perintend the earl's affairs during his own absence, imprudently thwarted the wishes of the king, and set the royal authority at defiance. James mustered a powerful military force, and took several of the castles of Douglas. Earl William received tidings of these transactions in Scotland, while he, with his companions, were at Rome. The earl hastened to Scotland and seemed at first to resume his former ascendancy over James's mind. He was nominated his lieutenant or justiciary for the whole kingdom. But Douglas could no longer repose confidence in the monarch's favour. The enmity between Crichton and Douglas was not now laid aside; and the earl resolved to rid himself for ever of such an enemy. Casting off all respect for the king's peace, Douglas laid wait for him between his own castle and the town of Edinburgh. Crichton, going with a few attendants to Edinburgh, was suddenly assaulted by a troop of armed men; but, taking courage, they made so vigorous a resistance, that he secured his retreat with safety and honour to Crichton castle. Neither Douglas nor his sovereign could longer condially and steadily believe the safety of each other to be consistent with his own. Maclellan of Bombie, a vassal of the crown, whose possessions lay in the midst of Douglas's land in Galloway, had refused to attach himself to the earl. In the eyes of Douglas this was an unpardonable offence. He besieged him in his castle, took and destroyed it; carried him to the contiguous castle of Thrieve, and afterwards beheaded him. The indignation with which James received the news of such acts as these, perpetrated by Douglas against his authority, determined him at length to endeavour to rid himself of the opposition of a subject so powerful. Earl Douglas was therefore invited to attend his sovereign in parliament at Stirling, which he accordingly did. The king endeavoured to expostulate with him concerning his conduct, but finding remonstrance in vain, he drew a dagger and plunged it into the earl's bosom on the 13th of January, 1452.

JAMES DOUGLAS, ninth earl of Douglas, and brother of William, eighth earl of Douglas, succeeded to the honours of the family upon the death of his brother. To revenge his death, he, with all the members of the league, took to arms; burnt, with every circumstance of contemptuous indignation, the letter of safe conduct by which the earl had been enticed within his sovereign's power, and desolated the domains of the monarch. James, active to support his authority, levied an army, and laid siege to the castle of Abercorn, one of the principal and best fortified seats belonging to the rebel earl. To raise this siege, Douglas assembled an army, consisting of all the military force which his vassals and adherents could furnish. The two armies were now encamped within an inconsiderable

distance of one another: but, without coming to an engagement, Douglas fled to Annandale with his brothers, the earls of Ormond and Moray. He was pursued thither by a body of forces; Moray was slain, the earl of Ormond made prisoner, and the earl of Douglas himself driven to provide for his safety in England. Some years after, Douglas returning, brought Percy, earl of Northumberland, upon an expedition against his country, in which Douglas was taken prisoner. James contented himself with sending the forfeited and captive earl of Douglas, to spend his latter years in monkish confinement, in the abbey of Lindores, where he died, in 1488, and was there buried.

JAMES DOUGLAS, fourth earl of Angus, succeeded his father in the title and estate, and died about the year 1452.

GEORGE DOUGLAS, fifth earl of Angus, succeeded his nephew in the title. He followed James II., against the earl of Douglas; and when Crichton was in disgrace, assisted him against the king's authority. He defeated the earls of Douglas and Northumberland, in a battle fought in the Merse, in which Douglas was taken prisoner, and his estates forfeited. The death of the earl of Angus is supposed to have happened about 1462.

ROBERT LORD BOYD, son of Sir Robert Boyd, of Kilmarnock, who was killed in 1439, in revenge for his murder of Lord Darnley. Towards the close of the reign of James II. of Scotland, Robert caused him to be called to parliament as a baron, by the style of Lord Boyd of Kilmarnock. In 1459, he was one of the plenipotentiaries for negociating a continuance of the truce with England. On the death of James II., in 1460, he was created justiciary, and named one of the lords of the regency, to manage affairs during the minority of James III. With the assistance of his younger brother, Sir Alexander Boyd of Duncan, he found means to ingross most of the offices of trust and profit about the court; and they proceeded so far as actually to carry off the king at a hunting, from Linlithgow, where he was under the care of Lord Kennedy, to Edinburgh. Here Lord Boyd procured a declaration in full parliament, constituting himself sole regent, with plenitude of power, till the king should arrive at the age of twenty-one, and, in fact, making him dictator of the kingdom. As an addition to his dignity, he was created lord high chamberlain in 1467. He further strengthened his authority, by effecting a marriage between the king's elder sister, and his son Sir Thomas, who was afterwards created Earl of Arran, and obtained large grants of land from the crown. The Boyds encouraged the young king in all kinds of licentiousness, in order to render him incapable of governing by himself. But their schemes of ambition were at length frustrat

ed. The Earl of Arran being sent over to Denmark, on the honourable mission of espousing the king's daughter in his master's name, opportunity was given for the discontented party to gain access to the king, and fill him with jealousies and suspicions of his favourites. In consequence, the king assembled a parliament at Edinburgh, in 1469, before which Lord Boyd, his son, and brother, were summoned to appear, and give an account of their administration. The blow could not be warded off; but Lord Boyd, for his security, appeared at the head of a body of armed men. Government, however, opposing a larger force, he disbanded them, and made his escape into England, where, broken down with this reverse of fortune, he died at Alnwick castle, in 1470. His brother, Sir Alexander, being sick, was brought before the parliament, indicted for high treason, found guilty, and executed. During this state of things, the Earl of Arran, who was joined in the indictment, arrived in the Frith of Forth with the young queen, and learning his danger, returned in one of the Danish ships to Denmark. He travelled to the courts of the kings of France, and the duke of Burgundy, and used every means to obtain his pardon and restoration, but ineffectually. His wife was divorced from him, and compelled to marry another; and in 1474, he closed his life and misfortunes at Antwerp. Such was the end of the flourishing period of this family, the history of which might afford an useful lesson to inordinate ambition, were it capable of receiving one! A descendant of this house, William Earl of Kilmarnock, had the misfortune of being beheaded on Towerhill, in 1746, for his share in the rebellion of that period.

JAMES III., king of Scotland, succeeded to the throne in his eighth year, on the death of his father, James II., in 1460. A regency was appointed, by which the custody of the king's person was committed to his mother, while the chief management of affairs devolved on lord Evandale, the chancellor, and James Kennedy, bishop of St. Andrew's. The early transactions of the minority chiefly concerned the part taken by the Scottish government in the contention between Lancaster and York. They favoured the former house, and Henry VI. surrendered to Scotland the important town and castle of Berwick, as the price of its friendship. Edward IV. endeavoured to counterbalance this by an alliance with John earl of Ross and lord of the isles, who in consequence rebelled against the Scottish king. A long truce, concluded after the complete ruin of the Lancaster party, put an end to these disorders. The death, in 1466, of bishop Kennedy, a wise and patriotic minister, proved a great misfortune, by delivering the young king into the power of flattering and mercenary courtiers. Among these, the family of Boyd obtained the superiority; and such was their

audacity, that they forcibly took possession of the king's person at Linlithgow, and carried him to Edinburgh. In a parliament there holden, the Boyds were pardoned for this outrage; and lord Boyd, the head of the family, was invested with offices which gave him the whole power of the crown. He married his eldest son to the sister of the young king, and accumulated estates and posts on all his kindred and friends. In 1468, James married Margaret, daughter of Christiern I., king of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. For the marriage portion, the Orkney and Shetland isles were pledged, and they were ever after annexed to the kingdom of Scotland.

James, now arrived at the age of maturity, took the reins of government into his own hands. His character, as it opened, displayed weakness, indolence, and caprice; a propensity to be ruled by favourites; an attachment to literature, and more particularly to the fine arts, and an inclination to despotism, but accompanied with lenity. He was pious, if minute devotional practices deserve that name; but he did not scruple indulging his avarice, by alienating ecclesiastical benefices to laymen. A treaty of friendship between Edward IV., cemented by the contract of the infant prince of Scotland, with a daughter of Edward, was the most important transaction of some succeeding years, and the annual payment of a sum by Edward, as a nominal portion with his daughter, operated like a subsidy in securing the amity of the Scottish court. In 1477, the king quarrelled with his two brothers, the duke of Albany and the earl of Mar. The favour which James showed to certain persons of mean birth and station who assisted him in his study of the arts, on one hand, and the ambitious and fiery spirit of the brothers, on the other, appeared to have been the cause of this breach. Both were apprehended, and an accusation was brought against Mar, of employing magical practices against the king's life. He was confined close prisoner, and shortly after died. Albany escaped from Edinburgh castle, and fled to France.

In 1480, war broke out between England and Scotland, but it was not until the next year that it bore a serious aspect. The preparations which Edward was making, excited the greatest zeal and unanimity in the Scotch parliament to resist them, and the nation appeared inspired by the warmest spirit of loyalty. The king, on his part, in this season of danger, made unusual concessions to the parliamentary authority. Beneath this apparent mutual good-will, however, there lurked much discontent. The long banished earl of Douglas had a party among the nobility. Albany, in despair of a reconciliation with his brother, had entered into a most dishonourable treaty with Edward, in which, assuming the title of king of Scotland, and branding James with illegitimacy, he acknowledged that he

"held his title by the gift of the king of England," and promised to make over to him several of the border districts in case of success. The king himself continued to offend his nobles, by giving his confidence to his chief favourite, Cochrane, an architect, whom he had made earl of Mar, and who behaved with the insolence usual in persons so elevated. In 1482, Edward's brother, the duke of Gloucester, accompanied by Albany and several English nobles, invested Berwick with a powerful army. James marched to Lauder to meet him, attended by his minions. The indignant nobles, at the head of whom was Archibald Douglas earl of Angus, determined to rid themselves by force of the disgrace to which their weak king subjected them. They seized Cochrane as he was going to council, and arrested, in the king's own tent, five others of the royal companions, of equally mean origin, and instantly hanged them over the bridge at Lauder. The astonished king, with his uncle the earl of Athol, either retired, or was conducted, to Edinburgh castle, and the army disbanded. The town of Berwick capitulated, but the castle still held out; and nothing now appearing to oppose the English, they marched as far as Edinburgh, and took possession of it. In this disastrous state of affairs, a party of nobles, who had assembled a small army, effected an accommodation, on the condition of the submission of Albany, and his restoration to his brother's favour. The king was libe rated, and resumed the reins of government, and Berwick remained in the possession of the English. It was not to be expected, that after such a demonstration of weakness in the sovereign, he should be able to rule in peace amid court factions and aristocratic turbulence. Albany soon revived his ambitious projects, and renewed his criminal treaty with Edward. The death of that prince prevented its execution, and Albany, on finding that his designs were discovered, was obliged to seek an asylum in England. He there collected a body of pillagers from the borders, with which, accompanied by the exiled Douglas, he made an incursion into Annandale; but he was defeated in an action at Lochmaben, and again became a fugitive.

In 1488, a confederation of the disaffected nobles broke out into an open rebellion, the objects of which were to dethrone and imprison James, and place his son on the throne. The king, alarmed at the gathering storm, retired to the north, which was for the most part well affected to him; and having collected a numerous army, returned southwards. In the mean time, the confederate barons had prevailed upon the governor of Stirling castle, to deliver to them the person of the king's eldest son, whom they placed at the head of their army. The armies met at Blackness, when the king's timidity and unwillingness to shed the blood of his subjects, induced him,