Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 29.djvu/136

James I of Northumberland and his grandson, young Henry Percy, Hotspur's son, driven into exile after the defeat of Shrewsbury, and the two boys were perhaps for a short time educated together. The aged and infirm king Robert, apprehensive that Albany might treat James like his brother, determined to send him to France. Embarking at the Bass Rock along with the Earl of Orkney, a bishop (according to Walsingham), and young Alexander Seton (afterwards Lord Gordon), their vessel was intercepted off Flamborough Head by an English ship of Cley in Norfolk. The bishop escaped; the prince, Orkney, and Seton were sent to Henry IV in London, who released Orkney and Seton, but detained James and his squire, William Gifford. There is discrepancy in the date assigned, both by earlier and later historians, for the capture of James. The ‘Kingis Quair,’ his own poem, implies that it was in the spring of 1404, when he was ten, or about three years past the state of innocence, i.e. the age of seven. Wyntoun suggests 12 April 1405, which Pinkerton, Irving, and Professor Skeat in his edition of the ‘Kingis Quair’ adopt. But in that case the capture would have been in most flagrant defiance of a truce which had been agreed to by Henry till Easter 1405. And Walsingham, the St. Albans chronicler, is probably more correct in assigning the event to 1406. Northumberland, who came to St. Andrews before the prince left, certainly did not reach Scotland till June 1405, and Bower states that Robert III, who is known to have died on 4 April 1406, barely survived the news of his son's capture. Mr. Burnett and Mr. W. Hardy adopt the later date, and place the capture about 14 Feb. 1406. The English records state that the first payment to the lieutenant of the Tower for the expenses of the son of the Scotch king was on 10 Dec., in respect of cost incurred from 6 July 1406, but the entries are too incomplete to prove there was no earlier payment.

For nineteen years the life of James was spent in exile under more or less strict custody. His ransom—always an item in the calculations of the English exchequer, exhausted by the French war—made his life safer than at home in the neighbourhood of an ambitious uncle and turbulent nobles. His education was carefully attended to, and improved a naturally vigorous mind. He became an expert in all manly and knightly exercises. We learn from the recent publication of English and Scottish records that he was at first confined in the Tower of London, where his expenses were allowed for at the rate of 6s. 8d. a day and 3s. 4d. for his suite, from 6 July 1406 to 10 June 1407. On that day the constable was ordered to deliver him and Griffin, son of Owen Glendower, to Richard, lord de Grey, in whose charge he was placed at Nottingham Castle, where he remained from 12 June 1407 till the middle of July. He was then removed to Evesham, where he continued at least down to 16 July 1409. In 1412 he appears to have visited Henry IV, and there is a holograph letter by him in the same year, by which he granted, or promised, lands to Sir W. Douglas of Drumlanrig, dated at Croydon, where he was probably the guest of his kinsman, Thomas Arundel [q. v.], archbishop of Canterbury.

One of the first acts of Henry V, the day after his father's death on 20 March 1413, was to recommit James to the custody of the constable of the Tower, along with the Welsh prince and his cousin, Murdoch, earl of Fife, who had been a prisoner in England since the battle of Homildon Hill. On 3 Aug. the three were ordered to be transferred to Windsor Castle. Throughout his reign Henry V treated James well, hoping through his influence to detach the Scots from the French alliance. But the constable of the Tower continued to receive payments for his expenses down to 14 Dec. 1416. On 22 Feb. 1417, after James was twenty-one, Sir John Pelham was appointed his governor, with an allowance of 700l. a year, and leave to take him to certain places. Windsor was henceforth his principal residence. After 1419 there are traces of small personal payments to James himself. The victory of Agincourt, in 1415, placed another illustrious captive in Henry's hands, Charles of Orleans, about the same age as James, and, like him, of bright intellect and poetic tastes. It has been assumed rather than proved that they were fellow-prisoners at Windsor. It is more likely that they were kept apart. In 1420 Henry was engaged in his final struggle with France, and during May, June, and July James received sundry sums towards his equipment for the French war. He sailed from Southampton in July, and joined Henry at the siege of Melun. Henry failed to detach the Scots then fighting for France. They declined to acknowledge a king who was a prisoner, and he refused, for the same reason, to claim their allegiance.

Melun capitulated after a brave resistance of four months, and James suffered the ignominy of seeing his countrymen who had taken part in the defence hanged as rebels. He was present at the triumphal entry of Henry into Paris on 1 Dec. 1420. In the beginning of the following year James went with Henry to Rouen, where he appears to have remained, during Henry's absence in England, from 3 Feb. till the middle of June. The defeat of