elso (August 10, 1460); his brothers, bearing the titles of Albany
and Mar, were not to be his supports. His mother, Mary of Gueldres, had
the charge of the boys, and, as she was won over by her uncle, Philip of
Burgundy, to the cause of the House of York, while Kennedy and the Earl
of Angus stood for the House of Lancaster, there was strife between them
and the queen-mother and nobles. Kennedy relied on France (Louis XL),
and his opponents on England.

The battle of Towton (March 30, 1461) drove Henry VI. and his queen
across the Border, where Kennedy entertained the melancholy exile in the
Castle of St Andrews. The grateful Henry restored Berwick to the Scots,
who could not hold it long. In June 1461, while the Scots were failing
to take Carlisle, Edward IV. was crowned, and sent his adherent, the
exiled Earl of Douglas, to treat for an alliance with the Celts, under
John, Lord of the Isles, and that Donald Balloch who was falsely believed
to have long before been slain in Ireland.

It is curious to think of the Lord of the Isles dealing as an independent
prince, through a renegade Douglas, with the English king. A treaty was
made at John's Castle of Ardtornish--now a shell of crumbling stone on
the sea-shore of the Morvern side of the Sound of Mull--with the English
monarch at Westminster. The Highland chiefs promise allegiance to
Edward, and, if successful, the Celts are to recover the ancient kingdom
from Caithness to the Forth, while Douglas is to be all-powerful from the
Forth to the Border!

But other intrigues prevailed. The queen-mother and her son, in the most
friendly manner, met the kingmaker Warwick at Dumfries, and again at
Carlisle, and Douglas was disgraced by Edward, though restored to favour
when Bishop Kennedy declined to treat with Edward's commissioners. The
Treaty of England with Douglas and the Celts was then ratified; but
Douglas, advancing in front of Edward's army to the Border, met old
Bishop Kennedy in helmet and corslet, and was defeated. Louis XI.,
however, now deserted the Red for the White Rose. Kennedy followed his
example; and peace was made between England and Scotland in October 1464.
Kennedy died in the summer of 1465.

There followed the usual struggles between confederations of the nobles,
and, in July 1466, James was seized, being then aged fourteen, by the
party of the Boyds, Flemings, and Kennedys, aided by Hepburn of Hailes
(ancestor of the turbulent Earl of Bothw