A Short History of England, Ireland and Scotland

by Mary Platt Parmele

Marjory's son, Robert II., the first of the Stuart kings, was crowned at Scone in 1371. His natural weakness of character made him the mere creature of his determined and ambitious brother, the Duke of Albany, who, in fact, held the state in his hand until far into the succeeding reign of Robert III., which commenced in 1390. The nobles had now established a ruinous ascendancy in the state, and so abject had the King become, that Robert III. was paying annual grants to the Duke of Albany and others for his safety and that of his heir. In spite of this, his eldest son, Rothesay, was abducted by Albany and the Earl of Douglas, and mysteriously died, it is said of starvation. The unhappy King then sent Prince James, his second son, to France for safety; but he was captured by an English ship by the way, and lodged in the Tower of London by Henry IV. When Robert III. died immediately after of a broken heart, the captive Prince was proclaimed king (1406), and his uncle, the Duke of Albany, the next in royal succession, ruled the kingdom in name, as he had for many years in fact.

There existed between France and Scotland that sure bond of friendship between nations—a common hatred. This had given birth to a political alliance which was to be a thorn in the side of England for many years. French soldiers and French gold strengthened Scotland in her chronic war with England, and in return the Scots sent their soldiers to the aid of the Dauphin of France. It was this which gave such value to the royal prisoner. He could be used by Henry IV. to restrain the French alliance, and also to keep in check the ambitious Duke of Albany, by the fact that he could in an hour reduce him to insignificance by restoring James to his throne.

Such were some of the influences at work during the eighteen years while the Scottish Prince with keen intelligence was drinking in the best culture of his age, and at the same time studying the superior civilization and government of the land of his captivity. He seems to have studied also to some effect the affairs of his own kingdom. He was released in 1424, crowned at Scone, and a new epoch commenced. He had resolved to break the power of the nobles, and with extraordinary energy he set about his task! There was a long and unsettled account with his own relatives. He knew well who had humiliated and broken his father's heart, and starved to death his brother Rothesay, and, as he believed, had also conspired with Henry IV. for his own capture and eighteen years' captivity. The old conspirator who had been the chief author of these things had recently died, but his son wore his title. So the Duke of Albany (the King's cousin) and a few of the most conspicuous of the conspirators were seized, tried, and one after another five of the King's kindred died by the axe, in front of Stirling Castle. It was one of those outbursts of wrath after a long period of wrongdoing, terrible but wholesome. An unscrupulous nobility had wrenched the power from the Crown, and it must be restored, or the kingdom would perish. This disease, common to European monarchies, could only be cured by just such a drastic remedy; successfully tried later in France, by Louis XI. (fifteenth century), by Ivan the Terrible in Russia (sixteenth century), and by slower methods accomplished in England, commencing with William the Conqueror, and completed when great nobles were cringing at the feet of Henry VIII. There are times when a tyrant is a benefactor. And when a centralized, or even a despotic, monarchy supplants an oligarchy, it is a long step in progress.

This ablest of the Stuart kings was assassinated in 1437 by the enemies he had shorn of power, his own kindred removing the bolts to admit his murderers. He was the only sovereign of the Stuart line who inherited the heroic qualities of his great ancestor Robert Bruce, a line which almost fatally entangled England, and sprinkled the pages of history with tragedies, four out of the fourteen dying violent deaths, two of broken hearts, while two others were beheaded.

It is a temptation to linger for a moment over the personal traits of James I. We shall not find again among Scottish kings one who is possessed of "every manly accomplishment," one who plays upon the organ, the flute, the psaltery, and upon the harp "like another Orpheus," who draws and paints, is a poet, and what all the world loves—a lover. It was his pure, tender, romantic passion for Lady Jane Beaufort, whom he married, just before his return to his kingdom, which inspired his poem, "The Kingis Qahaiir" (the King's book), a work never approached by any other poet-king, and which marked a new epoch in the history of Scottish poetry. It is the story of his life and his love—a fantastic mingling of fact and allegory after the fashion of Chaucer and other mediaeval writers. It is pleasant to fancy that a sympathetic friendship may have existed between the unfortunate youth and the warm-hearted, impulsive Prince Hal, who, immediately upon his accession as Henry V., had James transferred from the Tower to Windsor. There it was he spent the last ten years of his captivity, there he met Lady Jane Beaufort, and wrote a great part of his poem.

The turbulence which had been checked by the splendid energy of James I., revived with increased fury after his death. The fifty years in which James II. and James III. reigned, but did not govern, is a meaningless period, over which it would be folly to linger. If it had any purpose it was to show how utterly base an unpatriotic feudalism could become—Douglases, Crawfords, Livingstons, Crichtons, Boyds, like ravening beasts of prey tearing each other to pieces, and trying to outwit by perfidy when force failed; Livingstons holding the infant King, James II., a prisoner in Stirling Castle, of which they were hereditary governors, and together with the Crichtons entrapping the young Earl of Douglas and his brother by an invitation to dine, and then beheading them both—so that it is with satisfaction we learn of the King's reaching his majority and beheading a half-score of Livingstons at Edinburgh Castle! Then to the Douglases is traced every disorder in the realm, and with relief we hear of their disgrace and banishment, only to have the Boyds come upon the scene with a villanous conspiracy to seize the young King, James III., they, after rising to power, swiftly and tragically to fall again. History could not afford a more shameful and senseless display of depravity than in these human vultures. A Scottish writer says: "There was nothing but slaughter in this realm, every party lying in wait for another, as they had been setting tinchills (snares) for wild beasts."

In viewing this raging storm of anarchy one wonders what had become of the people. We hear nothing of them. They had no political influence, and if they had representatives in Parliament, they were dumb, for the voice of the Commons was never heard. But there is reason to believe that, in spite of the ferocious feudal and social anarchy, the urban population and the peasantry were groping their way into a higher civilization. That better ways of living prevailed we may infer from sumptuary laws enacted by James III., and in the founding of three universities (St. Andrew's, 1411, Glasgow, 1450, and Aberdeen, 1494) there is sure indication that beneath the turbid political surface there flowed a stream of intellectual life. From these literary centres "learned Scotsmen" began to swarm over the land, and a solid scholarship was the aim of ambitious youths, who found in that the road to posts of distinction once won only by arms. There was a small body of national literature. Barbour's poem, "The Brus," led the way in the fourteenth century, then King James's poem in the fifteenth, then Henryson and Boece, and the procession of splendid names had commenced which was to be joined in later ages by Burns, Scott, and Carlyle.

England had now become the refuge for disgraced and intriguing nobles. The Duke of Albany, the Earl of Douglas, and others entered into negotiations with the English King, offering to acknowledge his feudal superiority, he in return promising to give the crown of Scotland to Albany. A battle between the English and Scottish forces took place in the vicinity of Stirling. During the engagement King James was thrown from his horse and then slain by his miscreant nobles (1488). The scheme was a failure, and the son of the murdered King was at once crowned James IV. Henry VII., now King of England, conceived a plan of cementing friendly relations between the two kingdoms by the marriage of his daughter, Princess Margaret, with the young King. This union, so fruitful in consequences, took place at Holyrood in 1502, amid great rejoicings.

During the two preceding reigns the relations of Scotland with her great neighbor were comparatively peaceful. But in 1509 Queen Margaret's brother, Henry VIII., was crowned King of England. Family ties sat very lightly upon this monarch, and his hostile purposes soon became apparent, and the friendly relations were broken. A war between France and England was the signal for a renewal of the old alliance between the French and the Scots. James himself led an army against that of his brother-in-law across the Tweed, and at Flodden met an overwhelming defeat and his own death (1513).

Europe was now unconsciously on the brink of a moral and spiritual revolution, a revolution which was going to affect no country more profoundly than Scotland. The Church of Rome, deeply embedded and wrought into the very structure of every European nation, seemed like a part of nature. As soon would men have expected to see the foundations of the continent removed, and yet there was a little rivulet of thought coursing through the brain of an obscure monk in Germany which was going to undermine and overthrow it, and cause a new Christendom to arise upon its ruins. And strangely, too, as if by pre-arrangement, that wonderful new device—the printing press—stood ready, waiting to disseminate the propaganda of a Reformed Church!