294 James Lindsay, Provost of Lincluden. 



provostship of Lincluden, early in 1449, he figures as a canon of 

 Glasgow ; and during the same period he was acting as secretary 

 to William, Eighth Earl of Douglas.^ He was now, if he had 

 not been before this, immersed in politics ; and since he became 

 more distinguished as a politician and statesman than as a church- 

 man, it is necessary to an insight into his life and character that 

 account should be taken of the political activities of the Doug- 

 lases, then dominating the public affairs of the kingdom. Im- 

 mediately upon succeeding his father Earl William went to Court, 

 and was forthwith appointed Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom. 

 ^' It sounds a thing incredible in modern ears;" says Sir Herbert 

 Maxwell, " that the whole of the royal forces should have been 

 entrusted to the command of a lad of eighteen; yet so it was." 

 Incredible it may .sound to us that military leadership, titular or 

 actual, should have been regarded as the natural right of noble 

 birth and feudal power; but such was the idea of the time, and 

 agreeably to this idea none had a better claim to high command 

 than the Earl of Douglas, young as he was. Not in this, then, 

 lies the marvel of Earl William's career, but in that he, between 

 his eighteenth and his twenty-fifth year when he died, should have 

 played so great a part in the game of politics, involved and 

 hazardous as it then was, and should have more than held his own 

 against such experienced and wily players as Li\ingstone, the 

 King's Governor; Crichton, the Chancellor; and Kennedy, 

 Bishop of St. Andrews. Livingstone and Crichton, though not 

 among the great territorial magnates, had proved themselves for- 

 midable foes by carrying through such a drastic scheme for 

 breaking the Douglas power as the judicial murder of the sixth 

 earl and his brother. On account of this record they had the 

 best of reasons to watch and to checkmate if possible every move 

 of their new opponent. Yet very soon he was playing the one 

 against the other. The Livingstones he detached from the oppos- 

 ing party, and looked on with indifference, if not with contempt, 

 when they went down before the wrath of their old associates. 

 The great stroke which was to have reduced the Black Douglas 

 to the level of the other nobles he countered and rendered of no 



5. Mnnimen/a dc. Mdro/>, Vol. II., p. 573 ; Frazer, Dovgla.i Book, Vol. III., 

 pp. 380, 428 ; The ScotU of Bucdenrh, Vol. II., p. 35 ; Fee/. May. 

 Sig. (6th Aug., 1447). Exchequer BoUs, Vol. V., p. 336. 



