sly, in the month of June
1488, having reigned twenty-eight years and lived thirty-five--a short
lifetime for so much trouble and general misfortune.

[Illustration: ARMS OF JAMES IV OF SCOTLAND

(From King's College Chapel, Old Aberdeen)]

CHAPTER IV

JAMES IV: THE KNIGHT-ERRANT

The graver records of the nation pause at the point to which we have
arrived. The tale leaves both battlefield and council chamber, though
there is an inevitable something of both in the chronicle as there is
something of daily bread in the most festive day. But it is not with
these grave details that the historian occupies himself. The most
serious page takes a glow from the story it has to tell, the weighty
matters of national life and development stand aside, and it is a knight
of romance who stands forth to occupy the field. The story of James, the
fourth of the name, is one of those passages of veritable history in
which there is scarcely anything that might not be borrowed from a tale
of chivalry. It is pure romance from beginning to end.

Of the character and personality of the boy whose education was carried
on under strict surveillance at Stirling we know nothing whatever, until
he suddenly appears before us in the enemy's camp, whether with his own
consent or not, or how much, if with his own consent, with any knowledge
of what he was about, it is difficult to tell. His mother had died while
he was still a child, and probably for the last few years of his much
disturbed life James III had but little attention to spare for his son.
If there is any truth in a curious story told by Pitscottie of a search
on board Sir Andrew Wood's ship for the murdered King, while yet the
fact of his death was unknown, and the Prince's wistful address to the
great sailor, "Sir, are ye my father?" we might suppose that the boy had
been banished altogether from his father's presence. But perhaps this is
too slender a foundation to build upon. There can be no doubt, however,
that after the battle, little honourable to either side, and lost by the
King's party almost before begun, from which he fled in a panic so
ignominious and fatal, there was a moment of great perplexity and
dismay, when King James's fate remained a mystery, and the rebel nobles
with the boy-prince among them knew not what to do or to say, in the
doubt whether he was dead or alive, whether he might not reappear at any
moment with a host from the Highlands or from France,