Painting by Richard Burchett 1815-1875
They found Richard III under a Hyundai so why not find the body one of greatest Scottish Kings who also died in battle. James IV was a true renaissance prince. He sponsored a flowering of culture in Scotland, made Europe’s largest warship, and did a weird experiment by letting highland children grow up isolated on an island to find out whether language was innate or learned. But he also led one of the most disastrous battles in Scottish history in 1513 at Flodden in Northumbria, where James himself was killed fighting at the front. This year it is the 500th anniversary of the battle and there is an excavation of the battlefield underway. Although they are not going to find the the King’s body (It’s was buried in a church in London that is now a chipper) they did find a livery badge of a soldier in his personal retinue. So what does this have to do with North Carolina? Well, in the 1760’s NC was called a Macocracy for the number of Scots in the government and residing in the state. Scots who had left a very impoverished nation which still felt the indirect effects from the fateful battle.
Source Impoderabilia, Scotsman
Wilson County Public Library Local History and Genealogy Blog 