Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 15.djvu/369

 a rich Scottish noble made even some little stir in Rome. The celebration of the jubilee was the ostensible object of his journey, but the time to which his safe-conduct extended gives countenance to the opinion that the relations between him and the king had already become strained. Boece, followed by Pitscottie and other historians, expressly accuses Douglas of great oppression, and the neglect to restrain the thefts and robberies of his Annandale vassals. In the border-country he was more like a prince than a subject, so that the people doubted whether they should call themselves the king's or Douglas's men.

Douglas, who was accompanied to Rome by his brother and heir, James, left as his procurator or representative in Scotland his youngest brother John, lord Balveny. He was well received on the continent, where the name of Douglas was celebrated through the services of his predecessors, the Dukes of Touraine, in the French wars. On his return to England in February 1451 he was met by Garter king-at-arms, who attended him during his stay. His absence gave an opportunity to the king, moved by the Crichtons and other nobles hostile to the Douglases, and an attempt was made to curb their power. The Earl of Orkney was sent to Galloway and Clydesdale to collect the king's rents and repress the disorders of these turbulent parts of the kingdom. Lord Balveny was specially ordered to answer the complaints made against himself. The king's commands being treated with contempt, he went in person to Galloway, and according to Pitscottie garrisoned Lochmaben with royal troops, and cast down the castle of Douglas; but the more trustworthy manuscript of Law restricts the king's action to the overthrow of the minor stronghold of Douglas Crag in Ettrick Forest shortly after the earl's return in April. The castle of Douglas was certainly not destroyed, for it was still standing in 1452. Soon after his return he made his submission to the king, and being again received with favour was named as warden of the marches, one of the commissioners to treat with English commissioners regarding violations of the truce. A series of charters granted during or shortly after the parliament which met in Edinburgh on 25 June 1451, when the earl was present, restored to him his estates, and remitted all penalties or forfeitures under which he lay; but the earldom of Wigton, including the lands west of the water of Cre, were excepted. ‘All gud Scottis men,’ says the chronicle of James's reign, ‘war rycht blyth of this accordance.’ Four months later, in October, at a parliament held in Stirling, the earldoms of Wigton and Stewarton, Ayrshire, also excepted from the former charters, were restored. But the peace between the sovereign and his too powerful subject was hollow.

The earl and Crichton, if we can credit Pitscottie's rambling narrative, plotted against each other's lives, and though both escaped their enmity was deadly. Douglas's brother James had gone to England in connection with a treasonable intrigue. A still more formidable bond was made or renewed between him and the great earls of the north, Crawford, Ross, and his brother Moray, for mutual defence against all enemies, not excepting the king. The occasions for the final rupture between Douglas and James are detailed by more than one historian. The lands of Sir John Herries were ravaged and Sir John hanged by the earl in defiance of the king. McLellan, the tutor of Bomby, one of the earl's Galloway vassals, having taken the king's side, was imprisoned, and when his kinsman, Sir Patrick Gray, was sent to demand his release the earl, while entertaining Sir Patrick at dinner, caused McLellan to be beheaded, and then showing the corpse told Sir Patrick, ‘You are come a little too late; yonder is your sister's son lying, but he wants his head. Take his body and do with it what you will,’ on which Sir Patrick rode off, vowing vengeance, saving his own life only by his horse's speed. Such brutal incidents were common at this time. They stain the record of the Douglases more frequently than that of other families, because they were so long the most conspicuous nobles, and by turns the actors or the victims of such tragedies. Few things are more astonishing than the suddenness of the alternations. It is due in part to the fragmentary character of the Scottish annals, which often leaves causes unexplained, and also to the rapid revolution of the wheel of fortune in Scotland at this period. Douglas, within a few months after the murder of McLellan, came with a few attendants, under a safe-conduct signed by James, and all the lords with him, to the castle of Stirling on the Monday before Fastern's Eve, 21 Feb. 1452. He was received with apparent hospitality and bidden to dine and sup with the king on the following day. After supper, ‘at seven hours,’ the king, being in the inner chamber of the castle lodgings, charged the earl to break the bond he had made with the Earl of Crawford. On his refusal James, according to the graphic narrative of the chronicle, said: ‘“Fals traitor, sen you will nocht I sall,” and start sodanly till him with ane knyfe and strake him at the colar and down in the body, and thai sayd that Patrick Gray strak out his harness and syn the gentilmen that war with the king strak him ilk ane a strak or twa with knyffis. And