cottage by the inhabitants, and such stimulants as they had—probably-whisky—were applied to recall his consciousness. On learning who the sufferer was, the woman ran out, calling for assistance for the king, and especially for a priest. A soldier from the prince's army, catching at the word "king," declared that he was a priest, and entering, pretended to stoop over him to administer ghostly consolation, but instead of that, stabbed him to the heart. Some historians assert this to have been a priest of the rebel army, of the name of Borthwick; but though James IV. afterwards offered a large reward for the discovery of the villain, no one was ever brought to justice.
By such means did James IV. succeed to the throne of Scotland in 1488. He is said to have issued a proclamation just before the battle forbidding any one, under the severest penalties, laying hands on the king. He was a youth of an ardent and impetuous temperament, and, no doubt, had been induced to believe, by the refractory barons, that it was necessary for the good of the country to oppose and control the king, who, they represented most falsely, was ready to surrender the independence of the realm to the King of England. But no pleas can excuse his conduct, which was unnatural and ungrateful, nor could his own conscience afterwards justify him.
Knight in complete Armour. 15th Century. Harl. MSS. 4,579-80.
James IV. of Scotland, though, to his perpetual regret, his ascent of the throne had been thus culpable, was a brave, generous, and patriotic monarch. As he came to reflect seriously on the part he had taken against the king his father, he was not slow to perceive that he had been made the instrument of the factious nobles, and that Henry VII. of England had not neglected to secretly foment the Scottish troubles. When Henry afterwards offered him his daughter Margaret, he, therefore, unceremoniously rejected the offer. The disposition which Henry was said to have shown to encourage his subjects, during the truce, to molest the Scottish merchantmen at the very mouth of the Forth, was highly resented by James, who supported his admiral, Wood, of Largo, in severely chastising the pirates, and did not fail to warn Henry that such practices must not be repeated. The dislike which James entertained for the insidious character of Henry, who began that system of bribing the nobles around the throne of Scotland which was never discontinued so long as a Tudor reigned, and which ended in the destruction of Mary, Queen of Scots, was violently aggravated by a base attempt of Henry in 1490. This was no other than a scheme to seize and carry off James to England.
Ramsay, Lord Bothwell, the favourite of the late king, who had fled to England, the Earl of Buchan, recently pardoned, and Sir Thomas Tod, a Scottish gentleman, entered into agreement with Henry VII. to seize the King of Scotland and his brother the Duke of Boss, and deliver them into the hands of the English monarch. Henry advanced them the sum of ₤266 to enable them to carry out this base enterprise; but, with his unconquerable regard for his money, binding them to repay it by a certain day, in case of failure. To ensure this, Tod delivered his son as a hostage. The original contract, drawn up at Greenwich, for this diabolical deed, still exists, and intimates that various other persons besides Bothwell, Buchan, and Tod were concerned in the affair. So unconscious was James of this treason meditated against his person, that at the very moment he was sending the Archbishop of St. Andrew's to meet the commissioners of Henry, for the adjustment of all border differences, and for the promotion of the general peace of the two kingdoms. Though this plot failed, another was soon after concocted by Henry with the malcontent Earl of Angus, of which James received due notice, and on the return of Angus ordered him into restraint in his castle of Tantallan, and deprived him of his lands and lordships of Liddisdale, and the strong fortress of Hermitage. These treacherous proceedings of King Henry sank deep into the mind of James, and he was anxious to break with England and carry some retributive trouble into Henry's own kingdom.
In this temper of the Scottish King, nothing could come more opportunely than such a person as Perkin Warbeck. James had, from the first moment of mounting his throne, been careful to strengthen his alliances with the whole European continent. With France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, and Flanders, his intercourse, both official and mercantile, was active and constant. Of course, James was kept in full information of all that was agitating as it regarded England. With the Duchess of Burgundy, the inveterate enemy of Henry, it is clearly provable that James was in secret correspondence only five months after his accession. In 1488, even, there were busy messengers and heralds passing to and fro betwixt Flanders, Ireland, and Scotland. In that year Margaret of Burgundy sent Sir Richard Hardelman and Richard Ludelay to Dublin, and thence to Edinburgh on a secret mission. This intercourse continued and grew in activity. James sent his newly-created Earl of Bothwell to the Court of France while Warbeck was there. Monipenny, the Sieur de Concressault, a Scotchman by descent, was at that time captain of the guard of Warbeck, and soon after was sent as ambassador to James's Court. In 1491, when Warbeck was in Ireland, this intercourse was more
