CHAPTER II

JAMES II: WITH THE FIERY FACE

It is clear that the public opinion of Scotland, so far as there was

such a thing in existence, had no sympathy whatever with the murderers

of James. The instruments of that murder were in the first place

Highland caterans, with whom no terms were ever held and against whom

every man's hand was armed. And the leaders who had taken advantage of

these wild allies against their natural monarch and kindred were by the

very act put beyond the pale of sympathy. They were executed ferociously

and horribly, according to the custom of the time, the burghers of Perth

rising at once in pursuit of them, and the burghers of Edinburgh looking

on with stern satisfaction at their tortures--these towns feeling

profoundly, more perhaps than any other section of the community, the

extraordinary loss they had in the able and vigorous King, already, like

his descendant and successor, the King of the commons, their stay and

encouragement. If there was among the nobility less lamentation over a

ruler who spared none of them on account of his race, and was sternly

bent on repressing all abuse of power, it was silent in the immense and

universal horror with which the event filled Scotland. It would seem

probable that the little heir, only six years old, the only son of King

James, was not with his parents in their Christmas rejoicings at Perth,

but had been left behind at Holyrood, for we are told that the day after

his father's death the poor little wondering child was solemnly but

hastily crowned there, the dreadful news having flown to the centre of

government. He was "crownd by the nobilitie," says Pitscottie, the great

nobles who were nearest and within reach having no doubt rushed to the

spot where the heir was, to guard and also to retain in their own hands

the future King. He was proclaimed at once, and the crown, or such

substitute for it as could be laid sudden hands upon, put on his infant

head. The scene is one which recurred again and again in the history of

his race, yet nothing can take from it its touching features. At six

years old even the intimation of a father's death, especially when

taking place at a distance, would make but a transitory impression upon

the mind; yet we may well imagine the child taken from his toys, wrapped

from head to foot in some royal mantle, with a man's crown held over his

baby head, receiving with large eyes of wonder and fright easily

translated into tears, the sacred oil, the sceptre which his little

fingers could scarcely enclose. Alas for the luckless Stewarts! again

and again this affecting ceremony took place before the time of their

final promotion which was the precursor of their overthrow. They were

all kings almost from their cradle--kings ill-omened, entering upon

their royalty with infant terror and tears.

[Illustration: EDINBURGH CASTLE FROM THE SOUTH-WEST]

When they had crowned the little James, second of the name, the lords

held a convention "to advise whom they thought most able both for

manheid and witt to take the government of the commonwealth in hand."

They chose two men for this office, neither of whom was taken from a

very great family, or had, so far as can be known, any special

importance--Sir Alexander Livingstone, described as Knight of Callender,

and Sir William Crichton, Chancellor of Scotland. Perhaps it was one of

the compromises which are so common when parties are nearly equal in

power which thus placed two personages of secondary importance at the

head of affairs: but any advantage which might have been secured by this

selection was neutralised by the division of power, which added to all

the evils of an interregnum the perplexity of two centres of government,

so that "no man knew," as says Pitscottie, "whom he should obey." One of

the Regents reigned in Edinburgh, the other in Stirling--one had the

advantage of holding possession of the King, the other had the doubtful

good of the support of the Queen. It may be imagined what an

extraordinary contrast this was to the firm and vigilant sway of a

monarch in the fulness of manhood, with all the prestige of his many

gifts and accomplishments, his vigorous and manful character and his

unquestioned right to the government and obedience of the country. It

had been hard work enough for James I., with all these advantages, to

keep his kingdom well in hand: and it would not be easy to exaggerate

the difficulties now, with two rival and feeble powers, neither great

enough to overawe nor united enough to hold in check the independent

power of the great houses which vied with each other in the display of

dominion and wealth. In a very brief time all the ground gained by King

James was lost again. Every element of anarchy arose in new force, and

if it had been hard to secure the execution of the laws which would have

been so good had they been kept in the time when their chief

administrator was the King himself, it may be supposed what was the

difficulty now, when, save in a little circuit round each seat of

authority, there was virtually no power at all. Pitscottie gives a

curious and vivid picture of the state of affairs in this lamentable

interval.

"In the mean time many great dissensions rose amongst us, but it was

uncertain who were the movers, or by what occasion the chancellor

exercised such office, further than became him. He keeped both the

Castle of Edinburgh and also our young King thereintill, who was

committed to his keeping by the haill nobilitie and ane great part

of the noble men assisted to his opinion. Upon the other side, Sir

Alexander Livingstoun bearing the authoritie committed to him by

consent of the nobilitie, as said is, contained another faction, to

whose opinion the Queen mother with many of the nobility very trewly

assisted. So the principals of both the factions caused proclaime

lettres at mercat crosses and principal villages of the realm that

all men should obey conforme to the aforesaid letters sent forth by

them, under the pain of death. To the which no man knew to whom he

should obey or to whose letters he should be obedient unto. And also

great trouble appeared in this realm, because there was no man to

defend the burghs, priests, and poor men and labourers hauntind to

their leisum (lawful) business either private or public. These men

because of these enormities might not travel for thieves and

brigands and such like: all other weak and decrepit persons who was

unable to defend themselves, or yet to get food and sustentation to

themselves, were most cruelly vexed in such troublous times. For

when any passed to seek redress at the Chancellor of such injuries

and troubles sustained by them, the thieves and brigands, feigning

themselves to be of another faction, would burn their house and

carry their whole goods and gear away before ever they returned

again. And the same mischief befell those that went to complain to

the Governor of the oppression done to them. Some other good men

moved upon consideration and pitie of their present calamities

tholed (endured) many such injuries, and contained themselves at

home and sought no redresse. In the midst of these things and

troubles, all things being out of order, Queen-Mother began to find

out ane moyane (a means) how she should diminish the Chancellor's

power and augment the Governor's power, whose authority she

assisted."

The position of Queen Jane in the circumstances in which her husband

left her, a woman still young, with a band of small children, and no

authority in the turbulent and distracted country, is as painful a one

as could well be imagined. Her English blood would be against her, and

even her beauty, so celebrated by her chivalrous husband, and which

would no doubt increase the immediate impulse of suitors, in that

much-marrying age, towards the beautiful widow who was of royal blood to

begin with and still bore the title of Queen. That she seems to have had

no protection from her royal kindred is probably explained by the fact

that Henry VI was never very potent or secure upon his throne, and that

the Wars of the Roses were threatening and demanding the whole attention

of the English Government. Wounded in her efforts to protect her husband

by her own person, seeing him slaughtered before her eyes, there could

not be a more terrible moment in any woman's life, hard as were the

lives of women in that age of violence, than that which passed over Jane

Beaufort's head in the Blackfriars Monastery amid the blood and tumult

of that fatal night. The chroniclers, occupied by matters more weighty,

have no time to picture the scene that followed that cruel and horrible

murder, when the distracted women, who were its only witnesses, after

the tumult and the roar of the murderers had passed by, were left to

wash the wounds and compose the limbs of the dead King so lately taking

his part in their evening's pastime, and to look to the injuries of the

Queen and the torn and broken arm of Catherine Douglas, a sufferer of

whom history has no further word to say. The room with its imperfect

lights rises before us, the wintry wind rushing in by those wide-open

doors, waving about the figures on the tapestry till they too seemed to

mourn and lament with wildly tossing arms the horror of the scene--the

cries and clash of arms as the caterans fled, pausing no doubt to pick

up what scattered jewels or rich garments might lie in their way: and by

the wild illumination of a torch, or the wavering leaping flame of the

faggot on the hearth, the two wounded ladies, each with an anxious group

about her--the Queen, covered with her own and her husband's blood; the

girl, with her broken wrist, lying near the threshold which she had

defended with all her heroic might. They were used to exercise the art

of healing, to bind up wounds and bring back consciousness, these

hapless ladies, so constantly the victims of passion and ambition. But

amid all the horrors which they had to witness in their lives, horrors

in which they did not always take the healing part, there could be none

more appalling than this. Neither then nor now, however, is it at the

most terrible moment of life, when the revolted soul desires it most,

that death comes to free the sufferer. The Queen lived, no doubt, to

think of the forlorn little boy in Holyrood, the five little maidens who

were dependent upon her, and resumed the burden of life now so strangely

different, so dull and blank, so full of alarms and struggles. Her elder

child, the little Princess Margaret, had been sent to France three or

four years before, at the age of ten, to be the bride of the Dauphin--a

great match for a Scottish princess--and it is possible that her next

sister, Eleanor, who afterwards married the Duc de Bretagne, had

accompanied Margaret--two little creatures solitary in their great

promotion, separated from all who held them dear. But the four infants

who were left would be burden enough for the mother in her unassured and

unprotected state. It would seem that she was not permitted to be with

her boy, probably because of the jealousy of the Lords, who would have

no female Regent attempting to reign in the name of her son: but had

fixed her residence in Stirling under the shield of Livingstone, who as

Governor of the kingdom ought to have exercised all the functions of the

Regency, and especially the most weighty one, that of training the King.

Crichton, however, who was Chancellor, had been on the spot when James

II was crowned, and had secured his guardianship by the might of the

strong hand, if no other, removing him to Edinburgh Castle, where he

could be kept safe under watch and ward. The Queen, who would seem to

have been throughout of Livingstone's faction, and who no doubt desired

to have her son with her, both from affection and policy, set her wits

to discover a "moyane," as the chroniclers say, of recovering the

custody of the boy. The moyane was simple and primitive enough, and

might well have been pardoned to a mother deprived of her natural

rights: but it shows at the same time the importance attached to the

possession of the little King, when it was only in such a way that he

could be secured. Queen Jane set out from Stirling "with a small train"

to avert suspicion, and appeared at the gates of Edinburgh Castle

suddenly, without warning as would seem, asking to be admitted to see

her son. The Chancellor, wise and wily as he was, would appear to have

acknowledged the naturalness of this request, and "received her," the

chronicler says, "with gladness, and gave her entrance to visit her

young son, and gave command that whensoever the Queen came to the castle

it should be patent to Her Grace." Jane entered the castle accordingly,

with many protestations of her desire for peace and anxiety to prevent

dissensions, all which was, no doubt, true enough, though the

chroniclers treat her protestations with little faith, declaring her to

have "very craftilie dissembled" in order to dispel any suspicion the

Chancellor may have entertained. It would seem that she had not borne

any friendship to him beforehand, and that her show of friendship now

required explanation. However that might be, she succeeded in persuading

Crichton of her good faith, and was allowed to have free intercourse

with her son and regain her natural place in his affections. How long

they had been separated there is no evidence to show, but it could

scarcely be difficult for the mother to recover, even had it fallen into

forgetfulness, the affection of her child. When she had remained long

enough in the castle to disarm any prejudices Crichton might entertain

of her, and to persuade the little King to the device which was to

secure his freedom, the Queen informed the Chancellor that she was about

to make a pilgrimage to the famous shrine of Whitekirk, "the white kirk

of Brechin," Pitscottie says, in order to pray for the repose of the

soul of her husband and the prosperity of her son, and asked permission

to carry away two coffers with her clothes and ornaments, probably

things which she had left in the castle before her widowhood, and that

means of conveyance might be provided for these possessions to Leith,

where she was to embark. This simple request was easily granted, and the

two coffers carried out of the castle, and conveyed by "horss" to the

ship in which she herself embarked with her few attendants. But instead

of turning northward Queen Jane's ship sailed up the Firth, through the

narrow strait at Queensferry, past Borrowstounness, where the great

estuary widens out once more, into the quiet waters of the Forth,

winding through the green country to Stirling on its hill. She was "a

great pairt of the watter upward before ever the keepers of the castle

could perceive themselves deceived," says Pitscottie. As the ship neared

Stirling, the Governor of the kingdom came out of the castle with all

his forces, with great joy and triumph, and received the King and his

mother. For one of the coffers, so carefully packed and accounted for,

contained no less an ornament than the little King in person, to whose

childish mind no doubt this mode of transport was a delightful device

and pleasantry. One can imagine how the Queen's heart must have throbbed

with anxiety while her son lay hidden in the bed made for him within the

heavy chest, where if air failed, or any varlet made the discovery

prematurely, all her hopes would have come to an end. She must have

fluttered like a bird over her young about the receptacle in which her

boy lay, and talked with her ladies over his head to encourage and keep

him patient till the end of the journey was near enough, amid the

lingering links of Forth, to open the lid and set him free. It is not a

journey that is often made nowadays, but with all the lights of the

morning upon Demayat and his attendant mountains, and the sun shining

upon that rich valley, and the river at its leisure wending, as if it

loved them, through all the verdant holms and haughs, there is no

pleasanter way of travelling from Edinburgh to Stirling, the two

hill-castles of the Scottish crown.

[Illustration: INNER BARRIER, EDINBURGH CASTLE]

It would be pleasant to think that Queen Jane meant something more than

the mere bolstering up of one faction against another in the distracted

kingdom by the abduction of her son. It is very possible indeed that she

did so, and that to strengthen the hands of the man who was really

Regent-Governor of Scotland, but whose power had been stolen from his

hands by the unscrupulousness of Crichton, seemed to her a great

political object, and the recovery of the supreme authority, which would

seem to have appeared to all as infallibly linked with the possession of

the young King, of the greatest importance. It is evident it was

considered by the general public to be so; but there is something

pitiful in the struggle for the poor boy, over whose small person those

fierce factionaries fought, and in whose name, still so innocent and

helpless as he was, so many ferocious deeds were done.

No sooner was he secure in Stirling than the Governor called together a

convention of his friends, to congratulate each other and praise the wit

and skill of "that noble woman, our soverain mother," who had thus set

things right. "Whereby I understand," he says piously, "that the wisest

man is not at all times the sickerest, nor yet the hardy man happiest,"

seeing that Crichton, though so great and sagacious and powerful, should

be thus deceived and brought to shame. "Be of good comfort therefore,"

adds this enlightened ruler; "all the mischief, banishment, troubles,

and vexation which the Chancellor thought to have done to us let us do

the like to him." He ended this discourse by an intimation that he was

about to besiege Edinburgh. "Let us also take up some band of

men-of-war, and every man after his power send secret messages to their

friends, that they and every one that favours us may convene together

quietly in Edinburgh earlie in the morning, so that the Chancellor

should not know us to come for the sieging of the castle till we have

the siege even belted about the walls; so ye shall have subject to you

all that would have arrogantly oppressed you."

This resolution was agreed to with enthusiasm, the Queen undertaking to

provision the army "out of her own garners"; but the Governor had no

sooner "belted the siege about the castle," an expression which renders

most graphically the surrounding of the place, than the Chancellor,

taken by surprise, prostrated by the loss of the King, and finding it

impossible to draw the powerful Earl of Douglas to his aid, made

overtures of submission, and begged for a meeting "in the fields before

the gates," where, with a few chosen friends on either side, the two

great functionaries of the kingdom might come to an agreement between

themselves.

By this time there would seem to have begun that preponderating

influence of the Douglas family in Scotland which vexed the entire reign

of the second James, and prompted two of the most violent and tragic

deeds which stain the record of Scottish history. James I. was more

general in his attempt at the repression and control of his fierce

nobility, and the family most obnoxious to him was evidently that of his

uncle, nearest in blood and most dangerous to the security of the

reigning race. The Douglas, however, detaches himself in the following

generation into a power and place unexampled, and which it took the

entire force of Scotland, and all the wavering and uncertain expedients

of law, as well as the more decisive action of violence quite lawless,

to put down. Whether there was in the pretensions of this great house

any aim at the royal authority in their own persons, or ambitious

assertion of a rival claim in right of the blood of Bruce, which was as

much in their veins as in those of the Stewarts, as some recent

historians would make out, it is probably now quite impossible to

decide. The chroniclers say nothing of any such intention, nor do the

Douglases themselves, who throughout the struggle never hesitated to

make submission to the Crown when the course of fortune went against

them. The Chancellor had been deeply stung, it is evident, by the answer

of Douglas to his appeal, in which the fierce Earl declared that discord

between "you twa unhappie tyrants" was the most agreeable thing in the

world to him, and that he wished nothing more than that it should

continue. Deprived of the sanction given to all his proceedings by the

name of the King, outwitted among his wiles, and exposed to the ridicule

even of those who had regarded his wisdom with most admiration, Crichton

would seem to have turned fiercely upon the common opponent, perhaps

with a wise prescience of the evil to come, perhaps only to secure an

object of action which might avert danger from himself and bring him

once more into command of the source of authority--most likely with both

objects together, the higher and lower, as is most general in our

mingled nature. The meeting was held accordingly outside the castle

gates, the Chancellor coming forth in state bearing the keys of the

castle, which were presented, Buchanan says, to the King in person, who

accompanied the expedition, and who restored the great functionary to

his office. The great keys in the child's hand, the little treble pipe

in which the reappointment would be made, the tiny figure in the midst

of all these plotters and warriors, gives a touch of pathos to the many

pictorial scenes of an age so rich in the picturesque; but the earlier

writers say nothing of the little James's presence. There was, however,

a consultation between the two Regents, and Douglas's letter was read

with such angry comments as may be supposed. The Earl's contempt

evidently cut deep, and strongly emphasised the necessity of dealing

authoritatively with such a high-handed rebel against the appointed

rulers.

It would appear, however, that little could be done against the

immediate head of that great house, and the two rulers, though they had

made friends over this common object, had to await their opportunity,

and in the meantime do their best to maintain order and to get each the

chief power into his own hands. Crichton found means before very long to

triumph over his adversaries in his turn by rekidnapping the little

King, for whom he laid wait in the woods about Stirling, where James was

permitted precociously to indulge the passion of his family for hunting.

No doubt the crafty Chancellor had pleasant inducements to bring forward

to persuade the boy to a renewed escape, for "the King smiled," say the

chroniclers, probably delighted by the novelty and renewed

adventure--the glorious gallop across country in the dewy morning, a

more pleasant prospect than the previous conveyance in his mother's big

chest. Thus in a few hours the balance was turned, and it was once more

the Chancellor and not the Governor who could issue ordinances and make

regulations in the name of the King.

Nothing, however, could be more tedious and trifling in the record than

these struggles over the small person of the child-king. But the story

quickens when the long-desired occasion arrived, and the two rulers,

rivals yet partners in power, found opportunity to strike the blow upon

which they had decided, and crush the great family which threatened to

dominate Scotland, and which was so contemptuous of their own sway. The

great Earl, Duke of Touraine, almost prince at home, the son of that

Douglas whose valour had moved England, and indeed Christendom, to

admiration, though he never won a battle--died in the midst of his

years, leaving behind him two young sons much under age as the

representatives of his name. It is extraordinary to us to realise the

place held by youth in those times, when one would suppose a man's

strength peculiarly necessary for the holding of an even nominal

position. Mr. Church has just shown in his Life of Henry V how that

prince at sixteen led armies and governed provinces; and it is clear

that this was by no means exceptional, and that the right of boys to

rule themselves and their possessions was universally acknowledged and

permitted. The young William, Earl of Douglas, is said to have been only

about fourteen at his father's death. He was but eighteen at the time of

his execution, and between these dates he appears to have exercised all

the rights of independent authority without tutor or guardian. The

position into which he entered at this early age was unequalled in

Scotland, in many respects superior to that of the nominal sovereign,

who had so many to answer to for every step he took--counsellors and

critics more plentiful than courtiers. The chronicles report all manner

of vague arrogancies and presumptions on the part of the new Earl. He

held a veritable court in his castle, very different from the

semi-prison which, whether at Edinburgh or Stirling, was all that James

of Scotland had for home and throne--and conferred fiefs and knighthood

upon his followers as if he had been a reigning prince. "The Earl of

Douglas," says Pitscottie, "being of tender age, was puffed up with new

ambition and greater pride nor he was before, as the manner of youth is;

and also prideful tyrants and flatterers that were about him through

this occasion spurred him ever to greater tyranny and oppression." The

lawless proceedings of the young potentate would seem to have stirred up

all the disorderly elements in the kingdom. His own wild Border county

grew wilder than ever, without control. Feuds broke out over all the

country, in which revenge for injuries or traditionary quarrels were lit

up of the strong hope in every man's breast not only of killing his

neighbour, but taking possession of his neighbour's lands. The caterans

swarmed down once more from the mountains and isles, and every petty

tyrant of a robber laird threw off whatever bond of law had been forced

upon him in King James's golden days. This sudden access of anarchy was

made more terrible by a famine in the country, where not very long

before it had been reported that there was fish and flesh for every man.

"A great dearth of victualls, pairtly because the labourers of the

ground might not sow nor win the corn through the tumults and cumbers of

the country," spread everywhere, and the state of the kingdom called the

conflicting authorities once more to consultation and some attempt at

united action.

The meeting this time was held in St. Giles's, the metropolitan church,

then, perhaps, scarcely less new and shining in its decoration than now,

though with altars glowing in all the shadowy aisles and the breath of

incense mounting to the lofty roof. There would not seem to have been

any prejudice as to using a sacred place for such a council, though it

might be in the chapter-house or some adjacent building that the barons

met. It is to be hoped that they did not go so far as to put into words

within the consecrated walls the full force of their intention, even if

it had come to be an intention so soon. There was but a small following

on either side, that neither party might be alarmed, and many fine

speeches were made upon the necessity of concord and mutual aid to

repress the common enemy. The Chancellor, having restolen the King,

would no doubt be most confident in tone; but on both sides there were

equal professions of devotion to the country, and so many admirable

sentiments expressed, that "all their friends on both sides that stood

about began to extol and love them both, with great thanksgiving that

they both regarded the commonwealth so mickle and preferred the same to

all private quarrels and debates." The decision to which they came was

to call a Parliament, at which aggrieved persons throughout the country

might appear and make their complaints. The result was a crowd of woeful

complainants, "such as had never been seen before. There were so many

widows, bairns, and infants seeking redress for their husbands, kin, and

friends that were cruelly slain by wicked murderers, and many for

hireling theft and murder, that it would have pitied any man to have

heard the same." This clamorous and woeful crowd filled the courts and

narrow square of the castle before the old parliament-hall with a murmur

of misery and wrath, the plaint of kin and personal injury more sharp

than a mere public grief. The two rulers and their counsellors no doubt

listened with grim satisfaction, feeling their enemy delivered into

their hands, and finding a dreadful advantage in the youth and

recklessness of the victims, who had taken no precaution, and of whom it

was so easy to conclude that they were "the principal cause of these

enormities." Whether their determination to sacrifice the young Douglas,

and so crush his house, was formed at once, it is impossible to say.

Perhaps some hope of moulding his youth to their own purpose may have at

first softened the intention of the plotters. At all events they sent

him complimentary letters, "full of coloured and pointed words,"

inviting him to Edinburgh in their joint names with all the respect that

became his rank and importance. The youth, unthinking in his boyish

exaltation of any possibility of harm to him, accepted the invitation

sent to him to visit the King at Edinburgh, and accompanied by his

brother David, the only other male of his immediate family, set out

magnificently and with full confidence with his gay train of knights and

followers--among whom, no doubt, the youthful element

predominated--towards the capital. He was met on the way by

Crichton--evidently an accomplished courtier, and full of all the habits

and ways of diplomacy--who invited the cavalcade to turn aside and rest

for a day or two in Crichton Castle, where everything had been prepared

for their reception. Here amid all the feastings and delights the great

official discoursed to the young noble about the duties of his rank and

the necessity of supporting the King's government and establishing the

authority of law over the distracted country, sweetening his sermon with

protestations of his high regard for the Douglas name, whose house, kin,

and friends were more dear to him than any in Scotland, and of affection

to the young Earl himself. Perhaps this was the turning-point, though

the young gallant in his heyday of power and self-confidence was all

unconscious of it; perhaps he received the advice too lightly, or

laughed at the seriousness of his counsellor. At all events, when the

gay band took horse again and proceeded towards Edinburgh, suspicion

began to steal among the Earl's companions. Several of them made efforts

to restrain their young leader, begging him at least to send back his

young brother David if he would not himself turn homeward. "But," says

the chronicler, "the nearer that a man be to peril or mischief he runs

more headlong thereto, and has no grace to hear them that gives him any

counsel to eschew the peril."

[Illustration: EDINBURGH CASTLE FROM THE VENNEL]

The only result of these attempts was that the party of boys spurred on,

more gaily, more confidently than ever, with the deceiver at their side,

who had spoken in so wise and fatherly a tone, giving so much good

advice to the heedless lads. They were welcomed into Edinburgh within

the fatal walls of the Castle with every demonstration of respect and

delight. How long the interval was before all this enthusiasm turned

into the stern preparations of murder it seems impossible to say--it

might have been on the first night that the catastrophe happened, for

anything the chroniclers tell us. The followers of Douglas were

carefully got away, "skailled out of the town," sent for lodging outside

the castle walls, while the two young brothers were marshalled, as

became their rank, to table to dine with the King. Whether they

suspected anything, or whether the little James in his helpless

innocence had any knowledge of what was going to happen, it is

impossible to tell. The feast proceeded, a royal banquet with "all

delicatis that could be procured." According to a persistent tradition,

the signal of fate was given by the bringing in of a bull's head, which

was placed before the young Earl. Mr. Burton considers this incident as

so picturesque as to be merely a romantic addition; but no symbol was

too boldly picturesque for the time. When this fatal dish appeared the

two young Douglases seem at once to have perceived their danger. They

started from the table, and for one despairing moment looked wildly

round them for some way of escape. The stir and commotion as that tragic

company started to their feet, the vain shout for help, the clash of

arms as the fierce attendants rushed in and seized the victims, the

deadly calm of the two successful conspirators who had planned the

whole, and the pale terrified face of the boy-king, but ten years old,

who "grat verie sore," and vainly appealed to the Chancellor for God's

sake to let them go, make one of the most impressive of historical

pictures. The two hapless boys were dragged out to the Castle Hill,

which amid all its associations has none more cruel, and there beheaded

with the show of a public execution, which made the treachery of the

crime still more apparent; for it had been only at most a day or two,

perhaps only a few hours, since the Earl and his brother in all their

bravery had been received with every gratulation at these same gates,

the welcome visitors, the chosen guests, of the King. The populace would

do little but stare in startled incapacity to interfere at such a scene;

some of them, perhaps, sternly satisfied at the cutting off of the

tyrant stock; some who must have felt the pity of it, and had

compunction for the young lives cut off so suddenly. A more cruel

vengeance could not be on the sins of the fathers, for it is impossible

to believe that the Regents did not take advantage of the youth of these

representatives of the famous Douglas race. Older and more experienced

men would not have fallen into the snare, or at all events would have

retained the power to sell their lives dear.

If the motives of Livingstone and Crichton were purely patriotic, it is

evident that they committed a blunder as well as a crime: for instead of

two boys rash and ill-advised and undeveloped they found themselves in

face of a resolute man who, like the young king of Israel, substituted

scorpions for whips, persecuting both of them without mercy, and finally

bringing Livingstone at least to destruction. The first to succeed to

William Douglas was his uncle, a man of no particular account, who kept

matters quiet enough for a few years; but when his son, another William,

succeeded, the Regents soon became aware that an implacable and powerful

enemy, the avenger of his two young kinsmen, but an avenger who showed

no rash eagerness and could await time and opportunity, was in their

way. The new Earl married without much ceremony, though with a papal

dispensation in consequence of their relationship, the little Maid of

Galloway, to whom a great part of the Douglas lands had gone on the

death of her brothers, and thus united once more the power and

possessions of his name. He was himself a young man, but of full age, no

longer a boy, and he would seem to have combined with much of the steady

determination to aggrandise and elevate his race which was

characteristic of the Douglases, and their indifference to commonplace

laws and other people's rights, an impulsiveness of character, and

temptation towards ostentation and display, which led him at once to

submission and to defiance at unexpected moments, and gave an element of

uncertainty to his career. Soon after his succession it would seem to

have occurred to him, after some specially unseemly disputes among some

of his own followers, that to get himself into harmony with the laws of

the realm and gain the friendship of the young King would be a good

thing to do. He came accordingly to Stirling where James was, very sick

of his governors and their wiles and struggles, and throwing himself at

the boy's feet offered himself, his goods and castles, and life itself,

for the King's service, "that he might have the licence to wait upon His

Majesty but as the soberest courtier in the King's company," and

proclaimed himself ready to take any oath that might be offered to him,

and to be "as serviceable as any man within the realm." James, it would

seem, was charmed by the noble suitor, and all the glamour of youth and

impulse which was in the splendid young cavalier, far more great and

magnificent than all the Livingstones and Crichtons, who yet came with

such abandon to the foot of the throne to devote himself to its service.

He not only forgave Douglas all his offences, but placed him at the head

of his government, "used him most familiar of any man," and looked up to

him with the half-adoring admiration which a generous boy so often feels

towards the first man who becomes his hero.

This happened in 1443, when James was but thirteen. It would be as easy

to say that Douglas displaced with a rush the two more successful

governors of the kingdom, and took their places by storm--and perhaps it

would be equally true: yet it would be vain to ignore James as an actor

in national affairs because of his extreme youth. In an age when a boy

of sixteen leads armies and quells insurrections, a boy of thirteen,

trained amid all the exciting circumstances which surrounded James

Stewart, might well have made a definite choice and acted with full

royal intention, perhaps not strong enough to be carried out by its own

impulse, yet giving a real sanction and force to the power which an

elder and stronger man was in a position to wield. We have no such means

of forming an idea of the character and personality of the second James

as we have of his father. No voice of his sounds in immortal accents to

commemorate his loves or his sadness. He appears first passively in the

hands of conspirators who played him in his childhood one against the

other, a poor little royal pawn in the big game which was so bloody and

so tortuous. His young memory must have been full of scares and of

guileful expedients, each party and individual about him trying to

circumvent the other. Never was child brought up among wilder chances.

The bewildering horror of his father's death, the sudden melancholy

coronation, and all the nobles in their sounding steel kneeling at his

baby feet, which would be followed in his experience by no expansion or

indulgence, but by the confinement of the castle; the terrible

loneliness of an imprisoned child, broken after a while by the sudden

appearance of his mother, and that merry but alarming jest of his

conveyance in the great chest, half stifled in the folds of her

embroideries and cloth of gold. Then another flight, and renewed stately

confinement among his old surroundings, monotony broken by sudden

excitements and the babble in his ears of uncomprehended politics, from

which, however, his mind, sharpened by the royal sense that these

mysterious affairs were really his own, would no doubt come to find

meaning at a far earlier age than could be possible under other

circumstances. And then that terrible scene, most appalling of all, when

he had to look on and see the two lads, not so much older than himself,

young gallants, so brave and fine, to whom the boy's heart would draw in

spite of all he might have heard against them, so much nearer to himself

than either governor or chancellor, those two noble Douglases, suddenly

changed under his eyes from gay and welcome guests to horrified victims,

with all the tragic passion of the betrayed and lost in their young

eyes. Such a scene above all must have done much to mature the

intelligence of a boy full like all his race of spirit and independence,

and compelled to look on at so much which he could not stop or remedy.

Thus passive and helpless, yet with the fiction of supremacy in his

name, we see the boy only by glimpses through the tumultuous crowd about

him with all their struggles for power, until suddenly he flashes forth

into the foreground, the chief figure in a scene more violent and

terrible still than any that had preceded it, taking up in his own

person the perpetual and unending struggle, and striking for himself the

decisive blow. There is no act so well known in James's life as that of

the second Douglas murder, which gives a sinister repetition, always

doubly impressive, to the previous tragedy. And yet between the two what

fluctuations of feeling, what changes of policy, how many long

exasperations, ineffectual pardons, convictions unwillingly formed, must

have been gone through. That he was both just and gentle we have every

possible proof, not only from the unanimous consent of the chronicles,

but from the manner in which, over and over again, he forgives and

condones the oft-repeated offences of his friend. And there could be few

more interesting psychological studies than to trace how, from the

sentiments of love and admiration he once entertained for Douglas, he

was wrought to such indignation and wrath as to yield to the weird

fascination of that precedent which must have been so burnt in upon his

childish memory, and to repeat the tragedy which within the recollection

of all men had marked the Castle of Edinburgh with so unfavourable a

stain.

We are still far from that, however, in the bright days when Douglas was

Lieutenant-Governor of the kingdom, and the men who had murdered his

kinsmen were making what struggle they could against his enmity, which

pursued them to the destruction of one family and the frequent hurt and

injury of the other. How Livingstone and his household escaped from time

to time but were finally brought to ruin, how Crichton wriggled back

into favour after every overthrow, sometimes besieged in his castle for

months together, sometimes entrusted with the highest and most

honourable missions, it would be vain to tell in detail. James would

seem to have yielded to the inspiration of his new prime minister for a

period of years, until his mind had fully developed, and he became

conscious, as his father had been, of the dangers which arose to the

common weal from the lawless sway of the great nobles, their continual

feuds among themselves, and the reckless independence of each great

man's following, whose only care was to please their lord, with little

regard either for the King and Parliament or the laws they made. During

this period his mother died, though there is little reason to suppose

that she had any power or influence in his council, or that her loss was

material to him. She had married a second time, another James Stewart

called the Black Knight of Lorne, and had taken a considerable part in

the political struggles of the time always with a little surrounding of

her own, and a natural hope in every change that it might bring her son

back to her. It is grievous that with so fair a beginning, in all the

glow of poetry and love, this lady should have dropped into the position

of a foiled conspirator, undergoing even the indignity of imprisonment

at the hands of the Regents whom she sometimes aided and sometimes

crossed in their arrangements. But a royal widow fallen from her high

estate, a queen-mother whose influence was feared and discouraged and

every attempt at interference sternly repressed, would need to have been

of a more powerful character than appears in any of her actions to make

head against her antagonists. She died in Dunbar in 1446, of grief, it

is said, for the death of her husband, who had been banished from the

kingdom in consequence of some hasty words against the power of the

Douglas, of whom however, even while he was still in disgrace, Sir James

Stewart had been a supporter. Thus ended in grief and humiliation the

life which first came into sight of the world in the garden of the great

donjon at Windsor some quarter of a century before, amid all the

splendour of English wealth and greatness, and all the sweet

surroundings of an English May.

James was married in 1450, when he had attained his twentieth year, to

Mary of Gueldres, about whom during her married life the historians find

nothing to say except that the King awarded pardon to various

delinquents at the request of the Queen--an entirely appropriate and

becoming office. No doubt his marriage, so distinct as a mark of

maturity and independence, did something towards emancipating James from

the Douglas influence; and it is quite probable that the selection of

Sir William Crichton to negotiate the marriage and bring home the bride

may indicate a lessening supremacy of favour towards Douglas in the mind

of his young sovereign. Pitscottie records a speech made to the Earl and

his brothers by the King, when he received and feasted them after their

return from a successful passage of arms with the English on the Border,

in which James points out the advantage of a settled rule and lawful

authority, and impresses upon them the necessity of punishing robbers

and reivers among their own followers, and seeing justice done to the

poor, as well as distinguishing themselves by feats of war. By this time

the Douglases had once more become a most formidable faction. The head

of the house had so successfully worked for his family that he was on

many occasions surrounded by a band of earls and barons of his own

blood, his brothers having in succession, by means of rich marriages or

other means of aggrandisement, attained the same rank as himself, and,

though not invariably, acting as his lieutenants and supporters, while

his faction was indefinitely increased by the followers of these cadets

of his house, all of them now important personages in the kingdom. It

was perhaps the swelling pride and exaltation of a man who had all

Scotland at his command, and felt himself to have reached the very

pinnacle of greatness, which suggested the singular expedition to France

and Rome upon which Douglas set forth, in the mere wantonness of

ostentation and pride, according to the opinion of all the chroniclers,

to spread his own fame throughout the world, and show the noble train

and bravery of every kind with which a Scottish lord could travel. It

was an incautious step for such a man to take, leaving behind him so

many enemies; but he would seem to have been too confident in his own

power over the King, and in his greatness and good fortune, to fear

anything. No sooner was he gone, however, than all the pent-up

grievances, the complaints of years during which he had wielded almost

supreme power in Scotland, burst forth. The King, left for the first

time to himself and to the many directors who were glad to school him

upon this subject, was startled out of his youthful ease by the tale of

wrong and oppression which was set before him. No doubt Sir William

Crichton would not be far from James's ear, nor the representatives of

his colleague, whom Douglas had pursued to the death. The state of

affairs disclosed was so alarming that John Douglas, Lord Balvenie, the

brother of the Earl, who was left his procurator and representative in

his absence, was hastily summoned to Court to answer for his chief.

Balvenie, very unwilling to risk any inquisition, held back, until he

was seized and brought before the King. His explanations were so little

satisfactory, that he was ordered at once to put order in the matter,

and to "restore to every man his own:" a command which he received

respectfully, but as soon as he got free ignored altogether, keeping

fast hold of the ill-gotten possessions, and hoping, no doubt, that the

momentary indignation would blow over, and all go on as before. James,

however, was too much roused to be trifled with. When he saw that no

effect was given to his orders he took the matter into his own hands.

The Earl of Orkney with a small following was first sent with the King's

commission to do justice and redress wrongs: but when James found his

ambassador insulted and repulsed, he took the field himself, first

making proclamation to all the retainers of the Douglas to yield to

authority on pain of being declared rebels. Arrived in Galloway, he rode

through the whole district, seizing all the fortified places, the narrow

peel-houses of the Border, every nest of robbers that lay in his way,

and, according to one account, razed to the ground the Castle of Douglas

itself, and placed a garrison of royal troops in that of Lochmaben, the

two chief strongholds of the house. But James's mission was not only to

destroy but to restore. He divided the lands thus taken from the House

of Douglas, according to Pitscottie, "among their creditors and

complainers, till they were satisfied of all things taen from them,

whereof the misdoers were convict." This, however, must only have

applied, one would suppose, to the small losses of the populace, the

lifted cows and harried lands of one small proprietor and another. "The

King," adds the same authority, "notwithstanding of this rebellion, was

not the more cruel in punishing thereof nor he was at the beginning:"

while Buchanan tells us that his clemency and moderation were applauded

even by his enemies.

This is throughout the opinion which we find of James. He was capable of

being moved to sudden violent indignation and hasty action, as was too

distinctly demonstrated afterwards; but the hasty outburst once over

came back at once without rancour to his natural benignity, always

merciful, slow to anger, ready to hear whatever the accused might have

to say for himself, and to pardon as long as pardon was possible.

Notwithstanding the rebellious and audacious contempt of all authority

but their own shown by the Douglas party, notwithstanding the standing

danger of their insolent power, their promises so often broken, their

frequent submissions and actual defiance, his aim in all his dealings

with them was rather to do justice to the oppressed than to punish the

guilty. His genial temper, and that belief in his kind which is always

so ingratiating a quality, is proved by the account Major gives of his

life on those military expeditions which from this time forth occupied

so much of his time. He lived with his soldiers as an equal, that

historian tells us, eating as they did, without the precaution of a

taster, which Major thinks highly imprudent, but which would naturally

bind to the frank and generous monarch the confidence and regard of his

fellow-soldiers, and the captains with whom he shared the sometimes

scanty provisions of the campaign.

News of these strange events was conveyed to Douglas, now in England on

his return from the pilgrimage of pride and ostentation to which, though

it was professedly for the Papal jubilee, no one attempts to give a

religious character. He was returning at his leisure, lingering on his

way, not without suspicion of secret treaties with the English in

support of the party of York, though all the prepossessions of Scotland

and King James were on the other side: but hurried home on hearing the

news, and was politic enough to make immediate submission as soon as he

became aware of the seriousness of the crisis, promising everything that

could be demanded of him in the way of obedience and respect of "the

King's peace." Once more he was fully and freely pardoned, his lands,

with some small diminution, restored, and the King's confidence given

back to him with a too magnanimous completeness. In the Parliament held

in Edinburgh in June 1451 he was present, and received back his charters

in full amity and kindness, to the great satisfaction and pleasure of

"all gud Scottis men." Later in the year, in his capacity of Warden of

the Marches, he was employed to assuage the endless quarrels of the

Border, but during his negotiations for this purpose secretly renewed

his mysterious and treacherous dealings with England, of which there is

no very clear account, but which was of all others the kind of treachery

most obnoxious to his countrymen. So far as would appear, James obtained

some hint of these clandestine proceedings, and was very angry, "highly

commoved," as was natural: on hearing which Douglas appeared once more

to ask pardon, with apparently an inexhaustible confidence in the

clemency of the young man whom he had guided so long. But the idea of

some "quyet draucht betwixt him and the King of Ingland," some secret

understanding with the old enemy, was more serious still than domestic

rebellion, and though he pardoned at the "great request" of the Queen

and nobles, the King did not again restore so doubtful a representative

to the great offices he had held. There would seem to have been a pause

of consternation on the part of Douglas when he found for the first time

the charm of his friendship and every petition for pardon ineffectual.

To attribute the change to old Crichton, who had recovered much of his

former influence and was again Chancellor, was easy, and the Earl who

had but the other day sworn the King's peace with all, set an ambush for

his old opponent, and would have succeeded in killing him but for

Crichton's son, "ane young valiant man," who overcame the bravos, and

housed his father safely in his Castle of Crichton. Douglas himself was

afterwards almost surprised in Edinburgh by Crichton's followers, and

saved himself only by a hurried departure not unlike a flight.

This disappointment, and the loss of the King's favour, and the apparent

solidity of his rivals in their place, half maddened the great noble,

little accustomed to yield to any contradiction. He had been up to this

time, save in so far as his private feuds and covetousness were

concerned, on the side of lawful authority; the King's man so long as

the King was his man, and did not interfere with the growth of his

wealth and greatness. But now he would seem to have given up hope of

recovering his hold upon his sovereign, and turned his eyes elsewhere

for support. The Earl of Crawford in the north country, and the Lord of

Isles who was also Earl of Ross in the west, were as powerful and as

intractable as Douglas himself, and more often in open rebellion than in

amity with the King, a constant danger and disturbance of all good order

and law. Douglas in his anger made an alliance with these two, by which

all bound themselves to resent and avenge any injury offered to either.

It was probably an expedient of rage and despair--the desire of doing

what was most baneful and insolent to his former friends, such as

happens often when a breach occurs--as much as a political act; but it

is evident that in every way Douglas was on the eve of open treachery,

no longer disposed to keep any terms with the royal master whose

patience had been exhausted at last. It required, however, a crowning

outrage to arouse once more James's much-forgiving spirit.

Among the gentlemen of Galloway, the most of whom rode with Douglas and

supported him in all his high-handed proceedings, too near neighbours to

venture upon independence, were a few who preferred to hold the other

side, that of law and justice and the authority of the King. Among them

was "one called Maclelan, who was tutor of Bombie for the time, and

sister's son to Sir Patrick Gray, principal servitor to the King, and

captain of his guard." The refusal of this man to serve in the

rebellious host under the Earl was immediately punished by Douglas, who

assailed his house and carried him off prisoner. The story reads like a

romance, which, however, is no reason for receiving it with discredit. A

more doubtful circumstance is that it is asserted to have happened in

Douglas Castle, which had been very recently destroyed by James, and

which was besides at a great distance from Edinburgh. I hazard a

conjecture whether it may have happened in the Castle of Abercorn, since

it must have been impossible for Douglas in Galloway to pursue Sir

Patrick to the very gates of Edinburgh. Wherever the incident may have

occurred, the story is, that Sir Patrick Gray, the uncle of the

prisoner, hastened to the King with the story of his nephew's danger,

and was at once sent off by James with "a sweit letter of supplication,"

praying the Earl to deliver over the unfortunate gentleman to the

messenger for love of the King. The Earl was at dinner when, "bloody

with spurring, fiery red with haste," Sir Patrick arrived at the castle,

where the drawbridge was lifted and the doors closed. "The Earle caused

incontinent draw the boards, and rose and met the said Sir Patrick with

great reverence and humilitie, because he was the King's principal

servant and familiar to His Grace." I tell the rest of the tale in the

words of Pitscottie:--

"He inquired at the said Patrick if he had dined, who answered that

he had not. Then the Earle said there was 'no talk to be had betwixt

ane full and ane fasting; therefore ye shall dine, and we shall

talke together at length.'

"In this meane tyme Sir Patrick Gray sat down to his dinner, and the

Earle treatted him and made him goode cheare, whereof Sir Patrick

was well contented, believing all things to succeed well thereafter.

But the Earle of Douglas on the other pairt took a suspicion and

conjecture what Sir Patrick's Gray's commission was, and dreading

the desyne thereof should be for his friend, the tutor of Bombie;

therefore in the meane time when they were at the dinner, talking of

merry matters, the Earle caused quietly take forth the tutor of

Bombie out of prison, and have him to the greene and there strooke

off his head and took the samine away from him, and syne covered a

fair cloth on his bodie that nothing might be seene of that

treasonable act that was done.

"In this meane time when dinner was done Sir Patrick Gray presented

the King's writing unto the Earle, who reverently received it and

considered the effect thereof. He gave great thanks to Sir Patrick

Gray, saying he was beholden to him that brought so familiar an

writing from his Prince to him, considering how it stood betwixt

them at that time: and as to the desire and supplication, it should

be thankfullie granted to the King, and the rather for Sir Patrick's

sake; and took him by the hand and led him furth to the greene where

the gentleman was lying dead, and shew him the manner, and said,

'Sir Patrick, you are come a litle too late; but yonder is your

sister's son lying, but he wants the head; take his body and do with

it what you will.' Sir Patrick answered again with ane sore heart,

and said, 'My Lord, ye have taken from him his head, dispone upon

the body as ye please;' and with that called for his horse and leapt

thereon. And when he was on horseback he said to the Earle on this

manner, 'My Lord, an I live ye shall be rewarded for your labour

that ye have used at this time, according to your demerits.' At this

saying the Earle was highly offended and cryed for horse. Sir

Patrick seeing the Earle's fury spurred his horse, but he was chased

neare to Edinburgh before they left him, and had it not been his

leid horse was so tryed and goode he had been taken."

The scene that ensued when James--awaiting in Edinburgh the return of

his messenger, without a doubt we may suppose of the obedience of

Douglas the friend of his youth, the often-pardoned, owing so much to

his clemency and friendship--saw Sir Patrick arrive breathless and

haggard, scarcely escaping, though the King's messenger, with his life,

and heard his story--the insolent contempt, the brutal jest, the cruel

murder--is one that might well mark the turning-point even in a mind so

magnanimous. The King had not been entirely without signs of inheriting

his father's firmness and promptitude; but his gentleness of

disposition, and strong inclination towards kindness and peace, had in

general carried the day over his sterner qualities. He had shown both

sides of his character when he pardoned Douglas and accepted his

promises of reformation on his return, but cut him off from public

service and closed all the doors of advancement against him. The

defiance now addressed to him, the scorn of his letters and request, so

audaciously shown, raised a sudden storm of indignation in his breast.

Whether his future action was based on the decision of his council to

which he submitted, sanctioning on his own part the treachery by which

alone Douglas could be beguiled within his reach, as the chroniclers, to

whom such a device was quite justifiable, tell us; or whether when he

issued his safe-conduct he still hoped to be able to convince the Earl

of his folly in resisting, and to bring him to a real and effectual

change of mind, no one can now tell. But James was so little addicted to

treachery, so fair, tolerant and merciful, that we may well give him the

benefit of the doubt, and believe that it was with the intention of

making another effort to bring Douglas back to his right mind and

allegiance that the King invited him to Stirling, where it was strange

indeed that with all his enormities on his conscience Douglas ventured

to come, whatever were the safe-conducts given. "Some sayes he got the

great seale thereunto before he would grant to come to the King," says

the chronicle. The fact that he did come however, after all that had

passed, says much for his confidence in King James and in his own power

over him, for Douglas must have been very well aware that safe-conducts

and royal promises were but broken reeds to trust to.

When he arrived in Stirling, whatever lowering looks he might see around

him--and it is scarcely possible to believe that Sir Patrick Gray for

one could have entirely cleared his countenance of every recollection of

their last meeting, of the men-at-arms thundering at his heels, and his

nephew's body headless on the greensward--Douglas found no change in the

King, who received and banqueted him "very royally," thinking if it were

possible "with good deeds to withdraw him from his attempt that he

purposed to do." After supper the King took his rebellious subject

aside, into another room opening from that in which they had supped, and

which is still exhibited in Stirling Castle to the curious stranger, and

once more reasoned with him on his conduct. No private matter would seem

to have been introduced, the treasonable league which the Earl had made

with Crawford and Ross, rebels against the lawful authority of the

kingdom, being the subject on which James put forth all his strength of

argument. Douglas, Pitscottie tells us, answered "verrie proudlie," and

the argument grew hot between the two men, of whom one had always

hitherto been the conqueror in every such passage of arms. It was

probably this long habit of prevailing that made the proud Earl so

obstinate, since to submit in words had never heretofore been difficult

to him. At last the dispute came to a climax, in the distinct refusal of

Douglas to give up his traitor-allies. "He said he myt not nor wald

not," says a brief contemporary record. "Then the King said, 'False

traitor, if you will not, I sall,' and stert sodunly till him with ane

knyf." "And they said," adds this chronicle with grim significance,

"that Patrick Gray straik him next the King with ane pole ax on the

hed." The other companions crowded round, giving each his stroke. And

thus within a short space of years the second Earl of Douglas was killed

in a royal castle, while under a royal safe-conduct, at a climax of

hopeless discord and antagonism from which there seemed no issue. The

exasperation of the King, the dead-lock of all authority, the absolutely

impracticable point at which the two almost equal powers had arrived,

account for, though they do not excuse, such a breach of faith. I prefer

to believe that James had at least no decided purpose in his mind, but

hoped in his own power to induce Douglas to relinquish these alliances

which were incompatible with his allegiance; but that the sudden

exasperation with which he became convinced of his own powerlessness to

move him brought about in a moment the fatal issue (with who knows what

sudden wild stimulus of recollection from the murder of which he had

been a witness in his childhood?) which statesmen less impulsive had

already determined upon as necessary, though probably not in this sudden

way.

[Illustration: ST. ANTHONY'S CHAPEL, AND ST. MARGARET'S LOCH]

The "Schort Memorial of the Scottis Cronikles," called the Auchinleck

Chronicle, gives a brief but striking account of the proceedings that

followed. Earl Douglas's retainers and kinsmen would seem to have been

struck dumb by the event, and probably fled in horror and dismay; but it

was not till long after, when the King had left Stirling, that the

younger brothers returned, on St. Patrick's Day in Lent, bringing with

them the safe-conduct with all its seals, which they exhibited at the

cross and dragged through the streets tied to a horse's tail, with many

wild and fierce words against the King and all that were with him,

ending by spoiling and burning the town. As James was no longer in it,

however, nor apparently any one who could resist them, this was a cheap

and unsatisfactory vengeance.

Some months after, in the summer of 1452, a Parliament was held at

Edinburgh, in which the three Estates passed a declaration that no

safe-conduct had been given on that fatal occasion--a declaration which

it is evident no one believed, and which probably was justified by some

quibble which saved the consciences of those who asserted it. The new

Earl, James Douglas, was summoned to appear at this Parliament, but

answered by a letter under his seal and that of his brother, which was

secretly affixed to the door of the Parliament House, "declynand from

the King, saying that they held not of him, nor would hold with him,

with many other slanderous words, calling them traitors that were his

secret council." Some say it was upon the church doors that this

defiance was attached. In any case it must have produced a wonderful hum

and commotion through the town, where already no doubt the slaying of

the Douglas had been discussed from every point of view--at the cross,

and among the groups at the street corners, where there would be many

adherents of the Douglas, and many citizens ready to discuss the new

event and all its possible consequences. The Parliament was followed by

a general muster upon the Burrowmuir, where the barons and their men

gathered, with all their spears and steel caps glistening in the June

sunshine, with an apparent intention of pursuing the race to its

stronghold and making an end of it. The raid, which was led by the King

in person, with an army of some thirty thousand men, accomplished little

however, doing more mischief than good the chronicle says, treading down

the new corn, and spoiling the country "right fellonly," notwithstanding

the King's presence. The result, at all events, was complete submission

on the part of the new Earl, accompanied by a promise to bear no enmity,

a promise often made but altogether impossible in the fifteenth century

to mortal flesh and blood.

It was scarcely possible however, short of a moral miracle, that such a

thing could happen as the abandonment of the entire policy of the house

of Douglas at a moment when their minds were embittered by so great a

tragedy. The new Earl was not a mere soldier, still less a courtier, but

a man of some culture, originally intended, it is said, for the Church,

though this does not seem to have withheld him from taking part in the

tumults of the time. Nor did it restrain him from marrying his brother's

widow, the hapless Maid of Galloway, whose share of the Douglas lands

made her indispensable to her two warlike cousins, though it seems

uncertain whether either of the two marriages, which necessitated two

dispensations from the Pope, was anything but nominal. After his

submission James Douglas was employed as his brother had been in the

arrangement of terms of truce with England, which was too great a

temptation for him, and led to further treasonable negotiations. He

would seem also to have renewed his brother's alliances with the rebels

of the north: and in a very brief period the nominal peace and doubtful

vows were all thrown to the winds, and this time there seems to have

been no question of partial rebellion, but every indication that a civil

war, rending the entire country in two, was about to break forth.

Douglas had the strong backing of England behind him, the support of the

Highland hordes always ready to be poured upon the peaceful country, and

many great lords in his immediate train. He had raised an army of, it is

said, forty thousand men, an enormous army for Scotland, and it was

evident that the struggle was one of life and death.

At this moment it would seem that King James for the first time lost

heart. He had been fighting during all the beginning of the year 1455,

reducing the west and south, the Douglas country, to subjection and

desolation. But when he found himself menaced by an army as great as

anything he could muster, with the angry north in the background and

clouds of half-savage warriors on the horizon, the King's heart sank. He

is said to have left Edinburgh in disgust and depression, and taken ship

at Leith for St. Andrews, to seek counsel from the best and most

trustworthy of his advisers, a man whose noble presence appears in the

distracted history with such a calm and sagacious steadfastness that we

can well understand the agitated King's sudden impulse towards him at

this painful period of his career. Bishop Kennedy had himself suffered

from the lawlessness of the Douglas retainers: and he too had royal

blood in his veins. He occupied one of the highest positions in the

Church, and his wisdom and strength had made him one of the most

prominent statesmen in the kingdom. James arrived hastily, according to

the chronicle, unexpected, and with many signs of distress and anxiety.

He betrayed to the Bishop his weariness of the ever-renewed struggle,

and of the falsehood and treachery which, even if victorious, were all

he had to encounter, the failure of every pledge and promise, the faith

sworn one day which failed him the next, and the deep discouragement

with all things round him which had taken possession of his mind. The

wise prelate heard this confession of heart-sickness and despondency,

and with a fatherly familiarity bade the young King sit down to meat,

which he much wanted, while he himself went to his oratory to pray for

enlightenment. That James thought no less than to throw up the struggle

and retire from his kingdom, is what the old writers say. But when, with

his bosom lightened by utterance of his trouble, and his courage a

little restored by food and rest, the Bishop came back to him with a

cheerful countenance from his prayers, the King took heart again.

Kennedy produced to him the old image of the sheaf of arrows which,

bound together, were not to be broken, but one by one could easily be

snapt asunder, and advised him to make proclamation of a free pardon to

all who would throw down their arms and make submission, and to march at

once against the rebel host with full confidence of victory. Inspired by

this advice, and by the companionship of the Bishop who went with him,

the King set out to meet the rebels, though with an army inferior in

number to theirs. Douglas, from some unexplained reason, wavered and

hesitated, taking no active step, and gave Bishop Kennedy time to put

his own suggestion in practice in respect to his nephew Lord

Hamilton--who was one of Douglas's chief supporters--sending secret

messengers to him to urge him to submission. Hamilton no doubt had

already perceived signs of wavering purpose and insecurity in the

heterogeneous host, in which were many whose hearts failed them at sight

of the King's banners--men who were apt to rebellion without being wound

up to the extreme point of civil war: but he had "ane kyndlie love to

Earl Douglas" as well as a regard for his own honour, and would not

lightly desert his friend. While thus uncertain he appealed to Douglas

to know what he meant to do, warning him that the longer he hesitated,

the less would be the forces at his disposal. Douglas replied haughtily

that if he were tired of waiting he might go when he pleased--an

indiscreet answer, which decided Hamilton to withdraw and throw himself

upon the King's promised mercy. The same night he went over to the royal

army, carrying with him so many that "on the morn thereafter the Earl

Douglas had not ane hunder men by his own household," the whole host

having melted away. Never was a greater risk for a monarchy nor a more

easy and bloodless escape. The Earl fled to the depths of his own

country and thence to England, where he lived long a pensioned

dependant, after all his greatness and ambition, to reappear in history

only like a ghost after many silent years.

Amid all these bewildering and bitter struggles, in which much misery

was no doubt involved, it is recorded of the King that he never lost his

humane character, and that even in the devastations he was forced to

sanction or command, the cruel reprisals carried out over all the south

of Scotland, his severity was always tempered with mercy. "He was not so

much feared as a king as loved like a father," says Major. This luminous

trait appears through all the darkness of the vexed and furious time.

The King was always ready to pardon at a word, to believe in the vows

and receive the submission of the fiercest rebels. One curious evidence

of the confidence felt in him was shown by the widow of the murdered

Earl, Margaret Douglas, the Maid of Galloway, a woman doubly injured in

every relation--the sister of the young Earl murdered at Edinburgh,

married by his successor in order to reunite the Douglas patrimony, a

great portion of which went to her as her brother's heir--and again

forced into another and unlawful marriage by her husband's brother,

immediately upon his death, for the same end. James received this

fugitive kindly, restored to her part of the lands of her family, and

finally married her--thus freeing her from the lawless bond into which

she had been driven--to his own step-brother, John, Earl of Atholl, "the

Black Knight of Lorne's son;" upon hearing of which another fugitive of

a similar description appeared upon the scene.

"When the Earl of Ross's wyff understood the King to be some pairt

favourable to all that sought his grace she fled also under his

protection to eschew the cruel tyranny of her husband, which she

dreaded sometyme before. The King called to remembrance that this

woman was married not by her own counsel to Donald of the Isles (the

Earl of Ross). He gave her also sufficient lands and living whereon

she might live according to her estate."

The case of women, and especially heiresses, in that lawless age must

have been miserable indeed. Bandied about from one marriage to another,

forced to accept such security as a more or less powerful lord could

give, and when he was killed to fall victim to the next who could seize

upon her, or to whom she should be allotted by feudal suzerain or

chieftain, the mere name of a king who did not disdain a woman's plaint,

but had compassion and help to give, must have conveyed hope to many an

unhappy lady bound to a repugnant life. James would seem to have been

the only man who recognised the misery to which such unconsidered items

in the wild and tumultuous course of affairs might be driven.

Thus King James and Scotland with him were delivered from the greatest

and most dangerous of the powerful houses that held the country in fear.

Shortly after he conquered, partly by arms, partly by the strain of a

universal impulse, which seemed to rouse the barons to a better way,

those great allies in the north who held the key of the Highlands, the

Earl of Crawford and the Earl of Ross, so that at last something of a

common rule and common sentiment began to move the country. It is almost

needless to say that James took advantage of this temporary unity and

enthusiasm in order to invade England--a thing without which no Scots

King could be said to be happy. The negotiations by which he was at once

stimulated and hindered--among others by ambassadors from the Duke of

York to ask his help against Henry VI, with orders to arrest his army on

their way--are too complicated to be entered upon; but at last the Scots

forces set out and, after various successes, James found himself before

Roxburgh, a town and castle which had remained in the hands of the

English from the time when the Earl of March deserted his country for

England in the reign of Robert III. The town was soon taken, but the

castle, in which there was a brave garrison, stood out manfully. This

invasion of the Borders, and opportunity of striking a blow at the "auld

enemy," was evidently an act of the highest policy while yet the

surgings of civil war were not entirely quieted, and a diversion of

ideas as well as new opportunities of spoil were peculiarly necessary.

Its first excellent result was that Donald of the Isles, the Earl of

Ross and terror of the north country, whose submission had been but

provisionally accepted, and depended upon some evidence of real desire

for the interest of the common weal, suddenly appeared with "ane great

armie of men, all armed in the Highland fashion," and claimed the

vanguard, the place of honour, and to be allowed to take upon him "the

first press and dint of the battell." James received this unexpected

auxiliary with "great humanitie," but prudently provided, before

accepting his offer, which apparently, however, was made in all good

faith, that Donald should "stent his pavilliones a little by himself,"

until full counsel had been taken on the subject. The army was also

joined by "a great company of stout and chosen men," under the Earl of

Huntly, whose coming "made the King so blyth that he commanded to charge

all the guns and give the castle ane new volie." James would seem

throughout to have felt the greatest interest in the extraordinary new

arm of artillery which had made a revolution in warfare. He pursued

siege after siege with a zeal in which something of the ardour of a

military enthusiast and scientific inquirer mingled with the necessities

of the struggle in which he was engaged. The "Schort Cronikle," already

quoted, describes him as lingering over the siege of Abercorn, "striking

mony of the towers down with the gret gun, the whilk a Franche man shot

richt wele, and failed na shot within a fathom where it was charged him

to hit." And when, in the exultation of his heart to see each new

accession of force come in, he ordered "a new volie" against the stout

outstanding walls, the excitement of the discharge, the eagerness of an

adept to watch the effect, no doubt made this dangerous expression of

satisfaction a real demonstration of pleasure.

[Illustration: MONS MEG]

King James had attained at this time a success which probably a few

years before his warmest imagination could not have aspired to. He had

brought into subjection the great families which had almost contested

his throne with him. Douglas, the highest and most near himself, had

been swept clean out of his way. The fiercest rebel of all, the head of

the Highland caterans, with his wild host in all their savage array, was

by his side, ready to charge under his orders. The country, drained of

its most lawless elements, was beginning to breathe again, to sow its

fields and rebuild its homesteads. Instead of the horrors of civil war

his soldiers were now engaged in the most legitimate of all

enterprises--the attempt to recover from England an alienated

possession. Everything was bright before him, the hope of a great reign,

the promise of prosperity and honour and peace.

It is almost a commonplace of human experience that in such moments the

blow of fate is near at hand. The big guns which were a comparatively

new wonder, full of interest in their unaccustomed operation, were still

a danger as well as a prodigy, and James would seem to have forgotten

the precautions that were considered necessary in presence of an

armament still only partially understood. The historian assumes, as

every human observer is apt to do in face of such a calamity, a tone of

blame. "This Prince," says the chronicle with a shrill tone of

exasperation in the record of the catastrophe, "more curious than became

the majestie of a king, did stand hard by when the artilliarie was

discharging." And in a moment all the labours and struggles, and the

hope of the redeemed kingdom and all the prosperity that was to come,

were at an end. One can imagine the sudden dismay in the group around

him, the rush of his attendants, his own feeble command to keep silence

when some cry of horror rose from the pale-faced circle. His thigh had

been broken, "dung in two," by the explosion of the gun, "by which he

was struken to the ground, and died hastilie thereafter," with no time

to say more than to order silence, lest the army should be discouraged

and the siege prove in vain.

So ended the troublous reign of the second James, involved in strife and

warfare from his childhood, vexed by the treacheries and struggles over

him of his dearest friends, full of violence alien to his mind and

temper, which yet was justified by his example at the most critical

moment of his life. He made his way through continual contention,

intrigue, and blood, for which he was not to blame, to such a settlement

of national affairs as might have consolidated Scotland and made her

great--by patience and firmness and courage, and conspicuously by mercy,

notwithstanding one crime. And when the helm was in his hands, and a

fair future before him, fell, not ignominiously indeed, yet uselessly, a

noble life thrown away, leaving once more chaos behind him. He was only

twenty-nine when the thunderbolt thus falling from a clear sky destroyed

all the hopes of Scotland; yet had reigned long, for twenty-three years

of trouble, tumult, and distress.