e connivance he
had been kept so long out of his throne, reduced the turbulent
Highlanders to order, and introduced a number of beneficial reforms (e. g.
a wider parliamentary franchise, a fixed standard for the coinage, a
supreme court of civil jurisdiction, a renovated system of weights and
measures), and widened Scotland's commercial relations with the
Continent; he was a man of scholarly tastes, a patron of learning, and
exhibits no mean poetic gift in his well-known poem the "King's Quhair";
his vigorous and sometimes harsh and vindictive efforts to lower the
powers of the nobility procured him their inveterate hatred, and in 1437
he was murdered in the Dominican monastery at Perth by a band of
conspirators (1394-1437).

JAMES II., king of Scotland from 1437 to 1460, son of preceding;
during his minority the country was torn by rival factions amongst the
nobility, the chief point of contest being the wardship of the young
king; an attempt on the part of the conspirators who had murdered James
I. to place their leader, the Earl of Athole, on the throne, was
frustrated; in 1449 James assumed the duties of his kingship, and in the
same year married Mary, the daughter of the Duke of Gueldres; an English
war then being waged on the Borders was brought to a close, and the young
king entered vigorously upon administrative reforms; in these efforts he
was hampered by the opposition of the nobility, and his fiery temper led
him to participate in the murder of the chief obstructionist, the Earl of
Douglas; protection given to the exiled Douglases by the Yorkists led
James to support the claims of Henry VI. in England; he was killed by the
bursting of a cannon at the siege of Roxburgh Castle (1430-1460).

JAMES III., king of Scotland from 1460 to 1488, son of James II.;
was during his minority under the care of his mother and Bishop Kennedy
of St. Andrews, the Earl of Angus being lieutenant-general of the
kingdom; but the bishop and the earl died before he was 14, and the
nobility fell into faction and disorder again; the first to gain power
was Lord Boyd (whose son married the king's sister), but a charge of
treason brought about his downfall and exile; the king married Princess
Margaret of Denmark in 1469, and gave himself up to a life of quiet ease
surrounded by men of art and culture, while his brothers Albany and Mar,
by their military tastes and achievements, won the affections of the
nobles; James, becoming jealou