he was not put there as a
prisoner, but for the maintaining of the commonweill: gave him leave
to use all his directions, gifts, and casualties at his pleasure.
For nothing was derogat from him by reason of his authority, and all
letters was given and proclamations made and printed in his name
lykas they were before at his inputting, nor no regent nor governour
was chosen at that time, but every lord within his own bounds was
sworn to minister justice and to punish theft and slaughter within
themselves, or else to bring the doers of the same to the King's
justice at Edinburgh."

"Thus there was peace and rest in the country the space of
three-quarters of a year," says Pitscottie. This, however, is a mistake,
for the time of the King's retirement was only three or four months,
from St. Magdalene's Day to Michaelmas. Short or long, it was one of the
most curious moments of interregnum that history knows. James was
conveyed back to Edinburgh with every show of respect, attended by the
triumphant lords, who despised his milder virtues, his preferences and
tastes, not one of whom could manage either pencil or lute, who cared
for none of these things--while his strained eyes could still see
nothing but the vision against the daylight, the impromptu gibbet of the
high-arched bridge over the Border stream, where his familiar friends
had been strung up with every sign of infamy. He had to contain within
himself the rage, the shame, the grief and loneliness of his heart, and
endure as he best could the exultation which his captors would scarcely
attempt to conceal. The historians tell us little or nothing of the
Queen, Margaret of Denmark, to whom James had been married for several
years, and who had brought with her the full allegiance of the isles,
the Hebrides, which up to that time had paid a tribute to the
Scandinavian kingdom, and Orkney and Shetland which were the Queen's
portion. Whether he found any comfort in her and in his children, when
he was thus brought back to them to the castle, which would seem to have
been their favourite residence, we are not told. At all events the shame
of such a return, and of the captivity which was veiled by so many
ironical appearances of freedom, must have been grievous to him, even as
reflected in the eyes of his foreign wife, or the wondering questions on
his sudden return of his baby son.

How this strange state of things was brought to an end it