unding of three
universities (St. Andrew's, 1411, Glasgow, 1450, and Aberdeen, 1494)
there is sure indication that beneath the turbid political surface
there flowed a stream of intellectual life. From these literary
centres "learned Scotsmen" began to swarm over the land, and a solid
scholarship was the aim of ambitious youths, who found in that the road
to posts of distinction once won only by arms. There was a small body
of national literature. Barbour's poem, "The Brus," led the way in the
fourteenth century, then King James's poem in the fifteenth, then
Henryson and Boece, and the procession of splendid names had commenced
which was to be joined in later ages by Burns, Scott, and Carlyle.

England had now become the refuge for {280} disgraced and intriguing
nobles. The Duke of Albany, the Earl of Douglas, and others entered
into negotiations with the English King, offering to acknowledge his
feudal superiority, he in return promising to give the crown of
Scotland to Albany. A battle between the English and Scottish forces
took place in the vicinity of Stirling. During the engagement King
James was thrown from his horse and then slain by his miscreant nobles
(1488). The scheme was a failure, and the son of the murdered King was
at once crowned James IV. Henry VII., now King of England, conceived a
plan of cementing friendly relations between the two kingdoms by the
marriage of his daughter, Princess Margaret, with the young King. This
union, so fruitful in consequences, took place at Holyrood in 1502,
amid great rejoicings.

During the two preceding reigns the relations of Scotland with her
great neighbor were comparatively peaceful. But in 1509 Queen
Margaret's brother, Henry VIII., was crowned King of England. Family
ties sat very lightly upon this monarch, and his hostile purposes soon
became apparent, and {281} the friendly relations were broken. A war
between France and England was the signal for a renewal of the old
alliance between the French and the Scots. James himself led an army
against that of his brother-in-law across the Tweed, and at Flodden met
an overwhelming defeat and his own death (1513).

Europe was now unconsciously on the brink of a moral and spiritual
revolution, a revolution which was going to affect no country more
profoundly than Scotland. The Church of Rome, deeply embedded and
wrought into the very structure of every European nation, seemed like a
part of nature. As soon