124. =While Albany with feeble hand.= After the death of James IV at
Flodden Field the regency was held first by the mother of the young
king, and then by the Duke of Albany. The latter was forced by the
Estates to leave Scotland in 1624, and soon after the regency fell
practically, though, not constitutionally, into the hands of the king's
step-father, Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus. See introduction on the
historical setting of the poem.