JAMES V. JAMES VI. 



alluded to in his (.leasing poem of the King's Quhair, 

 of whom he became enamoured, from beholding her 

 iu the royal gardens from the windows of his apart- 

 ments, while a captive in Windsor castle. On his 

 return to Scotland, finding that the duke of Albany 

 and his son had alienated many of the most valuable 

 possessions of the crown, lie caused them to be con- 

 victed and executed as traitors, and their estates to 

 be confiscated. These and some other strong mea- 

 sures in the resumption of improvident grants, under 

 the regency of the dukes ot Albany, were atoned 

 for by tlif enactment of many good laws in his parlia- 

 ments; and, as far as a lawless nobility would 

 allow them to be put in practice, they much improved 

 the state of society in Scotland. In 1436, he renewed 

 the Scottish nlliance with France, giving his daughter 

 Margaret in marriage to thedauphin, and sending with 

 her a splendid train, and a large body of troops. A 

 fruitless endeavour of the English to prevent this 

 marriage, by intercepting the Scottish fleet in its 

 passage, so exasperated James, that he declared war 

 against England. He was, however, on such bad 

 terms with his nobility, in consequence of his endea- 

 vours to curb their ambition and improve his revenue, 

 that he was obliged to disband his army, under the 

 apprehension of a conspiracy. He then retired to 

 the Carthusian monastery of Perth, which he had 

 himself founded, where he lived in a state of privacy, 

 which facilitated the success of a plot formed against 

 his life. The chief actors in this tragedy were Robert 

 Graham, and Walter, earl of Athol, the king's uncle, 

 the former of whom was actuated by revenge for 

 the resumption of some lands improperly granted 

 to his family, and the latter by the hopes of suc- 

 ceeding to the crown. By means of bribery, the 

 assassins gained admission to the king's apartment ; 

 and an alarm being raised, the queen's ladies attempt- 

 ed to secure the chamber door. One of them, Cath- 

 arine Douglas, thrust her arm througli the staple, in 

 which state she remained until it was dreadfully 

 broken by the assailants. The instant the assassins 

 got into the apartments, they dragged the king from 

 liis concealment, and, in spite of the cries and remon- 

 strances of the queen, who in vain threw herself 

 between them and the object of their resentment, put 

 him to death by multiplied wounds. He perished in 

 the forty-fourth year of his age, and thirteenth of his 

 reign, Feb. 20, 1 437, leaving one son and five daugh- 

 ters ; and his murder was punished by the deaths of 

 the conspirators in exquisite tortures. The king, who 

 may be said to have fallen a martyr to his attempts to 

 abolish the anarchy and disorder which prevailed 

 throughout his kingdom, holds no inconsiderable place 

 in the catalogue of royal authors; by his poem of the 

 King's Quhair. James is also said to have been a 

 skilful musician, and some attribute to him the com- 

 position of several of the most admired of the Scot- 

 tish melodies ; but of this Doctor Burney is much 

 inclined to doubt. An ascribed list of the works to 

 James I. will be found in Park's edition of Walpole's 

 Royal and Noble Authors. Among these are three 

 admirably descriptive poems, respectively entitled, 

 " Christ's Kirk on the Green," " Peblis to the Play," 

 and "The Gaberlunzie Man," the authorship of 

 which is sometimes given to James I., and sometimes 

 to James V., but in neither case with much proba- 

 bility. All that can be said with any degree of cer- 

 tainty is, that James V. from his well-known roving 

 propensities, was in all likelihood the hero of the last 

 mentioned piece. 



JAMES V. of Scotland succeeded, in 1513, at the 

 death of his father, James IV., though only eighteen 

 months old. His mother, Margaret of England, 

 governed during his childhood ; but, at the age of 

 seventeen, he assumed the reins of government, and, 



in 1535, married Magdalen, daughter of Francis I., 

 who died two years after. He afterwards married 

 Mary of Lorraine, widow of Louis of Orleans, and 

 died Dec. 13, 1542, leaving the throne to his only 

 child, Mary Stuart, who was born only eight days 

 before his death. 



JAMES VI. of Scotland, and I. of England, was 

 the son of Mary, queen of Scotland, by her cousin 

 Henry lord Darnley. He was born at Edinburgh 

 castle, in June, 1566, at the unfortunate period when 

 his mother was at variance with her husband, and 

 had begun to fix her affection on the earl of Both- 

 well. In the stormy and disgraceful times which fol- 

 lowed, the infant prince was committed to the charge 

 of the earl of Mar ; and, in the following year, Mary 

 being forced to resign the crown, he was solemnly 

 crowned at Stirling, and from that time all public 

 acts ran in his name. His childhood was passed in 

 civil wars, under the regencies of Murray, Mar and 

 Morton, during which time he resided in Stirling cas- 

 tle, under the tuition of the celebrated Buchanan. 

 His progress in school- learning was rapid; but, as 

 his character opened, an instability and weakness of 

 temper became manifest, which indicated what, in 

 the sequel, proved to be the case, that he would 

 become an easy prey to flatterers, and his reign be 

 marked by injudicious favouritism. From the first, 

 too, he seems to have imbibed those exalted notions 

 of the royal authority and divine right which proved 

 so injurious to his posterity. Some injudicious mea- 

 sures, in the spirit of these opinions, early produced 

 a conspiracy of his nobles against him, who, in 1582, 

 took possession of his person at Ruthven castle. A 

 new confederacy, however, effected his liberation, 

 and he again put himself under the direction of his 

 favourite, the earl of Arran. The policy of queen 

 Elizabeth, whose apprehensions from the Catholic 

 party in favour of Mary, led her to employ every art 

 to keep up a dissatisfied party in Scotland, was greatly 

 assisted by the violent and unprincipled measures of 

 Arran against the connexions of the late conspirators, 

 many of whom fled to England. When, however, it 

 became apparent that the life of his mother was in 

 danger from the sentence of an English judicature, 

 James, who had hitherto treated her very irrever- 

 ently, felt himself called upon to interfere. He accord- 

 ingly wrote a menacing letter to Elizabeth on the 

 subject, appealed to other courts for assistance, and 

 assembled his nobles, who promised to assist him 

 either to prevent or revenge that queen's injustice. 

 When the news of the catastrophe arrived, he reject- 

 ed with proper spirit the excuses of Elizabeth, and 

 prepared for hostilities ; but he was finally prevented 

 from engaging in actual war by the inadequacy of his 

 resources. One of the first acts of his majority was 

 to reconcile the feuds of his nobility, whom, for that 

 purpose, he invited to a grand festival at Holyrood- 

 house. On the threatened invasion of England by 

 Philip II. he judiciously resolved to assist Elizabeth 

 against the Spaniards, and was zealously supported 

 by his people for the preservation of Protestantism, 

 who entered into a national covenant to maintain it. 

 In 1589, James married Anne, daughter of Frederic 

 king of Denmark. On his return home, after passing 

 the winter in festivities at Copenhagen, he was in 

 some danger from conspiracies against his life ; and, 

 for several succeeding years of his reign, the history 

 of Scotland displays much turbulence and party con- 

 test. In 1600, while the country was in a state of 

 unusual tranquillity, a very extraordinary event took 

 place, the causes of which were never discovered. 

 While the king was upon a hunting excursion, he was 

 invited by the brother of Ruthven, earl of Cowrie, to 

 ride with a small train to the earl's house at Perth. 

 Here he was led to a remote chamber, on pretence of a 



