Political History Part VI

With James IV. we enter on the modern history of Scotland. The king escaped the evils of a long minority, was a "free king" and managed his own policy. He was tall, handsome, James IV strong and recklessly brave. He inherited his father's love of art and of nascent science; but this fault was forgiven him, as his manners were popular, his horsemanship good, and his bearing frank and free. The early Tudor policy of Henry VII. was not to make open war on Scotland, but to intrigue secretly, especially with the treacherous Douglas, earl of Angus, and with Ramsay, earl of Bothwell under James III., but soon dispossessed. They schemed to kidnap the king as vainly as Henry VIII. later planned to kidnap many of his foreign opponents. Under James IV. the houses of Hepburn of Hailes, ancestor of Queen Mary's Bothwell; of the Huntly Gordons; and of the Kers of Ferniehirst and Cessford, rose into new importance; while the Huntlys and Argylls were entrusted with the maintenance of order among the fighting clans of the west and north. They aggrandized themselves at the expense of the Macleans, Macdonalds, Camerons and Clan Chattan, but their sway was far from being peaceful and orderly.

The king, reckless as he was, had more than his share of the Stuart melancholy. His parricidal rebellion lay heavy on his conscience; he practised asceticism at intervals, and dreamed of eastern pilgrimages. But he also fostered a navy, under Sir Andrew Wood, who swept the seas of the English pirates. James threw Scotland into the whirlpool of European politics, dealing with Spanish envoys and with the duchess of Burgundy, the patroness of the mysterious Perkin Warbeck, who claimed to be Richard, duke of York, son of Edward IV. Meanwhile, to balance the power of the primate, James purchased from Innocent VIII. an archbishopic for the bishop of Glasgow (1492), who laid information against the heretics of Kyle in Ayrshire. They had evolved or inherited anti-papal heresies much like those of the reformers of 1559, but James turned their trial into a jest. He made a secret treaty to defend France if she were attacked by England, but meanwhile a five years' truce was concluded (1491). In the following year James was in correspondence with Perkin, then in Ireland; in 1495 he received that prétendant, married him to a daughter of Huntly, and in 1496 raided northern England in his company, all this in contempt of the offered hand of a Tudor princess. In the autumn of 1497 an attempted raid by James ended in a seven years truce fostered by the Spanish envoy, Ayala, who has left a flourishing description of the king and his country. Meanwhile Perkin had failed in Cornwall and been captured. Henry VII. kept offering the hand of his daughter Margaret, who was married to James at Holyrood in August 1503. From this wedding, disturbed by quarrels over the queen's jewels and dowry, was to result the union of the crowns on the head of Margaret's great-grandson, James VI., after a century of tragedies and turmoil.

In 1507 the pope failed to draw James into the league formed to check French aggression in Italy. A murder on the borders poisoned Scottish relations with England, and the death of Henry VII. (1509) left James face to face with his blustering brother-in-law, Henry VIII. The Holy League of 1511, against France, found James committed to the cause of the old French alliance. He strengthened his fleet, but his admiral, Sir Andrew Barton, fell in a fight with English privateers equipped by the earl of Surrey and commanded by his sons (1511). Border homicides added their element of international irritation, and James renewed the ancient league with France. In 1513 Dr West, an envoy of Henry VIII., found James in the state of "a fey man," doomed, distracted, agitated and boastful. In May came the letter and ring of the French queen ordering James, as her knight, to strike a blow on English ground. He wrote to Henry none the less (24th May) with peaceful proposals, but on the 30th of June Henry invaded France.

Strange portents and warning phantasms did not check James: he sent forth a fleet of thirteen ships and 3000 men, which faded into nothingness: - he declared war on Henry; and on the 22nd of August he crossed the border with all his force, including the highlanders and islesmen. After securing his flank and rear by taking Norham, Wark and Eitel castles, he awaited the approach of Surrey's army at Ford castle, a strong position, which he presently occupied. Surrey, who was ill-provisioned, challenged him to fight on the open field. James declined to commit this chivalrous folly; but, for lack of scouts, permitted Surrey to out-manceuvre him and pass, concealed by a range of hills, across his front, to a position north of Flodden, on his lines of communication.

Next day, 9th of September, Surrey crossed unobserved, by Twizel bridge and Millford, and moved south against Branxton hill, the middle of three ridges on the Flodden slope. The ground was difficult from heavy rains, the English troops were weary and hungry, but James had lost touch of Surrey and knew nothing of his movements till his troops appeared on his rear towards evening. In place of remaining in his position, James burned his camp and hurried his men down hill to the plateau of Branxton ridge. Home and Huntly, on the Scottish left, charged Edmund Howard's force; the Tynemouth men, under Dacre, did not support Howard, at first, but Dacre checked Home (whose later conduct is obscure) and drove off the Gordons. The Percys broke Errol's force; Rothes and Crawford fell, and the king led the centre, through heavy artillery fire, against Surrey. With Herries and Maxwell he shook the English centre, but while Stanley and the men of Cheshire drove the highlanders of Lennox and Argyll in flight (their leaders had already fallen), the admiral and Dacre fell on the flank of James's command, which Surrey, too wise to pursue the fleet highlanders, surrounded with his whole force.

The Scottish centre fought like Paladins, and James, breaking out in their front, hewed his way to within a lance's length of Surrey, as that leader himself avers. There fell the king, riddled with arrows, his left hand hanging helpless, his neck deeply gashed by a bill-stroke. His peers surrounded his body, and night fell on "the dark impenetrable wood" of the Scottish spears. At dawn the survivors had retreated, only the light Border horse of Home hung about the field. The bishop of Durham accuses them of plundering both sides. (That Home's Borderers had but slight loss is argued by Colonel the Hon. FitzWiiliam Elliot, in The Trustworthiness of Border Ballads, pp. 136-138.) Among the dead were thirteen earls, and James's son, the archbishop of St Andrews. The king's death assured the victory, which Surrey had not the strength to pursue, though the townsmen of Edinburgh built their famous Flodden Wall to resist him if he approached.

England never won a victory more creditable to the fighting and marching powers of her sons than at the battle of Flodden. The headlong recklessness of James, remarked on by Ayala, gave the opportunity, but he nobly expiated his fault. The Scots had so handled their enemies that they could not or dared not pursue their advantage; on the other hand, it was long indeed before the memory of Flodden ceased to haunt the Scots and deter them from invading England in force.

Though Ayala's well-known letter certainly flatters the material progress of Scotland, the country had assuredly made great advances. The good Bishop Elphinstone founded the university of Aberdeen in 1495; and in 1496 parliament decreed compulsory education, and Latin, for sons of barons and freeholders. Prior Hepburn founded a new college, that of St Leonard's, in the university of St Andrews, and Scotland owes only one university, that of Edinburgh, to the learned enthusiasm of her reformed sons. Printing was introduced in 1507, and the march of education among the laity increased the generaI contempt for the too common ignorance that prevailed among the clergy. The greater benefices were being conferred on young men of high birth but of little learning. The college of Surgeons was founded by the municipality of Edinburgh (1505), and in 1506 obtained the title of "Royal." The stimulus given to shipbuilding encouraged commerce, and freedom from war fostered the middle class, which was soon to make its influence felt in the Reformation. The burgesses, of course, had long been a relatively rich and powerful body: it is a fond delusion to suppose that they sprang into being under John Knox, though their attachment to his principles made them prominent among his disciples, while Flodden probably began to deter them from the ancient attachment to France. Protestantism, and the disasters of James V., with the regency of his widow, were to convert the majority of Scots to the English party.

The long minority of James V. was fatal to the Stuart dynasty. The intrigues of Henry VIII., the ambition of Angus, who married the king's mother (Margaret, sister of Henry VIII.); the counter intrigues of Albany, a resident in France, and son of the rebellious Albany, brother of James III; the constantly veering policy and affections of the queen-mother; and the gold of England, filled fourteen years with distractions, murders, treasons and conspiracies. Already Henry VIII. was trying to kidnap the child king, who found, as he grew up, that his stepfather, Angus, was his master and was the paid servant of Henry. The nobles were now of the English, now of the French party; none could be trusted to be loyal except the clergy, and they were factious and warlike. The result was that James threw off the yoke of his stepfather, Angus; drove him and his astute and treacherous brother, Sir George Douglas, into England (thereby raising up, like Bruce, a fatal party of lords disinherited), and while he was alienated from Henry and his Reformation, threw himself into the arms of France, of the clergy and of Rome.

Meanwhile the many noble and dissatisfied pensioners of England adopted Protestantism, which also made its way among the barons, burgesses and clergy, so that, for political reasons, James at last could not but be hostile to the new creed; he bequeathed this anti-protestantism, with the French alliance, through his wife, Mary of Guise, and the influence of the house of Lorraine, to his unhappy daughter, Mary Stuart. The country, ever jealous of its independence, found at last that France threatened her freedom even more than did England, the apparent enemy; and thus, partly from Protestantism, partly from patriotism, the English party in Scotland proved victorious, and the Reformation was accomplished. Had Henry been honourable and gentle, had his sister not shared his vehement passions, James and Henry, nephew and uncle, might have been united in peace; and the Scottish Reformation might have harmoniously blended with that of England.

It is impossible here fully to unfold the tortuous intrigues which darkened the minority of James. Who was to govern the young prince and the country? His wavering, intriguing mother, Margaret Tudor, or her sometimes friend, sometimes foe, Albany, arrived from France; or her discarded husband, Angus, the paid tool of Henry VIII.? By June 1528 the young king settled the question. He had complained to Henry of the captivity in which he was held by his hated stepfather, Angus. In June Angus had prepared forces to punish the Border raiders, and James, rightly or wrongly, seems to have suspected that he was to be handed over bodily to his royal uncle. On the 27th of May he was with Angus in the castle of Edinburgh; on the 3oth of May, by a bold and dexterous ride, he was with his mother in the castle of Stirling, with Archbishop Beaton, Argyll and Maxwell. In July he mastered Edinburgh, and bade Angus and his brother, Sir George Douglas, place themselves in ward north of Tay. This he announced to Henry, the paymaster of the Douglases, and the breach between the two kings was never healed. A war broke out between the Douglases and James, but a five years peace, not including the restoration of Angus, was concluded in December 1528. Angus prolonged his outrages on the Scottish, border till 1529, when he entered England as a subsidized mischief-maker against Scotland. Not till James's death did the Douglases return to their own country. Meanwhile James visited the Border, hanged some brigand lairds, and reduced such English partisans as the Kers, Rutherfords, Stewarts of Traquair, Veitches and Turnbulls. Johnny Armstrong of Gilnockie, famed in ballad and legend, was hanged, with forty of his clan, at Carlanrigg, in Teviotdale. The tale of royal treachery in his capture is popular; the best authorities for it seem to be the synoptic versions of a ballad and of the fabulous chronicler, Pitscottie.

When James V. became "a free King" the main problems before him were his relations with Henry VIII. and with the nascent Reformation. From 1535 Henry was anxious that James should meet him in England. Henry was notoriously treacherous; to kidnap was his ideal in diplomacy. His pensioner Angus (1531) was to have aided Bothwell in crowning Henry in Edinburgh. In 1535 Henry sent Dr Barlowe to convert James to his own religious ideas, Erastian, anti-papal, the seizure of the wealth of the church. James (1536) was willing enough to meet Henry in England, but his council, especially the clerical members, were opposed to the tryst. James desired to wed none but his mistress, Margaret Erskine, the mother of the Regent Moray. As Henry had once declared that he could only, meet a Scottish king, in England, as a vassal, James's council had good reason for their attitude. Had they consented, had James married Henry's daughter, Mary (called " The Bloody "), it is not plain that advantage would have come of the alliance.

In 1536 James sailed to France, and (1st of Jan. 1537) married Madeleine, daughter of Francis I. The die was cast; he was committed to France and to the ancient faith. This was the cardinal misfortune of the Stuarts, but who could trust Henry, and who could join in the fiery persecutions of the new pope-king? In James's absence, Scottish heretics fled to England, while Henry's heretics fled to Scotland. Madeleine died on the 7th of July 1537. "Lady Glamis," as she was called, a Douglas lady, widow of Lord Glamis, was burned for abetting her brother Angus and devising the king's death by poison. The truth of this matter is obscure; our early historians of this age, Protestants like Knox and Pitscottie, with Buchanan and the Catholic Lesley, are seldom to be trusted without documentary corroboration.

In 1538 James married a lady whom Henry desired to add to his list of wives, Mary of Guise, at this moment a young widow, Madame de Longueville. Mary shines like a good deed in a naughty world; but she was a Catholic, was of the house of Lorraine, and in diplomacy was almost as other diplomatists.

In 1539 David Beaton, the Cardinal, now aged forty-five, succeeded his uncle, James Beaton, as primate of Scotland. He had been educated in Scotland and Paris, held the rich abbey of Arbroath, and for some twenty years at least lived openly with Mariotte Ogilvy, of the house of Airlie. He was a practised diplomatist, and necessarily of the French and Catholic party. His wealth, astuteness, experience and tenacity of purpose, were to baffle Henry's attacks on Scottish independence, till the daggers of pietistic cut-throats closed the long debate. Beaton was cruel: he had no more scruples than Henry about burning men for their beliefs. But the martyrs were few, compared with the numbers of people whom the reformed kirk burned for witchcraft. Some twelve martyrs at least perished in 1539-1540, and George Buchanan, whose satires on the Franciscans delighted the king, escaped to France, in circumstances which he described diversely on different occasions, as was his habit.

In May 1540 James visited the highlands, and later reduced the Macdonalds and annexed the lordship of the Isles to the crown. In 1541 he lost two infant sons, and the mysterious affair of the death of that aesthetic ruffian, Sir James Hamilton of Finnart, was supposed to lie heavy on his mind. There were disputes with Henry, who demanded the extradition of fugitive friars, which James refused. In 1541 he disappointed Henry, not meeting him at York, and this course, advised by his council and Francis I., rankled deeply, while Angus was making a large English raid on the Border in time of peace. The English fared ill, and Henry horrified his council by his usual proposal to kidnap the king of Scotland. Henry's men marauded on the Border, but a force which James summoned to Fala Moor (31st of October 1542) contained but one lord who would march with him, Napier of Merchistoun. About this date occurs the legend of a list of hundreds of heretics, whom the clergy asked James to proscribe. No king of Scotland could dream of executing such a coup d'etat; the authority for it is that mythopoeic earl of Arran who later became regent, and told the fable to Henry's agent, Sir Ralph Sadleyr.

Presently ensued the Scottish raid of Solway Moss and the capture of many of the Scottish nobles. The facts may be found in contemporary English despatches printed, in the Hamilton papers. The fables are to be read in Knox's History of the Reformation in Scotland, and in Froude. The secret of the raid was sold by the brother of Angus, Sir George Douglas, and by other traitors. England was prepared, and on the 23rd of November routed and drove into Solway Moss a demoralized multitude of farm-burning Scots. The guns and some 1200 men were taken; many men were drowned. James retired heartbroken from the Border to Edinburgh, where he executed business. He then dwelt for a week at Linlithgow with the queen, who was about to give birth to a child. Next he bore "the pageant of his bleeding heart " to Falkland, where he heard of the birth (8th of December) of his daughter, Mary Stuart. Uncomforted, he died on the 14th (15th?) of December. Accounts differ as to the date. Sheer grief and shame, and, it is said, sorrow for the failure in war of his favourite, Oliver Sinclair, were the apparent causes of his death. Knox appears to insinuate that a rumour declared Mary of Guise and the cardinal guilty of poisoning James, but an attempt had been made to put another sense on the words of this historian, who frequently hints that Mary was the mistress of the cardinal.

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