d to
his execution, and the wail of his wild followers after him, sounds
still in the stirring strains of song and ballad. No doubt it was
justice that James did--but justice somewhat stern and out of time.

The young Court now blazing out into full splendour, with a legitimate
head and every prospect of prosperity, became again the resort of
foreign chivalry and magnificent envoys, among them a legate from the
Pope to assure the allegiance of James to the Holy See, which his uncle
of England had deserted. Henry at the same time did not neglect by
constant messengers and vague promises, now of the hand of the Princess
Mary, now of an English dukedom, to secure his nephew to his side. After
that princess, whom her father tried his utmost to put out of the
succession by divorcing her mother, James was the next heir, and Henry
did not forget that possibility. The hand of the young princess had
already been several times offered to the Scots King without any
certainty either in the proposal or its acceptance. One cannot help
wondering what might have been the issue had that unhappy Mary, to whom
history has given so grim a nickname, been thus wedded in early youth to
a gracious and gallant Stewart. In all history there occurs by times a
gleam like this of possible deliverance from fate, an opening by which
the subjects of tragedy might have secured an escape had they but known.
One wonders had she thus escaped the wrongs and bitterness of her early
career whether Mary would have got free from those traces of blood and
madness which have left so dark a shadow upon her name; or whether, in
the conflict that was to follow, her fierce Tudor passion would have
embittered every strife. It is wonderful to think that she might have
been the mother of that other Mary so different yet still more sadly
fated, who in that case never could have been the Mary Stewart she was.
We are led to something like a _reductio ad absurdum_ by such
speculations, very vain yet always attractive as they are. James was
eager to marry at the earliest possible moment, and all would have
welcomed the marriage with his kinswoman.

In this respect, however, as in almost every other, Scotland was now at
a turning-point of the utmost importance in her career. For the first
time her politics had begun to be troubled by the possibility of an
alliance with England more strong and lasting than the brief periods of
truce which had hitherto existed between two nat