BLAZON OF ARMS:
SHIELD: Quarterly:
1st: Gules, on a chevron Argent two lions pulling at a rose Gules. (Hepburn)
2nd: Azure, a ship Or, sails furled Argent, within a double tressure flory counterflory Or. (Orkney)
3rd: Ermine, three chevronels Gules. (Lord Soulis)
4th: Or, a bend Azure. ( Vaus of Dirleton)
SOURCE/NOTES & CREDITS: Blazon is from Nisbet as Duke of Orkney.
Illustration for background and some text is adapted from the Wikipedia article.
and “The Scots Peerage”, vol 2, 1905, pp 135-167, which gave the arms mentioned above.
James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell (Lord Boswell)was born circa. 1534, 3rd husband of Mary, Queen of Scots who created him Duke of Orkney and Marquess of Fife on 12 May 1567. They were married at Holyrood Palace by Adam Bothwell, the Bishop of Orkney on 15 May 1567
A huge uproar followed amongst the Scots nobility, and on 16 Jun 1567 Orkney fled Scotland to Norway. Arrested there for an earlier abandoned marriage he was sent to Copenhagen where the Danish King Frederik II ultimately imprisoned him at Dragsholm Castle and forgot about him. James Hepburn, Lord Boswell and Duke of Orkney, remained chained to a pillar and suffered for ten years until he died on 14 Apr 1578.
The artwork is an interpretation by John Hamilton Gaylor
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