CHAPTER III.

JAMES THE SECOND.
1436—1460.

The assassination of James the First,
and the succeeding minority of his
son, a boy of only six years of age,
was, if not a triumph to the majority
of the Scottish nobility, at least an
event eminently favourable to their
power and pretensions. His murder­
ers, it is true, whether from the in­
stant execration which bursts out
against a deed of so dark and sanguin­
ary a character, or from the personal
revenge of the queen-mother, were
punished with speedy and unmitigated
severity. Yet, when the first senti­
ments of horror and amazement were
abated, and the Scottish aristocracy
begun to regard the consequences
likely to arise from the sudden de­
struction which had overtaken the
king in the midst of his schemes for
the abridgment of their exorbitant
power, it is impossible but that they
should have contemplated the event
of his death with secret satisfaction.
The sentiments so boldly avowed by
Graham in the midst of his tortures,
that the day was near at hand when
they would bless his memory for hav­

ing rid them of a tyrant, must have
forcibly recurred to their minds ; and
when they regarded the fate of the
Earl of March, so summarily and
cruelly stript of his immense posses­
sions, and contemplated the magnitude
of James’s plans, and the stern firm­
ness with which, in so short a reign,
he had carried them into effect, we
can readily believe that the recovery
of the privileges which they had lost,
and the erection of some permanent
barriers, against all future encroach-

¹ The critical reader is referred to an able
answer to these “ Remarks,” by Mr Amyot.
in the twenty-third vol. of the Archæologia.
p. 277 ; to some additional observations by
the same gentleman, Archœologia, vol. xxv.
p. 394 ; to a critical “ Note,” by Sir James
Macintosh, added to the first volume of his
“ History of England ;" to a “Dissertation on
the Manner and Period of the Death of Rich­
ard the Second,” by Lord Dover; to observa­
tions on the same historical problem, by Mr
Riddell, in a volume of Legal and Antiquarian
Tracts, published at Edinburgh in 1835 ; and
to some remarks on the same point by Sir
Harris Nicolas in the Preface to the first
volume of his valuable work, the “ Proceed­
ings and Ordinances of the Privy Council of
England,” Preface, pp. 29 to 32.

120                                     HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.                     [Chap. III.

ments of the crown, would be the
great objects to which, under the mi­
nority of his successor, they would
direct their attention.

It happened also, unfortunately for
Scotland, that such a scheme for the
resumption of power by the feudal
nobility—in other words, for the return
of anarchy and disorder throughout
the country—was but too likely to
prove successful. The improvements
introduced by James the First—the
judicial machinery for the more per­
fect administration of justice; the
laws for the protection of the lower
orders against the insolence of the
great; the provisions for the admis­
sion of the representatives of the com­
mercial classes into parliament, and
for the abridgment of the military
strength of the great feudal lords—
were rather in the state of prospective
changes than of measures whose salu­
tary effects had been tried by time,
and to which the nation had become
attached by long usage. These im­
provements had been all carried into
effect within the short space of four­
teen years ; they still bore upon them
the hateful gloss of novelty and inno­
vation, and, no longer supported by
the firmness of the monarch with
whom they originated, they could
present but a feeble resistance to the
attacks of the numerous and powerful
classes whose privileges they abridged,
and with whose ambition their con­
tinuance was incompatible. The pros­
pect of recovering, during a long
minority, the estates and the feudal
perquisites which had been resumed
or cut down by James the First; the
near view of successful venality which
constantly accompanied the possession
of the great offices under an infant
sovereign; and the facility in the exe­
cution of such schemes which every
feudal government offered to any fac-
tion who were powerful or fortunate
enough to possess themselves of the
person of the king, rendered the period
upon which we now enter one of
great excitement amongst the Scottish
nobles. The greater chiefs amongst
them adopted every means to increase
their personal strength and impor­

tance, recruiting the ranks of their
armed vassals and followers, and plac­
ing persons of tried fidelity in their
castles and strongholds; the lesser
barons attached themselves to the
more powerful by those leagues or
bands which bound them by the
strictest ties to work the will of their
lord; and both classes set themselves
attentively to watch the course of
events, and to take immediate advan­
tage of those sudden changes and
emergencies which were so likely to
arise in a country thrown into the
utmost dismay and confusion by the
murder of the sovereign.

But although Such appear to have
been the low and interested feelings
of the greater proportion of the no­
bility, we are not to suppose that the
support of the crown and the cause of
order and good government were ut­
terly abandoned. They still retained
many friends in the dignified clergy,
as well as among those learned and
able Churchmen from whose ranks the
legal officers of the crown, and the
diplomatic agents who transacted all
foreign missions and alliances, were
generally selected; and they could
undoubtedly reckon upon the attach­
ment of the mercantile and commer­
cial classes, now gradually rising into
importance, and upon the affectionate
support of the great body of the
lower orders, in so far as they were
left untrammelled by the fetters of
their feudal servitude.

Whilst such were the sentiments
which animated the various bodies in
the state upon the murder of the king,
it may easily be supposed that terror
was the first feeling which arose in
the bosom of the queen-mother. Ut­
terly uncertain as to the ramifications
of the conspiracy, and trembling lest
the same vengeance which had fallen
upon the father should pursue the
son, she instantly fled with the young
prince to Edinburgh, nor did she
esteem herself secure till she had re­
treated with her charge within the
castle. The command of this fortress,
rendered now a place of far higher
importance than usual by its affording
a retreat to the queen and the prince,

1436-8.]                                           JAMES II.                                                  121

was at this time in the hands of
William Crichton, baron of Crichton,
and master of the household to the
late king, a person of great craft and
ambition, and who, although still in
the ranks of the lower nobility, wa3
destined to act a principal part in the
future history of the times.¹

After the first panic had subsided,
a parliament assembled at Edinburgh
within less than a month after the
murder of the king, and measures ap­
pear to have been adopted for the
government of the country during the
minority. The first care, however, was
the coronation of the young prince,
and for this purpose the principal
nobles and barons of the kingdom,
with the dignified clergy and a great
multitude of the free tenants of the
crown, conducted him in procession
from the castle of Edinburgh to the
abbey of Holyrood, where he was
crowned and anointed amid demon­
strations of universal loyalty.²

Under any other circumstances than
those in which James succeeded, the
long-established custom of conducting
the ceremony of the coronation at the
Abbey of Scone would not have been
departed from, but its proximity to
the scene of the murder rendered it
dangerous and suspected; and as de­
lay was equally hazardous, the queen

¹ Registrum Magni Sigilli, B. III. No. 161.
His first appearance is in Rymer, vol. x. p.
309, amongst the nobility who met James the
First at Durham, on his return from his long
detention in England. See also Crawford’s
Officers of State, p. 25, for his title of Magis-
ter Hospitii, as proved by a charter then in
the possession of Sir Peter Fraser of Dores,
Bart. See also MS. Chamberlain Rolls, July
4, 1438. “Et pro quinque barellis de Ham­
burgh salmonum salsorum, liberatis per com-
putantem et liberatis Domino Willielmo de
Crechtoun, custodi Castri de Edinburgh, fa-
tenti receptum super computum, ad expensas
domini nostri regis moderni, de quibus dictus
dominus respondebit ix. lib.” Again, MS.
Chamberlain Rolls, July 5,1438. “Per liber-
acionem factam Domino Willielmo de Crech-
toun, Vice-comiti et custodi Castri de Edin­
burgh, ut patet per literam suam sub signeto
ostensam super computum iiii^xx librarum de
quibus asserit quinquaginta libras receptas
ad expensas coronacionis domini nostri regis
moderni."

² “Cum maximo applausu et apparatu ad
laudem Dei et leticiam tocius populi.”—Acts
of the Parliament of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 31.

was obliged to purchase security and
speed at the expense of somewhat of
that solemnity which would other­
wise have accompanied the pageant.
Two important measures followed the
coronation. The first, the nomination
of the queen-mother to undertake the
custody of the king till he had attained
his majority, and to become at the
same time the guardian of the prin­
cesses, his sisters, with an annual al­
lowance of four thousand marks;³ the
second, the appointment of Archibald,
fifth earl of Douglas and duke of Tou-
raine, to be lieutenant-general of the
kingdom.⁴ This baron, undoubtedly
the most powerful subject in Scotland,
and whose revenue from his estates
at home and in France was probably
nearly equal to that of his sovereign,
was the son of Archibald, fourth earl
of Douglas, who was slain at the battle
of Verneuil, and of Margaret, daugh­
ter to King Robert the Third, so that
he was nephew of the late king. His
power, however, proved to be of short
duration, for he lived little more than
a year after his nomination to this
high office.

It is unfortunate that no perfect
record has been preserved of the pro­
ceedings of the first parliament of
James the Second. From a mutilated
fragment which remains, it is certain
that it was composed, as usual, of the
clergy, barons, and commissaries of
the burghs, and that all alienations of
lands, as well as of movable property,
which happened to be in the posses­
sion of the late king at his death, and
which had been made without consent
of the three estates, were revoked,
whilst an inventory of the goods and
treasure in the royal coffers was di­
rected to be taken, and an injunction
given that no alienation of the king’s
lands or property should be made to

³ Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, vol.
ii. p. 54.

⁴  Sir Thomas Boyd of Kilmarnock, in his
account in Exchequer of the rent of Duchale in
Ward, takes credit for the following payment:
—“ Et per solucionem factam Domino Comiti
de Douglas, locum tenenti domini regis, in
partem feodi sui de anno, 1438, dicto domino
locum tenenti fatenti receptum super com-
putum sexaginta librarum.”—MS. Chamber­
lain Rolls, sub anno 1438.

122                                   HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.                       [Chap. III.

any person whatever without the con­
sent of the three estates, until he had
reached his full age of twenty-one
years.¹ We may conjecture on strong
grounds that the subjects to which the
general council next turned their at­
tention were the establishment of a
peace with England, and the renewal
of amicable relations with the court
of France and the commercial states
of Holland.

With regard to peace with England,
various circumstances concurred in the
condition of that country to facilitate
the negotiation. Under the minority
of Henry the Sixth, the war with
France, and the struggle to maintain
unimpaired the conquests of Henry
the Fifth, required a concentration of
the national strength and resources
which must have been greatly weak­
ened by any invasion upon the part
of Scotland; and the Cardinal of Win­
chester, who was at this time pos­
sessed of the principal power in the
government, was uncle to the Queen
of Scotland. Commissioners were ac­
cordingly despatched by the Scottish
parliament,² who, after a meeting with
the English envoys, found little diffi­
culty in concluding a nine years’ truce
between the two kingdoms, which was
appointed to commence on the 1st of
May 1438, and to terminate on the 1st
of May 1447.³ Its provisions contain
some interesting enactments regarding
the commercial intercourse between
the two countries, deformed indeed
by those unwise restrictions which
were universal at this time through­
out Europe, yet evincing an ardent
anxiety for the prosperity of the
country. In addition to the common
stipulations against seizing vessels
driven into port, and preventing
shipwrecked mariners from returning
home, it was agreed that if any ves­
sel belonging to either country were

¹ Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, vol.
ii. p. 31.

² Rymer, Fœdera, vol. x. pp. 679, 680, 684.

³ Chamberlain MS. Rolls computum Johan-
nis de Fyfe Receptoris firmarum de Schines,
&c. “ Et allocatur pro expensis Dominorum
de Grordoun, et de Montegomeri ac aliorum
ambassatorum regni factis in Auglia pro treu-
gis inter regna ineundis. iiii^xx iij^lib vi^s viii^d.”

carried by an enemy into a port of the
other kingdom, no sale of the vessel
or cargo should be permitted without
the consent of the original owners;
that no vessel driven into any port
should be liable to arrest for any debt
of the king or of any other person,
but that all creditors should have safe-
conducts in order to sue for and re­
cover their debts with lawful damages
and interest; that in cases of ship­
wreck the property should be pre­
served and delivered to the owners;
that when goods were landed for the
purpose of repairing the ship they
might be reshipped in the same, or in
any other vessel without payment of
duties; and that vessels of either king­
dom putting into ports of the other
in distress for provisions might sell
goods for that purpose without being
chargeable with customs for the rest
of the cargo. It was finally provided
that no wool or woolfels should be
carried from one kingdom to the other,
either by land or by water; and that in
all cases of depredation not only the
chief offenders, but also the receivers
and encouragers, and even the com­
munities of the towns in which the
plundered goods were received, should
be liable for compensation to the suf­
ferers, who might sue for redress be­
fore the conservators of the truce or
the wardens of the marches. The
principal of these conservators for
England were the king’s uncle, the
Duke of Gloucester, and his kinsman,
the Duke of Norfolk, with the Earls of
Salisbury, Northumberland, and West­
moreland; and for Scotland, Archi­
bald, earl of Douglas and duke of Tou-
raine, with the Earls of Angus, Craw­
ford, and Avendale, and the Lords
Gordon, Maxwell, Montgomery, and
Crichton.⁴ Care was taken to send
an intimation of the truce to the Scot­
tish merchants who were resident in
Holland and in Zealand; and with re­
gard to France, although there can be
little doubt from the ancient alliance
with Scotland, and the marriage of
the sister of the king to the Dauphin,

⁴ Rymer, Fœdera, vol. x. p. 695. Rotuli
Scotiæ, vol. ii. pp. 306, 310. M’Pherson’s
Annals of Commerce, vol. i. p. 654.

1438.]                                               JAMES II.                                                  123

that the feelings of the country were
strongly attached to the cause of
Charles the Seventh, and that the
total expulsion of the English would
have been an event joyfully welcomed
in Scotland; yet the reverses experi­
enced in the battles of Crevant and
Verneuil effectually cooled the ardour
of that kingdom for foreign war, and
appear to have compelled the nation
to a temporary and unwilling neu­
trality.

We have seen that Antony, bishop
of Urbino, the Papal legate, was in
Scotland at the time of the murder of
the late king, and that a general
council of the clergy, which had been
called at Perth for the purpose of re­
ceiving his credentials, was abruptly
broken off by this event. The destruc­
tion of all contemporary records has
unfortunately left the proceedings of
this council in complete obscurity;
and we only know that, towards the
conclusion of the year 1438, Sir
Andrew Meldrum, a knight of St
John of Jerusalem, was despatched
through England into Scotland, on a
mission connected with the “ good of
religion,” and that a Papal nuncio,
Alfonso de Crucifubreis, proceeded
about the same time to the Scottish
court,¹ It is not improbable that the
Church, which, at the present moment,
felt deep alarm from the disorders of
the Hussites in Bohemia, and the
growth of heresy in England, was
anxious to engage on its side the
council and ministers of the infant
monarch of Scotland, and to interest
them in putting down those heterodox
opinions which, it is certain, during
the last reign, had made a consider­
able progress in that country.

An extraordinary event now claims
our attention, which is involved in
much obscurity, but drew after it im­
portant results. The queen-mother
soon found that the castle of Edin­
burgh, an asylum which she had so
willingly sought for her son the king,
was rendered, by the vigilance and
jealousy of Crichton the governor,
much too difficult of access to herself
and her friends. It was, in truth, no
¹ Rotuli Scotiæ. vol. ii. p. 311.

longer the queen, but this ambitious
baron, who was the keeper of the
royal person. Under the pretence of
superintending the expenses of the
household, he seized² and dilapidated
the royal revenues, surrounded the
young sovereign by his own creatures,
and permitted neither the queen-
mother, the lieutenant-general of the
kingdom, nor Sir Alexander Living­
ston of Callander, a baron who had
been in high favour with the late king,
to have any share in the government.
Finding it impossible, by any remon­
strances, to obtain her wishes, the
queen had recourse to stratagem. At
the conclusion of a visit of a few
days, which she had been permitted
to pay to her son, it was dexterously
managed that the prince should be
concealed in a large wardrobe chest,
which was carried along with some
luggage out of the castle. In this he
was conveyed to Leith, and from
thence transported by water to Stir­
ling castle, the jointure-house of his
mother, which was at this time under
the command of Livingston of Callan-
der. Whether the Earl of Douglas,
the Bishop of Glasgow, who was chan­
cellor, or any of the other officers of
state, were privy to this successful
enterprise, there are unfortunately no
documents to determine; but it seems
difficult to believe that the queen
should have undertaken it and carried
it through without some powerful as­
sistants; and it is still more extra­
ordinary that no proceedings appear
to have been adopted against Crichton
for his unjustifiable seclusion of the
youthful monarch from his mother,—
an act which, as it appears in the his­
tory of the times, must have almost
amounted to treason.

The records of a parliament which
was held at Edinburgh on the 27th of
November 1438, by the Earl of Doug­
las, therein styled the lieutenant-gene­
ral of the realm; and of a second
meeting of the three estates, which
assembled at Stirling on the 13th of
March, in the same year, are so brief

² Chamberlain MS. Rolls, computum Thomæ
Cranstoun. Receptoris redituum regis ex
parte australi aquæ de Forth. July 18, 1438.

124                                   HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.                       [Chap. III.

and mutilated, that little light can be
elicited either as to the different fac­
tions which unquestionably tore and
divided the state, or regarding the pro­
visions which were adopted by the
wisdom of parliament for the healing
of such disorders.

There is indeed a general provision
for the remedy of the open plunder
and robbery then prevalent in the
country. The sheriff, within whose
county the thieves had taken refuge,
was commanded to see strict restora­
tion made, and to denounce as rebels
to the king’s lieutenant all who refused
to obey him, under the penalty of
being himself removed from his office,
and punished as the principal offender.
But where there is strong reason to sus­
pect that the lieutenant and the greater
barons were themselves the robbers,
and that the sheriffs were their im­
mediate dependants, it may easily be
believed that, unless in instances where
they were desirous of cutting off some
unfortunate spoiler who had incurred
their resentment, the act was most im­
perfectly executed, if not universally
evaded.¹

Having liberated her son the king
from the durance in which he had been
kept by Crichton, the queen-mother
appears for some time to have reposed
unlimited confidence in the fidelity of
Sir Alexander Livingston ; whilst the
Earl of Douglas, the most powerful
man in the state, refused to connect
himself with any faction; and, al­
though nominally the lieutenant-gene­
ral of the kingdom, took little interest
in the scene of trouble and intrigue
with which the youthful monarch was
surrounded. It does not even appear
that he presided in a parliament which
was assembled at Stirling, probably a
short time after the successful issue of
the enterprise of the queen. In this
meeting of the three estates the
dreadful condition of the kingdom
and the treasonable conduct of Sir
William Crichton were, as far as we
can judge from the mutilated records
which have been preserved, the prin­
cipal subjects for consideration. It

¹ Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, vol.
ii. p. 32,

was resolved that there should be two
sessions held yearly within the realm,
in which the lord-lieutenant and the
king’s council should sit—the first to
begin on the day after the exalta­
tion of Holy Cross; and the second
on the first Monday in Lent thereafter
following. At the same time, an
enactment was passed, with an evi­
dent reference to Crichton, by which
it was ordained that where any rebels
had taken refuge within their castles
or fortalices, and held the same against
lawful authority, or wherever there
was any “ violent presumption of re­
bellion and destruction of the country,”
it became the duty of the lieutenant
to raise the lieges, to besiege such
places, and arrest the offenders, of
whatever rank they might be.²

The Earl of Douglas, however, either
too indolent to engage in an employ­
ment which would have required the
utmost resolution, or too proud to
embroil himself with what he con­
sidered the private feuds between
Crichton and Livingston, refused to
carry the act into execution; and
Livingston, having raised his vassals,
laid siege in person to the castle of
Edinburgh. The events immediately
succeeding are involved in much ob­
scurity; so that, in the absence of
original authorities, and the errors and
contradictions of historians, it is diffi­
cult to discover their true causes, or to
give any intelligible account of the
sudden revolutions which took place.
Amid these difficulties, I adopt the
narrative which approaches nearest to
those fragments of authentic evidence
that have survived the common wreck.

When he perceived that he was be­
leaguered by the forces of Livingston,
Crichton, who did not consider him­
self strong enough to contend singly
against the united strength of the
queen and this baron, secretly pro­
posed a coalition to the Earl of Doug­
las, but his advances were received by
that powerful chief with infinite scorn.
The pride of the haughty potentate
could ill brook any suggestion of a
division of authority with one whom

² Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, vol.
ii. p. 32.

1438-9.]                                  JAMES II.                                        125

he considered so far beneath him; and
it is said that in a fit of bitter irony
he declared how much satisfaction it
would give him if his refusal should
cause two such unprincipled disturbers
of the public peace mutually to de­
stroy each other. These rivals, how­
ever, although either of them would
willingly have risen upon the ruin of
the other, were too crafty to fulfil the
wishes of the Earl of, Douglas; and his
proud answer, which was soon carried
to their ears, seems to have produced
in their minds a disposition towards
a settlement of their differences. It
was evident that singly they could
have little hope of resisting the lieu­
tenant-general of the kingdom : but
Livingston possessed the confidence of
the queen-mother, and the custody of
the king, her son; and with this weight
thrown into the scale, it was not un­
likely that a coalition might enable
them to make head against his autho­
rity. The result of such mutual feel­
ings was a truce between the rival
lords, which ended in a complete re­
conciliation, and in the delivery of the
castle of Edinburgh into the hands of
Sir William Livingston. The young
king, whom he had carried along with
him to Edinburgh, was presented by
Crichton with the keys of the fortress,
and supped there on the night when
the agreement was concluded; on the
morrow, the new friends divided be­
tween them the power which had thus
fallen into their hands. Cameron,
bishop of Glasgow, who was a partisan
of the house of Douglas, and filled the
place of chancellor, was deprived of a
situation, in which there is reason to
believe he had behaved with much ra­
pacity. The vacant office was bestowed
upon Crichton, whilst to Livingston
was committed the guardianship of
the kings person, and the chief man­
agement in the government.¹ With
regard to Douglas, it is not easy to as­
certain what measures were resolved
upon; and it is probable that this great
noble, confident in his own power, and
in the high trust committed to him

¹ May 3, 1439, Cameron is Chancellor.
Mag. Sig. iii. 123. June 10,1439, Crichton is
Chancellor. Ibid. ii. 141.

by the parliament, would have im­
mediately proceeded against the con­
federate lords, as traitors to the state.
But at this important crisis he was
suddenly attacked by a malignant
fever, and died at Restalrig on the
26th of June 1439,² leaving an im­
mense and dangerous inheritance of
power and pride to his son, a youth of
only seventeen years of age.

The coalition might, therefore, for
the present, be regarded as completely
triumphant; and Livingston and Crich-
ton, possessed of the king’s person, and
enjoying that unlimited command over
the queen-mother against which an
unprotected woman could offer no
resistance, were at liberty to reward
their friends, to requite their enemies,
and to administer the affairs of the
government with a power which, for
a while, seemed little short of absolute.
The consequences of this state of things
were such as might have been antici­
pated. The administration of the
government became venal and dis­
orderly. Owing to the infancy of the
king, and the neglect of appointing a
lieutenant-general, or governor of the
realm, in the place of the Duke of
Touraine, the nation knew not where
to look for that firm controlling
authority which should punish the
guilty, and protect the honest and in­
dustrious. Those tyrannical barons,
with which Scotland at this period
abounded in common with the other
countries of Europe, began to stir and
be busy in the anticipation of a rich
harvest of plunder, and to entertain
and increase their troops of retainers ;
whose numbers and strength, as they
calculated, would induce Livingston,
Crichton, and the lords of their party,
to attach them at any price to their
service.

Meanwhile, in the midst of this
general confusion, the right of private

² Gray’s MS. Advocates’ Library, rr. i. 17.
“Obitus Domini Archibaldi Ducis Turonensis
Comitis de Douglas ac Domini Galwidiæ, apud
Restalrig, 26 die mensis Junii, anno 1439, qui
jacet apud Douglas.” See, for a beautiful en­
graving of his monument, Blore’s Monumental
Remains, Part I. No. IV., a work which, it
is to be regretted, did not meet with the en­
couragement it justly merited.

126                                    HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.                       [Chap. III.

war, and the prevalence of deadly
feud, those two curses of the feudal
system, flourished in increased strength
and virulence. Sir Alan Stewart of
Darnley, who had held the high office
of Constable of the Scottish army in
France,¹ was treacherously slain at
Polmais Thorn, between Falkirk and
Linlithgow, by Sir Thomas Boyd of
Kilmarnock, for “ auld feud which
was betwixt them,” in revenge of
which, Sir Alexander Stewart col­
lected his vassals, and, in “ plain bat­
tle,” to use the expressive words of an
old historian, “ manfully set upon Sir
Thomas Boyd, who was cruelly slain,
with many brave men on both sides.”
The ground where the conflict took
place was at Craignaucht Hill, a ro­
mantic spot, near Neilston, in Ren­
frewshire ; and with such determined
bravery was it contested, that it is
said the parties by mutual consent
retired sundry times to rest and re­
cover breath, after which they recom­
menced the combat to the sound of
the trumpet, till the victory at last
declared for the Stewarts. These
slaughters and contests amongst the
higher ranks produced their usual
abundant increase of robbery, plunder,
burning, and murder, amongst the
large body of the friends and vassals
who were in the remotest degree con­
nected with the parties; so that, whilst
Livingston and Crichton possessed the
supreme power, and, with a few of their
favourites, flourished upon the outlaw­
ries and forfeitures, and kept a firm hold
over the person of the youthful mon­
arch, whom they immured along with
his mother, the queen, in Stirling castle,
the state of the country became so de­
plorable as to call aloud for redress.

It was at this dark period that the
queen-mother, who was in the prime
of life, and still a beautiful woman,
finding that she was little else than a
prisoner in the hands of Livingston,
determined to procure protection for
herself by marriage. Whether it was
an alliance of love or of ambition, is
not apparent; but it is certain that
Margaret, unknown to the faction by

¹ Andrew Stewards Hist, of the Stewarts,
pp. 160, 166.

whom she was so strictly guarded,
espoused Sir James Stewart, third son
of John Stewart, lord of Lorn,² and
commonly known by the name of the
Black Knight of Lorn. This powerful
baron was in strict alliance with the
house of Douglas.³ As husband of
the queen-mother, to whom, in the
first instance, the parliament had com­
mitted the custody of the king’s per­
son, he might plausibly insist upon a
principal share in the education of the
youthful prince, as well as in the ad­
ministration of the government; and a
coalition between the party of the queen -
mother and the Earl of Douglas might,
if managed with prudence and address,
have put a speedy termination to the
unprincipled tyranny of Livingston.

But this able and crafty baron, who
ruled all things around the court at
his pleasure, had earlier information
of these intrigues than the queen and
her husband imagined; and whilst
they, confiding in his pretended ap­
proval of their marriage, imprudently
remained within his power, Sir James
was suddenly arrested, with his bro­
ther, Sir William Stewart, and cast
into a dungeon in Stirling castle, with
every circumstance of cruelty and
ignominy. An ancient manuscript
affirms that Livingston put “ thaim
in pittis and bollit thaim :”⁴ an ex­
pression of which the meaning is ob­
scure ; but to whatever atrocity these
words allude, it was soon shewn that the
ambition and audacity of the governor
of Stirling was not to be contented
with the imprisonment of the Black
Knight of Lorn. Almost immediately
after this act of violence, the apart­
ments of the queen herself, who then
resided in the castle, were invaded by
Livingston ; and although the servants
of her court, headed by Napier,⁵ one
of her household, made a violent re­
sistance, in which this gentleman was

²  Duncan Stewart’s Hist, and Geneal. Ac­
count of the Royal Family of Scotland, p. 171.

³ Lesley’s History, p. 14. Bannatyne edit.

⁴  Auchinleck Chronicle, privately printed
by Mr Thomson, Deputy-Clerk Register of
Scotland, p. 34, almost the solitary authentic
record of this obscure reign.

⁵  Royal Charter by James II., March 7,
1449-50, to Alexander Napier, of the lands of
Philde, Mag. Sig. iv. 4.

1439.]                                               JAMES II.                                                     127

wounded, his royal mistress was torn
from her chamber, and committed to an
apartment, where she was placed under
a guard, and cut off from all communi­
cation with her husband or his party.
It is impossible to believe that
Livingston would have dared to adopt
these treasonable measures, which af­
terwards cost him his head, unless
he had been supported by a powerful
faction, and by an armed force, which,
for the time, was sufficient to over­
come all resistance. The extraordinary
scene which followed can only be ex­
plained upon this supposition. A
general convention of the nobility was
held at Stirling, after the imprison­
ment of the queen. It was attended
by the Bishops of Glasgow, Moray,
Ross, and Dunblane, upon the part of
the clergy; and for the nobility, by the
Earl of Douglas, Alexander Seton, lord
of Gordon, Sir William Crichton, chan­
cellor, and Walter, lord of Dirleton;
and at the same time, that there might
at least be an appearance of the pre­
sence of a third estate, James of Par-
cle, commissary of Linlithgow, Wil­
liam Cranston, burgess and commis­
sary of Edinburgh, and Andrew Reid,
burgess and commissary of Inverness,
were present as representatives of the
burghs, and sanctioned, by their seals,
the transaction which took place. In
this convention, the queen-mother,
with advice and consent of this faction,
which usurped to themselves the name
of the three estates, resigned into the
keeping of Sir Alexander Livingston
of Callander the person of the king,
her dearest son, until he had reached
his majority ; she at the same time
surrendered in loan to the same baron
her castle of Stirling, as the residence
of the youthful monarch; and for the
due maintenance of his household
and dignity, conveyed to him her
annual allowance of four thousand
marks, granted by the parliament upon
the death of the king her husband.
The same deed which recorded this
strange and unexpected revolution
declared that the queen had remitted
to Sir Alexander Livingston and his
accomplices all rancour of mind which
she had erroneously conceived against

them for the imprisonment of her
person, being convinced that their
conduct had been actuated by none
other motives than those of truth,
loyalty, and a zealous anxiety for the
safety of their sovereign. It provided
also that the lords and barons who
were to compose the retinue of the
queen should be approved of by
Livingston ; and that this princess
might have access to her son at all
times, with the cautious proviso, that
such interview should take place in
the presence of unsuspected persons :
in the event of the king’s death, the
castle was to be redelivered to the
queen; and it was lastly stipulated
that the Lord of Livingston and his
friends were not to be annoyed or
brought “nearer the death” for any
part which they might have acted in
these important transactions.¹

It would be ridiculous to imagine
that this pardon and sudden confi-
fidence, bestowed with so much appa­
rent cordiality, could be anything else
than hollow and compulsory. That
the queen should have received into
her intimate councils the traitors who,
not a month before, had violently
seized and imprisoned her husband,
invaded her royal chamber, staining it
with blood, and reducing her to a state
of captivity, is too absurd to be ac­
counted for even by the mutability of
female caprice. The whole transac­
tion exhibits an extraordinary picture
of the country,—of the despotic power
which, in a few weeks, might be lodged
in the hands of a successful and un­
principled faction,—of the pitiable
weakness of the party of the queen,
and the corruption and venality of the
great officers of the crown. It must
have been evident to the queen-mother
that Livingston and Crichton divided
between them the supreme power;
and, in terror for the life of her hus­
band, and dreading her own perpetual
imprisonment, she seems to have con­
sented to purchase security and free­
dom at the price of the liberty and
independence of the king, her son,

¹ Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, vol.
ii. p. 54. The act is dated September 4,
1439.

128                                     HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.                     [Chap. III.

then a boy in his ninth year. He was
accordingly delivered up to Living­
ston, who kept him in a state of
honourable captivity at Stirling.

This state of things could not be of
long continuance. The coalition was
from the first purely selfish; it de­
pended for its continuance upon the
strict division of authority between
two ambitious rivals; and soon after,
the chancellor, jealous of the superior
power of Livingston, determined to
make him sensible on how precarious
a basis it was founded. Seizing the
opportunity of the governor’s absence
at Perth, he rode with a strong body
of his vassals, under cover of night, to
the royal park of Stirling, in which
the king was accustomed to take the
pastime of the chase. Crichton, fa­
voured by the darkness, concealed his
followers in the wood; and, at sun­
rise, had the satisfaction to see the
royal cavalcade approach the spot
where he lay in ambush. In an in­
stant the youthful monarch was sur­
rounded by a multitude which ren­
dered resistance hopeless; and the
chancellor, kneeling, and with an
action rather of affectionate submis­
sion than of command, taking hold of
his bridle rein, besought him to leave
that fortress, where he was more a
prisoner than a king, and to permit
himself to be rescued by his faithful
subjects, and restored to his free rights
as a sovereign. Saying this, Crichton
conducted his willing victim, amid the
applauses and loyal protestations of his
vassals, to Linlithgow, where he was met
by an armed escort, who conducted
him to the castle of Edinburgh.¹

To the king himself this transaction
brought merely a change of masters;
but to Livingston it was full not only
of mortification, but danger. Although
he would have been glad to have availed
himself of the power, he distrusted the
youth and versatility of the Earl of
Douglas. To the queen-mother he had
given cause of mortal offence, and
there was no other individual in the
country whose authority, if united to
his own, was weighty enough to
counteract the exorbitant power of the
¹ January 1439. Lesley’s Hist. p. 15.

chancellor. He had recourse, there­
fore, to dissimulation; and coming to
Edinburgh, accompanied by a small
train, he despatched a flattering mes­
sage to Crichton, deplored the mis­
understanding which had taken place,
and expressed his willingness to submit
all differences to the judgment of their
mutual friends, and to have the ques­
tion regarding the custody of the royal
person determined in the same manner.
It happened that there were then pre­
sent in Edinburgh two prelates, whose
character for probity and wisdom
peculiarly fitted them for the task of
reconciling the rival lords. These
were Leighton, bishop of Aberdeen,
and Winchester, bishop of Moray, by
whose mediation Crichton and Living­
ston, unarmed, and slenderly attended,
repaired to the church of St Giles,
where a reconciliation took place; the
charge of the youthful monarch being
once more intrusted to Livingston,²
whilst the chancellor was rewarded by
an increase of his individual authority
in the management of the state, and
the advancement of his personal friends
to offices of trust and emolument.³

In the midst of these selfish and
petty contests for power, the people
were afflicted by almost every scourge
which could be let loose upon a
devoted country : by intestine feuds,
by a severe famine, and by a wide­
spread and deadly pestilence. The
fierce inhabitants of the Western
Isles, under the command of Lauchlan
Maclean and Murdoch Gibson, two
leaders notorious for their spoliations
and murders, broke in upon the con­
tinent; and, not content with the
devastation of the coast, pushed for­
ward into the heart of the Lennox,
where they slew Colquhoun of Luss
in open battle, and reduced the whole
district to the state of a blackened and
depopulated desert.⁴ Soon after this,
the famine became so grievous, that
multitudes of the poorer classes died
of absolute want. It is stated in an

² Crawford’s Officers of State, p. 28. Pin-
kerton, vol. i. p. 191.

³ Buchanan and Bishop Lesley erroneously
suppose that the custody of the king’s person
remained with the chancellor Crichton.

⁴ Auchinleck Chronicle, p. 34,

1439-40.]                                         JAMES II.                                                   129

ancient contemporary chronicle that
the boll of wheat was then generally
sold at forty shillings, and the boll of
oatmeal at thirty. We know from
the authority of Stow that the scarcity
was also severely felt in England,
where wheat rose from its ordinary
price of five shillings and fourpence
the quarter to one pound; and soon
after, in the course of the year 1440,
to one pound four shillings. The con­
sequences of unwholesome food were
soon seen in a dreadful sickness of the
nature of dysentery, which broke out
amongst the people, and carried away
great numbers; so that, when the
pestilence soon after arrived in Scot­
land, and its ravages were added to
the already widely spread calamity,
the unhappy country seemed rapidly
advancing to a state of depopulation.
This awful scourge, which first shewed
itself at Dumfries, was emphatically
denominated “the pestilence without
mercy,” for none were seized with it
who did not certainly die within
twenty-four hours after the attack.¹

To these prolific causes of national
misery there was added another in
the overgrown power of the house of
Douglas, and the evils which were en­
couraged by the lawless demeanour of
its youthful chief. Upon the death of
Archibald, duke of Touraine and fifth
earl of Douglas, we have seen that the
immense estates of this family devolved
upon his son William, a youth who
was then only in his seventeenth year;
a period of life liable, even under the
most common circumstances, to be
corrupted by power and adulation.
To Douglas, however, the accession
brought a complication of trials, which
it would have required the maturity
of age and wisdom to have resisted.
As Duke of Touraine, he was a peer
of France, and possessed one of the
richest principalities in that kingdom.
In his own country he inherited
estates, or rather provinces, in Gallo­
way, Annandale, Wigtown, and other
counties, which were covered by war.

¹ Auchinleck Chronicle, p. 34. “ Thar tuke
it nain that ever recoverit, hot that deit
within twenty­four houris.” Fleetwood.
Chron. Preciosum, p. 83.
VOL. II.

like vassals, and protected by numerous
castles and fortalices; and in ancestry
he could look to a long line of brave
progenitors, springing, on the father’s
side, from the heroic stock of the Good
Sir James, and connected, in the ma­
ternal line, with the royal family of
Scotland. The effects of all this upon
the character of the youthful ease
were not long of making their appear­
ance. He treated every person about
him with an unbounded arrogance of
demeanour; he affected a magnificence
which outshone the splendour of the
sovereign; when summoned by the
governor in the name of the king, he
disdained to attend the council-general,
where he was bound to give suit and
service as a vassal of the throne; and
in the reception he gave to the mes­
sages which were addressed to him
carried himself more as a supreme and
independent prince than a subject
who received the commands of his
master. Soon after the death of his
father he despatched Malcolm Flem­
ing of Biggar, along with Alan Lauder
of the Bass, as his ambassadors to carry
his oath of allegiance to the French
monarch, and receive his investiture
in the dukedom of Touraine. The
envoys appear to have been warmly
welcomed by Charles the Seventh;
and, flattered by the reception which
was given them, as well as by his
immediate accession to his foreign
principality, Douglas increased his
train of followers, enlisted into his
service multitudes of idle, fierce, and
unprincipled adventurers, who wore
his arms, professing themselves his
vassals only to obtain a licence for
their tyranny, whilst within his own
vast territories he openly insulted the
authority of the government, and tram­
pled upon the restraints of the laws.

A parliament in the meantime was
assembled (2d August 1440) at Stir­
ling, for the purpose of taking into
consideration the disordered state of
the country, and some of those reme­
dies were again proposed which had
already been attended with such fre­
quent failure, not so much from any
defect in principle, as from the imper
I

130                                    HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.                      [Chap. III.

feet manner in which they were carried
into execution. It was declared that
the Holy Church should be maintained
in freedom, and the persons and pro­
perty of ecclesiastics universally pro­
tected; according to ancient usage,
the justiciars on the southern and
northern sides of the Firth of Forth
were commanded to hold their courts
twice in the year, whilst the same
duty was to be faithfully performed by
the lords of regalities, within their
jurisdiction, and by the judges and
officers of the sovereign upon the royal
lands. On the occurrence of any re­
bellion, slaughter, or robbery, it was
ordained that the king should instantly
ride in person to the spot, and, sum­
moning before him the sheriff of the
county, see immediate justice done
upon the offenders; for the more
speedy execution of which, the barons
were directed to assist with their per­
sons, vassals, and property.¹ It was,
in all probability, at this parliament
that those grievous complaints were
presented concerning the abuses which
then prevailed throughout the country,
which Lindsay of Pitscottie, the amus­
ing historian of these times, has de­
scribed as originating in the over­
grown power of the house of Douglas.
“ Many and innumerable complaints
were given in, whereof the like were
never seen before. There were so
many widows, bairns, and infants,
seeking redress for their husbands,
kindred, and friends, that were cruelly
slain by wicked bloody murderers,
sicklike many for herschip, theft and
reif, that there was no man but he
would have ruth and pity to hear the
same. Shortly, murder, theft, and
slaughter were come in such dalliance
among the people, and the king’s acts
had fallen into such contempt, that no
man wist where to seek refuge, unless
he had sworn himself a servant to some
common murderer or bloody tyrant, to
maintain him contrary to the invasion
of others, or else had given largely of
his gear to save his life, and afford him
peace and rest.” ²

¹ Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, vol.
ii. pp. 32, 33^.
2 Pitscottie’s History of Scotland, p 24.

There can be little doubt that this
dreadful state of things was to be
ascribed as much to the misgovern-
ment of Livingston, and the lawless
dominion of Crichton, as to the evil
example which was afforded by the
Earl of Douglas. On the one hand,
that proud potentate, whilst he kept
at a distance from court, and haughtily
declined all interference with govern­
ment, excused himself by alleging that
the custody of the sovereign and the
management of the state were in the
hands of two ambitious and unprin­
cipled tyrants who had treasonably
possessed themselves of the king’s per­
son, and sanctioned by their example
the outrages of which they complained.
On the other, Livingston and the chan­
cellor, with equal asperity, and more
of the appearance of justice—for, how­
ever unwarrantably, they represented
the supreme authority—complained
that Douglas refused obedience to the
summons of his sovereign; that he
affected a state and magnificence un­
becoming and dangerous in a subject;
and traversed the country with an
army of followers, whose excesses
created the utmost misery and dis­
tress in whatever district he chose to
fix his residence. Both complaints
were true; and Livingston and Crich-
ton soon became convinced that, to
secure their own authority, they must
crush the power of Douglas. For this
purpose, they determined to set spies
upon his conduct, and either to dis­
cover or create some occasion to work
his ruin; whilst, unfortunately for
himself, the prominent points of his
character gave them every chance of
success. He was still a youth, ambi­
tious, violent, and courageous even
to rashness; his rivals united to a
coolness and wariness, which had been
acquired in a long course of successful
intrigues, an energy of purpose and a
cruelty of heart which left no hope
for a fallen enemy. In a contest be­
tween such unequal enemies, the
triumph of the chancellor and Living­
ston might have been easily antici­
pated; but, unfortunately, much ob­
scurity hangs over the history of their
proceedings. In this failure of authen-

1440.]                                              JAMES II.                                                    131

tic evidence, a conjecture may be
hazarded that these crafty statesmen,
by means of the paid flatterers with
whom they surrounded the young earl,
prevailed upon him to express doubts as
to the legitimacy of the title of James
the Second to the throne, and to advo­
cate the pretensions of the children of
Euphemia Ross, the second queen of
Robert the Second. Nor, considering
Douglas’s own descent, was it at all
unlikely that he should listen to such
suggestions.¹ By his mother, Euphe-
mia Graham, the daughter of Patrick,
earl of Strathern, he was descended
from Robert the Second; and his
second queen, Euphemia, countess of
Ross, whose children, notwithstanding
an act of the legislature which declared
the contrary, were disposed to consider
their title to the crown preferable to
any other. It is well known, on the
other hand, that the Earl of Carrick,
the son of Robert the Second, by his
first marriage with Elizabeth More,
was born to that monarch previous to
his marriage with his mother, and that
he succeeded to the crown by the title
of Robert the Third, in consequence
of that legal principle which permits
the subsequent marriage of the parties
to confer legitimacy upon the issue
born out of wedlock. Under these
circumstances, it is not difficult to
imagine that the Earl of Douglas may
have been induced to consider his
mothers brother, Malise, earl of Strath-
ern, as possessed of a more indubit­
able title to the crown than the pre­
sent sovereign, and that a conspiracy
to employ his immense and overgrown
power in reinstating him in his rights
may have been a project which was
broached amongst his adherents, and
carried to the ready ears of his
enemies.² This theory proceeds upon

¹ Douglas’s Peerage, vol. i. p. 428. By his
father, the Earl of Douglas was a near kins­
man of the king, for Douglas’s father was
cousin-german to James the Second, his
mother being a daughter to Robert the Third.

² The reader will perhaps remember that
the injustice of James the First to this noble
youth, in depriving him of the earldom of
Strathern, and the determined purpose of
vengeance which instantly arose in the bosom
of his uncle, Robert Graham, were the causes

the idea that Douglas was inclined to
support the issue of Euphemia Ross,
the queen of Robert the Second, in
opposition to those of his first wife,
who died before his accession to the
throne; whilst, on the other hand, if
the earl considered the title of James
the First as unquestionable, he, as
the grandson of James’s eldest sister,
Margaret, daughter of Robert the
Third, might have persuaded himself
that, upon the failure of James the
Second without issue, he had a specious
claim to the crown. When we take
into consideration the fact that Doug­
las and his brother were tried for
high treason, and remember that when
the young king interceded for them,
Crichton reprimanded him for a desire
to gratify his pity at the expense of
the security of his throne, it is diffi­
cult to resist the inference that in one
or other of these ways the youthful
baron had plotted against the crown.

Having obtained sufficient evidence
of the guilt of Douglas to constitute
against him and his near adherents a
charge of treason, the next object of
his enemies was to obtain possession
of his person. For this purpose the
chancellor Crichton addressed a letter
to him, in which he flattered his
youthful vanity, and regretted, in his
own name and that of the governor
Livingston, that any misunderstanding
should have arisen which deprived the
government of his services. He ex­
pressed, in the strongest terms, their
anxiety that this should be removed,
and concluded by inviting him to
court, where he might have personal
intercourse with his royal kinsman,
where he would be received with the
distinction and consideration befitting
his high rank, and might contribute
his advice and assistance in the man­
agement of the public affairs, and the
suppression of those abuses which then
destroyed the peace of the country.
By this artful conduct, Crichton suc­
ceeded in disarming the resentment,
without awakening the suspicions, of
his opponent; and Douglas, in the
openness of his disposition, fell into

which led directly to the murder of that
monarch.

132                                    HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.                       [Chap. III.

the snare which had been laid for him.
Accompanied by his only brother,
David, his intimate friend and counsel­
lor Sir Malcolm Fleming, and a slender
train of attendants, he proceeded to­
wards Edinburgh, at that moment the
royal residence, and on his road thither
was magnificently entertained by the
chancellor at his castle of Crichton.¹
From thence he continued his journey
to the capital; but before he entered
the town it was observed by some of
the gentlemen who rode in his train
that there appeared to be too many
private messages passing between the
chancellor and the governor; and some
of his counsellors, reminding him of
an advice of his father, that in circum­
stances of danger he and his brother
ought never to proceed together, en­
treated him either to turn back, or at
least send forward his brother and
remain himself where he then was.
Confident, however, in his own opinion,
and lulled into security by the mag­
nificent hospitality of Crichton, Doug­
las rebuked his friends for their sus­
picions; and, entering the city, rode
fearlessly to the castle, where he was
met at the gates by Livingston with
every expression of devotion, and con­
ducted to the presence of his youthful
sovereign, by whom he was treated
with marked distinction.

The vengeance destined to fall upon
the Douglases does not appear to have
been immediate. It was necessary to
secure the castle against any sudden
attack; to find pretences for separat­
ing the earl from his accustomed at­
tendants ; and to make preparations
for the pageant of a trial. During
this interval, he was admitted to an
intimate familiarity with the king;
and James, who had just completed
his tenth year, with the warm and
sudden affection of that age, is said to
have become fondly attached to him :
but all was now ready, and the catas­
trophe at last was deplorably rapid
and sanguinary. Whilst Douglas and
his brother sat at dinner with the
chancellor and Livingston, after a

¹ Auctarium Scotichronici, apud Fordun,
vol. ii. p. 514. Same vol. p. 490. Ferrerius.
p. 302.

sumptuous entertainment, the courses
were removed, and the two youths
found themselves accused, in words of
rude and sudden violence, as traitors
to the state.² Aware, when too late,
that they were betrayed, they started
from the table, and attempted to
escape from the apartment; but the
door was beset by armed men, who,
on a signal from Livingston, rushed
into the chamber, and seized and
bound their victims, regardless of
their indignation and reproaches. It
is said that the youthful monarch
clung around Crichton, and pleaded
earnestly, and even with tears, for his
friends ; yet the chancellor not only
refused to listen, but sharply com­
manded him to cease his intercession
for traitors who had menaced his
throne. A hurried form of trial was
now run through, at which the youth­
ful king was compelled to preside in
person; and, condemnation having
been pronounced, the earl and his
brother were instantly carried to
execution, and beheaded in the back
court of the castle. What were the
precise charges brought against them
cannot now be discovered. That they
involved some expressions which re­
flected upon the right of the sove­
reign, and perhaps embraced a design
for the restoration of the children of
the second marriage of Robert the
Second, from which union Douglas
was himself descended, has been al­
ready stated as the most probable hy­
pothesis in the absence of all authentic
evidence.³ It is certain that three

²  Lesley’s Hist, of Scotland, p. 16. I can­
not follow the example of this writer in
retaining the fable of the bull’s head, which
is unsupported by contemporary history.
Illustrations, H.

³  All the conspiracies against the royal
family of Scotland, from the time of Robert
Bruce to the execution of the Douglases, may
be accounted for by two great objects : the
first which characterises the conspiracy of
David de Brechin against Robert the First,
and that of the Earl of Douglas on the acces­
sion of Robert the Second, was the restoration
of the right of the Baliols in preference to
that of the Bruces ; in other words, the rein­
stating the descendants of the eldest daughter
of David, earl of Huntingdon, brother to King
William the Lion, in their rights, in contra­
distinction to the children of the second
daughter, whom they regarded as having in-

1440-1.]                                          JAMES II.                                                    133

days after the execution, Malcolm
Fleming of Cumbernauld, their con­
fidential friend and adviser, was
brought to trial on a charge of trea­
son, and beheaded on the same ground,
which was still wet with the blood of
his chief.¹

It might have been expected that
the whole power of the house of
Douglas would have been instantly
directed against Livingston and the
chancellor, to avenge an execution
which, although sanctioned by the
formality of a trial, was, from its
secrecy and cruelty, little better than
a state murder. Judging also from
the common course adopted by the
government after an execution for
treason, we naturally look for the con­
fiscation of the estates, and the division
of the family property amongst the
adherents of the governor and the
chancellor; but here we are again
met by a circumstance not easily
explained. James, earl of Avendale,
the grand-uncle of the murdered earl,
to whom by law the greater part of
his immense estates reverted, entered
immediately into possession of them,
and assumed the title of Earl of
Douglas, without question or difficulty.
That he was a man of fierce and de­
termined character had been early
shewn in his slaughter of Sir David
Fleming of Cumbernauld, the father
of the unfortunate baron who now
shared the fate of the Douglases;²
and yet, in an age when revenge was
esteemed a sacred obligation, and
under circumstances of provocation
which might have roused remoter
blood, we find him not only singularly
supine, but, after a short period,
united in the strictest bonds of inti­
macy with those who had destroyed

traded into them. But in addition to this,
a second object arose out of the first and
second marriages of Robert the Second, which
furnished another handle to discontent and
conspiracy. To illustrate this, however,
would exceed the limits of a note. See Illus­
trations, I.

¹ Auchinleck Chronicle, p. 35. In the
charter-chest of the earldom of Wigtown at
Cumbernauld is preserved the “Instrument
of Falsing the Doom of the late Malcolm
Fleming of Biggar.’’ See Illustrations, K.

² Supra, p. 84.

the head of his house. The conjec­
ture, therefore, of an acute historian,
that the trial and execution of the
Earl of Douglas was, perhaps, under­
taken with the connivance and assist­
ance of the next heir to the earldom,
does not seem altogether improbable;
whilst it is difficult to admit the easy
solution of the problem which is
brought forward by other inquirers,
who discover that the uncommon
obesity of the new successor to this
dignity may have extinguished in him
all ideas of revenge.

The death of the Earl of Douglas
had the effect of abridging, for a short
season, the overgrown power of the
family. His French property and
dukedom of Touraine, being a male
fief, returned to the crown of France,
whilst his large unentailed estates in
the counties of Galloway and Wigtown,
along with the domains of Balvenie
and Ormond, reverted to his only
sister Margaret, the most beautiful
woman of her time, and generally
known by the appellation of the Fair
Maid of Galloway. The subsequent
history of this youthful heiress affords
another presumption that the alleged
crime of Douglas, her brother, was not
his overgrown power, but his treason­
able designs against the government;
for within three years after his death
William, earl of Douglas, who had
succeeded to his father, James the
Gross, was permitted to marry his
cousin of Galloway, and thus once
more to unite in his person the im­
mense estates of the family. Euphemia
also, the duchess of Touraine, and the
mother of the murdered earl, soon
after the death of her son, acquired a
powerful protector, by marrying Sir
James Hamilton of Cadyow, after­
wards Lord Hamilton.³
“ In the midst of these proceedings,
which for a time strengthened the au­
thority of Livingston and the chan­
cellor, the foreign relations of the
kingdom were fortunately of the most
friendly character. The intercourse
with England, during the continuance
of the truce, appears to have been

³ Andrew Stewart, Hist, of House of
Stewart, p. 464.

134                                   HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.                       [Chap. III.

maintained without interruption, not
only between the subjects of either
realm, who resorted from one country
to the other for the purposes of com­
merce, travel, or pleasure, but by vari­
ous mutual missions and embassies,
undertaken apparently with the single
design of confirming the good disposi­
tions which subsisted between the two
countries. With France the commu­
nication was still more cordial and
constant; whilst a marriage between
the Princess Isabella, the sister of the
king, and Francis de Montfort, eldest
son to the Duke of Bretagne, increased
the friendship between the two king­
doms. An anecdote, preserved by the
historian of Brittany, acquaints us
with the character of the princess, and
the opinions of John, surnamed the
Good and Wise, as to the qualifications
of a wife. On asking his ambassadors,
after their return from Scotland, what
opinion they had formed regarding the
lady, he received for answer, that she
was beautiful, elegantly formed, and
in the bloom and vigour of health;
but remarkably silent, not so much, as
it appeared to them, from discretion,
as from extreme simplicity. “ Dear
friends,” said John the Good and
Wise, “ return speedily and bring her
to me. She is the very woman I have
been long in search of. By St Nicho­
las ! a wife seems, to my mind, suffi­
ciently acute if she can tell the dif­
ference between her husband’s shirt
and his shirt-ruffle.” ¹

The general commercial prosperity
of the Netherlands, with which Scot­
land had for many centuries carried
on a flourishing and lucrative trade,
had been injured at this time by a
war with England, and by intestine
commotions amongst themselves ; but
with Scotland their commercial rela­
tions do not appear to have experi­
enced any material interruption; and,
although the precise object of his
mission is not discoverable, Thomas,
bishop of Orkney, in 1441, repaired to
Flanders, in all probability for the

¹ See Lobineam, Histoire de Bretagne, pp.
619, 621, for a beautiful portrait of this prin­
cess, taken from an original in the cathedral
church of Vannes.

purpose of confirming the amicable
correspondence between the two coun­
tries, and congratulating them on the
cessation of foreign war and domestic
dissension.² Whilst such were the
favourable dispositions entertained by
England, France, and the Netherlands,
it appears, from the public records,
that the court of Rome was anxious
at this time to maintain a close cor­
respondence with Scotland; and there
is reason for suspecting that the growth
of Lollardism, and the progress of those
heretical opinions for which Resby had
suffered in 1407, and against which
the parliament of James the First di­
rected their censures in 1424, were
the causes which led to the frequent
missions from the Holy See. In 1438,
Andrew Meldrum, a knight of St John
of Jerusalem, paid a visit to the Scot­
tish court on a mission connected with
the good of religion. In the follow­
ing year, Alfonso de Crucifubreis, the
Papal nuncio, obtained a passport for
the purpose of proceeding through
England into Scotland; and, in 1439,
William Croyser, a native of that coun­
try, but apparently resident at Rome,
invested also with the character of
nuncio of the apostolic see, and in
company with two priests of the names
of Turnbull and Lithgow, repaired to
Scotland, where he appears to have
remained, engaged in ecclesiastical ne­
gotiations, for a considerable period.
It is unfortunate that there are no
public muniments which tend to ex­
plain or to illustrate the specific object
of the mission.³

But although threatened with no
dangers from abroad, the accumulated
evils which in all feudal kingdoms
have attended the minority of the
sovereign continued to afflict the coun­
try at home. On the death of his
father, James the Gross, the ability,
the pride, and the power of the house
of Douglas, revived with appalling
strength and vigour in William, the
eighth Earl of Douglas, his son and
successor, inferior in talents and am­
bition to none who had borne the name
before him. By his mother, Lady

² Rotuli Scotiæ, vol. ii. p. 319.

³ Ibid. p. 302-315. Ibid. pp. 311, 317.

1441-3.]                                  JAMES II.                                                     135

Beatrix Sinclair, he was descended
from a sister of King Robert the
Third ;¹ by his father, from the Lady
Christian Bruce, sister of Robert the
First.² His extensive estates gave him
the command of a more powerful army
of military vassals than any other baron
in the kingdom, whilst the situation of
these estates made him almost an
absolute monarch upon the Borders,
which, upon any disgust or offence
offered him by the government, he
could open to the invasion of Eng­
land, or fortify against the arm and
authority of the law. He was sup­
ported also by many warlike and po­
tent lords in his own family, and by
connexion with some of the most an­
cient and influential houses in Scot­
land. His mother, a daughter of the
house of Sinclair, earl of Orkney, gave
him the alliance of this northern
baron; his brothers were the Earls of
Moray and Ormond ; by his married
sisters he was in strict friendship with
the Hays of Errol, the Flemings, and
the Lord of Dalkeith.

The possession of this great influ­
ence only stimulated an ambitious man
like Douglas to grasp at still higher au­
thority; and two paramount objects
presented themselves to his mind, to
the prosecution of which he devoted
himself with constant solicitude, and
which afford a strong light to guide us
through a portion of the history of
the country, hitherto involved in ob­
scurity. The first of these was to
marry the Fair Maid of Galloway, his
own cousin, and thus once more unite
in his person the whole power of the
house of Douglas. The second, by
means of this overwhelming influence,
to obtain the supreme management of
the state as governor of the kingdom,
and to act over again the history of
the usurpation of Albany and the cap­
tivity of James the First. It must
not be forgotten, also, that the heiress
of Galloway was descended, by the
father’s side, from the eldest sister of
James the First, and, by the mother,
from David, earl of Strathern, eldest.
son of Robert the Second by his se-

¹ Douglas’s Peerage, vol. i. p. 429^.
2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 220.

cond marriage. It is not therefore
impossible that, in the event of the
death of James the Second, some
vague idea of asserting a claim to
the crown may have suggested itself
to the imagination of this ambitious
baron.

Upon Livingston and the chancellor,
on the other hand, the plans of Doug­
las could not fail to have an impor­
tant influence. The possession of
such overgrown estates in the hands
of a single subject necessarily rendered
his friendship or his enmity a matter
of extreme importance to these states­
men, whose union was that of fear and
necessity, not of friendship. Both
were well aware that upon the loss of
their offices there would be a brief
interval between their disgrace and
their destruction. Crichton knew that
he was liable to a charge of treason for
the forcible seizure of the king’s per-
son at Stirling; Livingston, that his
imprisonment of the queen and his
usurpation of the government made
him equally guilty with the chancel­
lor; and both, that they had to an­
swer for a long catalogue of crimes, con­
fiscations, and illegal imprisonments,
which, when the day of reckoning at
last arrived, must exclude them from
all hope of mercy. To secure, there­
fore, the exclusive friendship of Doug­
las, and to employ his resources in
the mutual destruction of each other,
was the great object which governed
their policy. In the meantime, the
youthful monarch, who had not yet
completed his thirteenth year, beheld
his kingdom transformed into a stage
on which his nobles contended for the
chief power; whilst his subjects were
cruelly oppressed, and he himself
handed about, a passive puppet, from
the failing grasp of one faction into
the more iron tutelage of a more suc-
cessful party in the state. It is scarcely
possible to conceive a more miserable
picture of a nation, either as it regards
the happiness of the king or of the
people.

It is not therefore surprising that,
soon after this, the state of the
country, abandoned by those who pos­
sessed the highest offices only to con­

136                                   HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.                       [Chap. III.

vert them into instruments of their
individual ambition, called loudly for
some immediate interference and re­
dress. Sir Robert Erskine, who
claimed the earldom of Mar, and
apparently on just grounds, finding
himself opposed by the intrigues of
the chancellor, took the law into his
own hands, and laying siege to the
castle of Kildrummie, carried it by
storm; upon which the king, or rather
his ministers, seized the castle of Alloa,
the property of Erskine. This same
baron, as sheriff of the Lennox, was
Governor of Dumbarton, one of the
strongest fortresses in the kingdom;
but during his absence in the north,
Galbraith of Culcreuch, a partisan of
the Earl of Douglas, with the conniv­
ance of his master, and the secret
encouragement of Crichton, ascended
the rock with a few followers, and
forcing an entrance by Wallace’s tower,
slew Robert Sempill, the captain, and
overpowering the garrison, made them­
selves masters of the place.¹ In the
north, Sir William Ruthven, sheriff of
Perth, attempting, in the execution of
his office, to conduct a culprit to the
gallows, was attacked by John Gorme
Stewart of Athole, at the head of a
strong party of armed Highlanders,
who had determined to rescue their
countryman from the vengeance of the
law. Stewart had once before been
serviceable to government, in employ­
ing the wild freebooters whom he
commanded to seize the traitor Gra­
ham, who, after the murder of James
the First, had concealed himself in the
fastnesses of Athole; but. under the
capriciousness of a feudal government,
the arm which one day assisted the
execution of the law might the next
be lifted up in defiance of its autho­
rity; and Stewart, no doubt, argued
that his securing one traitor entitled
him, when it suited his own conveni­
ence, to let loose another. Ruthven,
however, a brave and determined
baron, at the head of his vassals, re­
sented this interference; and, after a

¹ Auchinleck Chronicle, p. 35. Wallace’s
tower was probably the tower in which Wal­
lace was confined after his capture by Men-

teith.

sanguinary conflict upon the North
Inch of Perth, both he and his fierce op­
ponent were left dead upon the field.²
In the midst of these outrageous
proceedings, the Earl of Douglas, in
prosecution of his scheme for his mar­
riage with the heiress of Galloway,
entered into a coalition with Living­
ston, the king’s governor. Living-
ston’s grandson, Sir James Hamilton
of Cadyow, had married Euphemia,
dowager-duchess of Touraine, the
mother of Douglas’s first wife; and it
is by no means improbable that the
friends of the Maiden of Galloway,
who was to bring with her so noble a
dowry, consented to her union with
the Earl of Douglas upon a promise
of this great noble to unite his in­
fluence with the governor, and put
down the arrogant domination of the
chancellor. The events, at least, which
immediately occurred demonstrate
some coalition of this sort. Douglas,
arriving suddenly at Stirling castle
with a modest train, instead of the
army of followers by which he was
commonly attended, besought and
gained admittance into the royal pre­
sence, with the humble purpose, as he
declared, of excusing himself from any
concern in those scenes of violence
which had been lately enacted at
Perth and Dumbarton. The king, as
was reported, not only received his
apology with a gracious ear, but was
so much prepossessed by his winning
addres3, and his declarations of de­
voted loyalty, that he made him a
member of his privy council, and ap­
pears soon after to have conferred
upon him the office of lieutenant-
general of the kingdom,³ which had
been enjoyed by the first Duke of
Touraine. The consequence of this
sudden elevation of Douglas was the
immediate flight of the chancellor
Crichton to the castle of Edinburgh,
where he began to strengthen the for­
tifications, to lay in provisions, and to

² Auchinleck Chronicle, p. 35.

³ Ibid. p. 36. Lesley’s Hist. p. 17. The
appointment of Douglas to be lieutenant-
general is not founded on certain historical
evidence, but inferred from his subsequent
conduct, and from his subsequent depriva­
tion. Postea, p. 152.

1443-4.]                                          JAMES II.                                                    137

recruit his garrison, as if he contem­
plated a regular siege. To imagine
that this elevation of Douglas was
accomplished by the king, a boy who
had not yet completed his thirteenth
year, would be ridiculous. It was
evidently the work of the governor,
who held an exclusive power over the
king’s person; and it indicated, for
the moment, a coalition of parties,
which might well make Crichton
tremble.

In the meantime, Livingston, plead­
ing his advanced age, transferred to
his eldest son, Sir James, the weighty
charge of the sovereign’s person, and
his government of Stirling castle;
whilst Douglas, in the active exercise
of his new office of lieutenant-general,
which entitled him to summon in the
king’s name, and obtain delivery of
any fortress in the kingdom, assembled
a large military force. At the head
of these troops, and attended by the
members of the royal household and
privy council, he proceeded to the
castle of Barnton, in Mid-Lothian, the
property of the chancellor Crichton,
demanded its delivery in the king’s
behalf, and exhibited the order which
entitled him to make the requisition.
To this haughty demand, the governor
of the fortress, Sir Andrew Crichton,
sent at first a peremptory refusal; but,
after a short interval, the preparations
for a siege, and the display of the
king’s banner, overcame his resolution,
and induced him to capitulate. En­
couraged by this success, Douglas
levelled the castle with the ground,
and summoned the chancellor Crich-
ton, and his adherents, to attend a
parliament at Stirling, to answer be­
fore his peers upon a charge of high
treason. The reply made to this by
the proud baron was of a strictly
feudal nature, and consisted in a raid
or predatory expedition, in which the
whole military vassals of the house of
Crichton broke out with fire and
sword upon the lands of the Earl of
Douglas, and of his adherent, Sir John
Forester of Corstorphine, and inflicted
that sudden and summary vengeance
which gratified the feelings of their
chief, and satisfied their own lust for

plunder.¹ Whilst the chancellor thus
let loose his vassals upon those who
meditated his ruin, his estates were
confiscated in the parliament which
met at Stirling ; his friends and ad­
herents, who disdained or dreaded to
appear and plead to the charges
brought against them, were outlawed,
and declared rebels to the king’s au­
thority ; and he himself, shut up in
the castle of Edinburgh, concentrated
his powers of resistance, and pondered
over the likeliest method of averting
his total destruction.

Douglas, in the meantime, received,
through the influence of the Living­
stons, the reward to which he had
ardently looked forward. A divorce
was obtained from his first countess;
a dispensation arrived from Rome,
permitting the marriage between him­
self and his cousin; and although still
a girl, who had not completed her
twelfth year, the Fair Maid of Gallo­
way² was united to the earl, and the
immense estates which had fallen
asunder upon the execution of Wil­
liam were once more concentrated in
the person of the lieutenant-general
of the kingdom. In this manner did
Livingston, for the purpose of gratify­
ing his ancient feud with the chan­
cellor, lend his influence to the ac­
cumulation of a power, in the hands
of an ambitious subject, which was
incompatible with the welfare of the
state or the safety of the sovereign.

But although the monarch was thus
abandoned by those who ought to have
defended his rights, and the happiness
of the state sacrificed to the gratifica­
tion of individual revenge, there were
still a few honest and upright men to
be found, who foresaw the danger,
and interposed their authority to pre­
vent it; and of these the principal,
equally distinguished by his talents,
his integrity, and his high birth, was

¹  Auchinleck Chronicle, pp. 36, 37.

²  In the dispensation obtained afterwards
for her marriage with her brother-in-law, it
appears that, at the time of her first mar­
riage, she was “infra nubiles annos.” An­
drew Stewart’s Hist. p. 444. The existence
of a first countess of Earl William is shewn
by the “Great Seal, vii. No. 214, under 13th
Oct. 1472 ; and 248, under 22d Jan. 1472-3.'’

138                                   HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.                      [Chap. III.

Kennedy, bishop of St Andrews, a
sister’s son of James the First, and by
this near connexion with the king,
entitled to stand forward as his de­
fender against the ambitious faction
who maintained possession of his per­
son. Kennedy’s rank, as head of the
Scottish Church, invested him with
an authority, to which, amid the
general corruption and licentiousness
of the other officers in the state, the
people looked with reverence and
affection. His mind, which was of the
highest order of intellect, had been
cultivated by a learned and excellent
education, enlightened by foreign
travel, and exalted by a spirit of un­
affected piety. During a residence of
four years at Rome, he had risen into
esteem with the honester part of the
Roman clergy; and, aware of the
abuses which had been introduced,
during the minority of the sovereign,
into the government of the Church—
of the venality of the presentations—
the dilapidation of the ecclesiastical
lands—the appointment of the licen­
tious dependants of the feudal barons
who had usurped the supreme power,
—Kennedy, with a resolution which
nothing could intimidate, devoted his
attention to the reformation of the man­
ners of the clergy, the dissemination
of knowledge, and the detection of all
abuses connected with the ecclesiastical
government. Upon the disgrace of
Crichton, this eminent person was ad­
vanced to the important office of chan­
cellor, which he retained only for a
brief period; and in his double capa­
city of primate and head of the law,
there were few subjects which did not,
in one way or other, come within the
reach of his conscientious and inquir­
ing spirit.

Upon even a superficial examina­
tion of the state of the country, it
required little discernment to discover
that out of the union of the two par­
ties of the Livingstons and the Doug­
lases had already sprung an infinite
multitude of grievances, which weighed
heavily upon the people, and that, if
not speedily counteracted, the further
growth of this coalition might en­
danger the security of the crown, and

threaten the life of the sovereign.
The penetrating spirit of Kennedy
soon detected an alarming confirma­
tion of these suspicions in the assi­
duity evinced by Douglas to draw
within the coalition between himself
and Livingston all the proudest and
most powerful of the feudal families,
as well as in the preference which he
manifested for those to whom the
severity of the government of James
the First had already given cause of
offence and dissatisfaction, and who,
with the unforgiving spirit of feudal
times, transferred to the person of his
son the hatred with which they had
regarded the father. Of this there
was a striking example in a league or
association which Douglas at this
time entered into with Alexander, the
second earl of Crawford, who had
married Mariot de Dunbar, the sister
of that unfortunate Earl of March
whom we have seen stripped of his
ancient and extensive inheritance by
James the First, under circumstances
of such severity, and at best of such
equivocal justice, as could never be
forgotten by the remotest connexions
of the sufferer^.1 When Kennedy ob­
served such associations, indicating in
Douglas a purpose of concentrating
around him, not only the most power­
ful barons, but the most bitter ene­
mies of the ruling dynasty, he at once
threw the whole weight of his autho­
rity and experience into the scale of
the late chancellor, and united cordi­
ally with Crichton in an endeavour to
defeat such formidable purposes. But
he was instantly awakened to the
dangers of such a proceeding by the
ferocity with which his interference
was resented. At the instigation of
the lord-lieutenant, the Earl of Craw­
ford, along with Alexander Ogilvy,
Livingston, governor of Stirling castle,
Lord Hamilton, and Robert Reoch, a
wild Highland chief, assembled an over­
whelming force, and, with every cir­
cumstance of savage and indiscrimi­
nate cruelty, laid waste the lands be­
longing to the bishop, both in Fife
and Angus; leading captive his vassals,

¹ Douglas’s Peerage, vol. i. p. 370. His­
tory, supra, p. 84.

1444-5.]                                         JAMES II.                                                     139

destroying his granges and villages
with fire, and giving up to wide and
indiscriminate havoc the only estates,
perhaps, in the kingdom, which, under
the quiet and enlightened rule of this
prelate, had been reduced under a
system of agricultural improvement.
Kennedy, in deep indignation, in­
stantly summoned the Earl of Craw­
ford to repair the ravages which had
been committed; and finding that the
proud baron disdained to obey, pro­
ceeded, with that religious pomp and
solemnity which was fitted to inspire
awe and terror even in the savage
bosoms of his adversaries, to excom­
municate the earl and his adherents,
suspending them from the services
and the sacraments of religion, and
denouncing, against all who harboured
or supported them, the extremest
curses of the Church.¹ It may give us
some idea of the danger and the hope­
lessness of the task in which the
Bishop of St Andrews now consented
to labour—the reformation of the
abuses of the government—when we
remember that three of the principal
parties engaged in these acts of spolia­
tion were the lieutenant-general of the
kingdom, the governor of the royal
person, and one of the most confiden­
tial members of the king’s privy
council.²

Douglas, in his character of king’s
lieutenant, now assembled the vassals
of the crown, and laid siege to Edin­
burgh castle, which Crichton, who
had anticipated his movements, was
prepared to hold out against him to
the last extremity. The investment
of the fortress, however, continued
only for nine weeks; at the expiration
of which period, the chancellor, who,
since his coalition with the Bishop of
St Andrews and the house of Angus,
was discovered by his adversaries to

¹ Auchinleck Chronicle, p. 39. Robert
Reoch, or Swarthy Robert, was the ancestor
of the Robertsons of Strowan. He had appre­
hended the Earl of Athole, one of the mur­
derers of James the First. He is sometimes
styled Robert Duncanson. See Hist, supra,
p. 92.

² MS. indenture in the possession of Mr
Maule of Panmure, between the king’s coun­
cil, and daily about him, on one part, and
Walter Ogilvy of Beaufort, on the other.

have a stronger party than they were
at first willing to believe, surrendered
the castle to the king, and entered
into a treaty with Livingston and
Douglas, by which he was not only
insured of indemnity, but restored to
no inconsiderable portion of his former
power and influence. ³ There can be
little doubt that the reconciliation of
this powerful statesman with the fac­
tion of Douglas was neither cordial
nor sincere : it was the result of fear
and interest, the two great motives
which influence the conduct of such
men in such times; but from the
friendship and support of so pure a
character as Kennedy, a presumption
arises in favour of the integrity of the
late chancellor, when compared with
the selfish ambition and lawless con­
duct of his opponents.

In the midst of these miserable
scenes of war and commotion, the
queen-mother, who since her marriage
with the Black Knight of Lorn had
gradually fallen into neglect and ob­
scurity, died at the castle of Dunbar.
Her fate might have afforded to any
moralist a fine lesson upon the insta­
bility of human grandeur. A daughter
of the noble and talented house of
Somerset, she was courted by James
the First, during his captivity, with
romantic ardour, in the shades of
Windsor, and in the bloom of beauty
became the queen of this great
monarch. After fourteen years of
happiness and glory, she was doomed
herself to witness the dreadful assassi­
nation of her royal consort; and hav­
ing narrowly escaped the ferocity
which would have involved her in a
similar calamity, she enjoyed, after the
capture of her husband’s murderers, a
brief interval of vengeance and of
power. Since that period, the tumult
of feudal war and the struggles of
aristocratic ambition closed thickly
around her; and losing her influence
with the guardianship of the youthful
monarch, the solitary tie which in­
vested her with distinction, she sunk
at once into the wife of a private
baron, by whom she appears to have
been early neglected, and at last utterly
³ Auchinleck Chronicle, p. 37.

140                                   HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.                      [Chap. III.

forsaken. The latest events in her
history are involved in an uncertainty
which itself pronounces a melancholy
commentary on the depth of the ne­
glect into which she had fallen ; and
we find her dying in the castle of
Dunbar, then in the possession of a
noted freebooter and outlaw, Patrick
Hepburn of Hailes. Whether this
baron had violently seized the queen,
or whether she had willingly sought a
retreat in the fortress, does not appear;
but the castle, soon after her death,
was delivered up to the king by Hep­
burn, who, as a partisan of the house
of Douglas, was pardoned his excesses,
and restored to favour.¹ It was a
melancholy consequence of the inse­
curity of persons and of property in
those dark times, that a widow be­
came the mark or the victim of every
daring adventurer, and by repeated
nuptials was compelled to defend her­
self against the immediate attacks of
licentiousness and ambition.

Upon the death of their mother the
queen, the two princesses, her daugh­
ters, Jane and Eleanor, were sent to
the court of France, on a visit to their
sister, the Dauphiness—anxious, in all
probability, to escape from a country
which was at that moment divided by
contending factions, and where their
exalted rank only exposed them to
more certain danger. On their arrival
in France, however, they found the
court plunged in distress by the death
of the Dauphiness, who seems to have
become the victim of a conspiracy
which, by circulating suspicions against
her reputation, and estranging the
affections of her husband, succeeded
at last in bringing her to an early

¹ Auchinleck Chronicle, p. 37. Douglas’s
Peerage, vol. i. p. 224.

Hepburn was ancestor of the Earl of Both-
well, husband of Mary Queen of Scots. Three
manuscript letters of James the Second are
preserved at Durham, amongst a collection of
original papers belonging to the monastery
of Coldingham. Raines’ Hist, of North Dur­
ham, Appendix, p. 22. One of them, dated
28th April 1446, mentions the "maist tresson-
able takyn of our castell of Dunbar, bernyng
her schippis, slaughtyr, pressonying, oppres­
sion of our peple, and destruction of our land,
and mony other detestabill enormyties and
offence done be Patrick of hepburn, sone till
Adam hepburn of hales, Knycht.”

grave. There is strong evidence of
her innocence in the deep sorrow for
her death expressed by Charles the
Seventh, and his anxiety that the
Dauphin should espouse her sister
Jane, a marriage for which he in
vain solicited a Papal dispensation,
Her husband, afterwards Lewis the
Eleventh, was noted for his craft and
his malignity; and there is little doubt
that even before the slanderous attack
upon her character by Jamet de Tillay,
the neglect and cruelty of the Dau­
phin had nearly broken a heart of
much susceptibility, enfeebled by an
over-devotion to poetry and romance,
and seeking a refuge from the scenes
of domestic suffering in the pleasures
of literary composition, and the pa­
tronage of men of genius. ²

In the meantime, amid a constant
series of petty feuds and tumults,
which, originating in private ambition,
are undeserving the notice of the his­
torian, one, from the magnitude of
the scale on which it was acted, as
well as from the illustrations which it
affords us of the manners of the times,
requires a more particular recital.
The religious house of Arbroath had
appointed Alexander Lindsay, eldest
son of the Earl of Crawford, their
chief justiciar, a man of ferocious
habits, and of great ambition, who,
from the length and bushiness of
his beard, was afterwards commonly
known by the appellation of the
“Tiger, or Earl Beardy.” The pru­
dent monks, however, soon discovered
that the Tiger was too expensive a
protector, and having deposed him
from his office, they conferred it upon
Ogilvy of Innerquharity, an unpar­
donable offence in the eyes of the
Master of Crawford, who instantly

² Berry, Hist, de Charles VII. Duclos III.
20. Paradin, Alliances Genealogiques des
Rois et Princes de Gaule, p. 111. “Mar­
guerite, fille de Jacques, Roy d’Escosse, pre­
mier de ce nom, fut premiere femme de ce
Louis, lui estant encores dauphin, et décéda,
n’ayant eu aucuns enfans, l'an 1445, à Cha­
lons, en Champaigne, auquel lieu fut inhume
son corps en la grand eglise la, ou demeura
jusqu’au regne de Roy Louis, qui le feit lore
apporter en l' Abbaie de Saint Laon de
Thouars, en Poitou, ou il git.'’ See same
work, p. 307.

1445-8.]                                           JAMES II.                                                   141

collected an army of his vassals, for
the double purpose of inflicting ven­
geance upon the intruder and repos­
sessing himself of the dignity from
which he had been ejected. There
can be little doubt that the Ogilvies
must have sunk under this threatened
attack, but accident gave them a
powerful ally in Sir Alexander Seton
of Gordon, afterwards Earl of Huntly,
who, as he returned from court, hap­
pened to lodge for the night at the
castle of Ogilvy, at the moment when
this baron was mustering his forces
against the meditated assault of Craw­
ford. Seton, although in no way
personally interested in the quarrel,
found himself, it is said, compelled to
assist the Ogilvies, by a rude but
ancient custom, which bound the
guest to take common part with his
host in all dangers which might occur
so long as the food eaten under his
roof remained in his stomach.¹ With
the small train of attendants and
friends who accompanied him, he
joined the forces of Innerquharity,
and proceeding to the town of Ar-
broath, found the opposite party
drawn up in great strength on the
outside of the gates. The families
thus opposed in mortal defiance to
each other could number amongst
their adherents many of the bravest
and most opulent gentlemen in the
country; and the two armies exhibited
an imposing appearance of armed
knights, barbed horses, and em­
broidered banners. As the com­
batants, however, approached each
other, the Earl of Crawford, who had
received information of the intended
combat, being anxious to avert it,
suddenly appeared on the field, and
galloping up between the two lines,
was mortally wounded by a soldier,
who was enraged at his interference,
and ignorant of his rank. The event
naturally increased the bitterness of
hostility, and the Crawfords, who
were assisted by a large party of the
vassals of Douglas, infuriated at the
loss of their chief, attacked the Ogil-
vies with a desperation which soon

¹ Lesley, De Rebus Gestis Scotorum, p. 286.
History of Scotland by the same author, p. 18.

broke their ranks, and reduced them
to irreclaimable disorder. Such, how­
ever, was the gallantry of their re­
sistance that they were almost entirely
cut to pieces; and five hundred men,
including many noble barons in Forfar
and Angus, were left dead upon the
field.² Seton himself had nearly paid
with his life the penalty of his ad­
herence to the rude usage of the times;
and John Forbes of Pitsligo, one of his
followers, was slain; nor was the loss
which the Ogilvies sustained in the
field their worst misfortune: for Lind­
say, with his characteris