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James V to Knox, without a blow, but was afterwards captured. It was a rout more disgraceful than Flodden. When the news reached James at Lochmaben, the melancholy which had been growing overwhelmed him, and though he went to bed, he could not rest, and kept exclaiming in reference to Sinclair, ‘Oh, fled Oliver! Is Oliver tane? Oh, fled Oliver!’ Next day, 25 Nov., he returned to Edinburgh, where he remained till the 30th, then, crossing to Fife, went to Halyards, one of the seats of Sir William Kirkcaldy, the treasurer. Sir William's wife, in her husband's absence, tried in vain to comfort him, and after a short stay at Cairny, another castle in Fife, he repaired to Falkland, and took to his bed. On 8 Dec. Mary of Guise gave birth to Mary Stuart at Linlithgow. This news he treated as the last blow of adverse fate, and exclaimed, ‘The Devil go with it. It will end as it began. It came with a lass, and will go with a lass.’ He spoke few sensible words after, and died on 16 Dec., and was buried at Holyrood. After his death a will was produced by Beaton, under which the cardinal, Huntly, Argyll, and Moray were named regents, but the condition in which James had been since he came to Falkland gave rise to the suspicion reported by Knox and Buchanan that he had signed a blank paper put into his hands by Beaton. The original document, dated 14 Dec. 1542, was discovered by Sir William Fraser among the Duke of Hamilton's manuscripts at Hamilton Palace (cf. Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. pt. vi. pp. 205–6;, Cardinal Beaton, 1891; Athenæum, June and July 1891).

Besides his only lawful surviving child, Mary Stuart, he left seven known bastards: by Elizabeth Shaw of Sauchie, James, the pupil of Buchanan, who became abbot of Kelso and Melrose and died in 1558; by Margaret Erskine, daughter of the fifth Lord Erskine, who afterwards married Sir James Douglas of Lochleven, James Stewart, earl of Moray (1533–1570) [q. v.], well known as the Regent Moray; by Euphemia, daughter of Lord Elphinstone, Robert, sometimes called Lord Robert Stewart, afterwards prior of Holyrood and Earl of Orkney; by Elizabeth, daughter of Lord Carmichael, John, prior of Coldingham, who was father of Francis Stewart Hepburn, fifth earl of Bothwell [q. v.], and Janet, who married the Earl of Argyll; by Elizabeth Stewart, daughter of John, earl of Lennox, Adam, who became prior of the Carthusian house at Perth; and by Elizabeth Beaton, a child whose name is not known (Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. pt. viii. p. 92). The bishops, according to Knox, encouraged his amours, and the pope certainly legitimated his natural children, and promoted some of them while still minors to church benefices.

James's face was oval, his quick eyes a bluish grey, his nose aquiline, his hair red, his mouth small, his chin weak for a man, his figure good, his height about the middle size. Both Leslie and Buchanan note his good looks, and from him, rather than Mary of Guise, Mary Stuart inherited her fatal beauty. Portraits are at Windsor Castle and Castle Fraser, and two others belong to the Marquis of Hartington. Buchanan also credits him with great activity and a sharp wit, insufficiently cultivated by learning, and notes that he seldom drank wine, that he was covetous from the parsimony of his early life, and licentious from the bad guidance of his guardians, who tolerated his vices that they might keep him under their own control. His licentiousness hastened the coming, and gave a tone to the character, of the Scottish reformation. A great number of his letters and speeches have been preserved. He had some of his ancestors' literary tastes, but the ascription to him of ‘Christis Kirk on the Green’ and a few songs cannot be accepted. His character had two sides: one shows him as the promoter of justice, the protector of the poor, the reformer of ecclesiastical abuses, the vigorous administrator who first saw the whole of his dominions, and brought them under the royal sceptre; the other exhibits him as the vindictive monarch, the oppressor of the nobles, the tool of the priests, the licentious and passionate man whose life broke down in the hour of trial. John Knox, with all his prejudices, describes him in language which comes nearest the facts. ‘Hie was called of some a good poore mans king; of otheris hie was termed a murtherare of the nobilitie, and one that had decreed thair hole destructioun. Some praised him for the repressing of thyft and oppressioun; otheris dispraised him for the defoulling of menis wiffis and virgines. And thus men spak evin as affectionis led thame. And yitt none spack all together besydis the treuth: for a parte of all these foresaidis war so manifest that as the verteuis could nott be denyed, so could nott the vices by any craft be clocked.’

[Buchanan, James's senior by six years, and Bishop Leslie, his junior by fifteen, give contemporary views of his life and reign as seen from opposite points. Their Histories, and the publication of the State Papers, both Domestic and Foreign, afford more complete materials for his life than exist for any prior Scottish king. Buchanan, Leslie, and Knox's Histories are the primary authorities, and require to be compared and tested by the Record sources, the Acts of Parliament, Exchequer Rolls, and the Epistolæ