History Of Scotland Vol. 1 - Part 23

( Originally Published 1909 )

James V. chastises the Borders—Introduces Cultivation and good Order—Institutes the College of Justice—Short War with England—Friendship restored—James temporizes with Henry—Marries Magdalen of France—Her early Death—James weds Mary of Guise—Sentence of Lady Glamis-Burning of several Heretics—Sadler's Embassy—James's wise Government--His Faults—He is of a severe Temper, and addicted to Favoritism--His Expedition to the Scottish Isles—Character of Sir James Hamilton of Draphane, and his Execution—Death of the two infant Sons of James--Considered as Ominous--Severe Laws against Heresy—Critical Position of James on the approaching War between France and England—He offends Henry by disappointing him at the proposed Interview—War with England —Battle of Haddon Rig—The Scottish Nobles at Fata Muir re-fuse to advance with the King—Incursion on the West Border —Rout of Solway Moss—James V. dies of a Broken Heart j AMES V. having, as mentioned in the last chapter, obtained the unlimited exercise of the royal authority, became desirous of reducing to order the formidable border men, who, under the Earl of Angus, had been permitted to indulge themselves uncontrolled in all kinds of violence. The king swept through the frontiers with a flying army, reducing the castles, and seizing upon the persons of those haughty chieftains, many of whom had no conception that the irregularities of which they and their people had been guilty were of a character to deserve the capital punishment of death, which was unsparingly executed upon them. John Armstrong of Gilnockie, Adam Scott of Tushielaw, called the King of the Border, and Piers Cockburn of Henderland, were among the border chiefs who perished on this memorable occasion. Having thus succeeded in quelling the authors of foreign strife and domestic disorder so effectually as to make "the bush of rushes keep the cow,"

James V. proceeded to occupy the crown lands, in the countries which had been so lately disturbed, with flocks and herds, the produce of which formed a large addition to his royal revenue on the borders.

After this signal infliction of punishment, it is boasted by a contemporary historian that the king had thirty thousand sheep pasturing in Ettricke Forest, and that his herds-man gave him as good an account of the produce, although in that disorderly district, as if they had gone within the bounds of Fife. Scotland seems to have enjoyed several years of such tranquillity as seldom occurs in the history of that distracted country. James, resenting the recollections of his sufferings under the tutelage of Angus, did not greatly use the services of his nobles, being disgusted with their ignorance and arrogance. He employed the talents of the clergy more freely; and they thus attained an influence over his mind which deterred him from joining the party of the reformers, to which he had originally shown some inclination.

In the year 1531, James V. gave to his country of Scotland the institution of the supreme court of council and session, which was framed in imitation of the parliament of Paris. Hitherto justice had been administered by standing committees of parliament, by whom the duty was irregularly and sometimes negligently discharged. These were now to give place to a court of professional persons, chosen with reference to their capacity for the high office, and having no occupation which might divert them from the ad-ministration of justice. The court possessed the supreme power of decision in all civil cases, and subsists to this day under the various alterations and improvements which the experience of three centuries has suggested. The number of the judges of the new court of session was fifteen, one half of them being laymen, and the others clergymen. The churchmen were taxed to defray the expense of the new establishment.

In 1533, a short and unimportant war broke out with England. It was signalized only by mutual inroads on the frontiers, and ended by a peace between the royal uncle and nephew ; after which James received from Henry the Order of the Garter. At this period Henry VIII., from motives well known in history, had renounced the papal sway, and became particularly anxious to induce his nephew to take a similar step. It is even said that, to purchase his compliance, Henry would have been contented that James should become the husband of his eldest daughter Mary, with other high advantages. He was pressing by his letters and messengers to have a personal interview appointed with his nephew, over whom he no doubt hoped to exercise that superiority which the powerful possesses over the comparatively weak sovereign, the rich over the poor, the aged over the young, and, as Henry doubtless supposed, the wise over the less strong-minded. But James, though desirous to be on good terms with his uncle, could not resolve upon imitating him in his scheme of throwing off the dominion of the Church of Rome. Ile had, indeed, listened with a smile to those lighter pieces of satire which reflected upon the personal character of the priests; a subject on which the Catholic Church has never manifested great irritability. But he was not prepared to resign any part of those doctrines which had been interwoven with his earliest ideas. The clergy, who were so useful to him in the course of his administration, had undoubtedly considerable influence in deterring him from following the courses of Henry. James also, though far from being wealthy, was so frugal as not to require for the support of his revenue the desperate measure of confiscating the church property. Finally, he felt that by joining with Henry in a step which all the princes of Europe held as impious and heretical, he must break off his friendly connection with France and every other power, to place himself wholly in the hands of the most haughty and imperious monarch then living. He procrastinated, there-fore, and evaded the proposal for a meeting, well knowing that if such an appointment did not produce all the effects which Henry desired and expected, it must necessarily destroy his amicable relations with England. These ties James desired to preserve in their present state, but did not wish to draw them closer.

The same reasons prevented the king from prosecuting the proposed match with the Princess Mary. Meantime his people anxiously desired that he should marry. Years rolled on, and James, the last of his line, was still single. His subjects were the more anxious on this point, as he often hazarded his person in private and nocturnal adventures, which he undertook sometimes to further the purposes of justice, and on other occasions from the love of enterprise and intrigue. A blow in a midnight brawl might have again reduced Scot-land to the miserable condition of a people with whom the succession to the crown is disputed.

At length a treaty of marriage was concluded between the king of Scotland and Marie de Bourbon, a daughter of the Duke of Vendome, in 1536. James undertook a journey to France to fetch home his betrothed bride. But when he arrived in that kingdom he was dissatisfied with the choice of his ambassador, and Magdalen, the princess of France, was substituted for Marie de Bourbon. They were married in great splendor on the 1st of January, and embarked in the beginning of May for the port of Leith, in Scotland, where they were received with great rejoicings, which with-in forty days were to be turned into the signs of mourning, July 7, 1537. Magdalen, the young queen of Scotland, carried in her constitution the seeds of a hectic fever, which, within that brief space, removed her from her new kingdom and royal bridegroom. Her vacant place on the throne was soon afterward filled by Mary of Guise, the most celebrated queen of Scotland, excepting her daughter Mary Stewart, still more famed for beauty and misfortune. This lady bore to her husband two healthy male children, both of whom died within a few days of each other during James's lifetime. Mary, the third offspring of the marriage, beheld the light for the first time at the period of her father's death, 1541.

Throughout the whole of this reign the banished Doug-lases, from their place of exile in England, intrigued among the Scottish nobility, who saw with displeasure that the king preferred the assistance of the churchmen to theirs in the management of his political affairs. During the life of James Beaton, archbishop of Glasgow, the king used his approved talents in the administration; and at his death in 1539 he had called to his councils his nephew David Beaton, afterward cardinal and primate of Scotland. He was sup-posed to have been peculiarly connected with the following judicial proceedings: the son of Lord Forbes was accused of treason by the Earl of Huntley, tried by the court of justiciary, and suffered death. In like manner Jane Douglas, the sister of Angus, widow of the late Lord Glamis, mother of the youth who bore the title at the time, and wife of Archibald Campbell of Kepneith, was, with her present husband, her son, and certain accomplices, accused of and tried for an attempt to hasten the king's death by the imaginary crime of witchcraft. For this offence Lady Glamis suffered death at the stake, on the castle hill of Edinburgh. She was much pitied on account of her noble birth, her distinguished grace and beauty, and the courage with which she endured her cruel punishment. The Scottish historians throw reflections upon James for giving vent to his resentment against the Douglases in the punishment of this lady : but her crimes appear to have been fully proved; and al-though the idea of taking away the life of others by acts of sorcery be now exploded, yet it is well known that in the Dark Ages the effect of the unhallowed rites was often accelerated by the administration of poison ; not to mention that those who engaged in such a conspiracy were morally, though not actually, guilty of the crime of murder. The punishment of Lady Glamis by fire was cruel, doubtless; but the cruelty was that of the age, not of the sovereign. Her husband Campbell was killed by a fall in attempting an escape from the castle of Edinburgh in which he was a prisoner.

The same horrible mode of punishment undergone by Lady Glamis was, during James's reign, unsparingly applied to the restraint of heresy. In the year 1528 a young man of good birth, named Patrick Hamilton, the first person who introduced the doctrines of Luther's reformation into Scotland, sealed them by his violent death, which took place at St. Andrew's. The king, being then under the tutelage of the Douglases, cannot be charged with this act of cruelty; but the execution of seven persons, in the year 1539, attested his assent to these bloody and impolitic inflictions. It is, however, certain that, in permitting the established laws of the realm to have their course, James by no means appeared satisfied either with the frequent repetition of such exhibitions, or with the conduct of the churchmen themselves. He evinced in several particulars a bias favorable to the reformed doctrines; and his uncle Henry VIII., confiding in these hopeful indications, continued to entertain considerable hopes of drawing over his nephew to follow his own example.

Sir Ralph Sadler, a statesman of great talent, and no stranger to Scotland, was despatched with a present of some horses and the delicate task of prevailing on James to dismiss such of his ministers as were Catholic priests, especially Cardinal David Beaton,' archbishop of St. Andrew's, and of exhorting him at the same time to seize on the property of the Church, and to reform the morals of the churchmen by severe correction. The old proposal of a personal conference was again renewed. King James answered with mildness to the urgency of his uncle. He declared he would reform the abuses of the Church, but that he could not justly or conscientiously make these a pretext for seizing on its property, especially since the churchmen were willing to supply him with such sums of money as he from time to time required. The candor of Sadler owned to his master that the king of Scotland was obliged to make use of the clergy in the public service, owing to the ignorance and incapacity of his nobility.

During all these transactions the personal character of James V. appears in a favorable light. He did not indeed escape the charge of severity usually brought against princes who endeavor to restore the current of justice to its proper channel after it has been for some time interrupted. But his reign was distinguished by acts of personal intrepidity on the part of the sovereign, as well as by an economical and sage management of the revenues of the kingdom. James encouraged fisheries, wrought mines, cultivated waste lands, and understood and protected commerce. The palaces which he built are in a beautiful though singular style of architecture; and the productions of his mint, particularly that called the bonnet-piece, because it bears James's head surmounted by the national cap, is the most elegant specimen of gold coinage which the age affords. The sculptor of the die was probably some foreign medallist whom James had induced to settle in Scotland, and who died young. Had so excellent an artist lived for any considerable period he must have distinguished himself.

James, in proportion to his means, was liberal to foreign mechanics, by whose aid he -hoped to encourage the arts among his ignorant people. The court of Scotland was gay, and filled with persons of accomplishment. Himself a poet, the king gave all liberal indulgence to the Muses, and does not seem to have resented the shafts of satire which were sometimes aimed against the royal gallantries or the royal parsimony.

With many virtues, James V. displayed few faults, but these were of a fatal character. We cannot reckon among them his unwillingness to receive a form of faith unknown to his fathers; but his rejection of the Reformation may be safely accounted among his misfortunes. The license which he gave to the vindictive persecution of the Protestants seems to have originated in that personal severity of temper already noticed. His inexorable hatred of the Douglases partakes of the same character. No recollection of early familiarity, no degree of personal merit, would induce him to extend any favor to an individual of that detested name. His dislike to or contempt for his nobility led to his admitting favorites into his society, on whom his countenance was too exclusively conferred. Among these minions, the most distinguished was Oliver Sinclair, a youth of noble descent, but to whom the king too indiscriminately extended the favor which he with-held from men of eminent rank.

In the year 1540 James V. undertook an expedition truly worthy of a patriotic sovereign, making, with a strong fleet and a sufficient body of troops, a circumnavigation of his whole realm of Scotland, acquainting himself with the various islands, harbors, capes, currents, and tides. In the Hebrides he took hostages from the most turbulent chiefs for the quiet behavior of their clans, which bore in general the same denominations which they have at this day, as M'Donalds, M'Leods, M'Leans, M'Kenzies, and others. In this expedition the king showed to the most remote part of his dominions the presence of their sovereign in a position both willing and able to support the dignity of the crown and the due administration of justice, striking a salutary terror into those heads of clans who were unwilling to acknowledge a higher authority than their own. James sailed from Leith on this praiseworthy expedition about the 22d May, and landed at Dumbarton in the course of July, 1540, after a voyage which, in that early state of navigation, was not without its dangers.

We have repeatedly mentioned Sir James Hamilton as a man of determined courage, but of a blood-thirsty and remorseless disposition. He was a base-born son of the Earl of Arran, the same whose violence precipitated the skirmish called Cleanse the Causeway, and who slew the Earl of Lennox in cold blood after the battle, near Kirkliston, between Angus and his father. This man, usually called the Bastard of Arran, and sometimes Lord Evandale, at one time stood high in the favor of James V., and obtained the estates of Draphane, Finnart, and others. He owed this distinction partly perhaps to his well-known character for determined courage, partly to a taste for architecture by which he was distinguished. The king seems to have used his talents in the rebuilding and ornamenting the palaces of Linlithgow, Stirling, and Falkland, in each of which may be remarked an elegant and highly ornamented style of architecture, being a mixture of the Gothic and Classical styles, like that which predominated in England in Elizabeth's reign. But having lost the king's favor when he advanced in years, Sir James Hamilton was accused of having entered into a conspiracy for restoring the Douglases (though his own hereditary enemies) by means of a plot on the king's life. For this he was convicted, and suffered death at Edinburgh, August 26, 1546. His accuser was a brother of Patrick Hamilton, the protomartyr. It is said Sir James Hamilton had been a violent persecutor of the Protestant faith.

In 1541 James met with a great and poignant family affliction. The two male infants, borne to him by his wife Mary of Guise, were both cut off by sudden illness within a few days of each other. The Protestants recorded this as a judgment against the king for permitting the persecution of their faith, and their writers record an ominous dream of the king, in which the spectre of Sir James Hamilton appeared to James in the visions of the night, and striking off his two arms while he upbraided him with his cruelty, announced that he would speedily return and take his head. The superstition of Mary of Guise, a devoted daughter of the Church of Rome, took a different direction; and the king might perhaps agree with her and the priests in concluding that their family calamity arose from the vengeance of Heaven expressed against him for his slowness in extirpating heresy. At least, from the tenor of his measures at this time, such seems to have been his own interpretation of this severe visitation.

The statute-book at this period contains various severe denunciations against heresy. To argue against the pope's authority is declared punishable with death, and all discussion on the subject of religion is as far as possible prohibited.

Suspected heretics are declared incapable of exercising any office; nay, such as may even have abjured their errors of faith are still to remain excluded from conversation with Catholics. Fugitives for their religious opinions are held as condemned ; all correspondence with them is prohibited, and rewards are offered for their discovery. These severe penal enactments sufficiently show the sense of Cardinal Beaton, their author, that the Protestant opinions were penetrating deeply into Scotland, and could in bis opinion only be eradicated by the most active measures. But in proportion as the severity increased, the prohibited doctrines seemed to gain ground; and the Scottish clergymen saw no remedy except in the dangerous expedient of engaging James V. in a war with England, the monarch of which kingdom had led the way in the great northern schism of the Church.

The situation of James V. now became extremely critical. Whatever might be the king's own moderation, there seemed almost an impossibility of his remaining neutral while France and England were hastening to a rupture; and there were weighty reasons for dreading the consequences, whichever party he might embrace. If he became the close and in-separable ally of his uncle, he must comply with that impetuous prince in all his humors, alter the religious constitution of his country after the example of England, confiscate the possessions of the Church, to the prejudice of his own ideas of religion and justice, and discharge Beaton and other counsellors by whose experienced talents he had hitherto conducted his administration. He felt also that these sacrifices, which must necessarily cost him the esteem and the alliance both of France and of Germany, would be made for the chance of securing the doubtful friendship of an uncle who, amid all his professions of friendship, had constantly maintained within his kingdom the exiled family of Douglas, whom James not only peculiarly hated, but whom, from their extensive connections in Scotland, he bad some reason to dread.

On the other hand, to refuse Henry's proffers of friendship must expose the kingdom of Scotland to a misfortune similar to that of his father at Flodden ; or, if he escaped such an overwhelming calamity, must give him still to fear the consequences of a war for which the disaffection of his nobles rendered him, notwithstanding all his own efforts to the contrary, very much unprepared. In its course it was likely to be the occasion of forming, under the patronage of the English monarch, a strong faction of malcontents in Scotland, partly united by the new views of religion which had been so generally adopted, and partly by alliance or intimacy on the part of some Scottish nobles, with Angus and the banished Douglases.

The king was warmly urged by a new embassy from Henry VIII. to come to a decisive conclusion on these difficult points, when, worn out by importunity, he gave a doubtful promise, that, if the affairs of his kingdom permitted, he would meet his uncle at York for the purpose of arranging an amicable settlement. Henry, who thought highly of his own arts of eloquence and persuasion, and who appears to have founded extravagant hopes on the influence which he might expect to gain by this personal interview, repaired to York, and remained there for six days, expecting the arrival of King James. The king of Scotland, however, aware that to meet Henry without being prepared to con-cede to him everything which he desired would only precipitate a rupture, excused himself for not attending upon the conference; and Henry returned to London, personally offended with James, and eagerly desirous of revenge. The chastisement of the king of Scotland became now as favorite an object with Henry as the conversion of James to his own opinions on religion and politics had previously been.

At length, in 1542, after a variety of petty incursions, the war broke out openly, and Sir Robert Bowes, with the banished Douglases, entered Scotland at the head of three thousand cavalry. They were encountered near Haddon Rig by the Earl of Huntley, to whom James had intrusted the defence of the border. The English were defeated, and left their general and many inferior leaders prisoners in the hands of their enemies. Angus himself would have shared the same fate, but he rid himself of the knight who laid hands on him by employing his dagger.

James was highly encouraged by this fortunate commencement of the campaign, and made a donation of the lands of Hirsel to Sir Andrew Ker of Littledean, who brought him the first news of the victory. But he was now doomed to find that he had made shipwreck of his popularity in lending his countenance to the severities against the heretics, as they were termed, and in excluding from his favor the nobility of the kingdom. The presence of an English army under the Duke of Norfolk, which, entering the Scottish frontier, had burned the towns of Kelso and Roxburgh and nearly twenty villages, compelled him to summon an army to repel the invasion.

The Scottish king, therefore, assembled thirty thousand men, under their various feudal leaders, upon the Borough Moor, and marched from thence against the enemy. But as the Scottish army halted at Fala Muir, they received information that the English had retired to Berwick, and dismissed the greater part of their forces.

The Scottish nobles, on receiving this intelligence, united in declaring that the occasion of their service in arms was ended, signified their intention to attend the host no longer, and prepared to depart with their respective followers. The king was deeply grieved and irritated by this unexpected resolution. Henry had insulted him by the threat that he had still the same rod in keeping which had chastised his father. By that rod the Duke of Norfolk was intimated, who, while yet Earl of Surrey, commanded at Flodden, where James IV. fell. His son and successor highly resented this reference to his father's misfortunes; and now, when the duke was within a few miles' distance of him, and he himself at the head of an army numerous enough to second his desire of revenge, it was with peculiar pain that he saw himself deserted by his nobility, when he most desired their cordial support. There was, however, no remedy : in a Scottish feudal camp the aristocracy were omnipotent, the king's power merely nominal; and to have urged the dispute to an open rupture would only have incurred the risk of reviving the scene of Lauder Bridge in James III.'s time. For the leaders began to whisper to each other that rather than indulge the king's humor for an impolitic war, they would hang up the evil counsellors who had suggested the idea to him. Rewarding, therefore, with heraldic honors John Scott of Thirlestane,1 the only baron in that large host who offered to follow his banner, James dismissed his refractory army, when it was about to dismiss itself, and returned so deeply, moved with shame and indignation that he not only lost his spirits, but his health was obviously affected.

The royal counsellors endeavored to find a remedy for James's wounded feelings by appointing another attempt to be made against England on the western border, the success of which might, they hoped, obliterate the recollection of the mutiny at Fala. The Lord Maxwell was appointed to command ten thousand men; but though Maxwell was himself a counsellor and favorite of the king, they were injudiciously composed of the followers of Cassilis, Glencairn, and other Westland nobles, among whom the Reformation had made considerable progress, and who were proportionably disgusted with the war, which they regarded as undertaken at the instigation and to serve the interest of the papal clergy. This may in part account for the extraordinary scene which followed.

In 1542 Maxwell's army had assembled, and advanced as far as the western border, when it was drawn up in order, and Oliver Sinclair was raised on a buckler for the purpose of reading the commission intrusting Lord Maxwell with the command of the army. The ill-timed introduction of this unpopular minion in a situation and duty so ostensible occasioned a belief that the commission which he read was in his own favor; and as this rumor gained ground a general confusion prevailed, and many, who did not choose to fight under the command of so unpopular a general, began to leave their ranks and return homeward. Dacres and Musgrave, two chiefs of the English borderers, who had come to watch the motions of the Scottish army, were witnesses of the strange and apparently causeless scene of confusion which it exhibited. Without knowing the cause, they took advantage of the effect, and charged with a degree of courage and determination which changed the confusion of the enemy into flight, and in many cases into surrender; for a great number of the chiefs and nobles chose rather to become the prisoners of the English leaders than to escape to their own country and meet the displeasure of their offended monarch. The whole Scottish force dispersed without stroke of sword, and the victors made many prisoners.