History Of Scotland Vol. 1 - Part 20

( Originally Published 1909 )

Roxburgh is taken—Administration during James's Minority—He assumes the Royal Authority, by Advice of the Boyds—The younger Boyd is created Earl of Arran, and married to the King's Sister—He negotiates a Marriage between the King and a Princess of Denmark, and obtains the Orkney and Zetland Islands in security of the Dowry: is disgraced, and dies in obscurity—Treaty of Marriage between the Prince of Scotland and a Daughter of England, and its Conditions: broken off by Edward IV.—Submission of the Lord of the Isles—Character of James III.—His favorite Pursuits—His Disposition to Favoritism—Character of Albany and Mar, the King's Brothers—The King imprisons them on suspicion—Albany escapes—Mar is murdered—War with England—Conspiracy of Lauder—The King's Favorite seized and executed—Intrigues of Albany—He is received into his Brother's Favor; but is afterward again banished—Peace with England--The King gives way to his Taste for Music and Building—Conspiracy of the Southern Nobles—Battle of Sauchie Burn, and the King's Murder

THE sudden death of James II. struck such a damp into the Scottish nobles that they were about to abandon the siege of Roxburgh, and break up their camp, when the courage of Mary of Guelders, the widowed queen, reanimated their spirits. She arrived in the camp almost immediately after the king's death, and throwing herself and her son, their infant sovereign, upon the faith of the Scottish lords, conjured them never to remove the siege from this ill-fated castle till they had laid it in ruins. The nobles caught fire at her exhortations. They crowned their king at the neighboring abbey of Kelso, with such ceremonies of homage and royalty as the time admitted, and, pressing the siege with double vigor, compelled the English garrison to surrender on terms. The castle of Roxburgh they levelled to the ground, agreeably to the policy recommended by Robert Bruce. The vestiges of its walls still show the extent and consequence of which it had formerly boasted.

The queen-regent naturally retained a considerable influence in the government, and seems to have acted for some time as regent, with the assistance of a council of state. Her conduct, however, which was not personally respectable, considerably diminished her influence before her death, which took place when she was in the full vigor of life. Kennedy, archbishop of St. Andrew's, the wise and loyal friend of his father, became the personal guardian of the infant king. The rapid changes of fortune occurring in the wars of York and Lancaster saved Scotland during this minority from the dangers arising from her ambitious neighbors. The meek usurper, Henry VI., was received with hospitality in Scotland during his exile after the battle of Towton, 1461; and Berwick, an important acquisition, was delivered up by his authority to the Scots, and duly garrisoned. The assistance rendered by Scotland to the dethroned king occasioned a brief war with England, urged with little zeal on either side, and which soon terminated by a truce, which in 1463 was extended to the unusually long period of fifty-four years.

The death of the queen-mother and of Archbishop Kennedy now opened to the king, who was in his fourteenth year, the dangerous privilege of acting for himself. Subject all his life to the weakness of adopting favorites, to whom he intrusted the charge of public affairs, when the nation had a right to expect they should be administered by himself personally, James surrendered himself to his immediate partialities. Robert, Lord Boyd, and his two sons, were at this time high in James's confidence; and the royal favor filled them with such presumption that they removed the person of the king from those to whom his custody had been committed by the estates of the kingdom, and brought him to Edinburgh, under pretence of setting him at liberty.

A new parliament was convoked, in which Lord Boyd was formally pardoned for his late audacious enterprise ; and, to add to the authority of the family, the Princess Margaret, eldest daughter of James II., and sister to the king, was given in marriage to Sir Thomas Boyd, who was at the same time created Earl of Arran.

An important acquisition to the Scottish dominions was effected in this reign (1467), feeble as it was. The Orkney Islands had as yet remained part of the Norwegian dominions, having been seized by that people in the ninth century. A large sum of money was due from Scotland to Denmark, being the arrears of the annual, as it was called, of Norway. This was the annuity of one hundred marks, due to Norway as the consideration for the cession of the Hebrides, or West-ern Isles, settled by the treaty of 1264, entered into after Haco's defeat at the battle of Largs. James I. had obtained some settlement respecting this annuity; but it had been again permitted to fall into arrear, and the amount of the debt had become uncertain.

Under the influence of Charles VII. of France, there had been negotiations between Denmark and Scotland for the final arrangement of these claims, which were renewed in 1468. Boyd, the young Earl of Arran, seems to have man-aged this treaty with considerable dexterity. It was finally agreed that James III. should wed a daughter of the Princess of Denmark, whom her father proposed to endow with a portion of sixty thousand florins, of which ten thousand only were to be paid in ready money, and for security of the remainder the islands of Orkney were to be assigned in pledge. In addition to this, Denmark renounced all claim to the arrears of the annuity payable on account of the cession of the Hebrides, which seem to have been given up as an old, pre-scribed, and somewhat desperate claim. When the term for payment of the ten thousand florins arrived, Christian of Denmark found himself so short of money that he could only produce the fifth part of the sum, and for the rest an assignment of security over the archipelago of Zetland was offered and gladly accepted. Thus Scotland acquired a right of mortgage to the whole of these islands, constituting the ancient Thule, so important to her in every point of view, and which, as we shall hereafter see, the crown of Denmark was never able to redeem.

While the Earl of Arran was negotiating this national treaty, his influence with the king was undermined by those courtiers who envied his sudden elevation, and the preference which James had displayed toward him and his family. When the earl arrived in the Firth of Forth with the fleet which escorted the Danish princess to the shores where she was to reign, Arran's wife, the Princess Margaret, came on board to acquaint him that if he landed his life would be in danger. They fled together, therefore; and the new Earl of Arran returned to Denmark, to seek refuge from the indignation of his fickle prince, for whom he had so lately achieved, in the same kingdom, such important negotiations. In the meantime the total ruin of his friends at home took place, almost without opposition, and the power of the House of Boyd was destroyed as speedily as it arose. It is vain to inquire why a weak prince should be as changeable as he was violent in his partialities. Sentence of high treason was passed upon the Boyds for their aggression in 1466, though fully pardoned by a subsequent parliament. Sir Alexander Boyd suffered death; the Lord Boyd escaped to England, where he died in poverty. The Earl of Arran, who appears by his personal qualities to have merited the confidence which the king had so suddenly withdrawn, seems to have received but a cold welcome in Denmark. The Princess Margaret was separated from him and sent back to Scot-land, on the demand, it may be presumed, of her royal brother; and her unfortunate husband, after wandering as an exile from one country to another, died, it is said, in Flanders. His death, or a divorce between him and the Princess Margaret, obtained by the influence of James, gave an opportunity for forming a second marriage between the king's sister and the Lord Hamilton, the heir of a family which had been rising in influence and importance ever since the first lord of the name so opportunely embraced the cause of the king, in the grand struggle of James II. with the House of Douglas. The princess had a family by both marriages; but Boyd's son and daughter died without heirs; while her son by Hamilton survived, so that in Queen Mary's time their descendant stood first in succession to the crown.

In the parliament of 1469, held after the fall of the Boyds, we see the good sense of the people of Scotland displayed in an act declaring that every homicide who flees to sanctuary shall be taken forth and put to the judgment of an assize; "for to such manslayers of forethought felony," said the statute, "the law will not grant the immunity of the Church."

The sceptre of France was now swayed by Louis XI., one of the most wise of princes and most worthless of men, of whom it can be hardly said, whether he were more superstitious or sagacious, more prudent and liberal, or more perfidious and cruel. He was aware of the importance of the Scottish league to the safety of France, as affording a ready means of annoyance against England. Edward IV. of England became, on the other hand, sensible that it was better to ac-quire, if possible, the goodwill of his northern neighbors by friendly means, and thus secure his frontier at home, while he undertook the invasion of France, which he meditated, than, with the haughty policy of his predecessors, to renew the attempt of subjugating Scotland by force. By a treaty entered into in 1474, it was agreed that, in order to promote the mutual happiness, honor, and interest of this noble island, called Great Britain, a contract of marriage should be executed between the Prince of Scotland and Cecilia, daughter of the king of England, the former being only two, the latter four, years old. A portion of twenty thousand marks sterling was to be paid by annual instalments of two thou-sand marks, to commence with the date of the contract. If the prince or princess named in the contract should die, it was agreed that another of the royal family to which the deceased party might belong should fill up his or her place in the contract. If such marriage did not take place, Scot-land became bound to repay the sum of money advanced in manner aforesaid, under the deduction of two thousand five hundred marks, which Edward agreed to abandon as a consideration paid for the friendship of Scotland at a critical period. By the same treaty, the long truce of fifty-five years was affirmed and secured.

It appears from this remarkable treaty that the policy of Louis XI., who maintained his power in Europe more by influence and subsidies than by the direct exercise of positive violence and force, was becoming general through Europe, and had been adopted by England.

The payment of the Princess Cecilia's portion so long before the possibility of an effectual marriage taking place, afforded an honorable pretext for England to give and Scot-land to receive by instalments a certain large sum of money or subsidy, by which annual gratification she was to be induced to maintain amity with her wealthier neighbor. Ed-ward IV. was, however, too impetuous and too necessitous to continue long this expensive, though secure course of policy. Three years' instalments of the proposed portion were paid with regularity; but Edward in the course of 1478 conceived he stood so well with France as might enable him to dispense with the expensive friendship of Scotland.

In the same year in which the treaty of marriage with England was fixed upon, the counsellors of James III. re-solved to proceed to check the power of John, lord of the Isles, and titular earl of Ross, whose insubordination again had merited chastisement. After a show of resistance the island lord submitted himself, and by an act of parliament was finally deprived of the earldom of Ross, which was annexed inalienably to the crown, with liberty to the kings to convey it as an appanage to their younger sons, but to no meaner subject. The humbled lord of the Isles was also deprived of the regions of Knapdale and Cantire, which he had possessed on the continent, and dismissed under promise to be a submissive subject in future.

James III, had now, 1478, attained his twenty-first year, under circumstances of success which had attended no Scottish monarch since Robert Bruce. His kingdom was strengthened by the expulsion of the English from Roxburgh Castle and the town of Berwick, as well as by the acquisition of the Orkney and Zetland Islands, the natural dependencies of Scot-land. The country was relieved of the charge of the Norway annual, a burden it was incapable of discharging; and the increasing consequence of the nation was manifested by the contending offers of France and England for her favor and friendship. All these advantages indicate that James had, at this period of his reign, able ministers, by whom his councils were directed. The chief of these probably was the chancellor, Andrew Stewart, Lord Evandale, whose importance was now so great that, in virtue of his office, he took rank next to the princes of the blood royal. He was a natural son of Sir James Stewart, son of Murdach, duke of Albany.

In the meantime the unfortunate James began to disclose evil qualities and habits which his youth had hitherto concealed from observation. He had a dislike to the active sports of hunting and the games of chivalry, mounted on horseback rarely, and rode ill. A consciousness of these deficiencies, in what were the most approved accomplishments of the age, and a certain shyness which attends a timorous temper, rendered the king alike unfit and unwilling to mingle in the pleasures of his nobility, or to show him-self to his subjects in the romantic pageants which were the delight of the age. James's amusements were of a character in which neither his peers nor people could share, and though to a certain extent they were innocent and even honorable, they were yet such as, pushed to excess, must have necessarily interfered with the regular discharge of his royal duties. He was attached to what are now called the fine arts of architecture and music; and in studying these used the instructions of Rogers, an English musician, Cochrane, a mason or architect, and Torphichen, a dancing-master.

Another of his domestic minions was Hommil, a tailor, not the least important in the conclave, if we may judge from the variety and extent of the royal wardrobe, of which a voluminous catalogue is preserved.

Spending his time with such persons, who, whatever their merit might be in their own several professions, could not be fitting company for a prince, James necessarily lost the taste for society of a different description, whose rank imposed on him a certain degree of restraint; and with the habit of en-gaging in good society easily, he left unpracticed the manners which ought to distinguish the prince when mixing with the nobility of his realm. Thus thrown back upon his low-born associates, it was scarcely possible that James should not have used the counsels of men totally ignorant in political affairs, upon matters far above their sphere; or that they, with the presumption common to upstarts; should not readily interpose their advice on such subjects. The nation, therefore, with disgust and displeasure, saw the king disuse the society of the Scottish nobles, and abstain from their counsel, to lavish favors upon, and be guided by the advice of, a few whom the age termed base mechanics.

In this situation, the public eye was fixed upon James's younger brothers, Alexander, duke of Albany, and John, earl of Mar. These princes were remarkable for the royal qualities which the king did not possess. Being naturally drawn into comparison with their brother, and extolled above him by the public voice, James seems to have be-come jealous of them, even on account of their possessing the virtues or endowments which he himself was conscious of wanting. It is too consonant with the practice of courts to suppose that Mar and Albany were not quiescent under this dishonorable suspicion and jealousy. It is probable that they intrigued with the other discontented nobles; with what purpose, or to what extent, cannot now be ascertained. Mar was accused of having inquired of pretended witches concerning the term of the king's life; a suspicious subject of inquiry, considering it was made by so near a relation; and the progress of Albany's life shows him capable of unscrupulous ambition.

The king, on his part, resorted to diviners and soothsayers to know his own future fate; and the answer (probably dictated by the favorite Cochrane) was, that he should fall by the means of his nearest of kin. The unhappy monarch, with a self-contradiction, one of the many implied in superstition, imagined that his brothers were the relations indicated by the oracle; and also imagined that his knowledge of their intentions might enable him to alter the sup-posed doom of fate.

In 1478, Albany and Mar were suddenly arrested, as the king's suspicions grew darker and more dangerous; and while the duke was confined in the castle of Edinburgh, Mar was committed to that of Craigmillar. Conscious, probably, that the king possessed matter which might afford a pretext to take his life, Albany resolved on his escape. He communicated his scheme to a faithful attendant, by whose assistance he intoxicated, or, as some accounts say, murdered the captain of the guard, and then attempted to descend from the battlements of the castle by a rope. His attendant made the essay first; but the rope being too short, he fell, and broke his thigh-bone. The duke, warned by this accident, lengthened the rope with the sheets from his bed, and made the perilous descent in safety. He trans-ported his faithful attendant on his back to a place of security, then was received on board a vessel which lay in the roads of Leith, and set sail for France, where he met a hospitable reception, and was maintained by the bounty of Louis XI.

In 1479, enraged at the escape of the elder of his captives, it would seem that James was determined to make secure of Mar, who remained. There occur no records to show that the unfortunate prince was subjected to any public trial; nor can it be known, save by conjecture, how far James III. was accessory to the perpetration of his murder, which was said to be executed by bleeding the prisoner to death in a bath. Several persons were at the same time condemned and executed for acts of witchcraft, charged as having been practiced, at Mar's instance, against the life of the king.

About this time war broke out between the two sister countries of Britain, after an interval of peace of unusual duration. The blame may have originally laid with England, who had violated the articles of the last treaty, in discontinuing the stipulated payment of the Princess Cecilia's portion ; but the incursions of the Scots gave the first signal for actual hostilities. Wise regulations were laid down by the Scottish parliament for garrisoning, with hired soldiers, Berwick, the Hermitage Castle, and other fortresses on the border, the expense to be defrayed from the public revenue. If Edward IV., who is discourteously termed the reifar or robber, should invade Scotland, it was appointed that the king should take the field, and that the whole nobles and commons should live or die with him.

Edward IV. on his part, desirous to obtain an advantage similar to that which had been gained by Edward I. and Edward III., by means of the Baliols' claim to the Scottish throne, made proposals to the banished Duke of Albany that he should set himself up as a competitor for his brother's throne. Whatever had been the specious virtue of Albany, it was of a kind easily seduced by temptation; and, like Baliol in similar circumstances, he hastened from France over to England, agreed to become king of Scotland under the patronage of Edward, consented to resign the long-disputed question of the independence of his country, promised the abandonment of Berwick and other places on the border, and undertook to restore to his estate the banished Earl of Douglas, who was to be a party in the projected invasion. Under this agreement, which was, however, kept strictly secret, the celebrated Duke of Gloucester, afterward King Richard III., was detached to the Scottish wars at the head of a considerable army, and Albany accompanied him.

The Scottish king had in the meantime assembled his army, and set forward against the enemy. But there existed a spirit of disaffection among his nobility, which led to an unexpected explosion. Cochrane, the mason, the most able, or at least the most bold of the king's plebeian favorites, had made so much money by accepting of bribes and selling his interest in the king's favor, that he was able to purchase from his master James, who added avarice to the other vices of a grovelling and degraded spirit, the earldom of Mar. It is an additional shade of meanness in James's character, that, when satisfied with the amount of the consideration to be paid, he never hesitated at conferring upon a low-born upstart the lordship which had belonged to his late murdered brother. Cochrane proceeded in his career. The insatiable extortioner amassed money by indirect means of every kind; and one mode which particularly affected the poor was the debasement of the coin of the realm, by mixing the silver with so much copper as entirely to destroy its value. This adulterated coin was called the Cochrane-plack, and was so favorite a speculation of his, that, having been told it would be one day called in, he answered scornfully, "Yes, on the day I am hanged"; an unwitting prophecy, which was punctually accomplished.

The rank and state affected by the new Earl of Mar only more deeply incensed the nobility, who considered their order as disgraced by the introduction of such a person. A band of three hundred men constantly attended the favorite armed with battle-axes, and displaying his livery of white with black fillets. He himself used to appear in a riding-suit of black velvet, his horn mounted with gold, and hung around his neck by a chain of the same metal. In this manner he joined the Scottish host. The army had advanced from the capital as far as Lauder, when the nobility, beginning to feel sensible of their power in a camp consisting chiefly of their own soldiers and feudal followers, resolved that they would meet together, and consult what measures were to be taken for the reform of the abuses of the commonwealth, having already in vain represented their grievances to the king.

The armed conclave was held in Lauder Church, where, in the course of their deliberations, Lord Gray reminded them of the fable in which the mice are said to have laid a project for preventing the future ravages of the cat by tying a bell around her neck, which might make them aware of her approach. "An excellent proposal," said the orator, "but which fell unexpectedly to the ground, because none of the mice had courage enough to fasten the bell on the cat's neck." "I will bell the cat!" exclaimed Douglas, earl of Angus; from which he was ever afterward called by the homely appellation of Archibald Bell-the-Cat. It was agreed that the king's favorite should be seized and put to death, and the king himself should be placed under some gentle restraint, until he should give satisfactory assurance of a change of measures.

Just as this was determined on, Cochrane came to the council, and demanded admission. He was suffered to enter with some of his attendants, but was received with the scorn and indignation which were the natural preface of actual violence. Douglas of Lochleven, who kept the door, snatched from him the hunting-horn that hung round his neck. "Thou hast hunted mischief," he said, "over long." Angus seized the chain which held the bugle, saying, "A halter would suit him better." "Is it jest or earnest, my lords?" said the astonished favorite, surprised at his reception. "It is sorrowful earnest," they answered, "and that thou shalt presently feel." One or two, deemed the most grave of the nobles, undertook to acquaint the king with their purpose; while the others, seizing the minions who were the objects of their violence, caused them to be hanged over the bridge of Lauder. Cochrane, when brought to the place of execution, showed how much a paltry love of show made part of his character. He made it his suit to be hanged in a silken cord, and offered to supply it from his own pavilion. This idle request only taught his stern auditors how to wound his feelings more deeply, "Thou shalt die," they said, "like a mean slave as thou art" ; and applied to the purpose of his execution a halter of horsehair, as the most degrading means of death which they could invent. This execution was done with excessive applause on the part of the army. All the favorites of the weak prince perished, except a youth called Ramsay of Balmain, who clung close to the king's person; James begged his life with so much earnestness that the peers relented, and granted their sovereign's boon.

The consequences of this enterprise are very puzzling to the historian. The Scottish nobility seem to have retired with the determination not to oppose the English host in arms, expecting, probably, that they would be able to settle some accommodation by means of the Duke of Albany. They were as yet ignorant of the disgraceful treaty which he had made with England, and hoped to have the advantage of his talents as a regent to direct the weak councils of his brother James. In the meantime they subjected the king to a mitigated imprisonment in Edinburgh Castle.

It would seem that Albany, perceiving the Scottish nobles totally indisposed to admit his claim to the kingdom, was willing enough to accept the proposal of becoming lieutenant-general. That he might do so with the better grace, Albany and the Duke of Gloucester interceded with the Scottish lords for the liberation of the king. The nobles addressed the Duke of Albany with much respect, and agreed to grant whatever he desired, acknowledging him to be, after James's children, the nearest of blood to the royal family. "But for that per-son who accompanies you," they continued, in allusion to the English prince, "we know nothing of him whatever, or by what right he presumes to talk to us upon our national affairs, and will pay no deference to his wishes, seeing he is entitled to none."

The English, however, gained one important advantage upon this occasion. The town of Berwick, which had been delivered up to the Scots by Henry VI., and possessed by them for nearly twenty years, was now taken by the troops of Richard of Gloucester, and the castle being also yielded, this strong fortress and valuable seaport never afterward returned to the dominion of Scotland. In other respects the English sought no national advantage by the pacification.

James was in this manner restored to his liberty, and, either from fickleness of temper or profound dissimulation, appeared for a time to be so much attached to Albany, that he could not be separated from him for a moment. The concord of the royal brethren showed itself by some demonstrations which would seem strange at the present day. They rode together, on one occasion, mounted on the same horse, from the castle of Edinburgh, along the principal street, down to the Abbey of Holyrood, to the great joy and delectation of all good subjects. Every night, also, the king and Albany partook the same bed.

But this fraternal concord, which must have had, from the beginning, its source in a degree of affectation, did not long continue; and, in 1483, the predominant disposition of each prince disconcerted their union. The ambition of Albany would have alarmed the fears of a less timorous or suspicious man than James. It appears too plainly that the duke resumed his treasonable practices with the court of England, and it would seem that his intrigues were discovered, and that the greater part of the Scottish nobles, incensed at his perfidy, joined in expelling him from the government. In 1484 doom of forfeiture was pronounced against Albany, and he fled to England, having first, as the last act of treachery in his power, delivered up his castle of Dunbar to an English garrison, and thus, in so far as in him lay, exposed the frontiers of which he was the warden. The next year witnessed the battle of Lochmaben, the event of a foray undertaken by Douglas and Albany into Annandale, in which Douglas was made prisoner, and Albany obliged to fly for his life.

Richard III. had now (1485) begun his brief and precarious reign. A short negotiation speedily arranged a truce with Scotland, which might have had some endurance if the monarchs who made it had remained steady on their thrones. But James, when he felt himself uncontrolled in his sovereignty, used it, as his inclinations determined him, in founding expensive establishments for the cultivation of music, and in the erection of chapels and palaces in a peculiar species of architecture, in which the Gothic style was mingled with an imitation of the Grecian orders. To meet the ex-pense of these buildings and foundations, and to gratify his natural love of amassing treasure, James watched and availed himself of every opportunity by which he could collect money; nor did he hesitate to appropriate to these favorite purposes funds which the haughty nobles were disposed to consider as perquisites of their own. A particular instance of this nature hurried on James's catastrophe.

In order to maintain the expenses of a double choir in the royal chapel of Stirling, the king ventured to apply to that purpose the revenues of the priory of Coldingham. The two powerful families of Home and Hepburn had long accounted this wealthy abbey their own property, insomuch that they expected that the king would not have violated or interfered with a family compact, by which they had agreed that the prior of Coldingham should be alternately chosen from their respective names. The king's appropriation of the revenues which they had considered as destined to the advantage of their friends and clansmen, disposed these haughty chiefs to seek revenge as men who were suffering oppression. The spirit of discontent spread fast among the southern barons, much influenced by the Earl of Angus, a nobleman both hated and feared by the king, who could not be sup-posed to have forgotten the manner in which he had acquired his popular epithet of Bell-the-Cat. In the vain hope of con-trolling his discontented nobles, the king showed his fears more than his wisdom by prohibiting them to appear at court in arms, with the exception of Ramsay, whose life had been spared upon his entreaty at the execution of Lauder Bridge. James had made this young man captain of his guard, and created him a peer, by the name of Lord Both-well, under which title the new favorite had succeeded, if not to the whole power, at least to much of the unpopularity of Cochrane, whose fate he had so nearly shared.

A league was now formed against James, which was daily increased by fresh adherents till it ended in a rebellion which could be compared to no similar insurrection in Scottish history, save that of the Douglas in the preceding reign.

The fate of James III. was not yet determined, notwithstanding this powerful combination. He had on his side the northern barons, and was at least as powerful as his father had been at the siege of Abercorn. But he had not his father's courage, nor the sage counsels of Bishop Kennedy His wife, Margaret of Denmark, who, there is reason to think, had been a wise adviser as well as a most excellent spouse, died at a critical period for her husband (1487). Thus destitute of wise counsel, the king was advised (probably by Ramsay) to arrest suddenly the nobles concerned in the conspiracy. Unfortunately for the issue of this scheme, the king was unwise enough to admit Angus to knowledge of his intentions. The earl instantly betrayed them to the malcontents, who, instead of attending the king's summons to court, withdrew to the southward, and raised their banners in open insurrection. James, unnerved by his fears, repaired to the more northern regions, in which the strength of his adherents lay, and by the assistance of Athole, Crawford, Lindesay of the Byres, Ruthven, and other powerful chiefs of the east and north, assembled a considerable army. The insurgent lords advanced to the southern shores of the Forth.

During some indecisive skirmishes, and equally indecisive negotiations, the associated nobles contrived to get into their hands the king's eldest son, by the treachery of Shaw of Sauchie, his governor. This gave a color to their enterprise which was of itself almost decisive of success. They erected the royal standard of Scotland in opposition to its monarch, and boldly proclaimed that they were in arms in behalf of the youthful prince, whose unnatural father intended to put him to death, and to sell the country to the English. These were exaggerated calumnies; but it may be observed that the populace are more easily imposed upon by falsehoods suited to the grossness of their intellects than by such arguments as are consonant to reason. The king stood so low in public estimation, on account of his love of money and his disposition to favoritism, that nothing could be invented respecting him so base that it would not find credence among his subjects.

The king retired upon Stirling; but the faithless Shaw, who had betrayed the prince to the rebel lords, completed his treachery by refusing James access to the castle of that town. In a species of despair, the king turned southward, like a stag brought to bay, with the purpose of meeting his enemies in conflict. The battle took place not far from Falkirk, where Wallace was defeated, and yet nearer to the memorable field of Bannockburn, where Bruce triumphed. At the first encounter, the archers of the king's army had some advantage. But the Annandale men, whose spears were of unusual length, charged, according to their custom, with loud yells, and bore down the left wing of the king's forces. James, who was already dispirited from seeing his own banner and his own son brought in arms against him, and who remembered the prophecy of the witch, that he should fall by his nearest of kin, on hearing the cries of the bordermen, lost courage entirely, and turned his horse for flight. As he fled at a gallop through the hamlet of Mill-town, his charger, a fiery animal, presented to him on that very morning by Lindesay of the Byres, took fright at the sight of a woman engaged in drawing water at a well, and threw to the ground his timid and inexpert rider. The king was borne into the mill, where he was so incautious as to proclaim his name and quality. The consequence was that some of the rebels who followed the chase entered the hut and stabbed him to the heart. The persons of the murderers were never known, nor was the king's body ever found.