Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 15.djvu/274

 preserved to have been less vigorous than that of his father; possibly his illness in 1424 and his death from fever point to a constitution naturally feeble, or enfeebled by the hardships of the French war. The panegyric of the family historian, Hume of Godscroft, that his only fault was that he did not sufficiently restrain the oppression of the men of Annandale, appears to corroborate this conclusion. But the absence of records and the confusion of the period of Scottish history which preceded and succeeded the death of James I, permit only a hypothetical judgment.

[The Chronicle of Monstrelet, the Scottish Chronicles of Bower, the Book of Pluscarden, and Major's History are the original sources. Boece and the historians who followed him are untrustworthy, nor can Hume of Godscroft be relied on. The modern historians Pinkerton, Tytler, and Burton differ in their estimates. Sir W. Fraser's Douglas Book and Mr. Burnett's prefaces to the Exchequer Records give the most recent views and the fullest narrative of the facts known as to this earl's life.]  DOUGLAS, ARCHIBALD, fifth, ‘the Great Earl’ (Bell-the-cat) (1449?–1514), was eldest son of George, fourth earl [q. v.], and Isabel, daughter of Sir John Sibbald of Balgony in Fifeshire. When a boy he had been betrothed to Lady Katherine Gordon, daughter of the Earl of Huntly, but this marriage did not take place, and early in the reign of James III, before May 1465, he married Elizabeth, daughter of Robert, lord Boyd, chancellor of Scotland. This connection, probably one of ambition, did not fulfil its promise, for it was soon followed by the fall of the Boyds from the power they had suddenly acquired at the commencement of the new reign. Perhaps their fall may account for the fact that the Earl of Angus, notwithstanding his own high rank and abilities, was slow in reaching any prominent position either at the court or in the country. He was present in parliament, however, in 1469, 1471, 1478, and 1481, and served in the latter years on the committee of the articles. In 1479, when he was absent from parliament, he was engaged in a raid upon Northumberland, during which Bamborough was burnt. In April 1481 he was appointed warden of the east marches, and succeeded in holding Berwick with a small garrison against the English. When James III was estranged from his brothers by the influence of his favourite Cochrane, Albany entered into an alliance with Edward IV; Angus and his father-in-law, Huntly, as well as many other nobles, took part in it. The English, under the Duke of Gloucester, the king's brother, accompanied by Albany and the Earl of Douglas, besieged Berwick, and James III, having collected a large force, marched to oppose them. While at Lauder, the Scottish nobles, incensed at the insolence of Cochrane [q. v.], who had assumed the title of Mar, and governed the king, mutinied in the camp. According to the well-known story, Lord Gray told the fable of the mice, who strung a bell round the neck of their enemy the cat, to warn them of its approach, and when the question was raised ‘Who will bell the cat?’ Angus declared that he would, from which ‘Bell-the-Cat’ became his by-name. The nobles had met in the church of Lauder, and Cochrane having tried to break in, Sir Robert Douglas of Lochleven, who kept the door, asked who it was that knocked so rudely, and being answered ‘The Earl of Mar,’ Angus, who with others came to the door, pulled the gold chain from Cochrane's neck, saying, ‘a tow [i.e. a rope] would suit him better.’ Douglas of Lochleven then seized his hunting-horn, which was topped with gold and had a beryl on the point, and said ‘he had been a hunter of mischief over long;’ Cochrane exclaimed in alarm, ‘My lords, is it mows [a jest] or earnest?’ to which they replied, ‘It is good earnest, and so thou shalt find.’ Their acts corresponded to their words. Cochrane and his chief associates were hung over the bridge of Lauder in sight of the king; Cochrane, in derision, with a rope of hemp, a little higher than the rest, ‘that he might be an example,’ says Hume of Godscroft, ‘to all simple mean persons not to climb so high and intend to great things at court as he did.’ The king was taken as a prisoner to Edinburgh, and treated with apparent courtesy, but all real power remained in the hands of the nobles. James procured his deliverance by making terms with Albany, and it would seem with Angus, who joined the party of Albany after he came to Edinburgh, and was present at the parliament in December 1482, over which Albany presided. In January 1483 Albany sent Angus on one of his commissions to the English court. They negotiated a treaty with Edward IV, by which the surrender of Berwick to England was sanctioned.

Albany was to obtain the Scottish crown by English aid, and Angus on his part undertook to keep the peace in the east and middle marches, and to fulfil the provisions of a separate agreement between him and the Earl of Douglas, by which Douglas was to be restored on certain terms to his Scottish estates.

The events which follow are difficult to trace in regard to Angus, but it seems probable that he continued to act in concert with 