James I of Scotland

“ He had governed Scotland during his twenty-two years of absence with a much firmer hand than [Pg 129] in the troubled time of his personal rule. He had then been quite at the mercy of his ministers and of the nobles. The wealth and power of his larger kingdom made him now able to deal with the smaller one pretty much as he liked, and the nobles were too eagerly seeking favour and place at the richer court to be willing to risk the loss of them by opposing his will. James was quite unlike all his forefathers. ”

“ James appears to have been a brave and generous man, and a wise and energetic king. According to one account, he was possessed of considerable learning; during his reign the Scottish court attained some degree of refinement, and Scotland counted in European politics as she had never done before. Literature flourished under the royal patronage, education was encouraged, and the material condition of the country improved enormously. ”

“ James II., king of Scotland from 1437 to 1460, son of preceding; during his minority the country was torn by rival factions amongst the nobility, the chief point of contest being the wardship of the young king; an attempt on the part of the conspirators who had murdered James I. to place their leader, the Earl of Athole, on the throne, was frustrated; in 1449 James assumed the duties of his kingship, and in the same year married Mary, the daughter of the Duke of Gueldres ”

“ A singular riot in Edinburgh in December 1596, of which an account is given in the chronicle, led to a reaction in favour of the king against the ultra-zealous Presbyterians. James was enabled to acquire considerable influence in the church-courts, to obtain seats in parliament for certain ministers, as representing the ancient bishops, and to secure a peaceable restoration for the popish lords. His brightening prospects of the English succession added to his power within Scotland, and the latter years of his Scottish reign were marked by comparatively few events of importance. ”

“ James, who saw the advantage Scotland would derive from an alliance with England, began to urge the Union, but the English naturally objected to such a very unprofitable match; for Scotland had nothing to lose, nothing to give, nothing to lend, and nothing to teach, except the art of making bread without flour, joke-books without wit, reputation without ability, and a living without anything. James felt that the sarcasms on the Scotch were personal to himself, and he told the Parliament they ought not to talk on matters they did not understand ”

“ The Estates of England had brought two charges against James, his misgovernment and his flight, and had, by using the soft word "Abdication," evaded, with some sacrifice of verbal precision, the question whether subjects may lawfully depose a bad prince. That question the Estates of Scotland could not evade. They could not pretend that James had deserted his post. For he had never, since he came to the throne, resided in Scotland. ”

“ James’s work as a ruler can be divided, without violating any sound rule of criticism, into black and white—into the part which was a failure and a preparation for future disaster, and the part which was solid achievement, honourable to himself and profitable to his people. His native kingdom of Scotland had the benefit of the second. Between 1583 and 1603 he reduced the anarchical baronage of Scotland to obedience, and replaced the subdivision of sovereignty and consequent confusion, which had been the very essence of feudalism, by a strong centralized royal authority. ”

“ James is described as middle-sized, handsome, and well-made. Besides Latin and several other foreign languages, he could speak the Irish or Gaelic, which was the native tongue of his western subjects. During his reign Scotland was more prosperous than it had been since the days of the last Alexander. Trade was flourishing and on the increase, and large quantities of wool, hides, and fish were exported to other countries. ”

“ Too blindly the enemies of Arran, they never rest while a Hamilton lives, and are too much in Henry's interest ever again to be true to Scotland. How was it when James assumed the government, and, by the intercession of Wolsey and myself, so unwisely permitted the ambitious Earls of Ashkirk and of Angus to return home? No sooner were their feet on Scottish ground, than, ever restless, they raised a faction to expel the queen-mother and the minister Arran, and came at once to blows about where the Parliament should meet. ”

“ After the funeral, King James, with a small retinue, retired to the solitude of his beautiful country palace at Falkland.
If the hidden cause of the queen's illness had puzzled the learned physicians and astrologers who had gathered around her couch, as it were, from the four winds of heaven, it occasioned greater speculation among the superstitious people of Scotland, and a universal whisper of sorcery, followed by a cry for vengeance on the cause of an effect so dire, went throughout the land, from the Caledonian to the German Sea. ”

“ So far as education went this was no doubt the case; but it is possible that in his subsequent life his reforms were too rapid, too thorough-going, too modern, for Scotland. The English sovereigns were richer, stronger, and more potent; the English commonalty more perfectly developed, and more capable of affording a strong support to a monarch who stood against the nobles and their capricious tyranny. James might not have been the enlightened ruler he was but for his training in a region of more advanced and cultivated civilisation ”

“ Under his wise rule, Scotland was at peace and prosperous, the Court maintained a higher level of refinement and luxury, and science and art were encouraged. Unfortunately, James's chivalrous and rash temperament led him into war with England and the disaster at Flodden Field. Before starting on the expedition, a council was held at Linlithgow, after which the King attended evensong in the church. ”

“ On 19 June 1587 James reached the age of twenty-one. He celebrated the event by an attempt to reconcile the feuds between the nobility by making the bitterest enemies walk through the streets of Edinburgh hand in hand. In July the estates passed an act revoking all grants made to the injury of the crown during the king's nonage.
In 1588 the approach of the Spanish Armada threw Scotland as well as England into consternation. In opposition to the Earl of Huntly in the north and to Lord Maxwell on the western borders, James took his stand against Spain. ”

“ It was hoped that this alliance [Pg 12] would be the means of ending the bitter hostility which had existed between Scotland and England since the time of Edward I. A temporary peace ensued, but it was not till a century later that a descendant of the Scottish James sat on the throne of England.
The only son of James IV. and Margaret who survived infancy was James V. (James Fitz-James of the poem) . He was born in 1513, and crowned when less than ten years old, his father having been slain at the battle of Flodden Field, which had resulted so disastrously for Scotland. ”

“ The absence of any fear of an outbreak of hostilities with the "auld enemy" was a great boon to the borders, but there was little love lost between the two countries. The union of the crowns did not, of course, affect the position of Scotland to England in matters of trade, and beyond some thirty years of peace, James's ancient kingdom gained but little. King James, who possessed considerable powers of statesmanship, if not much practical wisdom, devised the impossible project of a union of the kingdoms in 1604. "What God hathe conjoyned", he said, "let no man separate. ”

“ Both England and Scotland recognised in him the principle of hereditary right, for there was little in his character or antecedents to recommend him as a national sovereign. In his own country he had become unpopular, and in England he was chiefly known as one who had basely betrayed his mother, who had intrigued with Elizabeth to obtain her throne, and who had no sympathy with the great alliance with France and the United Provinces in the war with Spain. James, however, encountered no opposition in assuming the sceptre of these realms ”

“ When Philip the Second was preparing his Armada for the conquest of England, he spared no pains to induce James of Scotland to favor his enterprise. Elizabeth, on her part, was not less active to secure the friendship of a neighbor, who, by opening or closing his ports, might do so much to assist or to counteract the projects of her enemy. James had the [Pg 215] wisdom to see that it was not for his interest to ally himself with a power that sought the extinction of the faith which he professed, and the subjugation of a kingdom to which he was the heir. ”

“ The blessings of the poor and the lowly attend me when I walk abroad, without guards, without retinue, without arms. I hate the nobles, for they are ever ready to barter their country and their God for foreign gold: and Scotland's nobles will one day be Scotland's destruction. Pardon this honest vanity; but I feel that to reign in the hearts of my people is a great and glorious thing. There are many kings in Europe, but not one is called the father of his poor but James Stuart of Scotland. ”

“ None has done more than the Lord Ashkirk to further a marriage between King James and a daughter of the mansworn Tudor; but happily, I have ever been victorious; for the honour and policy of Scotland and France require that they must league together against the grasping ambition and centralizing greed of England. Thou knowest that I have ever been for France, and bear about as much love for England as a tiger doth to a panther. ”

“ The Register House, Edinburgh, contains a curious and valuable series of these Accounts, detailing the daily expenses of the kings of Scotland from the reign of James III. down to the ascension of the English throne by James VI. At the time of the first appearance of syphilis in our northern realm, the throne of Scotland was occupied by James IV., a prince who was a great patron of the arts and sciences of his time. He was a practitioner in them also, as well as a patron of them. At different times we find him busily experimenting in chemistry, in physiology, and in medicine. ”

“ All his trusty adherents in England were without power or influence, and in Scotland the Duke of Gordon was the only nobleman who openly stood out for the interests of his sovereign. He had been created a duke by Charles II. James had appointed him governor of the castle of Edinburgh, and he had been thereafter made a privy-counsellor and one of the lords of the treasury. Though a firm and conscientious Catholic, he was always opposed to the violent measures of the court, as he was afraid that however well meant, they would turn out ruinous to the king ”

“ His time, besides, fell at a crisis in Scottish history—the meeting of the counter currents of the old order and the new in the Reformation. Whatever the causes, the fact remains that from his birth at Linlithgow on 10th April, 1512, till his death at Falkland on 14th [142] December, 1542, the career of James V. presents a continuous series of personal episodes as dramatic as anything on the historic stage. Dating his reign from the most tragic disaster in Scottish history, he was crowned King of Scotland before he could speak, a month after his father’s death on the battlefield. ”

“ Elphinstone was a saint, a scholar, and a statesman, and he was probably the only man in Scotland who could influence the king. During the discussion of the French alliance he urged delay, but was overborne by the impetuous patriotism of the younger nobles, whose voice was, as ever, for war. So, war it was. Bitter letters of defiance passed between the two kings, and, in August, 1513, James led his army over the border. Lowlanders, Highlanders, and Islesmen had alike rallied round his banner; once again we find the "true Scots leagued", not "with", but against "the Saxons farther off". ”

“ In the Viscount Dundee, King James lost the only man in Scotland possessed of all the qualifications necessary for conducting to a successful issue the great and important charge which had been committed to him by his sovereign. Educated in the strictest principles of toryism, he could never divest his mind of the abstract ideas of passive obedience and hereditary right, and to him, therefore, any attempt to resist the authority of the sovereign, no matter how far that authority was abused, appeared highly treasonable. ”

“ A large number of the Scottish nobility were anxious to avert by armed force the contemplated insult to their nation, and to secure Scotland against a humiliation such as their ancestors would never have tolerated. But a cowardly King and a divided nobility were not the forces which, in earlier days, had awakened terror in the heart of England. Elizabeth and her advisers know this, and were well aware that the fear of never reaching the goal of his ambition--the united thrones of England and Scotland--would curb within harmless limits the half-hearted anger of the selfish James. ”

“ 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. ”