How James II’s Childhood Escape Shaped Scotland’s Capital

a 15th-century cliff-hanger that changed Edinburgh & Leith forever

On a raw spring morning in 1439, Edinburgh Castle awoke to holy-day bustle. Queen Joan Beaufort announced that she would ride east to Whitekirk to pray for the frail health of her six-year-old son, King James II. Sir William Crichton, castle governor and political strong-man, accepted the pious tale at face value. What he didn’t know was that the “luggage chest” being roped to a sumpter horse contained the boy-king himself, curled beside spare hose and linen. A second chest held the queen’s own wardrobe. Once the gate clanged shut behind the party, Joan wheeled south, bolting downhill through the Grassmarket and along the Netherbow for Leith. At the King’s Wark—a royal storehouse and quay on the Shore—oarsmen stood ready. By the time Crichton realised his captives had slipped the noose, a brisk easterly wind was pushing mother and son across the Firth of Forth toward the safety of Stirling Castle.

The escape is the stuff of cloak-and-dagger legend, yet its impact was concrete: it embarrassed Crichton, reset the balance of power among competing factions, and—less obviously—nudged Scotland’s political centre of gravity toward Edinburgh and its port of Leith for the next two centuries.