#bydand

On this day in 1562, the Battle of Corrichie was fought on the slopes of Meikle Tap, near Aberdeen.

The battle was the culmination of simmering tensions between George Gordon, 4th Earl of Huntly, and Mary, Queen of Scots.

As one of Mary's few remaining Catholic nobles in country by then transformed by the phenomenon of the Protestant Reformation, it might have been expected that Huntly would have been amongst the least likely to openly oppose his Queen.

Nevertheless, oppose her he did. Angry at the granting of the Earldom of Moray he believed was his birthright to Mary's half-brother James Stewart, he would not give his son John up to the Queen as demanded, and his lieutenant at Inverness Castle refused Mary entry to the northern fortress. Huntly was soon declared a rebel, and formed an army of around 700 men before marching towards Aberdeen.

Huntly's army was met by a considerably larger force outside the city led by the Earl of Moray, and soundly defeated. He was said to have died of a heart attack and shortly afterwards his son John was executed in Aberdeen, apparently not without the tears of the Queen, who, it was rumoured, had been a lover of the young man.

Today, the battlefield, now largely covered by commercial forestry is marked by a solitary granite standing stone, inscribed with the Gaelic "Cuimhnichibh La Coire Fraoichidh" - Remember the Day of Corrichie.