Graham, who
bearded James in Parliament, was confiscated, fled across the Highland
line, and, on February 20, 1437, aided, it is said by the old Earl of
Atholl (a grandson of Robert II. by his second marriage), led a force
against the King in the monastery of the Black Friars at Perth, surprised
him, and butchered him. The energy of his Queen brought the murderers,
and Atholl himself, to die under unspeakable torments.

James's reforms were hurried, violent, and, as a rule, incapable of
surviving the anarchy of his son's minority: his new Court of Session,
sitting in judgment thrice a-year, was his most fortunate innovation.

CHAPTER XII. JAMES II.

Scone, with its sacred stone, being so near Perth and the Highlands, was
perilous, and the coronation of James II. was therefore held at Holyrood
(March 25, 1437). The child, who was but seven years of age, was bandied
to and fro like a shuttlecock between rival adventurers. The Earl of
Douglas (Archibald, fifth Earl, died 1439) took no leading part in the
strife of factions: one of them led by Sir William Crichton, who held the
important post of Commander of Edinburgh Castle; the other by Sir
Alexander Livingstone of Callendar.

The great old Houses had been shaken by the severities of James I., at
least for the time. In a Government of factions influenced by private
greed, there was no important difference in policy, and we need not
follow the transference of the royal person from Crichton in Edinburgh to
Livingstone in Stirling Castle; the coalitions between these worthies,
the battles between the Boyds of Kilmarnock and the Stewarts, who had to
avenge Stewart of Derneley, Constable of the Scottish contingent in
France, who was slain by Sir Thomas Boyd. The queen-mother married Sir
James Stewart, the Black Knight of Lorne, and (August 3, 1439) she was
captured by Livingstone, while her husband, in the mysterious words of
the chronicler, was "put in a pitt and bollit." In a month Jane Beaufort
gave Livingstone an amnesty; he, not the Stewart family, not the queen-
mother, now held James.

To all this the new young Earl of Douglas, a boy of eighteen, tacitly
assented. He was the most powerful and wealthiest subject in Scotland;
in France he was Duc de Touraine; he was descended in lawful wedlock from
Robert II.; "he micht ha'e been the king," as the ballad says of the
bonny Earl of Moray. But he held proudly aloof from both Livingstone and
Crichton, w