"When James IV was killed at Flodden, yet another royal minority ensued,for his son James V was only one year old.
The Scots were reluctant to accept his English mother Margaret Tudor asRegent, and after her remarriage in 1514 they replaced her with JamesIV's half-French cousin, the Duke of Albany.
Queen Margaret's tempestuous private life complicated her son'schildhood, and after she divorced her second husband, Archibald Douglas6th Earl of Angus, the Earl kidnapped young James.
For two years he held him captive, showering him with gifts andintroducing him to a round of unsuitable pleasures. James loathed hisformer stepfather, and finally managed to escape in 1528, to rule byhimself.
James' personal rule began by savagely pursuing his opponents and hehounded the Earl of Angus out of Scotland. James combined suspicion ofnobles with a popular touch, travelling anonymously among Scottish peopleas the 'Gudeman o'Ballengeich'.
John Knox described him thus: 'he was called of some, a good poor man'sking; of others he was termed a murderer of the nobility, and one thathad decreed their whole destruction'.
In 1536 he decided to marry. A highly strung, intelligent man whoalternated between black depression and bouts of feverish energy, he hadalready fathered at least nine illegitimate children by a series ofmistresses.
He now chose as his wife Princess Madeleine of France, for he was eagerto strengthen 'the Auld Alliance' against England. The Princess wastubercular, and she died in his arms on 7 July 1537, seven weeks afterher arrival in Edinburgh.
In 1538 he married another French lady, the widowed Mary of Guise, tall,well-built and already the mother of two sons. She had two more sons byJames but they both died in infancy within hours of each other in 1541.
James V's uncle, Henry VIII, who had by now broken with the RomanCatholic Church and dissolved the monasteries, was urging him to do thesame. He refused to listen to his uncle's persuasions and in 1542 failedto go to an arranged meeting with Henry at York.
Furious, Henry launched an invasion of Scotland. Already ill, Jamesmarched south with his army, to defeat at the Battle of Solway Moss onthe Scottish/English Border, on 24 November 1542.
Although he himself had not been present at the battle, James suffered acomplete nervous collapse. Retiring to Falkland Palace in Fife he took tohis bed with a high fever and, when a messenger came to tell him that hispregnant queen had given birth to a daughter instead of the hoped-forson, he believed that the Stewart dynasty was at an end.
'It cam wi' a lass and it will gang wi' a lass', he said, remembering howthe crown had come to his family through Marjorie Bruce and fearing thatno woman could ever rule his troubled nation. Six days later, he wasdead."
-- Royal Household
Copyright © 2001-2005, Tim Dowling
email: tdowling_53223@yahoo.com
