King James I of Scotland

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Wifeless and sonless, in one week—I may well be crownless and lifeless the next. Oh, who that could have a crust and cup of water in peaceful obscurity would be king of Scotland? One word ere we go, Sir James of Sauchie, and answer me truly on your soul as a Christian man, is my son in arms against me of his own free will?"
"I know not; but the nobles, now in arms to demand justice, took him away with them."
"Justice is in the hand of Heaven; and yet these rebel lords would seek it at the head of forty-thousand spears." ”

“ His habit of going about in disguise familiarly among the people, endeared him to them, and led him into many amusing adventures. James was twice married, first to Magdalen, daughter of Francis the First, King of France; secondly, to Mary, daughter of the Duke of Guise, widow of the Duke of Longueville. In character and policy James was something like James the First. Like him, he strove to curb the power of the nobles, and to win for the Crown something more than mere nominal power, by making reforms which were much needed in the administration of justice. ”

“ 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. ”

“ James of Scotland succeeded—a King who reigned like a woman after a woman who had reigned like a man. The Puritans in Elizabeth’s time were comparatively insignificant in numbers, but the strictness of the Queen’s ecclesiastical rule acted upon their stubborn nature, and those who were averse to Episcopacy, and impatient of uniformity in rites and ceremonies and the decorous adjuncts of a National Church, grew formidable under James, and turbulent and aggressive after the accession of Charles. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Edinburgh council were immovable; and delay could not now be avoided, for three years must pass before James would be of age to be a party to a valid contract. The immediate difficulty of the unsettled war was disposed of by a treaty of peace to last for that time. When the three years were expired the whole question should be re-opened. Possibly the temper of Scotland would not have permitted a more satisfactory conclusion; but the young James, weary to his heart of the heartburnings and quarrels which surrounded him, told Magnus he wished he was in England with the King his uncle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Scotland has not seen such for many a day, sad and sorrowful as have been the fates of her kings. Will your grace hear your fate from the lips of a seer?"
"I would rather hear that of my enemy, who rules this kingdom with a rod of iron," replied the duke.
"You will hear the fates and fortunes of both," said Graham—"ay, even as is seen the scales of justice, which, as the beam moves, lifts one, only to depress the other. If you will accompany me to a shepherd's hut, back among your own hills of Athol, you will hear what time has in store for you and King James." ”

“ By these great accessions of territory James became more powerful than any former king, and for the short remainder of his reign was, in fact, almost an absolute monarch in Scotland. Parliament was summoned to Stirling on 13 Oct., for the third time in 1455, a proof how greatly the king relied on its support. The parliament of Stirling was almost exclusively occupied with measures to secure the kingdom against the English, with whom war had already broken out in the course of the summer, as a sequel of the suppression of the Douglas rebellion. ”

“ Though war rendered the continent a sealed book to the English, Sir Walter Scott's poems and novels had not as yet opened up all Scotland to the tourists of Europe and Cockneydom. The kingdom of the Jameses could not be "done" then as now, by Brown, Jones, and Robinson, with knapsack on back (with Black's Guide and Bradshaw's Table, tartan peg-tops and paper collars) , in a fortnight by rail and steam; hence a traveller on foot, and portmanteau in hand, was apt to be considered in the rural districts as an English pedlar or worse. ”

“ In 1603, at Queen Elizabeth's death, the prince was nine years old. Before King James left Scotland, which he did immediately upon receiving the proclamation that raised him to the throne of Great Britain, he wrote a sensible letter to his son, telling him of the immense change in their fortunes, but warning him not to let this news make him "proud or insolent; for a king's son and heir was ye before, and no more are ye now. The augmentation that is hereby like to fall unto you, is but in cares and heavy burthens. ”

“ After all the ages of conflict to unite the two kingdoms under one crown, it was effected, but in the reverse direction to that in which the monarchs of England had striven. They had not mounted the throne of Scotland, but Scotland sent her king to rule over England. With Elizabeth and the Tudors terminated the reign of almost unresisted absolutism; with James commenced that mighty struggle for constitutional liberty which did not cease till it had expelled his dynasty from the throne, and placed on a firm basis the independence of the people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The lure to James was the hand of the English king's daughter, Margaret Tudor. For five years the negotiations dragged wearily along. The bitter hate of the two peoples blocked the way, and even Henry's ministers objected that the English crown might be made by the match the heritage of a Scottish king. "Then," they said, "Scotland will annex England." "No," said the king with shrewd sense; "in such a case England would annex Scotland, for the greater always draws to it the less." His steady pressure at last won the day. In 1502 the marriage-treaty with the Scot-king was formally concluded ”

“ The old associations were appealed to with the usual success. Fatally for himself—fatally for his country—James invaded Northumberland in the absence of his brotherin-law, and Scotland paid for his fault in the defeat of Flodden, in which the King and the flower of the nobility perished miserably. ”

“ And leading forth his horse, for the storm had now died away, and the early sun of June had risen, the king put his foot in the stirrup, saying,—
"My adventures are wild and strange; and assuredly, if ever old Scotland hath a Plutarch, James V. will live in his pages. Adieu!" and with these words, placing the wolf's head at his saddle-bow, the king put spurs to his grey horse, and galloping along the sandy beach, rode over the adjacent hill in the direction of Falkland, which lay on his road to the Cistercian abbey of Balmerino. ”

“ The liberal members of the Convention took advantage of this movement to summon the people to arms for their protection, and they were instantly surrounded by hundreds of armed Cameronians, who completely overawed the adherents of the late government. The Convention then declared King James to have forfeited the crown, by his attempts to overcome the religion and liberties of his subjects. The sovereignty of Scotland was settled, like that of England, upon the next Protestant heirs, the Prince and Princess of Orange, who were accordingly proclaimed at Edinburgh on the 11th of April. ”

“ According to the law of Scotland, the heir to the throne was not allowed to be brought up by his parents, but was sent to Stirling Castle, to be under the care of the Earl of Mar, who held the right to be the hereditary guardian, and this accounts for the many letters which passed between the little prince and the king and queen. When Elizabeth died and James became king of Great Britain, he had to go hastily to London, but about a year later he sent for the queen to come "with the bairns to Windsor, where he prayed God they should all have a blyth meeting." ”

“ Master Edward Shelly, the Englishman, who was disguised as a follower of the House of Glencairn, joined in the plot also, but with some unwillingness; for he ran considerable risk. By the laws of James II., any Englishman found in Scotland became the lawful captive of the first man who discovered him; and any Scottish subject who met an English man under tryst, as these noblesse were doing, was liable to imprisonment during the king's pleasure, and to the forfeiture of all he possessed. ”

“ Roman Catholics were ill-treated by James, and most of the Irish were Roman Catholics.
When James died, all the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland were discontented. Poor Ireland was even worse off than ever. Scotland had been neglected, and the people affronted about their religion; and, in England, James had taken money unlawfully, and behaved so ill, both to parliament and people, that everybody disliked him as a king, and he was so silly in his private behaviour, that everybody laughed at him as a gentleman. ”