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This is not to be confused with ´the Black Dinner´, which had taken place at Edinburgh Castle twelve years previously, at which the 6th Earl of Douglas and his brother were killed. Some writers give the name ´Black Dinner´ to both events, causing much confusion.
 
At this second dinner, the victim was William, 8th Earl of Douglas, who, like his predecessor-but-one, the 6th earl, was born about 1425. The harmless 7th earl had died in his bed at Abercorn in 1443 and the 8th earl was not quite 18 at the time of his succession. At first he made such a favourable impression on the 13-year-old James II that he was rapidly made Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom. In 1444 he married, the 15-year-old Margaret, ´the Fair Maid of Galloway´, sister of the 6th Earl of Douglas, meaning that much of the lands dispersed at the death of the 6th earl were brought together, together with Margaret´s dowry of Galloway and other lands.
 
The 8th earl was frequently at court in attendance on the king until August 1450, when he withdrew temporarily from public life in order to go on pilgrimage to Rome to celebrate the jubilee year. He was favourably received by His Holiness (Nicholas V, pope from 1447 to 1455) but had hurried back to Scotland by April 1451, at once resuming his place at court; news had reached him that there were plots to damage his reputation with the king. His fears appear to have been justified and his good favour with the monarch was indeed short-lived.
 
King James believed Douglas to be involved in a plot against the crown, led by Alexander Lindsay, 4th Earl of Crawford (´Earl Beardie´), and he summoned the Douglas to his presence at Stirling Castle. The earl arrived and was invited to dine with the king the following evening, 20 February 1452. After supper the king argued privately with the earl and urged him to break off all dealings with Crawford, but Douglas refused. Tempers flared and anger drew nigh to the edge of swords. The 22-year-old king, in a moment of violent passion, drew his dagger and stabbed the 27-year-old earl, first in the neck and then in the body. These wounds might not have been fatal, but the courtiers rushed in to defend the king and the hapless earl was finished off by a blow on the head from an axe. His body was afterwards found to have received 26 wounds, great and small. His remains were buried secretly in the grounds of the Dominican friary at Stirling.