On March 28, 1424, James I. was released, on a ransom of £40,000,
and after his marriage with Jane Beaufort, grand-daughter of John of
Gaunt, son of Edward III. The story of their wooing (of course
in the allegorical manner of the age, and with poetical conventions
in place of actual details) is told in James's poem, “The
King's Quair,” a beautiful composition in the school of
Chaucer, of which literary scepticism has vainly tried to rob the royal
author. James was the ablest and not the most scrupulous of the
Stuarts. His captivity had given him an English education, a belief
in order, and in English parliamentary methods, and a fiery determination
to put down the oppression of the nobles. “If God gives
me but a dog's life,” he said, “I will make the key
keep the castle and the bracken bush keep the cow.” Before
his first Parliament, in May 1424, James arrested Murdoch's eldest
son, Sir Walter Fleming of Cumbernauld, and the younger Boyd of Kilmarnock.
The Parliament left a Committee of the Estates (“The Lords of
the Articles”) to carry out the royal policy.
Taxes for the payment of James's ransom were imposed; to impose them was
easy, “passive resistance” was easier; the money was never
paid, and James's noble hostages languished in England.
He next arrested the old Earl of Lennox, and Sir Robert Graham of the
Kincardine family, later his murderer.
These were causes of unpopularity. During a new Parliament
(1425) James imprisoned the new Duke of Albany (Murdoch) and his son
Alexander, and seized their castles.
The Albanys and Lennox were executed; their estates were forfeited;
but resentment dogged a king who was too fierce and too hurried a reformer,
perhaps too cruel an avenger of his own wrongs.
Our knowledge of the events of his reign is vague; but a king of
Scotland could never, with safety, treat any of his nobles as criminals;
the whole order was concerned to prevent or avenge severity of justice.
At a Parliament in Inverness (1427) he seized the greatest of the
Highland magnates whom he had summoned; they were hanged or imprisoned,
and, after resistance, Alastair, the new Lord of the Isles, did penance
at Holyrood, before being immured in Tantallon Castle. His cousin,
Donald Balloch, defeated Mar at Inverlochy (where Montrose later routed
Argyll) (1431). Not long afterwards Donald fled to Ireland, whence
a head, said to be his, was sent to James, but Donald lived to fight
another day.
Without a standing army to garrison the inaccessible Highlands, the
Crown could neither preserve peace in those regions nor promote justice.
The system of violent and perfidious punishments merely threw the Celts
into the arms of England.
Execution itself was less terrible to the nobles than the forfeiting
of their lands and the disinheriting of their families. None the
less, James (1425-1427) seized the lands of the late Earl of Lennox,
made Malise Graham surrender the earldom of Strathearn in exchange for
the barren title of Earl of Menteith, and sent the sufferer as a hostage
into England. The Earl of March, son of the Earl who, under Robert
III., had gone over to the English cause, was imprisoned and stripped
of his ancient domains on the Eastern Border; and James, disinheriting
Lord Erskine, annexed the earldom of Mar to the Crown.
In a Parliament at Perth (March 1428) James permitted the minor barons
and freeholders to abstain from these costly assemblies on the condition
of sending two “wise men” to represent each sheriffdom:
a Speaker was to be elected, and the shires were to pay the expenses
of the wise men. But the measure was unpopular, and in practice
lapsed. Excellent laws were passed, but were not enforced.
In July-November 1428 a marriage was arranged between Margaret the
infant daughter of James and the son (later Louis XI.) of the still
uncrowned Dauphin, Charles VIII. of France. Charles announced
to his subjects early in 1429 that an army of 6000 Scots was to land
in France; that James himself, if necessary, would follow; but Jeanne
d'Arc declared that there was no help from Scotland, none save
from God and herself. She was right: no sooner had she won her
victories at Orleans, Jargeau, Pathay, and elsewhere (May-June 1429)
than James made a truce with England which enabled Cardinal Beaufort
to throw his large force of anti-Hussite crusaders into France, where
they secured Normandy. The Scots in France, nevertheless, fought
under the Maid in her last successful action, at Lagny (April 1430).
An heir to the Crown, James, was born in October 1430, while the
King was at strife with the Pope, and asserting for King and Parliament
power over the Provincial Councils of the Church. An interdict
was threatened, James menaced the rich and lax religious orders with
secular reformation; settled the Carthusians at Perth, to show an example
of holy living; and pursued his severities against many of his nobles.
His treatment of the Earl of Strathearn (despoiled and sent as a
hostage to England) aroused the wrath of the Earl's uncle, Robert
Graham, who bearded James in Parliament, was confiscated, fled across
the Highland line, and, on February 20, 1437, aided, it is said by the
old Earl of Atholl (a grandson of Robert II. by his second marriage),
led a force against the King in the monastery of the Black Friars at
Perth, surprised him, and butchered him. The energy of his Queen
brought the murderers, and Atholl himself, to die under unspeakable
torments.
James's reforms were hurried, violent, and, as a rule, incapable
of surviving the anarchy of his son's minority: his new Court
of Session, sitting in judgment thrice a-year, was his most fortunate
innovation.
