ational affairs as might have consolidated Scotland and made her
great--by patience and firmness and courage, and conspicuously by mercy,
notwithstanding one crime. And when the helm was in his hands, and a
fair future before him, fell, not ignominiously indeed, yet uselessly, a
noble life thrown away, leaving once more chaos behind him. He was only
twenty-nine when the thunderbolt thus falling from a clear sky destroyed
all the hopes of Scotland; yet had reigned long, for twenty-three years
of trouble, tumult, and distress.

CHAPTER III

JAMES III: THE MAN OF PEACE

Again the noises cease save for a wail of lamentation over the dead. The
operations of war are suspended, the dark ranks of the army stand aside,
and every trumpet and fatal cannon is silent while once more a woman and
a child come into the foreground of the historic scene. Once more, the
most pathetic figure surely in history, a little startled boy clinging
to his mother--not afraid indeed of the array of war to which he has
been accustomed all his life, and perhaps with an instinct in him of
childish majesty, the consciousness which so soon develops even in an
infant mind, of unquestioned rank, but surrounded by the atmosphere of
horror and affright in which he has been taken from among his
playthings--stands forth to be hastily enveloped in the robes so
pitifully over-large of the dead monarch. The lords, we are told, sent
for the Prince in the first sensation of the catastrophe, and had him
crowned at Kelso, feeling the necessity of that central name at least,
round which to rally. They were not always respectful of the real King
when they had him, yet the divinity which hedged the title, however
helpless the head round which it shone, was felt to be indispensable to
the unity and strength of the kingdom. Mary of Gueldres in her sudden
widowhood would seem to have behaved with great dignity and spirit at
this critical moment. She is said to have insisted that the siege should
not be abandoned, but that her husband's death might at least accomplish
what his heart had been set upon; and the army after a moment of
despondency was so "incouraged" by the coming of the Prince "that they
forgot the death of his father and past manfullie to the hous, and wan
the same, and justified the captaine theroff, and kest it down to the
ground that it should not be any impediment to them hereafter." The
execution of the captain seems a hard measure unless he wa