Crail

James V (the father of Mary Queen of Scots) sent for his wife, Mary of Guise, whom he had recently married by proxy in Paris, and she landed in Crail in June 1538. According to Antonia Fraser, “Accompanied by a navy of ships under Lord Maxwell, and 2,000 lords and barons whom her new husband had sent from Scotland to fetch her away, Queen Mary landed at Crail in Fife on 10 June 1538, just over a year since the landing of Queen Madeleine. She was formally received by the king at St Andrews a few days later with pageants and plays performed in her honour, and a great deal of generally blithe rejoicing, before being remarried the next morning in the Cathedral of St Andrews.” (Queen Madeleine, the first wife of James V, had landed at Leith in the spring of 1537 and died shortly afterwards.) In August 1583 many of the inhabitants of Crail attacked nearby Wormiston House, which belonged to Sir John Anstruther. They filled up newly made ponds and ditches, and destroyed a plantation of ash trees. They were angry at Sir John because his new ditches had been built on land they claimed to belong to them as common land. The Privy Council of Scotland ordered them to rebuild the dykes. In 2017 The Community Council was granted the Letters Patent to the Crail Shield and Coat of Arms. This was lost when the Royal Burgh of Crail Council was abolished in 1976.