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James
I
On
March 28, 1424, James I. was released, on a ransom of £40,000,
and after his marriage with Jane Beaufort, grand-daughter of
John of Gaunt, son of Edward III. The story of their wooing,
of course in the allegorical manner of the age, and with poetical
conventions in place of actual details, is told in James’s
poem, “The King’s Quair,” a beautiful composition
in the school of Chaucer, of which literary scepticism has vainly
tried to rob the royal author. James was the ablest and not
the most scrupulous of the Stuarts. His captivity had given
him an English education, a belief in order, and in English
parliamentary methods, and a fiery determination to put down
the oppression of the nobles. “If God gives me but a dog’s
life,” he said, “I will make the key keep the castle
and the bracken bush keep the cow.” Before his first Parliament,
in May 1424, James arrested Murdoch’s eldest son, Sir
Walter Fleming of Cumbernauld, and the younger Boyd of Kilmarnock.
The Parliament left a Committee of the Estates (“The Lords
of the Articles”) to carry out the royal policy. Taxes
for the payment of James’s ransom were imposed; to impose
them was easy, “passive resistance” was easier;
the money was never paid, and James’s noble hostages languished
in England. He next arrested the old Earl of Lennox, and Sir
Robert Graham of the Kincardine family, later his murderer.
These were
causes of unpopularity. During a new Parliament (1425) James
imprisoned the new Duke of Albany (Murdoch) and his son Alexander,
and seized their castles. {57} The Albanys and Lennox were executed;
their estates were forfeited; but resentment dogged a king who
was too fierce and too hurried a reformer, perhaps too cruel
an avenger of his own wrongs.
Our knowledge
of the events of his reign is vague; but a king of Scotland
could never, with safety, treat any of his nobles as criminals;
the whole order was concerned to prevent or avenge severity
of justice.
At a Parliament
in Inverness (1427) he seized the greatest of the Highland magnates
whom he had summoned; they were hanged or imprisoned, and, after
resistance, Alastair, the new Lord of the Isles, did penance
at Holyrood, before being immured in Tantallon Castle. His cousin,
Donald Balloch, defeated Mar at Inverlochy (where Montrose later
routed Argyll) (1431). Not long afterwards Donald fled to Ireland,
whence a head, said to be his, was sent to James, but Donald
lived to fight another day.
Without
a standing army to garrison the inaccessible Highlands, the
Crown could neither preserve peace in those regions nor promote
justice. The system of violent and perfidious punishments merely
threw the Celts into the arms of England.
Execution
itself was less terrible to the nobles than the forfeiting of
their lands and the disinheriting of their families. None the
less, James (1425-1427) seized the lands of the late Earl of
Lennox, made Malise Graham surrender the earldom of Strathearn
in exchange for the barren title of Earl of Menteith, and sent
the sufferer as a hostage into England. The Earl of March, son
of the Earl who, under Robert III., had gone over to the English
cause, was imprisoned and stripped of his ancient domains on
the Eastern Border; and James, disinheriting Lord Erskine, annexed
the earldom of Mar to the Crown.
In a Parliament
at Perth (March 1428) James permitted the minor barons and freeholders
to abstain from these costly assemblies on the condition of
sending two “wise men” to represent each sheriffdom:
a Speaker was to be elected, and the shires were to pay the
expenses of the wise men. But the measure was unpopular, and
in practice lapsed. Excellent laws were passed, but were not
enforced.
In July-November
1428 a marriage was arranged between Margaret the infant daughter
of James and the son (later Louis XI.) of the still uncrowned
Dauphin, Charles VIII. of France. Charles announced to his subjects
early in 1429 that an army of 6000 Scots was to land in France;
that James himself, if necessary, would follow; but Jeanne d’Arc
declared that there was no help from Scotland, none save from
God and herself. She was right: no sooner had she won her victories
at Orleans, Jargeau, Pathay, and elsewhere (May-June 1429) than
James made a truce with England which enabled Cardinal Beaufort
to throw his large force of anti-Hussite crusaders into France,
where they secured Normandy. The Scots in France, nevertheless,
fought under the Maid in her last successful action, at Lagny
(April 1430).
An heir
to the Crown, James, was born in October 1430, while the King
was at strife with the Pope, and asserting for King and Parliament
power over the Provincial Councils of the Church. An interdict
was threatened, James menaced the rich and lax religious orders
with secular reformation; settled the Carthusians at Perth,
to show an example of holy living; and pursued his severities
against many of his nobles.
His treatment
of the Earl of Strathearn (despoiled and sent as a hostage to
England) aroused the wrath of the Earl’s uncle, Robert
Graham, who bearded James in Parliament, was confiscated, fled
across the Highland line, and, on February 20, 1437, aided,
it is said by the old Earl of Atholl, a grandson of Robert II.
by his second marriage, led a force against the King in the
monastery of the Black Friars at Perth, surprised him, and butchered
him. The energy of his Queen brought the murderers, and Atholl
himself, to die under unspeakable torments.
James’s
reforms were hurried, violent, and, as a rule, incapable of
surviving the anarchy of his son’s minority: his new Court
of Session, sitting in judgment thrice a-year, was his most
fortunate innovation.
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