Chapter V: James V: the Last of the Heroic Age (2)

When the young King was in his twenty-fourth year he found himself able--many previous negotiations on the subject having come to nothing--to pay a visit to the Continent in his own person in order to secure a wife. It is a greater testimony to the personal power and vigour of James than any mere details could give that, within eight years of the time when, a boy of sixteen, he had escaped from the power of the Douglas, it should be possible for him to leave, after all the wild anarchy of his minority, a pacificated and orderly kingdom behind him, in the care of a Council of Regency, while he went forth upon a mission so important to himself. He had altogether extinguished and expelled the house of Douglas; he had subdued and repressed other turbulent lords, and convinced them that his authority was neither to be neutralised nor made light of; he had settled and calmed the Border by the most decisive means; and he was now free to show himself in the society of kings, and win his princess, and see the world. He had been already the object of many overtures from contemporary Powers. The Emperor and the Pope had both sent him envoys and conciliated his friendship; and in the imperial house itself as well as in many others of the highest rank there had been ladies proposed to share his crown. The one more immediately in view when he set out on his journey was a daughter of the Duke of Vendome. The defeat of Charles V before Marseilles took place almost simultaneously with James's arrival, and the Scotch chroniclers do not lose the opportunity of asserting that it was the coming of the King of the Scots with a supposed army of twenty thousand men to the succour of France which was the reason of the Emperor's precipitate withdrawal. Pitscottie narrates, with more evident truthfulness, how the Frenchmen on the Norman coast were alarmed by the ships, fearing it to be an enemy which hove in sight, "for there were many strangers in his companie, so that he appeared ane great army." But the sight of the red lion of Scotland changed their alarms into joy, and they welcomed the Scots King and party, "at the New Haven beside Diep," with much rejoicing. He would seem to have pushed across France to the Court of Vendome without pausing to pay his respects to the King at Paris; and we find his movements recorded in a romantic tale, which is neither contradicted nor supported by other authorities, but likely enough to a romantic young prince upon a love-quest. According to this description James did not assume his proper character but appeared only as one among the many knights, who probably represented themselves, to make his feint successful, as merely a party of cavaliers seeking adventure and the exercises of chivalry. He intended thus to see, while himself unknown, "the gentlewoman who sould have been his spouse, thinking to spy her pulchritud and behaviour unkenned by her."

"Notwithstanding this fair ladie took suspition that the King of
Scotland should be in the companie, wherefore she passed to her
coffer and took out his picture, which she had gotten out of
Scotland by ane secret moyane, and as soon as she looked to the
picture it made her know the King of Scotland incontinent where he
stood among the rest of his companie, and past peartlie to him, and
took him by the hand, and said, 'Sir, ye stand over far aside;
therefore, if it please your Grace, you may show yourself to my
father or me, and confer and pass the time ane while.'"

Perhaps it was injudicious of the fair ladie to be so "peart." At all events, after much feasting, "nothing but merriness and banquetting and great cheer and lovelie communing betwixt the King's grace and the fair ladies, with great musick and playing on instruments, and all other kinds of pastime for the fields," as well as "jousting and running of great horses," the ungrateful James "thought it expedient to speak nothing of marriage at that time, till he had spoken with the King of France, considering," adds the chronicler, who perhaps sees an excuse to be necessary, "he was within his realm he would show him his mind and have his counsel thereto before he concluded the matter." Pitscottie thus saves the feelings of the lady of whom other historians say curtly that she did not please the King. But when the Scottish band reached the Court, though it was then in mourning for the Dauphin, recently dead, King James was received with open arms. The King of France, sick and sad for the loss of his son, was in the country at a hunting seat, and when James was suddenly introduced at the door of his chamber as "the King of Scotland, sire, come to comfort you," the arrival evidently made the best possible impression. The sorrowful father declared, as he embraced the young stranger, that it was as if another son had been given him from heaven; and after a little interval the royal party, increased by James's Scottish train, moved on to another palace. We may be allowed to imagine that the Queen and her ladies came out to meet them, as the first sight which James appears to have had of his future bride was while she was "ryding in ane chariot, because she was sickly, and might not ryd upon hors." Magdalen, too, saw him as he rode to meet the fair cavalcade in her father's company, who looked so much happier and brighter from the encounter with this gallant young prince. The poor girl was already stricken for death, and had but a few months to live; but it is very likely that her malady was that fatal but deceitful one which leaves a more delicate beauty to its victims, and gives feverish brightness to the eyes and colour to the cheek. A tender creature, full of poetry and imagination, and most likely all unconscious of the fate that hung over her, she loved the gallant cavalier from the first moment of seeing him, and touched the heart of James by that fragile beauty and by the affection that shone in her soft eyes. It was a marriage that no one approved, for her days were known to be numbered. But perhaps some faint hope that happiness, that potent physician, might arrest disease, as it has been known to do, prevailed both with the anxious father and the young man beloved, in whom tender pity and gratitude replaced a warmer sentiment. At all events the marriage took place in Paris, in the noble church of Notre Dame, in the beginning of the year 1537. The King, we are told, sent to Scotland to invite a number of other noblemen and gentlemen to attend his wedding, which was performed with the greatest pomp and splendour. Not until May did the young couple set out for their home, and then they were laden with gifts, two ships being presented to them, a number of splendid horses fully caparisoned, and quantities of valuable tapestries, cloth of silver and gold, and jewels of every description. Perhaps the long delay was intended to make the journey more safe for the poor young Queen. The voyage from Dieppe to Leith lasted five days, and the bridal party was accompanied by an escort of "fiftie ships of Scottismen, Frenchmen, and strangers." "When the Queen was come upon Scottis eard, she bowed her down to the same, and kissed the mould thereof, and thanked God that her husband and she were come safe through the seas." There could not be a more tender or attractive picture. How full of poetry and soft passion must the gentle creature have been who thus took possession of the land beloved for her young husband's sake! The Scottish eard indeed was all that she was to have of that inheritance, for in little more than a month the gentle Magdalen was dead. She was laid in the chapel of the palace which was to have been her home, with "ane dolorous lamentation; for triumph and merriness were all turned into dirges and soul-masses, which were very lamentable to behold."

This sad story is crowned by Pitscottie with a brief note of the death of the Duc de Vendome's daughter, "who took sick displeasure at the King of Scotland's marriage that she deceased immediately thereafter; whereat the King of Scotland was highly displeased, thinking that he was the occasion of that gentlewoman's death." Other historians say that this tragical conclusion did not occur, but that the Princess of Vendome was married on the same day as James. Pitscottie's is the more romantic ending, and rounds the pathetic tale.

After such a mournful and ineffectual attempt at married life all the negotiations had to be begun over again, and James was at last married, to the general satisfaction, to Mary of Guise, a woman, as it turned out, of many fine and noble qualities, to which but indifferent justice was ever done. It was before this event, however, and immediately after the death of the Queen, that a curious and tragical incident happened, which furnished another strange scene to the many associations of Edinburgh. This was the execution of Lady Glamis upon the Castle Hill for witchcraft and secret attempts upon the life of the King by means of magic or of poison. No one seems to know what these attempts were. Pitscottie gives this extraordinary event a short paragraph. The grave Pinkerton fills a page or two with an apology or defence of James for permitting such an act. But we are not told what was the evidence, or how the sovereign's life was threatened. The supposed culprit was however--and the fact is significant--the only member of the family of Angus left in Scotland, the sister of the Earl. Once more the Castle Hill was covered with an awed or excited crowd, not unaccustomed to that sight, for the heretics had burnt there not long before, but at once more and less moved than usual, for the victim was a woman fair and dignified, such a sufferer as always calls forth the pity of the spectators, but her crime witchcraft, a thing held in universal horror, and with which there would be no sympathisers. Few, if any, in that crowd would be so advanced in sentiment as to regard the cruel exhibition with the horrified contempt of modern times. The throng that lined that great platform would have no doubt that it was right to burn a witch wherever she was found; and the beauty of the woman and the grandeur of her race would give a pang the more of painful satisfaction in her destruction. But it is strange that thus a last blow should have been aimed at that family, once so great and strong, which James's resentment had pursued to the end. A little while before, Archibald Douglas of Kilspindie had thrown himself upon James's mercy--the only member of the Douglas family who can be in any way identified with the noble Douglas of _The Lady of the Lake_.

"'Tis James of Douglas, by St. Serle,
The uncle of the banished Earl."

But Archibald of Kilspindie did not meet the same forgiveness with which his prototype in the poem was received. He was sent back into banishment unforgiven, the King's word having been passed to forgive no one condemned by the law. Perhaps the same stern fidelity to a stern promise was the reason why Lady Glamis was allowed to go to the stake unrescued. But we speculate in vain on subjects so veiled in ignorance and uncertainty. Perhaps his counsellors acted on their own authority in respect to a crime the reprobation and horror of which were universal, and did not disturb the King in the first shock of his mourning. In the same week the fair and fragile Magdalen of France was carried to her burial, and Lady Glamis was burned at the other extremity of Edinburgh. Perhaps it was supposed that something in the incantations of the one had a fatal influence upon the young existence of the other. At all events these two sensations fell to the populace of Edinburgh and all the strangers who were constantly passing through her gates, at the same time. Life in those days was full of pictorial circumstances which do not belong to ours. One is inclined to wonder sometimes whether the many additional comforts we possess make up for that perpetual movement in the air, the excitement, the communication of new ideas, the strange sights both pleasant and terrible. The burning of a witch or a heretic is perhaps too tremendous a sensation to be desired by the most heroic spectator; but the perpetual drama going on thus before the eyes of all the world, and giving to the poorest an absolute share in every new and strange thing, must have added a reality to national life which no newspapers can give. That the people remain always eager for this share in historical events, the crowds that never weary of gazing at passing princes, the innumerable audience of the picture papers, the endless reproduction of every insignificant public event, from a procession of aldermen to the simplest day's journey of a royal personage, abundantly testify. In the days of the Jameses few of the crowd could read, and still fewer had the chance of reading. A ballad flying from voice to voice across the country, sung at the ingle-neuk, repeated from one to another in the little crowd at a "stairhead," in which the grossest humorous view was the best adapted for the people, represented popular literature. But most things that went on were visible to the crowding population. They saw the foreign visitors, the ambassadors, the knights, each with his distinguishable crest, who came to meet in encounter of arms the knights of the Scottish Court. All that went on they had their share in, and a kind of acquaintance with every notability. The public events were a species of large emblazoned history which he who ran could read.

These ballads above referred to came to singular note, however, in one of the many discussions between England and Scotland which were carried on by means of the frequent envoys sent to James from his uncle. The Borders, it appears, were full of this flying literature sent forth by unknown writers, and spread probably by, here and there, a wandering friar, more glad of a merry rhyme than disconcerted by a satire against his own cloth, or with still more relish dispersing over the countryside reports of King Henry's amours and divorces, and of the plundering of abbeys and profane assumption of sacred rights by a monarch who was so far from sanctified. Popular prophecies of how a new believing king should be raised up to disconcert the heretics, and on the northern side of the Border of the speedy elevation of James to the throne of England, and final victorious triumph of the Scottish side, flew from village to village, exciting at last the alarm of Henry and his council, who made formal complaint of them at the Scottish Court, drawing from James a promise that if any of his subjects should be found to be the authors of such productions they should suffer death for it--a heavy penalty for literary transgression. In Scotland farther north it was another kind of ballad which was said and sung, or whispered under the breath with many a peal of rude laughter, the Satires of "Davy Lindsay" and many a lesser poet--ludicrous stories of erring priests and friars, indecent but humorous, with lamentable tales of dues exacted and widows robbed, and all the sins of the Church, the proud bishop and his lemans, the avaricious priest and his exactions, the confessors who bullied a dying penitent into gifts which injured his family, and all the well-worn scandals by which in every time of reformation the coarser imagination of the populace is stirred. If James himself was startled into an angry demand how such things could be after he had witnessed the performance of David Lindsay's play, which was trimmed into comparative decency for courtly ears, it may be supposed what was the effect of that and still broader assaults, upon the unchastened imagination of the people. The Reformation progressed by great strides by such rude yet able help as well as by the purer methods of religion. The priests, however, do not seem to have made war on the balladmakers, as the great King of England would have had his nephew do. Buchanan, indeed, whose classic weapons had been brought into this literary crusade, and who also had his fling at the Franciscans as well as his coarser and more popular brethren, was imprisoned for a time, and had to withdraw from his country, but the poets of the people, far more effective, would seem to have escaped.

All this, however, probably seemed of but little importance to James in comparison with the greater affairs of the kingdom of which his hands were full. When the episode of his marriages was over, and still more important an heir secured, he returned to that imperial track in which he had acquitted himself so well. All would seem to have been in order in the centre of the kingdom; the Borders were as quiet as it was possible for the Borders to be; and only the remote Highlands and islands remained still insubordinate, in merely nominal subjection to the laws of the kingdom. James, we are told, had long intended to make one of the royal raids so familiar to Scottish history among his doubtful subjects of these parts, and accordingly an expedition was very carefully prepared, twelve ships equipped both for comfort and for war, with every device known to the time for provisioning them and keeping them in full efficiency. We are told that the English authorities looking on, were exceedingly suspicious of this voyage, not knowing whither such preparations might tend, while all Scotland watched the setting out of the expedition almost as much in the dark as to its motive, and full of wonder as to where the King could be going. Bonfires were blazing on all the hilltops in rejoicing for the birth of a prince when James took his way with his fleet down the Firth. Pinkerton, who ought to have known better, talks of "the acclamations of numerous spectators on the adjacent hills and shores" as if the great estuary had been a little river. It might well be that both in Fife and Lothian there were eager lookers-on, as soon as it was seen that the fleet was in motion, to see the ships pass: but their acclaims must have been loud indeed to carry from Leith to Kinghorn. The King sailed early in June 1540 towards the north. Many a yacht and pleasure ship still follows the same route round the Scottish coast towards the wild attractions of the islands.

"Merrily, merrily, bounds the bark,
She bounds before the gale,
The mountain breeze from Ben-na-darch
Is joyous in her sail.
With fluttering sound like laughter hoarse
The cords and canvas strain,
The waves divided by her force
In rippling eddies chased her course
As if they laughed again."

But it was on no pleasure voyage that James had set out. He had in his twelve ships two thousand armed men, led by the most trusted lords of Scotland, and his mission was to reduce to order the clans who knew so little what a king's dignity was, or the restraints of law, or the pursuits of industry. No stand would seem to have been anywhere made against him. Many of the chiefs of the more turbulent tribes were brought off to the ships, not so much as prisoners in consequence of their own misdoings, but as hostages for their clans: and the startled isles, overawed by the sight of the King and his great ships, and by the more generous motive of anxiety for their own chieftains in pledge for them, calmed down out of their wild ways, and ceased from troubling in a manner unprecedented in their turbulent history.

An incidental consequence of this voyage sounds oddly modern, as if it might have been a transcript from the most recent records. James perceived, or more probably had his attention directed to the fact, that the fishermen of the north were much molested by fishing vessels from Holland, Flanders, and the Scandinavian coasts, who interfered with their fishing, sometimes even thrusting them by violence of arms out of their own waters. The King accordingly detached one or two of his vessels under the command of Maxwell, his admiral, to inquire into these high-handed proceedings, with the result that one of the foreign fisher pirate-ships was seized and brought to Leith to answer for their misdoings. There they were reprimanded and bound over to better behaviour, then dismissed without further penalty. How little effectual, however, this treatment was, is exemplified by the fact that the selfsame offence continues to be repeated until this very day.

There would seem to have been a little pause of calm and comfort in James's life after this victorious expedition. Clouds already bigger than a man's hand were forming on his horizon; the country had begun to be agitated throughout its depths with the rising forces of the reform, and the priests who had always surrounded James were hurrying on in the truculence of terror to sterner and sterner enactments against heretics: while he, probably even yet but moderately interested, thinking of other things, and though adding to the new laws which he was persuaded to originate in this sense, conditions to the effect that corresponding reforms were to be wrought in the behaviour of the priesthood,--had not entered at all into the fierce current of theological strife. He followed the faith in which he had been bred, revolted rather than attracted by the proceedings and pretensions of his uncle of England, willing that the bishops, who probably knew best, and who were, as he complained to the English ambassador, the only men of sense and ability near him, should have their own way in their own concerns; but for himself much more intent on the temporal welfare of his kingdom than on its belief, or the waves of opinion which might blow over it. He had just been very successful in what no doubt seemed to him an enterprise much more kingly and important--the subjugation of the islands. He was happy and prosperous in his private life, his Queen having performed the high duty expected of her in providing the kingdom with an heir, indeed with two sons, to make, as appeared, assurance doubly sure; and though the burning of a heretic was not a pleasant circumstance, Beatoun and the rest of the brotherhood were too clever and helpful as men of the world to be easily dispensed with. James had, there can be no doubt, much reason to be discontented and dissatisfied, as almost all his predecessors had been, with the nobility of his kingdom. Apart from some of those young companions-in-arms who were delightful in the camp and field but useless in the council chamber, his state of mind would seem to have resembled more the modern mood which is represented by the word "bored" than any other more dignified expression. The priests might be fierce (as indeed were the lords, still more) but they were able, and knew something of the necessities of government. The barons disgusted him with their petty jealousies, their want of instruction, their incapacity for any broad or statesmanlike view, and there would seem little doubt that he dispensed with their services as much as possible, and turned to those persons who comprehended him with a natural movement which unfortunately, however, is never fortunate in a king. Something of the severance between himself and those who were nearest to him in rank, which had ruined his grandfather, showed itself as he advanced towards the gravity of manhood: and the fatal name of favourite began to be attached to one man at least in the Court, who would seem to have understood better than the others the ways and intentions of James. But in the meantime the clouds were only gathering; the darkness had not begun. A year or two before, the King had given to the legal faculty of Scotland a form and constitution which it has retained to this day. He had instituted the Court of Session, the "Feifteen," the law lords in their grave if short-lived dignity. He had begun to build and repair and decorate at Holyrood and Linlithgow. "He sent to Denmark," says Pitscottie, "and brought home great horss and meares and put them in parks that their offspring might be gotten to sustein the warres when need was. Also he sent and furnished the country with all kinds of craftsmen such as Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Dutchmen, which ever was the first of their profession that could be had." He went even so far in his desire to develop the natural wealth of his kingdom that he brought over certain German wise men to see if gold could be found in the mines, of which there has always been a tradition, as probably in most countries. All these pacific enterprises occupied James's time and helped on the prosperity of the country. But evil times were close at hand.

One of the first indications that the dreadful round of misfortune was about to begin was the sudden denunciation of James Hamilton, the bastard of Arran, as a conspirator against the King, an event which Pitscottie narrates as happening in the year 1541. He had been a favourite of the King in his youth, and a great champion against the Douglas faction, and it was indeed his intemperate and imprudent rage which determined the fight called Clear the Causeway, and wrought much harm to his own party. He had been high in favour for a time, probably on the ground of his enmity to the house of Angus, then had fallen into discredit, but had lately been employed in certain public offices, and if we may trust Pitscottie, had been put into some such position by the priests as that which Saul of Tarsus held in the service of the persecuting ecclesiastics of Jerusalem. At all events his sudden accusation as plotting against the King's life, and especially as doing so in the interests of the Douglases, was evidently as startling and extraordinary to the great officials to whom the communication was made as it would be to the reader who has heard of this personage only as the infuriated opponent of Angus and his party. No credence seems to have been given to the story at first, though it was told by another Hamilton, a cousin of the culprit. As this happened, however, in the King's absence from Edinburgh, the lords thought it a wise precaution to secure Sir James, and, according to Pitscottie, proceeded in their own dignified persons--the Lord Treasurer, Secretary, and "Mr. Household," preceded by Lyon King-of-Arms--to his lodging in Edinburgh, whence they conveyed him to the castle. Such arrestations would probably cause but little excitement, only a momentary rush and gazing of the crowd as the group with its little band of attendants and defenders passed upward along the High Street, the herald's tabard alone betraying its character. Sir James Hamilton, however, was very well known and little loved, and small would be the sympathy in the looks of the citizens, and many the stern nods and whispers of satisfaction that vengeance had seized him at length. The King, like his representatives, was astonished by the accusation, but when he heard of the terrible "dittay" which had been brought against Hamilton "he came suddenly out of Falkland, where His Grace was for the time, and brought the said Sir James out of the castle to the Tolbooth, and gave him fair assize of the lords and barons, who convicted him of sundry points of treason; and thereafter he was headed and quartered, and his lands annexed to the Crown."

It is a curious question, which however none of the historians think of asking, whether there could be any connection between the scheme, if any, for which the Lady Glamis suffered, and this wholly unexpected outbreak of murderous intention on the part of Hamilton. The Hamiltons and Douglases were sworn enemies, yet greater wonders have been seen than the union of two feudal foes to compass the destruction of the enemy of both. Angus and his brothers banished, but little forgetful of all that had happened, and trusting in the favour of King Henry, were soon to show themselves at the head of expeditions hostile to Scotland across the Border. Were these two sudden disclosures of unexpected treachery the manifestations of a deep-laid plot which might have further developments--if with the bastard of Arran also perhaps in still more unlikely quarters? It is but a conjecture, yet it is one that might seem justified by two isolated events so extraordinary, and by the state of discouragement and misery into which James seems soon to have fallen. Pitscottie relates that the King "took ane great suspition of his nobles, thinking that either one or other of them would deceive him;" and then there began to appear to him "visions in his bed." He thought he saw Sir James Hamilton, fierce and vengeful, appearing to him in the darkness with a drawn sword, with which he cut off the King's right arm. Next time the cruel spectre appeared it upbraided him with an unjust sentence and struck off the other arm: "Now therefore thou sall want both thy armes, and sall remain in sorrow ane while, and then I will come and stryk thy head from thee," said the angry ghost. Whatever may be the reader's opinion about the reality of these visions, there can be little doubt that they show deep depression in the mind of James to whom they came. He woke out of his sleep in great excitement and terror, and told his attendants what he had dreamed, who were very "discontent of his visioun, thinking that they would hear hastily tidings of the same."

"On the morning word came to the King that the prince was very sick
and like to die. When the King heard thereof he hasted to Sanct
Andros, but, or he could come there the prince was depairted,
whereat the King was verrie sad and dolorous. Notwithstanding
immediately thereafter the post came out of Stirling to the King
showing him that his second son, the Duke of Albany, could not live;
and or the King could be in Stirling he was depairted. Whose
departures were both within fortie-eight hours, which caused great
lamentations to be in Scotland and in especial by the Queen, their
mother. But the Queen comforted the King, saying they were young
enough, and God would send them more succession."

There is no suggestion, such as might have been natural enough at that age, of poison or foul play in the death of the two infants--nothing but misfortune and fatality and the dark shadows closing over a life hitherto so bright. James was the last of his name: the childless Albany in France, whom Scotland did not love, was the only man surviving of his kindred, and it is not wonderful if the King's heart failed him in such a catastrophe, or if he thought himself doomed of heaven. When this great domestic affliction came to him he was on the eve of a breach with England, brought about not only by the usual mutual aggravations upon the Border, but by other matters of graver importance. King Henry had made many efforts to draw the Scottish King to his side. He had discoursed to him himself by letter, he had sent him not only ambassadors but preachers, he had done everything that could be done to detach the young monarch from the band of sovereigns who were against England, and the allegiance of the Pope. Latterly the correspondence had become very eager and passionate on Henry's side. He had repeatedly invited his nephew to visit him, and many negotiations had passed between them on the subject. The project was so far advanced that Henry came to York to meet James, and waited there for nearly a week for his arrival. But there was great reluctance on the Scottish side to risk their King so far on the other side of the Border. They had suggested Newcastle as a more safe place of meeting, but this had been rejected on the part of the English king. Finally, Henry left York in great resentment, which was aggravated by a defeat upon the Border. Pitscottie tells us that he sent a herald to James declaring that he considered the truce between them broken; that "he should take such order with him as he took with his father before him; for he had yet that same wand to ding him with that dang his father; that is to say, the Duke of Norfolk living that strak the field of Flodden, who slew his father with many of the nobles of Scotland." The King of Scotland thought, the chronicler adds, that these were "uncouth and sharp words"--an opinion in which the reader will agree. But whether Pitscottie is verbally correct or not it is very evident that Henry did not hesitate to rate his nephew in exceedingly sharp and discourteous terms, as for instance bidding him not to make a brute of himself by listening to the priests who would lead any man by the nose who gave them credence. The negotiations altogether were carried on from the English side in a very arrogant manner as comported with Henry's character, made all the more overbearing towards James by their relationship, which gave him a certain natural title to bully his sister's son.

And everything in Scotland was now tending to the miseries of a divided council and a nation rent asunder by internal differences. The new opinions were making further progress day by day, the priests becoming more fierce in their attempts to crush by violence the force of the Reformation--attempts which in their very cruelty and ferocity betrayed a certain growing despair. When Norfolk came to Scotland from Henry--an ill-omened messenger if what is said above of Henry's threat was true--the Scottish gentlemen sought him secretly with confessions of their altered faith; and the ambassador made the startling report to Henry that James's own mind was in so wavering and uncertain a state that if the priests did not drive him into war during the current summer he would confiscate the possessions of the Church before the year was out. But Norfolk's mission, which was in itself a threat, and the presence of the Douglases over the Border, who had never ceased to be upheld by Henry, and whose secret machinations, of which Lady Glamis and James Hamilton had been victims, were now about to culminate in open mischief, all contributed to exasperate the mind of James. That he was not supported as his father had been by the nobility, who alone had the power of giving effect to his call for a general armament, is evident from the first. His priestly counsellors could support him by the imposts which he made freely upon the revenues of the Church, not always without complaint on their part; but they were of comparatively little influence in bringing together the hosts who had to do the fighting; and from the first the nobility,--half of which or more was leavened with Reformation doctrines and felt that their best support was in England--while the whole, almost without exception, resented the prominence of the Church in the national councils, hating and scorning her interference in secular and especially in warlike matters, as is the case in every age,--showed itself hostile. After various incursions on the part of England, made with much bravado and considerable damage, one of which was headed by Angus and his brother George Douglas (this latter, however, being promptly punished and defeated on the spot by the brave Borderers), James made the usual call for a general assembly of forces on the Boroughmuir: but he had advanced only a little way on his march to the Borders when he was stopped by the declaration of the lords that they would only act on the defensive, and would on no account go out of Scotland. The fathers of these same lords had followed James IV, though with the strongest disapproval, to the fatal field of Flodden, their loyalty triumphing over their judgment: but the sons on either side had no such bond between them. James disbanded in disgust the reluctant host, which considered less the honour of Scotland than their own safety; but got together afterwards a smaller army under the leadership of Lord Maxwell, with which to try over again the old issue. Pitscottie's account of the discussions and dissensions, and of all the scorns which subdued James's spirit, is very graphic. Norfolk had led a great body of men into Scotland, who though not advancing very far had done great harm burning and ravaging; but, checked by a smaller force, which held him back without giving battle, had finally retired across the Border, where James was very anxious to have followed him.

"The King's mind was very ardent on battel on English ground, which
when the lords perceived they passed again to the council, and
concluded that they would not follow the Duke of Norfolk at that
time for the King's pleasure, because they said that it was not
grounded upon no good cause or reasone, and that he was ane better
priests' king nor he was theirs, and used more of priests' counsel
nor theirs. Therefore they had the less will to fight with him, and
said it was more meritoriously done to hang all such as gave counsel
to the King to break his promises to the King of England, whereof
they perceived great inconvenients to befall. When they had thus
concluded, and the King being advertised thereof, the King departed
with his familiar servants to Edinburgh; but the army and council
remained still at Lauder."

It was a fatal spot for such a controversy, the spot where, two generations before, the favourite friends and counsellors of James III, whether guilty or not guilty--who can say?--were hanged over the bridge as an example to all common men who should pretend to serve a king whose peers and the nobles of his realm were shut out from the first of his favour. James V had in his train some familiar servants, confidants of his many public undertakings, who were not of noble blood or, at least, of distinguished rank, and his angry withdrawal might well be explained by his determination to save them, if indeed any explanations beyond his vexed and miserable sense of humiliation and desertion were necessary to account for it. He left the lords, whom he would seem to have had no longer either the means or the heart to confront, saying in his rage and shame that he would "either make them fight or flee, or else Scotland should not keep him and them both," and returned to Edinburgh sick at heart to his Queen, who was not in very good health to cheer him--passing, no doubt, with a deepened sense of humiliation through the crowds which would throng about for news, and to whom the spectacle of their King thus returning discomfited was no pleasant sight; if it were not, perhaps, that many among them had now begun to think all failures and disappointments were so many proofs of the displeasure of heaven against one who would not take upon him the office of reformer.

When James heard soon after that his rebellious lords had disbanded their host, he collected a smaller army to revenge the ravages of Norfolk, issuing, according to Pitscottie, a proclamation bidding all who loved him be ready within twenty-four hours "to follow the King wherever he pleased to pass"; but even this new levy was little subordinate. After it had penetrated a little way into England a fatal mistake arose--an idea that Oliver Sinclair, the King's "minion," whom he had sent to read a manifesto to the army, had been appointed its general--upon which the new bands, disgusted in their turn, fell into a forced retreat, and getting involved in the broken ground of Solway Moss were there pursued and surrounded by the English, miserably defeated and put to flight. "There was but ane small number slain in the field," says Pitscottie, "to wit, there was slain on both sides but twenty-four, whereof was nine Scottishmen and fifteen Englishmen"; a very great number, however, were taken prisoners, many of the gentlemen, it is suggested, preferring captivity to the encounter of the King after such an inexcusable catastrophe. We are not told why it was that James had not himself taken the command of his army. He does not even seem to have accompanied it, perhaps fearing that personal opposition which was an insult to a king in those days.

"When these news came to the King of Scotland where he was for the
time, how his lords were taken and had in England, and his army
defaitt, he grew wondrous dollorous and pensive, seeing no good
success to chance him over his enemies. Then he began to remord his
conscience, and thought his misgovernance towards God had the wyte
therof and was the principal cause of his misfortune; calling to
mind how he had broken his promise to his uncle the King of England,
and had lost the hearts of his nobles throw evil counsel and false
flattery of his bishops, and those private counsellors and his
courtiers, not regarding his wyse lords' counsels."

"He passed to Edinburgh," adds the chronicler, "and there remained eight days with great dollour and lamentation for the tinsell (loss) of his lieges and shame to himself." Discouragement beyond the reach of mortal help or hope seemed to have taken hold of the unfortunate King. He saw himself alone, no one standing by him, his nobles hostile, his people indifferent; he had vowed that Scotland should not be broad enough to hold both them and him, but he had no power to carry out this angry threat. His life had been threatened in mysterious ways; he had lost his children, his confidence in himself and his fortunes; last and worst of all, he was dishonoured in the eyes of the world. His army had refused to advance, his soldiers to fight. He was the King, but able to give effect to none of a king's wishes--neither to punish his enemies nor to carry out his promises. He who had done so much for his realm could do no more. He who had ridden the Border further and swifter than any man-at-arms to carry the terror of justice and the sway of law--who had daunted the dauntless Highlands and held the fiercest chiefs in check--who had been courted by pope and emperor, and admired and feasted at the splendid Courts of France--he who had been the King of the Commons, the idol of the people--was now cast down and miserable, the most shamed and helpless of kings.

There seems no reason why James should have so entirely lost heart. There had already been moments in his life when he had suffered sore discouragement and overthrow, yet never had been overcome. But now it is clear he felt himself at the end of his resources. How could he ever hold up his head again? a man who could not keep his own kingdom from invasion, or avenge himself upon his enemies! After he had lingered a little in Edinburgh, where the Queen was now near the moment which should give another heir to Scotland, he left the capital--perhaps to save her at such a time from the sight and the contagion of his despair--and crossed the Firth to Falkland, a place so associated with stirring passages in his career. But there his sickness of heart turned to illness of body; he became so "vehement sick" that his life was despaired of; he was "very near strangled to death by extreme melancholie." One hope remained, that the Queen might restore some confidence to his failing strength and mind by an heir to the crown, another James, for whom it might be worth while to live. James sent for some of his friends, "certain of his lords, both spiritual and temporal," to help him to bear this time of suspense, and advise him what might yet be done to set matters right, who surrounded him, as may be imagined, very anxiously, fearing the issue.

"By this the post came out of Linlithgow showing the King good
tidings that the Queen was delivered. The King inquired whether it
was man or woman. The messenger said it was ane fair dochter. The
King answered and said, 'Farewell! it came with ane lass, and it
will pass with ane lass,' and so commended himself to Almighty God,
and spoke little from thereforth, but turned his back to his lords
and his face to the wall."

Even at this bitter moment, however, the dying Prince was not left alone with his last disappointment. Cardinal Beatoun, whose influence had been so inauspicious in his life, pressed forward, "seeing him begin to fail of his strength and natural speech," and thrust upon him a paper for his signature, "wherein the Cardinal had writ what he pleased for his own particular weill," evidently with some directions about the regency, that ordeal which Scotland, unhappily, had now again to go through. When James had put his dying hand to this authority, wrested from him in his last weakness, a faint light of peace seems to have fallen across his death-bed.

"As I have shown you, he turned him upon his back, and looked and
beheld his lords around about, and gave ane little lauchter, syne
kissed his hand and gave it to all his lords about him, and
thereafter held up his hands to God and yielded the spirit."

There are many pathetic death scenes in history, but few more touching. His father, after a splendid and prosperous life, had fallen "in the lost battle, borne down by the flying;" he, after a career almost as chivalrous and splendid and full of noble work for his country, in a still more forlorn overthrow; his hopes all gone from him, his strength broken in his youth. Nothing, it would seem, could save these princes, so noble and so unfortunate. It was enough to bear the name of James Stewart to be weighed down by cruel Fate. But before his spirit shook off the mortal coil a ray of peace had shot through the clouds; he looked upon the anxious faces of his friends, some of whom at least must surely have been true friends, bound to him by comradeship and brotherhood, with that low laugh which is one of the most touching expressions of weakened and failing humanity--love and kindness in it, and a certain pleasure to see them round him; and yet to be free of it all--the heavy kingship, the hopes that ever failed, the friends that so rarely were true. The lips that touched that cold hand which he kissed before he gave to them must have trembled, perhaps with compunction, let us hope with some vow of fidelity to his memory and trust.

Thus died the last of the five Jameses--the last in one sense of that unfortunate but gallant line. A life more swept by storms, more rent asunder by conflicting passions and influences, more tragic still and passionate than theirs, was to part them from the singularly changed, modified, and modernised successors who, with a difference, were to wear yet drop this ancient crown. The Stewarts after Mary are no longer like those that went before. James's dying words came in some curious fashion true, though not as he thought. It came with a lass and it went with a lass that ancient crown. When another James reached the throne Scotland was no more as it had been.

It may seem a fantastic chronology to end here the records of the Stewards of Scotland: but it is I think justified by this change, which altered altogether the character of the history and the circumstances of the monarchs. Henceforward new agencies, new powers, were at work in the little proud and self-contained kingdom, which had maintained its independence and individuality so long. Torn asunder by rival influences, by intrigues incessant and profound, by that struggle between the old and the new which was never more desperate than in her bosom, and which, being a religious change chiefly, was one of life and death: and with a monarch no longer native, but of foreign training and thoughts, even if she had not been a woman and half a Tudor, the little ship of State, the gallant little nation, plunged amid waves and billows, not unfamiliar, indeed, but fiercer and wilder than ever before, with winds so much increased in force as they raged over wider seas.

The Stewards of Scotland here ended their special trust and gave in their account. No race was ever more unfortunate, but I think we may say that none more nobly endeavoured to discharge that high commission. With one exception, and that doubtful--for a man may be weak and may not be brave without being a bad man or even king--every bearer of this fated name laboured with courage and constancy at the great work of elevating his country. "Another for Hector!" cried the Highland warrior when his young chief was in danger, and all the world has read the story with moistened eyes. Another for Scotland! had been the cry of the house of Stewart throughout more than a century. As one man fell he handed the sword to another; to an infant hand trained amid feuds and anarchy, but always clasping, as soon as it had force enough, the royal weapon with royal courage and meaning. None of the Jameses lived beyond the earliest chapter of middle age; all of them succeeded in early youth, most of them in childhood; and, with but that uncertain exception of James III, every one of them was actuated by a noble patriotism, and did his _devoir_ manfully for the improvement and development of his country. They were noble gentlemen one and all: the bigotry, the egotism, the obstinacy of the later Stewarts were not in them. Knights and paladins of an age of romance, they were also stern executors of justice, bold innovators, with eyes ever open to every expedient of progress and prosperity. Their faults were those faults of a light heart and genial temperament, which are the most easily understood and pardoned. Under their sway their country and their little capital came to be known over Christendom as not unworthy to hold place among the reigning kingdoms and cities through which the stream of chivalry flowed. They invented the trade, the shipping, the laws and civic order of Scotland. Among her heroes there are none more worthy of everlasting remembrance. They fulfilled their stewardry with a unity of purpose and a steadfastness of aim which, when we take into account the continually recurring lapses of long minorities, is one of the wonders of the time. Edinburgh grew under their sway from an angry village, lying between a fierce castle and a rich monastery, little distinguished above its peers, less favoured than Stirling, less wealthy than the town of St. John, to one of the most noted of cities, picturesque and splendid, full of noble houses, the centre of national life and government. And it is curious to record that no one of the monarchs who brought it such nobility and fame left any sadness of death to the associations of Edinburgh. They lived and were wedded and filled with the brightness of their happier moments the town which afforded so beautiful a scene for all rejoicings: they died on the field of battle or in other places in conflict or violence or despair. But Edinburgh only retains the brighter memories, the triumphal processions, the bridal finery, the jousts and the feasts, the Parliaments and proclamations of laws and high alliances. The reigns of the Jameses contain the history of her rise, her splendour, her climax of beauty and stateliness, without any association of downfall or decay.