it should be possible for him to leave, after all the
wild anarchy of his minority, a pacificated and orderly kingdom behind
him, in the care of a Council of Regency, while he went forth upon a
mission so important to himself. He had altogether extinguished and
expelled the house of Douglas; he had subdued and repressed other
turbulent lords, and convinced them that his authority was neither to be
neutralised nor made light of; he had settled and calmed the Border by
the most decisive means; and he was now free to show himself in the
society of kings, and win his princess, and see the world. He had been
already the object of many overtures from contemporary Powers. The
Emperor and the Pope had both sent him envoys and conciliated his
friendship; and in the imperial house itself as well as in many others
of the highest rank there had been ladies proposed to share his crown.
The one more immediately in view when he set out on his journey was a
daughter of the Duke of Vendome. The defeat of Charles V before
Marseilles took place almost simultaneously with James's arrival, and
the Scotch chroniclers do not lose the opportunity of asserting that it
was the coming of the King of the Scots with a supposed army of twenty
thousand men to the succour of France which was the reason of the
Emperor's precipitate withdrawal. Pitscottie narrates, with more evident
truthfulness, how the Frenchmen on the Norman coast were alarmed by the
ships, fearing it to be an enemy which hove in sight, "for there were
many strangers in his companie, so that he appeared ane great army." But
the sight of the red lion of Scotland changed their alarms into joy, and
they welcomed the Scots King and party, "at the New Haven beside Diep,"
with much rejoicing. He would seem to have pushed across France to the
Court of Vendome without pausing to pay his respects to the King at
Paris; and we find his movements recorded in a romantic tale, which is
neither contradicted nor supported by other authorities, but likely
enough to a romantic young prince upon a love-quest. According to this
description James did not assume his proper character but appeared only
as one among the many knights, who probably represented themselves, to
make his feint successful, as merely a party of cavaliers seeking
adventure and the exercises of chivalry. He intended thus to see, while
himself unknown, "the gentlewoman who sould have been his spouse,
thinking to spy her pulchritud and b