#n agnes randolph
Lady Agnes Randolph, known as ‘Black Agnes’
Countess of Dunbar and March
Born c. 1312 – Died 1369
Claim to fame: a Scottish heroine who successfully defended Dunbar Castle during a five month siege by the English.
Known as ‘Black Agnes’, she was the wife of Patrick, Earl of Dunbar and March. Whilst her husband was fighting in the north, Agnes defended Dunbar Castle against an English siege by the Earl of Salisbury for five months in 1338. She had only a retinue of servants and a few guards to meet the attack, but she was outraged and refused to surrender.
Salisbury began by bombarding Dunbar using catapults. Lady Agnes responded by taunting the English and having her maids dress in their Sunday best to nonchalantly dust the battlements with handkerchiefs.
Salisbury began assaulting the castle with a battering ram, so Agnes had a huge boulder dropped over the walls to destroy it.
The English then captured Agnes’s brother, the Earl of Moray, parading him in front of the castle with a rope round his neck, threatening to hang him if she did not surrender. She told them to go ahead so she could inherit his Earldom. The English relented and Moray survived.
Though an able commander, Salisbury lifted his siege of Dunbar castle after five months without success.
Black Agnes became a folk hero and is remembered in a ballad attributing these words to Salisbury:
She kept a stir in tower and trench, that brawling, boisterous Scottish wench,
Came I early, came I late, I found Agnes at the gate.
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