Scone, with its sacred stone, being so near Perth and the Highlands, was
perilous, and the coronation of James II. was therefore held at Holyrood
(March 25, 1437). The child, who was but seven years of age, was bandied
to and fro like a shuttlecock between rival adventurers. The Earl of
Douglas (Archibald, fifth Earl, died 1439) took no leading part in the
strife of factions: one of them led by Sir William Crichton, who held the
important post of Commander of Edinburgh Castle; the other by Sir
Alexander Livingstone of Callendar.
The great old Houses had been shaken by the severities of James I., at
least for the time. In a Government of factions influenced by private
greed, there was no important difference in policy, and we need not
follow the transference of the royal person from Crichton in Edinburgh to
Livingstone in Stirling Castle; the coalitions between these worthies,
the battles between the Boyds of Kilmarnock and the Stewarts, who had to
avenge Stewart of Derneley, Constable of the Scottish contingent in
France, who was slain by Sir Thomas Boyd. The queen-mother married Sir
James Stewart, the Black Knight of Lorne, and (August 3, 1439) she was
captured by Livingstone, while her husband, in the mysterious words of
the chronicler, was "put in a pitt and bollit." In a month Jane Beaufort
gave Livingstone an amnesty; he, not the Stewart family, not the queen-
mother, now held James.
To all this the new young Earl of Douglas, a boy of eighteen, tacitly
assented. He was the most powerful and wealthiest subject in Scotland;
in France he was Duc de Touraine; he was descended in lawful wedlock from
Robert II.; "he micht ha'e been the king," as the ballad says of the
bonny Earl of Moray. But he held proudly aloof from both Livingstone and
Crichton, who were stealing the king alternately: they then combined,
invited Douglas to Edinburgh Castle, with his brother David, and served
up the ominous bull's head at that "black dinner" recorded in a ballad
fragment. {61} They decapitated the two Douglas boys; the earldom fell
to their granduncle, James the Fat, and presently, on _his_ death (1443),
to young William Douglas, after which "bands," or illegal covenants,
between the various leaders of factions, led to private wars of shifting
fortune. Kennedy, Bishop of St Andrews, opposed the Douglas party, now
strong both in lands newly acquired, till (July 3, 1449) James married
Mary of Gueldres, imprisoned the Livingstones, and relied on the Bishop
of St Andrews and the clergy. While Douglas was visiting Rome in 1450,
the Livingstones had been forfeited, and Crichton became Chancellor.
FALL OF THE BLACK DOUGLASES.
The Douglases, through a royal marriage of an ancestor to a daughter of
the more legitimate marriage of Robert II., had a kind of claim to the
throne which they never put forward. The country was thus spared
dynastic wars, like those of the White and Red Roses in England; but,
none the less, the Douglases were too rich and powerful for subjects.
The Earl at the moment held Galloway and Annandale, two of his brothers
were Earls of Moray and Ormond; in October 1448, Ormond had distinguished
himself by defeating and taking Percy, urging a raid into Scotland, at a
bloody battle on the Water of Sark, near Gretna.
During the Earl of Douglas's absence in Rome, James had put down some of
his unruly retainers, and even after his return (1451) had persevered in
this course. Later in the year Douglas resigned, and received back his
lands, a not uncommon formula showing submission on the vassal's favour
on the lord's part, as when Charles VII., at the request of Jeanne d'Arc,
made this resignation to God!
Douglas, however, was suspected of intriguing with England and with the
Lord of the Isles, while he had a secret covenant or "band" with the
Earls of Crawford and Ross. If all this were true, he was planning a
most dangerous enterprise.
He was invited to Stirling to meet the king under a safe-conduct, and
there (February 22, 1452) was dirked by his king at the sacred table of
hospitality.
Whether this crime was premeditated or merely passionate is unknown, as
in the case of Bruce's murder of the Red Comyn before the high altar.
Parliament absolved James on slender grounds. James, the brother of the
slain earl, publicly defied his king, gave his allegiance to Henry VI. of
England, withdrew it, intrigued, and, after his brothers had been routed
at Arkinholm, near Langholm (May 18, 1455), fled to England. His House
was proclaimed traitorous; their wide lands in southern and south-western
Scotland were forfeited and redistributed, the Scotts of Buccleuch
profiting largely in the long-run. The leader of the Royal forces at
Arkinholm, near Langholm, was another Douglas, one of "the Red
Douglases," the Earl of Angus; and till the execution of the Earl of
Morton, under James VI., the Red Douglases were as powerful, turbulent,
and treacherous as the Black Douglases had been in their day. When
attacked and defeated, these Douglases, red or black, always allied
themselves with England and with the Lords of the Isles, the hereditary
foes of the royal authority.
Meanwhile Edward IV. wrote of the Scots as "his rebels of Scotland," and
in the alternations of fortune between the Houses of York and Lancaster,
James held with Henry VI. When Henry was defeated and taken at
Northampton (July 10, 1460), James besieged Roxburgh Castle, an English
hold on the Border, and (August 3, 1460) was slain by the explosion of a
great bombard.
James was but thirty years of age at his death. By the dagger, by the
law, and by the aid of the Red Douglases, he had ruined his most powerful
nobles--and his own reputation. His early training, like that of James
VI., was received while he was in the hands of the most treacherous,
bloody, and unscrupulous of mankind; later, he met them with their own
weapons. The foundation of the University of Glasgow (1451), and the
building and endowment of St Salvator's College in St Andrews, by Bishop
Kennedy, are the most permanent proofs of advancing culture in the reign
of James.
Many laws of excellent tendency, including sumptuary laws, which suggest
the existence of unexpected wealth and luxury, were passed; but such laws
were never firmly and regularly enforced. By one rule, which does seem
to have been carried out, no poisons were to be imported: Scottish
chemical science was incapable of manufacturing them. Much later, under
James VI., we find a parcel of arsenic, to be used for political
purposes, successfully stopped at Leith.