Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/517

Rh STUARTS TO JAMES IV.] SCOTLAND 495 who received office at the commencement of the reign one of the foremost was Robert Boyd of Kilmarnock, the justiciar. Boyd determined to play the part of Livingstone in the last reign, and usurp the supreme power by seizing the person of the king. Bonds with this object were entered into between him, Fleming of Cumbernauld, Lord Kennedy, a brother of the bishop, and others. While holding a court at Linlithgow James was carried off to Edinburgh by Boyd. Kennedy made a feint to save him by seizing his bridle, but was overpowered ; perhaps the attempt was real, for Kennedy afterwards separated from the Boyds. In parliament Boyd went through the form of asking pardon of the young king in presence of the estates, and was immediately entrusted with the custody of the royal person (October 1466) and that of his brothers Albany and Mar, as well as the fortresses of the kingdom. Next year he was made chamberlain, which gave him control of the revenue. The marriage of his son Thomas, created earl of Arran, with the king's sister Mary, marked the height of his ambition. The fall of Boyd, as sudden as his rise, whom with his brother Alexander James at first favoured, was due to the same cause as that of Livingstone, the king's marriage and his desire when major to assert his independence. Negotiations for an English match having fallen through, an alliance with a Norwegian prin- cess was determined on, and an embassy sent to Norway by parliament. Christian of Denmark and Norway readily assented. He promised his daughter a dowry of 60,000 florins, besides a surrender of the claim of arrears of the annual payment for the Hebrides. But, as it was incon- venient to pay the dowry, both the Orkneys and the Shetlands were mortgaged to Scotland, and have remained ever since under the Scottish crown. Two years later (July 1469) the princess Margaret arrived in Scotland, when the marriage took place. Arran on his arrival at Leith with the king's bride received a message from his wife warning him that James had conceived a great hatred against him; accordingly he fled to Denmark. In the parliament his father and his uncle, Sir Alexander Boyd, were attainted. The chamberlain saved himself by flight ; Sir Alexander was executed. The specific charge made was the seizure of the king's person ; but a general clause had reference to the immense estates they had annexed. The king's sister, divorced from Arran, was married to Lord Hamilton, who thus laid the foundation of a family whose head more than once aspired to the crown. The refusal of parliament in 1473 to sanction the pro- posed passage of James to France, to aid Louis XI. against Charles the Bold, on the score of the expense and risk, was the first indication of the difference between the king and the nobility which led to the disasters of the close of his reign. The parliament of 1476 took a bolder step. At its adjournment it committed its whole powers to certain members, of whom the duke of Albany and the earl of Mar, the king's brothers, were the principal, a measure which indicated a want of confidence in the king. He had shown himself, like Louis XL, disposed to govern by new men who owed their elevation to himself, a policy which alienated the aristocracy. Of these favourites the chief were Robert Cochrane, originally, it was said, a mason, who proved himself a skilful architect ; Roger, an English musician ; and Andrews, a physician, who dealt in astrology, all able to gratify tastes of James. There were besides a few young men of birth who gained favour by flattery or other arts. Cochrane became all powerful and disgusted the nobles by sumptuousness and arrogance, and the people by debasing the coin. He succeeded, it was reported, by relating a, prophecy that a lion should be devoured by its whelps, in producing in the king's mind an aversion to his brothers, whose characters and knightly accomplishments made them popular. James seized Mar 1406-1488. and sent him to Craigmillar castle. He soon after died (1479) in Edinburgh under circumstances which gave rise to suspicion of foul play. The gift to Cochrane of the vacant earldom or its revenues strengthened the suspicion of his complicity. Albany, committed to Edinburgh castle (1480), escaped to Dunbar and thence to France. He there married Anne de la Tour d'Auvergne, whose son was the regent Albany in the reign of James V. Failing to induce Louis to do more than urge his restoration, two years afterwards he quitted France and at Fotheringay entered into a treaty (1482) with Edward IV., by which, in return for the empty title of Alexander IV., he owned the subjection of the country to England and made other humiliating promises. Supported by the earl of Gloucester and the exiled earl of Douglas, Albany laid siege to Ber- wick, while James collected his forces on the Boroughmuir of Edinburgh and advanced to Lauder. There the chief nobles, indignant at the favour shown to Cochrane, mutinied, and, led by Angus, who then acquired his name of " Bell the Cat," seized Cochrane and some of the other favourites of James and hanged them before his eyes. Berwick fell and was never afterwards recovered by the Scots. The nobles, distrusting Angus, who had made secret terms with Albany and the English king, were induced by Schivas, the archbishop of St Andrews, to effect a reconciliation between the king and his brother, who received the vacant earldom of Mar and for a little became chief minister. A parliament in December ap- pointed Albany lieutenant-general, but his continued in- trigues with the English king being discovered he was attainted for treason and fled to England (1483), and thence to France. James had now a brief period of peace, during which the revolutions in England freed him from the danger of war in that quarter. New matrimonial projects were tried. It was proposed that the prince of Scotland should marry a niece of Richard III., Anne de la Pole, daughter of the duke of Suffolk, and after Richard's deposition a marriage with Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV., was suggested. On the death of Queen Margaret James himself made an offer for the hand of the widow of Edward IV. Such proposals, though abortive, were signs of a better understanding between the two countries, or at least between their sovereigns. When the rebellion broke out in the following year the nobles and James accused each other of treasonable correspondence with England, but no assistance was got by either, for England was still scarcely released from its own civil war. In 1487 the greater part of the Scottish barons rose in arms. James had abandoned himself to another favourite, Sir John Ramsay, whose life had been spared at Lauder. The chiefs of the party were the earls of Angus and Argyll, Blackadder, bishop of Glasgow, and the Homes and Hep- burns, powerful barons on the border. Having seized the person of the young prince, whom they already desig- nated king, they pretended to act in his name. James retreated to Aberdeenshire, for the northern barons still adhered to him. Father and son, at the head of their respective forces, first met at Blackness (May 1488) on the Forth, where a pacification was agreed to on terms which showed the king's party was the weaker. In the following month the rebellion was renewed and the king was slain at Sauchie (llth June), within sight of Bannockburn. He was buried at Cambuskenneth, being only thirty-five years of age. He did not fall, like his father, through the strength of the nobles, for they were much divided, and he commenced his independent reign master of the situation. The Wars of the Roses gave him an oppor- tunity, which he missed, of strengthening his kingdom in relation to England, whose monarchs adopted a new attitude