Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 29.djvu/159

James IV of Scotland have been preserved. One, in the diptych, now at Holyrood, represents him as a boy praying by the side of his father; and another, with a falcon on his wrist, formerly in the royal English collection, is at Keir. A third, attributed to Holbein, is in the possession of the Marquis of Lothian; it represents James holding a Marguerite daisy in his right hand. A fourth painting of 1507, and supposed to represent James IV, is the property of the Hon. Mrs. Maxwell-Scott. No copy of the medal he struck just before Flodden is now known to exist.

Flodden is a deeper stain than Sauchieburn on the memory of James. He was the chief author of the defeat, which his country never recovered till the union of the crowns of England and Scotland in the person of his great-grandson. A large share of the misery of Scotland during the interval must be attributed to his decision to side with France against England, and to his incompetence as a general. Yet he had the chivalry of a knight-errant and the courage of a soldier. He was a wise legislator, an energetic administrator, and no unskilful diplomatist, a patron of learning, the church, and the poor. Scotland under him advanced in civilisation, and became from a second- almost a first-class power.

The elegant latinity of James's diplomatic letters (Letters of Richard III and Henry VII), of which many are still in manuscript in the Advocates' Library and British Museum, is probably due to the scholarship of Patrick Panther, royal secretary during the greater part of the reign, and not to James, who cannot himself, as Mr. Brewer surmises (Henry VIII, i. 28), have been a pupil of Erasmus, though he entrusted the education of his bastard son Alexander, the archbishop, to the great humanist. But at no period was the Scottish court more friendly to literature and education. The chief authors were Henry the Minstrel [q. v.], Robert Henryson [q. v.], William Dunbar [q. v.], and Gavin Douglas [q. v.], besides a crowd of minor minstrels, one of whom, ‘Great Kennedy,’ was apparently counted the equal of Dunbar. History, as distinguished from mere chronicles, was beginning [cf. ; ; and ]. The statute of 1504, which required all barons and freeholders to send their sons to grammar schools till they had perfect Latin, and then to the university, marks the royal interest in education. William Elphinstone [q. v.], bishop of Aberdeen, founded the university in his town, and James gave his name to King's College. James's personal prediction was perhaps more for science than literature. He amused himself with the astrology and practised the imperfect surgery then in vogue. A professorship of medicine was instituted at Aberdeen, and more than one surgeon was in the royal pay. His dabbling in the black arts unfortunately made him a prey to impostors, one of whom, Damian, the abbot of Tungland, who pretended to fly, and obtained large sums to experiment on the quintessence, has been pilloried in Dunbar's verse. Another of the king's favourite pursuits was the tournament, already passing out of fashion in England, but never celebrated with more pomp in Scotland than at James IV's marriage, that of Perkin Warbeck, and the reception of D'Aubigny. The morality of James's court was as low as that of the Tudor kings, and its coarseness was less veiled.

James's personal faults infected his regal virtues. Inconstancy rendered him infirm as a general. Extravagance impoverished the exchequer. Obstinacy deprived him of wise counsellors, and pride exposed him, though not to the same extent as his father, to flatterers. His superstition placed him too much in the hands of a bad class of ecclesiastics. But with all these faults, he continued popular with the commons. The nobles were his natural enemies, as of all the Stewarts, but he controlled them better than any of his house, as the death-roll of Flodden proves. Dunbar, though he obtained no preferment and his satires had no effect, remained his friend. Sir David Lindsay observed him with the closeness of a courtier, and although himself a reformer, speaks of him, like Erasmus and Ayala, in terms of panegyric.

The Treasurer's Accounts, Exchequer Rolls, and Acts of Parliament, the letters of James IV in Ruddiman's Epistolæ Regum Scotorum, supplemented by Mr. Gairdner's additions in the Letters of Richard III and Henry VII, the documents printed in Pinkerton's Appendix, and the poems of William Dunbar (Scottish Text Soc. ed.) are the original authorities. Major is a contemporary, but tantalisingly meagre. Buchanan, Leslie, and Lindsay of Pitscottie are separated only by one generation.] 

JAMES V (1512–1542), king of Scotland, the only son who survived infancy of James IV [q. v.] and Margaret (Tudor) [q. v.], was born at Linlithgow on Easter eve, 10 April 1512, and christened on Easter day by the name of ‘Prince of Scotland and the Isles.’ The title had been borne by two elder brothers, James and Arthur. The date is fixed by letters from James IV to his uncle, Hans of Denmark, and his queen announcing the happy event. David Lindsay, the poet, an usher at court, who seems at first to have