History Of Scotland Vol. 1 - Part 22

( Originally Published 1909 )

Proclamation of the temporary Magistrates of Edinburgh—Moderate Conduct of the English—Convention of Estates—Duke of Albany proposed for Regent—Marriage of the Queen-Dowager with the Earl of Angus—He attempts to get the Regency in Right of his Wife; but Albany is preferred—His Character—Angus and the Queen Mother fly to England—Albany is unpopular—Trial and Execution of Lord Home—Albany returns to France—Murder of the Sieur de la Bastie—Feuds between the Hamiltons and Douglases—Skirmish called Cleanse the Causeway—Albany returns from France, and reassumes the Government: makes an inefficient Attempt to invade England, and again retires to France—Surrey takes Jedburgh—Albany returns for the third Time to Scotland: besieges Wark--Upon this Siege being shamefully raised, he returns, dismisses his Army, and leaves Scotland forever—Intrigues of Henry VIII. among the Scottish Nobility—Queen Margaret once more raised to Power —King James assumes the Government under her Guardianship—Her Aversion to her Husband Angus, and her imprudent Affection for Lord Methven—Angus returns and attains the supreme Power—Becomes tyrannical in his Administration—Battle of Melrose—Battle of Kirkliston—Supreme Sway of the Douglases—Escape of the King from Falkland—The Douglases are banished the Royal Presence, and compelled to fly into England—Comparison between the Fall of the House of Angus and that of the elder Branch of the Douglas Family

THE alarm which followed upon the melancholy event of the field of Flodden through the whole kingdom of Scotland was universal and appalling; but, fortunately, those who had to direct the energies of the state under circumstances so adverse were composed of a metal competent to the task. The commissioners who exorcised the power of the magistracy of Edinburgh, for the lord provost and magistrates in person had accompanied the king to the fatal field, set a distinguished example of resolution. A proclamation is extant, in which, speaking of the misfortune of the king and his host as a rumor of which there was yet no certainty, they appointed the females of respectability to pass to church, those of the lower rank to forbear clamoring and shrieking in the streets, and all men capable of bearing arms to take their weapons, and be ready, on the first tolling of the great bell of the city, to attend upon the magistrates, and contribute to the defence of the town. It is the language of Rome when Hannibal was at the gates.

The victorious English were, therefore, expected to appear shortly before the walls of the metropolis; but Surrey's army had been summoned together for defending their own frontier, not for the invasion of Scotland. The crown vassals did not remain in the field after their term of service had been rendered : and though the victory was gained, yet a loss of at least four thousand men had thinned the ranks of the conquerors. The absence of Henry VIII. prevented any vindictive measures, which he was likely enough to have taken, on finding the kingdom of his late brother by the recent defeat exposed to receive its doom at the hand of a conqueror.

A general council of the Scottish nobles was convoked at Perth (October, 1513), to concert what national measures ought to be adopted for the government of the kingdom at this exigency. The number of the nobles who gave attendance was few, and the empty seats and shortened roll gave melancholy evidence of the extent of the late loss. The queen was readily admitted to the regency, a compliment which might be intended to conciliate her brother Henry. It had not, however, that effect. Letters arrived from France, by which the king of England strictly commanded and fiercely urged that the success at Flodden should be followed up by repeated inroads upon the Scottish frontiers, where a desolating though indecisive war was maintained accordingly.

Driven to despair by the severity of Henry, the Scottish council began to look toward France, and to turn their eyes to a prince of the blood royal, now resident there, and next heir to the crown of Scotland, had James IV. died childless. This was John, duke of Albany, son of that Alexander, duke of Albany, who was brother to James III., and who, having been declared a traitor for attaching himself to England, had ended his days in France. To this Duke John a strong party in Scotland proposed to assign the regency, which they wished no longer to intrust with a female and an Englishwoman, sister to a monarch who used his success so unsparingly. Whatever efforts might have been made to support Margaret in the office to which the king's will had admitted her, they became unavailing by her marrying the Earl of Angus as soon as she had recovered from her confinement, in which she bore a posthumous child to James IV. A marriage so soon after the death of her royal husband was prejudicial to her reputation, and, as it placed her personally under the control of a subject, rendered her incapable of holding and exercising the sovereign power of regent.

In some respects, indeed, her choice could not be amended. Earl Archibald of Angus was grandson and successor to him whom we have so often distinguished by the name of Bell-the-Cat. His father and uncle had fallen at Flodden; his aged grandfather had carried his sorrows for Scotland, and for his own loss of two gallant sons, into the shade of religious retirement. This young man, therefore, was at the head of the second branch of the House of Douglas, which had risen to a degree of power destined once more to make their sovereign tremble. Angus was also all that could win a lady's eye; he was splendid in attire, retinue, and house-keeping; handsome, brave, and active. But he had the faults of his family, being ambitious and desirous of power; and he had those of his youth, being headlong and impetuous in his passions, wild and unrestrained in his conduct. He did not pay the queen, who was some years older than himself, that deference which Margaret might have expected from decorum if not from affection, and at best was a negligent and faithless husband. His ambition aspired to maintain his wife's claims to the regency, although forfeited, as already said, by her second marriage.

But the preferable claim of Albany was maintained by the Scottish nobility, who asserted the right of the next in succession to rule the kingdom during the minority of the monarch. Albany had, indeed, an elder brother; but as a divorce after his birth had passed between his parents, for being related within the forbidden degrees, he was regarded as illegitimate. The right of this prince to the chief government was in an especial manner supported by the Earl of Arran, head of the House of Hamilton, and connected with the royal family by his mother, Mary Stuart, the eldest daughter of King James II., who, when widow of the fallen favorite, Thomas Boyd, earl of Arran, had married the first Lord Hamilton. The title of her first husband was conferred upon her son by the second, who thus became the first earl of Arran of the name of Hamilton. This powerful noble-man, waiving some pretensions which he himself might have made to the regency, added great weight to that party which pleaded the rights of Albany. In 1515, the Duke of Albany came over to Scotland, accordingly, and was installed as re-gent. In the same year the lingering war with England was put an end to by the inclusion of Scotland in the peace which had been agreed upon between France and that country.

The Regent Albany, bred in the court of Francis I., and a personal favorite of that monarch, was more of a courtier than a soldier or a statesman; and the winning qualities of vivacity and grace of manners which had gained him favor and applause while in France were lost on the rude nobility of Scotland. He possessed the pride of high birth, and the command of considerable wealth, for his wife had been heiress of the county of Auvergne ; but his talents were of a mean order, and he was alike insolent and pusillanimous.

Albany was not long in showing that he was about to direct the power of regent, now that he had obtained the office, against Angus and his wife, by whom his ascent to the dignity had been opposed. He obtained an order from the parliament that the royal children should be delivered up to him. Margaret, after a vain resistance, was compelled to place the infant king and his short-lived brother Alexander under the suspicious care of an aspiring kinsman; and her husband Angus hastened to the border, to consult with Lord Home upon some means of withstanding the oppressive se-verity of the regent's government. Albany, however, was powerful enough to disconcert all their measures, even though Arran, deserting the regent's party, was so mutable as to make common cause with Home. The queen-mother, far advanced in her pregnancy, was driven into England, where she was delivered of a female infant, in the miserable turret of a Northumbrian baron, from which she afterward took refuge in her brother's court. The circumstance, however, of having been born in England was of considerable advantage to the Lady Margaret Douglas in calculating her proximity to the English crown.

Meantime the regent became unpopular. The younger of the two Scottish princes died in his custody, not without foul suspicion of neglect or poison. The nation sympathized with the distresses and danger of the royal family; the dissatisfaction at Albany's government became universal; and the king's person was taken from his custody, and placed in the hands of certain select peers, to whose loyalty he might be safely intrusted. The regent found his power restricted and his situation unpleasant, and entertained thoughts of withdrawing from the rude kingdom which he had under-taken to govern. He seems to have suspended his purpose only till he made the experiment, whether by one grand exertion of authority he might not reduce to obedience those troublesome peers by whom his government had been repeatedly disturbed. This blow descended on the Lord Home, who, being the favorite of the late king, and the close ally of Angus, had maintained in the eastern marches a resistance to the regent's authority, and a constant communication with England. In 1516, being imprudent enough to trust his per-son and that of his brother within reach of the regent's authority, Lord Home was seized, tried, and executed. But this exertion of power had no effect, save that of exciting, as we shall hereafter see, the vindictive rage of the friends of the deceased victim of justice or of vengeance. In the year in which Home was beheaded, Albany obtained or extorted the permission of the estates to pay a visit to France. At the same time, although the duke's name was retained as regent, the real power was lodged in a council, in which Angus, having now returned to Scotland, held a seat. His wife, Queen Margaret, was received back with all due honor, and there seemed reason to think that something like a steady government was at length formed.

The contrary, however, was soon visible. Anthony d'Arcy, Seigneur de la Bastie, a French knight of great courage and fame, had been left by the regent in the important situation of warden of the eastern marches, and had taken up the duties of the office with a strict hand. But Home of Wedderburn, a powerful chief of the name, could not brook that an office usually held by the head of his house should be lodged in the hands of a foreigner dependent on the regent, by whom Lord Home had been put to death. Eager for revenge, the border chieftain waylaid the new warden with an ambuscade of armed men. Seeing himself beset, the unfortunate d'Arcy endeavored to gain the castle of Dunbar; but having run his horse into a morass near Dunse, he was overtaken and slain (1517). Home knitted the head to his saddle-bow by the long locks which had been so much admired in courtly assemblies, and placed it on the ramparts of Home Castle, as a pledge of the vengeance exacted for the death of the late lord of that fortress.

The peace of the kingdom was also disturbed by a constant dissension between the parties of Hamilton and Douglas, in other words, between the Earls of Angus and Arran. They used arms against each other without hesitation. At length, January, 1520, a parliament being called at Edinburgh, the Earl of Angus appeared with four hundred of his followers, armed with spears. The Hamiltons, not less eager and similarly prepared for strife, repaired to the capital in equal or superior numbers. They assembled in the house of the chancellor Beaton, the ambitious archbishop of Glasgow, who was bound to the faction of Arran by that nobleman having married the prelate's niece. Gawain Douglas, bishop of Dunkeld, a son of Earl Bell-the-Cat, and the celebrated translator of Virgil, labored to prevent the factions from coming to blows. He applied to Beaton himself, as official conservator of the laws and peace of the realm. Bea-ton, laying his hand upon his heart, protested upon his con-science he could not help the affray which was about to take place. "Ha! my lord," said the advocate for peace, who heard a shirt of mail rattle under the bishop's rochet, "me-thinks your conscience clatters." The bishop of Dunkeld then had recourse to Sir Patrick Hamilton, brother to the Earl of Arran, who willingly attempted to exhort his kinsmen to the preservation of peace, until he was rudely up-braided with reluctance to fight by Sir James Hamilton, natural son to his brother, and a man of a fierce and sanguinary disposition. "False bastard!" said Sir Patrick, in wrath, "I will fight today where thou darest not be seen."

There were now no more thoughts of peace, and the Hamiltons, with their western friends and allies, rushed in fury up the lanes which led from the Cowgate, where the bishop's palace was situated, intending to take possession of the High Street. But the Douglases had been before-hand with them, and already occupied the principal street, with the advantage of attacking their enemies as they issued in disorder from the narrow closes or lanes. Such of Angus's followers also as had not lances were furnished with them by the favor of the citizens of Edinburgh, who handed them over their windows. These long weapons gave the Doug-lases great advantage over their enemies, and rendered it easy to bear them down, as they struggled breathless and disordered out of the heads of the lanes. Nor was this Angus's only piece of fortune: Home of Wedderburn, also a great adherent of the Douglases, arrived while the battle was yet raging, and, bursting his way through the Nether-bow Gate at the head of his formidable borderers, appeared in the street in a decisive moment. The Hamiltons were driven out of the city, leaving upward of seventy men dead, one of whom was Sir Patrick Hamilton, the advocate for peace. The Earl of Arran and his natural son were so far endangered, that, meeting a collier's horse, they were fain to throw off its burden, and, both mounting the same miser-able animal, they escaped through a ford in the loch which then defended the northern side of the city.

The consequences of this skirmish, which, according to the humor of the age, was long remembered by the name of Cleanse the Causeway, raised Angus for a little time to the head of affairs. But, unable to reacquire the lost affection of his wife, the queen-dowager, the latter, in her aversion to her husband and resentment of his infidelities and neglects, joined in soliciting the return of Albany, an event which took place December 3, 1521. Angus and his party, alarmed at his arrival, and remembering the fate of Lord Home and his brother, made a precipitate retreat from Edinburgh, and took refuge in England. A new change of administration followed with little advantage to the unfortunate and ill-governed nation. Placing him-self at the head of a party which might be called the French interest in Scotland, Albany, ignorant of and indifferent to the real interests of his country, endeavored so to rule the kingdom as might best serve the purposes of France, her powerful ally.

The flimsy species of peace with England, which had hitherto been maintained by ill-observed truces, did not prevent the most murderous and desolating ravages between the borderers on both sides. Albany appeared on the west-ern frontier at the head of an army of eighty thousand men; but, cowardly in war as he was presuming in peace, having had a single interview with Lord Dacres, he consented to sheathe his sword, and omitted the opportunity of doing some considerable service, which was the rather to have been expected, as the king of England had no army on foot to encounter that of Scotland.

The regent, feeling himself a second time the object of general dislike and contempt, again escaped from the tumultuous scene, and retired to France, leaving a council of regency to sustain as well as they might the war which his rashness had awakened, and to collect as they best could the materials of defence which he had dissipated and thrown away. In the spring of 1523, Henry VIII. sent the Earl of Surrey to the borders with a considerable army, to repay the threatened invasion of Albany. This enterprising general resolved to sweep the Scottish frontiers, and desolate them so effectually as to render them totally uninhabitable for nine miles beyond the border of England.

With this purpose he advanced upon Jedburgh, in spite of the opposition of about fifteen hundred borderers, who skirmished so boldly with Surrey's vanguard that he terms them the boldest and most ardent men-at-arms whose feats he ever witnessed, adding that, if forty thousand such soldiers could be assembled, it would be hard to withstand them. Driving this handful of Scots before him, Surrey reached Jedburgh, which was taken by storm, after a gallant defence. The fine abbey was also carried by assault, after it had been valiantly held out till late in the evening. The ruins still exhibit marks of the injuries which were then inflicted. This town, then rich and spacious, was set on fire by the English soldiery. But the victors were thrown into much confusion through the wilfulness of Lord Dacres, who commanded the cavalry. This nobleman. did not choose to bring his horsemen within the fortified camp, which Surrey had appointed for his quarters. The consequence was that in the evening the horse-quarter was surprised, and most of the horses cut loose from their picketing. The animals, finding themselves at liberty, ran furiously past the fortified camp of Surrey, whose soldiers manned their defences, and, unable to discern the true cause of the alarm, shot both with bows and guns against the Scottish assailants as they thought. Many horses were carried off by the Scottish women, who fearlessly seized them in the scuffle. So many steeds were slain or taken that about a thousand English cavaliers were seen to walk afoot the next day.

While the two countries were thus engaged in fierce contention, both Scots and English were astonished to hear of Albany's return, with a small French army, in number between four and five thousand men, and a quantity of arms and treasure. With this new display of wealth and auxiliaries the regent endeavored to engage the Scottish nobles in a common effort against England, and he succeeded in obtaining a promise of firm support from the parliament. Including his French auxiliaries, Albany assembled a force estimated at sixty thousand. With this large army he formed the siege of Wark Castle, in 1523. The assailants took the outer circuit of the castle, and attacked the keep; but the Earl of Surrey advancing from Barmoor Wood, the Duke of Albany shamefully raised the siege, and retreated at the head of his well-appointed and numerous army, which he soon after dismissed. He retired to Edinburgh, and having dissipated the treasures which he brought with him, and shown to a demonstration his unfitness to command an army, he made his final retreat to France, loaded with the curses and reproaches of the nation from which he derived his ancestry.

After the flight of Albany the English interest once more began to predominate in the Scottish councils; for Henry VIII. had again adopted his father's policy, and instead of endeavoring to conquer Scotland, and render it a part of his dominions by dint of arms, was contented to aim at maintaining such an influence in the councils of that country as a wealthy and powerful nation may always find means of acquiring in the government of one that is poorer and weaker than herself. The present revolution seemed the more favorable to the interest of England, since it raised Margaret once more to an efficient power in the Scottish government. She came from Stirling to Edinburgh, and announced that her son, James V., now a boy of twelve years old, was determined to take the sovereign power into his own hands. A great many of the Scottish peers, upon hearing this information, associated themselves for protection of the young king's government, and for declaring the termination of Albany's regency. It was clear, notwithstanding, as the independent government of a boy of twelve years old could be only nominal, that James's councils must be guided and directed by some familiar advice, and nothing could be more natural than that he should find that counsellor in an affectionate mother.

The English king and his minister Wolsey at this crisis anxiously desired that Margaret would consent to a reconciliation with her husband Angus, in whose attachment to the interests of England they had great confidence, and whose masculine judgment they supposed to be necessary in aiding the queen-dowager to support the weight of government. But the passions of Margaret had some of the fickleness and all the impetuosity of her brother's.

She retained a deep resentment and even detestation against her husband, and gave her brother plainly to under-stand that any attempt to intrude Angus on her society, or even the granting him licenses to return from England, would forfeit Henry's share of the interest which the last revolution had given her in the affairs of Scotland. The truth was that Margaret with an unmatronly levity had become enamored of a young gentleman named Henry Stuart, second son of Andrew, lord Evan dale, and already entertained hopes of ridding herself of Angus by a divorce, and then conferring her hand upon this younger favorite. In the meantime she raised the favored youth to the dignity of Lord Treasurer of Scotland. By such light conduct Margaret alienated the affections of the nobles, while she increased their discontent by excluding them from her councils, and listening only to the advice of her lover, and other inexperienced young men.

Blaming the conduct of his sister, and expecting a more firm support from the government of Angus, whose misfortunes might be supposed to have taught him wisdom, Henry now countenanced the return of the earl, in hopes that he might still be able to effect some reconciliation, ostensible at least, between him and the queen. This was found totally impossible; and Angus, having determined to destroy his wife's power if he could not share it, attempted to supplant her authority, first by an escalade of the town of Edinburgh, in which he was assisted by Scott of Buccleuch, and other border chiefs, and afterward by a union with the wily and able Archbishop Beaton, with whom he effected a reconciliation, and formed a party, the object of which was to free the young king from the tutelage of his mother. The struggle ended in the youthful monarch's being committed to the charge of a council of lords, the queen being allowed to pre-side at their sittings, a power which consisted in appearance rather than reality.

This revolution was completed, when the king, having arrived at the age of fourteen years, made choice of Angus, who had, by the most sedulous attention, obtained great influence over his mind, for administering the royal authority. But this state of things by degrees terminated in the absolute ascendency of Angus. As some atonement to the imprudent queen for having thus expelled her from all share of power, he ceased to oppose the divorce which Margaret so anxiously desired, and no sooner was it obtained than the royal matron hastened to wed her youthful lover, Henry Stuart, who was afterward created Lord Methven.

When Angus had attained the supreme power, which had been so long the object of his ambition, the use which he made of it was not corresponding to the sagacity he had displayed in the acquisition. He gave far greater attention to supporting and providing for his own friends and followers than to ruling the kingdom at large with justice and equity; and his relations and clansmen felt so much their own license and impunity that it was currently said that, whatever complaints were brought respecting actions of theft, rapine, and slaughter, it was useless and dangerous to insist on them, if a Douglas or the dependent of a Douglas were one of the parties inculpated. And although the Earl of Angus and the lords of his faction made progresses through the country under pretence of administering justice, and putting down oppressors and murderers, "yet," says honest Pitscottie, "there were no greater homicides and felons to be found than those who rode in their own company."

The government of Angus, being that of a predominant family and faction, was not only universally complained of as unjust and oppressive by the country in which it was exercised, but became odious to the king also, in whose name and authority it was carried on. Angus, as we have already said, had at first conciliated the goodwill of the youthful king, by making himself the channel through which James received all the presents which Henry VIII. used occasion-ally to send to his nephew, and by carefully studying his taste, in order to anticipate and comply with his inclinations; but when the earl became established in his authority, he began to exercise it without regard to the wishes of the young monarch, and often in direct contradiction to them. In this Angus was guided by the councils of his brother Sir George, a man of a fiery and haughty temper, who preferred governing by fear and constraint rather than by fair means and flattery.

This order of things could not exist long without the king making some effort to free himself from a yoke which was at once galling and degrading; but such was the state of Scotland at that period, that the king's person was regarded as the symbol of the royal power; and while Angus could retain possession of James himself, he cared little whether or not he possessed the royal affections. The young king, however, determined in secret to escape from him at whatever risk, and entered into more than one plot for accomplishing his freedom.

The first of these attempts exploded at Melrose on the 25th of July, 1526. Angus had brought the king thither with the purpose of quelling some recent disturbances on the frontier; but on leaving the town, and approaching the bridge in his return, he was encountered by Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, at the head of a thousand horse. His purpose being demanded, the chieftain replied that he came like other border men to show his followers to the king, and to invite him to his house. He added, that he knew the king's mind as well as Angus. A smart action immediately took place, in which the Scotts were defeated with the loss of eighty men; but many were also killed on the opposite side, in particular Sir Andrew Ker of Cessford, whose slaughter made a long and deadly feud between these two powerful clans.

It was generally suspected that the enterprise of Buccleuch had been instigated by Lennox, who, now retiring from the court, entered into a league with Chancellor Beaton, whom the predominance of Angus had nearly reduced to insignificance as a member of the administration, and to whom, of course, the power of the Douglases was obnoxious. The queen-mother seems also to have entered into the views of the party. Lennox, who was universally esteemed and beloved, raised a considerable army, and advanced toward Edinburgh from the westward. It is probable that Lennox was in hope of obtaining the support of the Earl of Arran on this occasion ; he was Lennox's uncle, and the ancient rival of Angus. But their strife had been appeased since the battle of Cleanse the Causeway, and Arran drew out his forces in support of Angus, and not in opposition to him. He marched toward Lennox at the head of a body of men equal to that of the insurgents. The armies met: Lennox and his host arrived in the neighborhood of Kirk-liston, and Angus rushed out from Edinburgh to support Arran. Sir George Douglas followed, bringing with him the young king in person, and the citizens of Edinburgh. Observing the king's great unwillingness to proceed, as the noise of the artillery on both sides now apprised them that the conflict was hotly maintained, "I read your majesty's thoughts," said the stern Douglas; "but do not deceive yourself. If your enemies had hold of you on one side, and we on the other, we would tear you asunder, rather than quit our hold" :—rash words, which the king never forgave.

On reaching the field of battle, they found the victory was with Angus. Lennox, after having been taken, was slain by Sir James Hamilton the Bastard, whose sanguinary temper has been already mentioned. Arran was mourning beside the dead body of his nephew, over which he had laid his scarlet cloak. "The best," he said, "the wisest, the bravest man in Scotland lies here slain."

The insurrection against Angus's government being thus a second time quelled, the chancellor, after lurking for some time among the hills in the disguise of a shepherd, was compelled to purchase peace by a copious distribution of ready money, and surrender of ecclesiastical benefices in favor of the prevailing party. The young king obtained by his inter-cession some favor for his mother; and the authority of Angus became more despotic, and was stronger than ever. This ambitious earl shortly after took upon himself the office of chancellor, and surrounded the king even more closely than before with his clients and dependents, whom James felt now tempted to regard as his jailers rather than his servants. Wherever he turned, his eye lighted on the dark complexion and vigilant eye of a Douglas. Douglas of Parkhead commanded a guard of one hundred men, rather to control the king's motions than to defend his person. His minister Angus never stirred from his presence, or if he did, he left him under the yet more stern custody of his brother, Sir George Douglas.

The young monarch was compelled to dissemble and appear satisfied with his situation, in order to disarm the vigilance of those by whom he was thus closely watched. This device succeeded so well that the Douglases, conceiving the king to be altogether occupied with sylvan sports and amusements, lost a part of the jealousy with which they regarded his motions.

In the beginning of July, the king being at Falkland, his whole attention apparently engrossed by the sport of hunting, Angus took the opportunity to look after some of his private affairs in Lothian. George Douglas also left Falkland to settle the terms of some beneficial leases which he was to obtain from the bishop of Saint Andrew's. Archibald Douglas, the uncle of the Earl of Angus, left the court for Dundee, to pursue, it was said, an intrigue with a paramour; so that the custody of the king's person was confided to Douglas of Parkhead, with his bodyguard of a hundred gentlemen. The king saw the opportunity favorable for his escape. He appointed a particularly solemn hunting match for the next morning, and repeatedly commanded his guard to be in attendance at an early hour. But he had no sooner retired to rest than he assumed the dress of a yeoman, and getting to the stables unperceived, mounted with two attend-ants, whom he had taken into his confidence, and galloped to Stirling. The governor of the strong castle, which commands that town, received the prince with great joy, and assured him of his personal fidelity. But James's apprehensions of the Douglases were still so great, that, fatigued as he was with his long and midnight ride, he would not go to sleep until the keys of the castle were laid beneath his pillow, to insure that no one might enter without his knowledge or consent.

The Douglases early on the morrow perceived the flight of their royal captive, and anticipated the downfall of the power which they had so long enjoyed. They agreed, however, to ride in a body to Stirling, and put a bold face upon the matter. But when the king heard of their approach, he caused a solemn proclamation to be made, commanding that neither the Earl of Angus nor any of his kindred should approach within six miles of the king's person under the pain of high treason.

A parliament was thereafter assembled, in which Angus and his whole friends and dependents were summoned to answer for various abuses of the royal authority, and for keeping the king's person nearly two years under restraint. To defend themselves was impossible to appear was to encounter ruin; the Earl of Angus and his followers, therefore, retreated into England, being secure of the mediation of Henry VIII. with his incensed nephew. Unfortunately, the earl did not deign to take this necessary step without offering some semblance of defending himself by arms. He garrisoned his castle of Tantallon, and taking the field with a gallant body of cavalry, seemed disposed to bid defiance to his youthful king, 1528. James hastened to lay siege to the castle; but it defied his forces. He was obliged to retreat from before it with dishonor; and Angus, attacking the rear of the royal army, added to the disgrace by killing one David Falconer, a favorite officer of James. It was in vain that the Earl of Angus showed much moderation, and for-bore to seize on the royal train of artillery which were in his power. James remembered with deep resentment the wrongs which he had received, and felt no gratitude for those which his disobedient subject had refrained from inflicting. He swore in his anger that no Douglas should, while he lived and reigned, find favor or countenance in Scotland. It was pity that James V. should have in this manner bound himself up from exercising his prerogative of pardon ; for, says one old historian, no friend of the Doug-lases, "I cannot find that the Earl of Angus, or any of that kindred, failed to the king in any part, since, although they were covetous, greedy, and oppressive of their neighbors, yet were they ever true, kind, and serviceable to the king in all his affairs, and ofttimes offered their persons to jeopardy for his sake."

The Earl of Angus, seeing the king so decidedly deter-mined against him, ceased his unavailing resistance, and retired with his brother and kinsman. Henry VIII. used much intercession in the earl's favor; but it was not until the death of James that the Douglases were restored to their native country of Scotland.

In the elevation of the House of Angus to eminent power, and in its fall, there was something which resembled the rise and declension of the original House of Douglas in the reign of James II. But the second course of events were far inferior in consequence to those of the earlier revolution. The power which the Earl of Angus possessed flowed from his wielding the king's authority and acting in the royal name. He was, it is true, an overgrown minister, who controlled the person and thwarted the inclinations of his sovereign; but still the power which he abused was that of a minister only, as appeared from the almost unresisted fall of the family as soon as they were deprived of the custody of the king's person. The last Earl of Douglas, on the contrary, had bid the king defiance in open rebellion ; assembled an army as large as that of James II.; and there was no guessing to which side victory might have inclined, had the earl given the monarch battle as a rival for his throne.

The natural inference is, that since, with every advantage of a minority and a divided cabinet, with as much ambition and more talents than Douglas, Angus had neither been able to found his power so deeply or to raise it so high, the precautions taken by James II. for repealing grants of crown-lands, for prohibiting or limiting the erection of hereditary jurisdictions, and otherwise restricting the powers of the nobility, had taken a certain though slow effect, and that James V. possessed a degree of authority unknown to the Scottish princes before these restrictions undermined the power of the aristocracy.

The slaughter of Flodden, where twelve earls, thirteen lords, and the eldest sons of five noble families lay on the field, tended much to reduce the numbers of the Scottish aristocracy, and increase the power of the crown, to which many of their honors and estates reverted..