Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

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STUARTS TO JAMES IV.] SCOT
Ascend- who received office at the commencement of the reign
ency of one of the foremost was Robert Boyd of Kilmarnock, the
Boyd, 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, winch 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
Govern- which indicated a want of confidence in the king. He
ment by had shown himself, like Louis XL, disposed to govern by
favour- new men who owed their elevation to himself,——a policy
ltes' 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
LAND
accomplishments made them popular. James seized Mar 1466-1488.
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 IY., 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 (11th 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