friendship with England, and closely allied with the French king: he was adored by the people, who enjoyed unusual security and happiness under his administration: and all his acquisitions, however fatal to the body of the nobles, had been gained by attacks upon individuals; were obtained by decisions of law, and, being founded on circumstances peculiar to the persons who suffered, might excite murmurs and apprehensions, but afforded no colourable pretext for a general rebellion. It was not so with the next attempt which the king made. Encouraged by the facility with which he had hitherto advanced, he ventured upon a measure that irritated the whole body of the nobility, and which the events show either to have been entered into with too much precipitancy, or to have been carried on with too much violence. The father of George Dunbar, earl of March, had taken arms against Robert III. the king's father; but that crime had been pardoned, and his lands restored by Robert duke of Albany. James, on pretext that the regent had exceeded his power, and that it was the prerogative of the king alone to pardon treason, or to alienate lands annexed to the crown, obtained a sentence declaring the pardon to be void, and depriving Dunbar of the earldom. Many of the great men held lands by no other right than what they derived from grants of the two dukes of Albany. Such a decision, though they had reason to expect it in consequence of the statute which the king had obtained, occasioned a general alarm. Though Dunbar was at present the only sufferer, the precedent might be extended, and their titles to possessions which they considered as the rewards of their valour, might be subjected to the review of courts of law, whose forms of proceeding and jurisdiction were in a martial age little known, and extremely odious. Terror and discontent spread fast upon this discovery of the king's intentions; the common danger called on the whole order to unite, and to make one bold stand before they were stripped successively of their acquisitions, and reduced to a state of poverty and insignificance. The prevalence of these sentiments among the nobles encouraged a few desperate men, the friends or followers of those who had been the chief sufferers under the king's administration, to form a conspiracy against his life. The first uncertain intelligence of this was brought him while he lay in his camp before Roxburgh castle. He durst not confide in nobles, to whom he had given so many causes of disgust, but instantly dismissed them and their vassals, and retiring to a monastery near Perth, was soon after murdered there in the most cruel manner. All our historians mention with astonishment this circumstance, of the king's disbanding his army at a time when it was so necessary for his preservation. A king, say they, surrounded with his barons, is secure from secret treason, and may defy open rebellion. But those very barons were the persons whom he chiefly dreaded; and it is evident, from this review of his administration, that he had greater reason to apprehend danger than to expect defence from their hands. It was the misfortune of James, that his maxims and manners were too refined for the age in which he lived. Happy! had he reigned in a kingdom more civilized; his love of peace, of justice, and of elegance, would have rendered his schemes successful; and, instead of perishing because he had attempted too much, a grateful people woula have applauded and seconded his efforts to reform and improve them.

Crichton, the most able man of those who had the direction of affairs during the minority of James II., had been the minister of James I., and well acquainted with his resolution of humbling the nobility. He did not relinquish the design, and he endeavoured to inspire his pupil with the same sentiments. But what James had attempted to effect slowly and by .egal means, his son and Crichton pursued with the impetuosity natural t Scotsmen, and with the fierceness peculiar to that age. William, the sixta earl of Douglas, was the first victim to their barbarous policy. That young nobleman (as we have already observed), contemning the authority of ar

infant prince, almost openly renounced his allegiance, and aspired to independence. Crichton, too high spirited to bear such an insult, but too weak to curb or bring to justice so powerful an offender, decoyed him by many promises to an interview in the castle of Edinburgh, and, notwithstanding these, murdered both him and his brother. Crichton, however, gained little by this act of treachery, which rendered him universally odious. William, the eighth earl of Douglas, was no less powerful, and no less formidable to the crown. By forming the league which we already mentioned with the earl of Crawford and other barons, he had united against his sovereign almost one half of his kingdom. But his credulity led him into the same snare which had been fatal to the former earl. Relying on the king's promises, who had now attained to the years of manhood, and having obtained a safe conduct under the great seal, he ventured to meet him in Stirling Castle. James urged him to dissolve that dangerous confederacy into which he had entered; the earl obstinately refused. "If you will not," said the enraged monarch, drawing his dagger, "this shall;" and stabbed him to the heart. An action so unworthy of a king filled the nation with astonishment and with horror. The earl's vassals ran to arms with the utmost fury, and dragging the safe conduct, which the king had granted and violated, at a horse's tail, they marched towards Stirling, burned the town, and threatened to besiege the castle. An accommodation however ensued ; on what terms is not known. But the king's jealousy, and the new earl's power and resentment, prevented it from being of long continuance. Both took the field at the head of their armies, and met near Abercorn. That of the earl, composed chiefly of borderers, was far superior to the king's both in number and in valour;, and a single battle must, in all probability, have decided whether the house of Stuart or of Douglas was henceforth to possess the throne of Scotland. But while his troops impatiently expected the signal to engage, the earl ordered them to retire tc their camp; and sir James Hamilton of Cadyow, the person in whom he placed the greatest confidence, convinced of his want of genius to improve an opportunity, or of his want of courage to seize a crown, deserted him that very night. This example was followed by many; and the earl, despised or forsaken by all, was soon driven out of the kingdom, and obliged to depend for his subsistence on the friendship of the king of England. The ruin of this great family, which had so long rivalled and overawed the crown, and the terror with which such an example of unsuccessful ambition filled the nobles, secured the king, for some time, from opposition; and the royal authority remained uncontrolled and almost absolute. James did not suffer this favourable interval to pass unimproved; he procured the consent of parliament to laws more advantageous to the prerogative, and more subversive of the privileges of the aristocracy, than were ever obtained by any former or subsequent monarch of Scotland.

By one of these, not only all the vast possessions of the earl of Douglas were annexed to the crown, but all prior and future alienations of crown lands were declared to be void; and the king was empowered to seize them at pleasure, without any process or form of law, and oblige the possessors to refund, whatever they had received from them.* A dreadful instrument of oppression in the hands of a prince!

Another law prohibited the wardenship of the marches to be granted hereditarily; restrained, in several instances, the jurisdiction of that office; and extended the authority of the king's courts.†

By a third, it was enacted that no regality, or exclusive right of administering justice within a man's own lands, should be granted in time to come, without the consent of parliament; a condition which implied almost an express prohibition. Those nobles who already possessed that great pri

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vilege would naturally be solicitous to prevent it from becoming common, by being bestowed on many. Those who had not themselves attained it would envy others the acquisition of such a flattering distinction, and both would concur in rejecting the claims of new pretenders.

By a fourth act, all new grants of hereditary offices were prohibited, and those obtained since the death of the last king were revoked.*

Each of these statutes undermined some of the great pillars on which the power of the aristocracy rested. During the remainder of his reign this prince pursued the plan which he had begun with the utmost vigour; and had not a sudden death, occasioned by the splinter of a cannon which burst near him at the siege of Roxburgh, prevented his progress, he wanted neither genius nor courage to perfect it; and Scotland might, in all probability, have been the first kingdom in Europe which would have seen the subversion of the feudal system.

James III. discovered no less eagerness than his father or grandfather to humble the nobility; but, far inferior to either of them in abilities and address, he adopted a plan extremely impolitic, and his reign was disastrous, as well as his end tragical. Under the feudal governments, the nobles were not only the king's ministers, and possessed of all the great offices of power or of trust; they were likewise his companions and favourites, and hardly any but they approached his person or were entitled to his regard. But James, who both feared and hated his nobles, kept them at an unusual distance, and bestowed every mark of confidence and affection upon a few mean persons, of professions so dishonourable as ought to have rendered them unworthy of his presence. Shut up with these in his castle of Stirling, he seldom appeared in public, and amused himself in architecture, music, and other arts, which were then little esteemed. The nobles beheld the power and favour of these minions with indignation. Even the sanguinary measures of his father provoked them less than his neglect. Individuals alone suffered by the former; by the latter, every man thought himself injured because all were contemned. Their discontent was much heightened by the king's recalling all rights to crown lands, hereditary offices, regalities, and every other concession which was detrimental to his prerogative, and which had been extorted during his minority. Combinations among themselves, secret intrigues with England, and all the usual preparatives for civil war, were the effects of their resentment. Alexander duke of Albany, and John earl of Mar, the king's brothers, two young men of turbulent and ambitious spirits, and incensed against James, who treated them with the same coldness as he did the other great men, entered deeply into all their cabals. The king detected their designs before they were ripe for execution, and, seizing his two brothers, committed the duke of Albany to Edinburgh Castle. The earl of Mar, having remonstrated with too much boldness against the king's conduct, was murdered, if we may believe our historians, by his command. Albany, apprehensive of the same fate, made his escape out of the castle and fled into France. Concern for the king's honour, or indignation at his measures, were perhaps the motives which first induced him to join the malecontents. But James's attachment to favourites rendering him every day more odious to the nobles, the prospect of the advantages which might be derived from their general disaffection, added to the resentment which he felt on account of his brother's death and his own injuries, soon inspired Albany with more ambitious and criminal thoughts. He concluded a treaty with Edward IV. of England, in which he assumed the name of Alexander king of Scots; and, in return for the assistance which was promised him towards dethroning his brother, he bound himself, as soon as he was put in possession of the kingdom, to swear fealty and do homage o the English monarch, to renounce the ancient alli

* Act 44.

ance with France, to contract a new one with England, and to surrender some of the strongest castles and most valuable counties in Scotland.* That aid, which the duke so basely purchased at the price of his own honour and the independence of his country, was punctually granted him, and the duke of Gloucester with a powerful army conducted him towards Scotland. The danger of a foreign invasion obliged James to implore the assistance of those nobles whom he had so long treated with contempt. Some of them were in close confederacy with the duke of Albany, and approved of all his pretensions. Others were impatient for any event which would restore their order to its ancient pre-eminence. They seemed, however, to enter with zeal into the measures of their sovereign for the defe ice of the kingdom against its invaders, and took the field at the head of a powerful army of their followers, but with a stronger disposition to redress their own grievances than to annoy the enemy; and with a fixed resolution of punishing those minions whose insolence they could no longer tolerate. This resolution they executed in the camp near Lauder, with a military despatch and rigour. Having previously concerted their plan, the earls of Angus, Huntly, Lennox, followed by almost all the barons of chief note in the army, forcibly entered the apartment of their sovereign, seized all his favourites except one Ramsay, whom they could not tear from the king, in whose arms he took shelter, and, without any form of trial, hanged them instantly over a bridge. Among the most remarkable of those who had engrossed the king's affection, were Cochran, a mason; Hommil, a tailor; Leonard, a smith; Rogers, a musician; and Torsifan, a fencing master. So despicable a retinue discovers the capriciousness of James's character, and accounts for the indignation of the nobles when they beheld the favour due to them bestowed on such unworthy objects.

James had no reason to confide in an army so little under his command, and, dismissing it, shut himself up in the castle of Edinburgh. After various intrigues, Albany's lands and honours were at length restored to him, and he seemed even to have regained his brother's favour by some important services. But their friendship was not of long duration. James abandoned himself once more to the guidance of favourites; and the fate of those who had suffered at Lauder did not deter others from courting that dangerous pre-eminence. Albany, on pretext that an attempt had been made to take away his life by poison, fled from court, and, retiring to his castle at Dunbar, drew thither a greater number of barons than attended on the king himself. At the same time he renewed his former confederacy with Edward; the earl of Angus openly negotiated that infamous treaty; other barons were ready to concur with it; and if the sudden death of Edward had not prevented Albany's receiving any aid from England, the crown of Scotland would probably have been the reward of this unworthy combination with the enemies of his country. But, instead of any hopes of reigning in Scotland, he found, upon the death of Edward, that he could not reside there in safety; and flying first to England and then to France, he seems from that time to have taken no part in the affairs of his native country. Emboldened by his retreat, the king and his ministers multiplied the insults which they offered to the nobility. A standing guard, a thing unknown under the feudal governments, and inconsistent with the familiarity and confidence with which monarchs then lived amidst their nobles, was raised for the king's defence, and the command of it given to Ramsay, lately created earl of Bothwell, the same person who had so narrowly escaped when his companions were put to death at Lau der As if this precaution had not been sufficient, a proclamation was issued, forbidding any person to appear in arms within the precincts of the court; which, at a time when no man of rank left his own house without

* Abercr. Mart. Atch. vol. ii. p. 443. † Black Acts, fol. 65

‡ Ferrerius, 398

a numerous retinue of armed followers, was, in effect, debarring the nobles from all access to the king. James, at the same time, became fonder of retirement than ever, and sunk in indolence or superstition, or attentive only to amusements, devolved his whole authority upon his favourites. So many injuries provoked the most considerable nobles to take arms; and having persuaded or obliged the duke of Rothesay, the king's eldest son, a youth of fifteen, to set himself at their head, they openly declared their intention of depriving James of a crown, of which he had discovered himself to be so unworthy. Roused by this danger, the king quitted his retirement, took the field, and encountered them near Bannockburn; but the valour of the borderers, of whom the army of the malecontents was chiefly composed, soon put his troops to flight, and he himself was slain in the pursuit. Suspicion, indolence, immoderate attachment to favourites, and all the vices of a feeble mind, are visible in his whole conduct; but the character of a cruel and unrelenting tyrant seems to be unjustly affixed to him by our historians. His neglect of the nobles irritated, but did not weaken them; and their discontent, the immoderate ambition of his two brothers, and their unnatural confederacies with England, were sufficient to have disturbed a more vigorous administration, and to have rendered a prince of superior talents unhappy.

The indignation which many persons of rank expressed against the conduct of the conspirators, together with the terror of the sentence of excommunication which the pope pronounced against them, obliged them to use their victory with great moderation and humanity. Being conscious how detestable the crime of imbruing their hands in the blood of their sovereign appeared, they endeavoured to regain the good opinion of their country men, and to atone for the treatment of the father by their loyalty and duty towards the son. They placed him instantly on the throne, and the whole kingdom soon united in acknowledging his authority.

James IV. was naturally generous and brave; he felt in a high degree all the passions which animate a young and noble mind. He loved magnificence, he delighted in war, and was eager to obtain fame. During his reign, the ancient and hereditary enmity between the king and nobles seems almost entirely to have ceased. He envied not their splendour, because it contributed to the ornament of his court; nor did he dread their power, which he considered as the security of his kingdom, not as an object of terror to himself. This confidence on his part met with the proper return of duty and affection on theirs; and, in his war with England, he experienced how much a king beloved by his nobles is able to perform. Though the ardour of his courage and the spirit of chivalry, rather than the prospect of any national advantage, induced him to declare war against England, such was the zeal of his subjects for the king's glory, that he was followed by as gallant an army as ever any of his ancestors had led upon English ground. But though James himself formed no scheme dangerous or detrimental to the aristocracy, his reign was distinguished by an event extremely fatal to it; and one accidental blow humbled it more than all the premeditated attacks of preceding kings. In the rash and unfortunate battle of Flowden a brave nobility chose rather to die than to desert their sovereign. Twelve earls, thirteen lords, five eldest sons of noblemen, and an incredible number of barons, fell with the king.* The whole body of the nobles long and sensibly felt this disaster; and if a prince of full age had then ascended the throne, their consternation and feebleness would-have afforded him advantages which no former monarch ever possessed.

But James V., who succeeded his father, was an infant of a year old; and though the office of regent was conferred upon his cousin the duke of

* Aber. ii. 540