the Old Pretender’ visited the chapel at Glamis in January 1716 to cure the King’s Evil (or scrofula, as it is also known). The Grey Lady was observed, entering the chapel and then kneeling in prayer. Of course, James was the great great great grandson of James V, the man who had had Janet Douglas so horribly and unjustly executed.

Also see further ghost stories about Glamis Castle

© Martin Coventry 2017

More info on Glamis Castle and Edinburgh Castle from thecastlesofscotland.co.uk

text from Scotland's Wicked Witches