10. James III., 1460-1488.—During the first part of this reign, Kennedy, Bishop of St. Andrews, had the chief part in the government. He died in 1466, and on his death the Boyds got hold of the King and of the chief power. These Boyds were originally simple lairds, but they strengthened themselves by bonds with more powerful families, won the King's favour and finally got possession of his person, by making him come with them, partly by persuasion, partly by force, from Stirling to Edinburgh. They then obtained an act of the Estates declaring that this step had been taken with the full consent and good pleasure of the King. The Lord Boyd was appointed guardian of his person and of the royal strongholds, his son Thomas was created Earl of Arran, and with the earldom the King's sister Mary was given him in marriage.
11. Annexation of Orkney and Shetland.—For many years the rent of the Western Isles had not been paid to the King of Norway. There were heavy arrears due to him which had been demanded in the last reign. It was now agreed to settle the matter peaceably by the marriage of James with Margaret, daughter of Christian of Norway, in 1469. Her dowry was the claim for the arrears and 60,000 florins, in security for which the Orkney and Shetland Isles were placed as pledges in the hands of the King of Scotland. These islands have never been redeemed by payment of the sum agreed on. Arran had been chiefly concerned in bringing about this marriage. During his absence at the court of Christian his enemies were busy in compassing his fall. His wife sent him timely warning of his danger, and he fled first to Denmark and finally to England, whither his father had also escaped. But Alexander, the younger son, was made the scapegoat for the sins of his kindred. He was seized, tried, and put to death for his share in kidnapping the King, which was now denounced as treason. The family estates were forfeited, and most of them were declared inalienable from the Crown.
12. Relations with England.—In the beginning of the reign, Edward the Fourth kept up a seeming show of friendliness, but he was secretly treating with Douglas and the Lord of the Isles to the effect that they should hold the two parts of Scotland as principalities dependent on England. The end of this underhand dealing was that John, son of the Lord of the Isles, invaded and wasted the district that was to be his principality, all the country north of the Scots Water. This led to the final breaking up of the lordship of the Isles, for he was called to account for his rebellion, and was required to resign the districts of Knapdale and Kintyre, the original Scottish kingdom; the sheriffdoms of Inverness and Nairn, and the earldom of Ross, which was vested in the Crown. In exchange for his proud but doubtful title of Lord of the Isles, he was made a peer of parliament. In 1474 a marriage was arranged between Edward's daughter Cecily and James the Prince of Scotland. It was broken off owing to a quarrel between the King and his brothers, Alexander Duke of Albany, and John Earl of Mar. They were much more popular than James, and, when Mar died suddenly in Craigmillar Castle, James was suspected of having poisoned him. Albany was arrested and confined in Edinburgh Castle on a charge of treasonable dealings with Edward. He escaped to France in hopes of getting Louis the Eleventh to take his part, but he found a more willing helper in Edward. An agreement was made that Edward should place Albany on the throne of Scotland, that he should hold it, and that he should marry the Lady Cecily. After divers threatening messages had been exchanged between the two governments, and many threatenings of attack had been made, a great Scottish army was mustered to invade England in good earnest.
13. Revolt of the Nobles.—The King had always been unpopular with his nobles. His love of money and of peaceable pursuits found little sympathy with them, and they could neither understand nor tolerate his fancy for making favourites of men whom they despised. The time had now come when they could take the law into their own hands. The army raised for the invasion of England was led by the King in person, and advanced as far as Lauder in Berwickshire. There the nobles met together, with old Angus at their head, to devise some way of getting rid of the most hated of these favourites. This was Robert Cochrane, a mason or architect, to whom the King had given the control of the artillery in this expedition. He had also conferred on him the revenues of the earldom of Mar, and Cochrane, going a step further, had assumed the title. While they were deliberating, the Lord Gray, so the story goes, quoted the old fable of the mice and the cat, meaning thereby that all their talk would come to nothing unless one of their number was bold enough to attack their enemy. On this Archibald Earl of Angus cried out, "Heed not, I'll bell the cat." This saying won him the nickname of "Bell the Cat." While they thus sat in council in the church, Cochrane himself knocked at the door and demanded admittance in the name of the King. The finery which he wore, the chain of massive gold thrown round his neck, the jewelled horn that dangled from it, the gilt helmet borne before him, still further heated the wrath of the lords. They seized him, and with many insults accused him of misguiding the King and the government. Meanwhile they had sent a band of armed men to the King's tent to secure Rogers, a musician, and the other favourites. They then hanged them all over Lauder Bridge. John Ramsay of Balmain was the only one of the favourites who was spared to the entreaties of the King. The triumphant barons then brought the King back to Edinburgh, 1482. Soon after this Albany came back, and demanded the release of his brother, and for a short time they lived together seemingly on good terms, while Albany really ruled. But before long he found it most prudent to return to England, and he showed his real designs by putting Dunbar Castle into the hands of the English.
14. Battle of Sauchieburn.—The King, who had not learned wisdom by the lesson of Lauder Bridge, grew more and more unpopular. A confederacy was formed, and a large army was raised by the lords south of the Forth. To give a show of justice to their doings, they placed James the Prince of Scotland at their head, professing to have deposed his father, and to have accepted him as their lawful king. North of the Scots Water the country was true to James, and there he collected a considerable force. The two armies met at Sauchieburn. The King, who was not brave, turned and fled at the first sign that the day was going against him. In his flight he was thrown from his horse and carried to a mill built on the Bannock Burn, where he was murdered by an unknown hand, 1488.
15. Church Matters.—In 1471 St. Andrews was raised to an Archbishopric. Pope Sextus the Fourth sent the pallium to Robert Graham the bishop, but this increase of dignity only proved a source of torment to him, for his suffragans, out of jealousy, accused him of all manner of heresies and crimes. He was deposed and degraded, and ended his days in confinement.
16. James IV., 1488-1513.—The first thing to be done after the affair of Sauchieburn was to find out what had become of the King, and, when his death was made sure of, an inquiry was set on foot as to the cause of it. The offices of state were transferred to the party in power, and an act of amnesty was passed, to take in all persons who had taken part with the late King in the struggle which the nobles pleased to call the late rebellion. Two ineffectual risings to avenge the murder of the King were made by the Lords Lennox and Forbes, and three years later, to pacify the clamours of the people, a reward of one hundred marks was offered for the discovery of the actual murderers.
17. English Intrigues.—Just at this time Henry the Seventh of England had his hands too busy at home to allow of his making open war upon Scotland, but he carried on secret schemes with Angus, Ramsay, and others for the capture of the King. James, on the other hand, upheld that Perkin Warbeck was really Richard, Duke of York, received him at his court as the son of King Edward, and gave him in marriage his kinswoman Lady Katharine Gordon. A force of French and Burgundians came to aid him, and an army crossed the Border, but it did nothing, as the rising which had been planned, and was to have been made at the same time in the north of England, did not take place. At last James got tired of Perkin, sent him off to Ireland, though with a princely escort, and renewed a truce with Henry, in 1497. The two kings were drawn still closer by the marriage of James with Margaret Tudor, eldest daughter of Henry, in 1502.
18. State of the Highlands.—James paid frequent visits to Kintyre, the Isles, and Inverness, and took measures for the building of more castles and the maintenance of garrisons in those already built. This plan might have been successful in keeping the country quiet, if the Crown had been strong enough to carry it out. As it was not, James was forced to fall back on the old policy of turning the feuds of the chiefs to their own destruction, by empowering one to act against another. Again the Gordons got a great increase of power, for their head, the Earl of Huntly, was appointed sheriff of Inverness, Ross, and Caithness, with the condition that he should finish and maintain a fortress at Inverness. In the west the charge of keeping order was put into the hands of the Earl of Argyle, the chief of the Campbells. An attempt was also made to break up the Isles into sheriffdoms, and to impose upon the Highlanders the laws of the Lowlands. A commission was issued for the banishment of broken men, as those clansmen were called who had no representative chiefs, and an Act was passed which made the chiefs responsible for the execution of legal writs upon their clansmen. But the disaffected chiefs rallied round Donald Dhu, an illegitimate descendant of the last Lord of the Isles, and it took three years' fighting on the part of the King and of Huntly to reduce them. Donald was at last brought captive to Edinburgh, and the lordship of the Isles was finally broken up in 1504.
19. Differences with England.—In this reign Scotland first appears as a naval power, and this proved a new source of strife with England. One of the King of Scots' captains, Andrew Barton, bore letters of marque against the Portuguese, but the English accused him of taking English vessels also. He was attacked in time of truce by the Howards. He himself was killed in the action, and his ship, the Lion, was taken, and became the second ship in the English navy. James had also another cause of complaint against Henry the Eighth, for Henry refused to give up to his sister Margaret a legacy of jewels left to her by her father. When therefore England and France declared war, Scotland stood by her old ally, the bond between them was drawn closer, the right of citizenship in France was extended to the Scots, and Queen Anne of France made an appeal to the chivalrous feeling of James by choosing him as her knight, and calling on him for assistance. James therefore fitted out a fleet of twenty-three vessels. Among them was a very large ship called the Great Michael, which was looked on as a masterpiece of shipbuilding. This fleet was put under the command of James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, with orders to sail for France. Instead of doing this, he stormed Carrickfergus, and what became of the ships was never clearly made out.