it raised into supremacy only interrupted their strife with
England to battle fiercely with one another or to coerce their king. The
power of the Crown sank in fact into insignificance under the earlier
sovereigns of the line of Stuart which succeeded to the throne on the
extinction of the male line of Bruce in 1371. Invasions and civil feuds
not only arrested but even rolled back the national industry and
prosperity. The country was a chaos of disorder and misrule, in which the
peasant and the trader were the victims of feudal outrage. The Border
became a lawless land, where robbery and violence reigned utterly without
check. So pitiable seemed the state of the kingdom that at the opening of
the fifteenth century the clans of the Highlands drew together to swoop
upon it as a certain prey; but the common peril united the factions of the
nobles, and the victory of Harlaw saved the Lowlands from the rule of the
Celt.

[Sidenote: Margaret Tudor]

A great name at last broke the line of the Scottish kings. Schooled by a
long captivity in England, James the First returned to his realm in 1424
to be the ablest of her rulers as he was the first of her poets. In the
twelve years of a wonderful reign justice and order were restored for the
while, the Scotch Parliament organized, the clans of the Highlands
assailed in their own fastnesses and reduced to swear fealty to the
"Saxon" king. James turned to assail the great houses; but feudal violence
was still too strong for the hand of the law, and a band of ruffians who
burst into his chamber left the king lifeless with sixteen stabs in his
body. His death in 1437 was the signal for a struggle between the House of
Douglas and the Crown which lasted through half a century. Order however
crept gradually in; the exile of the Douglases left the Scottish monarchs
supreme in the Lowlands; while their dominion over the Highlands was
secured by the ruin of the Lords of the Isles. But in its outer policy the
country still followed in the wake of France; every quarrel between French
king and English king brought danger with it on the Scottish border; and
the war of Britanny at once set James the Fourth among Henry's foes. James
welcomed the fugitive pretender at his court after his failure in Ireland,
wedded him to his cousin, and in 1497 marched with him to the south. Not a
man however greeted the Yorkist claimant, the country mustered to fight
him; and an outbreak among his nobles, many o