Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/272

 for the loss of a royal ship, the Yellow Carvel, which had been taken by the Duke of Gloucester's May Flower, and for another vessel of the laird of Luss taken by Lord Grey.

The last seven years of the life of Albany are crowded with romance and tragedy. The contrast in the character and ambition of the three brothers of the royal house (James III, Albany, and the Earl of Mar) burst into full light; the Scottish court became the scene of fratricidal strife and the country of revolution. Albany's offices and lands on the marches brought him into conflict with the two most powerful barons of the borders, Hepburn and Hume [see, third and first ;  or , first ]. Probably towards the end of 1479 the hostility latent in their character and fomented by their advisers broke out. Both sides attributed the rupture to magical arts. Albany fortified Dunbar against the royal forces, and both he and his brother, the Earl of Mar, were seized by the king's command. Mar, committed to Craigmillar, soon after died [see ]. Albany was put in ward in the castle of Edinburgh. His escape was accompanied or magnified by incidents which seized the popular imagination. A French ship in the Forth succeeded in sending him two casks of malmsey which had stowed in them, wrapped in wax, a paper with secret instructions and a ‘tow’ or rope. Albany invited the captain of the castle to share the wine, and, when he had partaken of it too freely, aided by a chamber child or valet, slew him and three of his guard, whose bodies were cast into the fire. The chamber child let himself down with the rope over the castle wall. It proved too short, and he fell and broke his thigh. Albany, forewarned, used his sheets to lengthen it and, reaching the ground, carried the child on his back to a place of safety, and, himself escaping to Newhaven, near Leith, boarded the French ship, which carried him to France. He arrived in Paris in September 1479, and was received by order of Louis XI at the gate of St. Antoine by M. de Gancourt as royal lieutenant, and lodged at the king's expense at the Sign of the Coq, in the Rue St.-Martin, with a Scottish denizen, Monypenny, seigneur de Concressault, to attend him. His marriage with Anne, daughter of the Comte d'Auvergne et de Boulogne, was celebrated on 10 Feb. 1480. Before May 1482 he crossed to England in the Mickle Carvel, a vessel in the service of Edward IV, and from this time his life was spent in a treasonable alliance with that king and intrigues with his own countrymen to acquire his brother's crown at the price of the independence of Scotland.

On 10 June 1482 Albany made a treaty with Edward at Fotheringay to do homage and to transfer Berwick to the English king, and fourteen days after he was conducted to Edinburgh. Edward undertook to warrant Scotland to Albany against James, and to give his daughter Cecilia, though already contracted to the infant son of James, in marriage to Albany if he could clear himself ‘from all other women,’ a curious expression which perhaps indicates that his first marriage required full legal dissolution. The English army, sixty thousand strong, under Gloucester and Albany, was, in execution of the agreement, summoned to Alnwick early in July 1482. Albany assumed the humiliating title, which recalls John Baliol, of ‘king’ of Scotland by the gift of the king of England, and the nobles who favoured him, headed by Angus Bell-the-Cat [see, fifth ], met at the kirk of Lauder, hanged Cochrane and other royal favourites over the bridge, and seized the person of the king. Gloucester and Albany now marched through the Merse and Lothian to Edinburgh, burning the villages on their way, and Berwick surrendered to Thomas, lord Stanley (afterwards first Earl of Derby) [q. v.] on 24 Aug.

Meantime a change had taken place at Edinburgh. The Scottish nobles who had possession of the king were willing to acknowledge Albany, but wanted to ignore Gloucester. In the beginning of August Albany and Gloucester, with the English army, lay at Lethington, near Haddington. James was in the castle of Edinburgh under the custody of his uncles, the Earls of Atholl and Buchan. The king's supporters, of whom the chief were Andrew Stewart, Lord Avandale, the chancellor [q. v.], the bishops of St. Andrews and Dunkeld, and the Earl of Argyll, still held the town. On 2 Aug. they agreed to obtain the restoration of Albany to his lands and offices if he would promise to be faithful to King James. Albany accepted the offer, and left Gloucester's camp for Edinburgh on the following day, but before he left took an oath in Gloucester's presence that he would perform all he had promised to King Edward at Fotheringay. A proclamation was at once issued in the name of James in Edinburgh appointing Albany lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and summoning the lieges to meet at Cranshaws, a hamlet and fortress of the Lammermuirs in Berwickshire, and raise the siege both of Edinburgh and Berwick.