THIS accomplished prince was born some time in the year 1394. He was a younger son of King Robert III., and grandson of Robert II., the first king of the unfortunate line of Stuart, who had ascended the Scotish throne in 1371. The sixty-four years between the death of Bruce, the great liberator of his country, and the birth of James I., had been years of war and turbulence, and, partly owing to the weakness of his father's character, Scotland was in a very anarchic condition during the royal poet's childhood. Robert III. was fifty years old before he came to the crown (in 1390): he was of a mild and somewhat timid disposition, and much fonder of retirement and study than of war and state business. He was pious, merciful, and accomplished; but these were qualities which the half-savage aristocracy of Scotland held very cheap at the end of the fourteenth century, and, indeed, even two centuries later; and his want of energy and of a taste for war excited contempt. These

iron barons were only to be ruled by a king of iron heart and iron hand. Robert's two younger brothers, the Earl of Fife and the Earl of Buchan, were men of a very different stamp, and during the life of their father Robert II. they had divided between them such powers as the kingly government then possessed. Upon his accession, the amiable recluse, apparently without a struggle, and even without any regret, left the management of affairs to the Earl of Fife (afterwards created Duke of Albany); and, under the name of Custos or Guardian, or that of Governor, the crafty, stirring, and ambitious Albany governed both kingdom and king. But when Robert's eldest son, the Duke of Rothsay, grew up to manhood, he submitted very unwillingly to the authority of his uncle; and a strong party rallying round the heirapparent, Albany, in 1398, found himself compelled to retire and admit his nephew as Regent. The Duke of Rothsay occupied this post for about three years; but he was thoughtless, rash, and dissipated, and his uncle Albany was constantly on the watch for an opportunity to work his ruin. It is also said that the cunning and ambitious uncle got dissolute and depraved men placed about the young Regent, in order to lead him into guilt and trouble, and that, at the same time, he never ceased lamenting in public the vices of his nephew. By means of artful representations conveyed to the old pious king of the licentious conduct of his son, Albany, at the beginning of the year 1402, procured an order under the royal signet to arrest Rothsay and place him in temporary confinement. The unhappy young man was treacherously seized near St. Andrews, and was soon lodged in a dungeon in Falkland Castle. How long he was left to linger there, or of what death he really died, is not clearly ascertained; but the general belief is that he was starved to death, and that his helpless father did not know his fate until the year 1404. From the moment of the seizure of the Duke of Rothsay, Albany resumed his authority as Custos or Regent, leaving his brother the king in the quiet retirement he so much loved. But Robert, taking the proper measure of Albany's ambition

and remorselessness, was very eager to get his younger son James out of his way, lest he too should be cut off in order to leave the succession to the throne open to Albany and his sons. Prince James was now near upon his eleventh year, and already gave good promise of the high qualities he afterwards displayed. His father had given him a taste for books, and he had been carefully instructed by Henry Wardlaw, Bishop of St. Andrews, in letters; and in arms and martial exercises by Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, Sir David Fleming of Cumbernauld, and other nobles and knights who remained steady in their attachment to the poor king, whose piety and charity endeared him to the churchmen and the common people. But for these last circumstances, Albany might have proceeded to some desperate extremity in Scotland against the young heir to the throne. But not daring to take this step, he agreed with his brother King Robert that James should be sent over to France, to be educated in the court of Charles VI. It is suspected, however, that Albany, before giving his necessary consent to the prince's departure, arranged in a secret correspondence with Henry IV. of England, who had recently dethroned Richard II., that Prince James should be seized on his voyage, and kept a close prisoner in one of King Henry's castles.

In the spring of the year 1405 the young James took his leave of his father, whom he was destined never to see again. The prince travelled to North Berwick, being accompanied and protected by the Earl of Orkney, Sir David Fleming, and a strong party of barons and knights, chiefly of the Lothians. He embarked and took his departure from the Bass Rock. The Earl of Orkney, young Sir Alexander Seton, his esquire William Gifford, and a few others (making but a small retinue), continued with the prince, and were to remain with him in France; the rest of the party took a mournful farewell and returned homeward. But one of the best of that party, Sir David Fleming, never reached his home, being waylaid and barbarously murdered on Langhermanstone moor, by a band led on by Douglas of Balvainy, laird of Dirle

ton, an adherent of the Regent Albany. As it was a time of peace with England, the prince's friends seem to have entertained no apprehension from that quarter, and the ship sailed close along the English coast. But as they were rounding Flamborough Head, on the Yorkshire coast, on or about the 12th of April, 1405, the vessel was surrounded by a squadron of armed merchantmen, commanded by one John Joliffe, and belonging to the port of Clay. According to another account, the prince and his friends, after passing Flamborough Head, landed to procure refreshments, and were taken prisoners on shore. But it appears pretty certain that they were boarded and captured at sea, and that Henry IV. was fully prepared to intercept the prince and keep him a prisoner for life. When the Earl of Orkney spoke of the existing peace between the two countries, and showed the English king the passes and letters which he had received from King Robert, and protested that the only object held in view in sending the young prince into France was that he might be well educated and taught the French language, Henry laughed and said, "Well, as I know the French tongue right well, the boy could not have fallen into better hands than mine!" James was forthwith shut up in Pevensey Castle on the coast of Sussex.

There was at this time, as there had been for the four or five preceding years, a mysterious adventurer that passed for the king, Richard II. of England, whom the wily Bolingbroke had dethroned, and who had died in his prison. It seems almost certain, and it is not at all inconsistent with the temper of that meek and credulous old king, that Robert believed this man to be King Richard; but it is not easy to conceive that the acute, crafty, and suspicious Albany gave any credit to the adventurer's strange story. It would, however, suit the Scotish Regent's purpose to feign a belief; for Albany, by treating the adventurer as the true Richard, could confirm the popular notion of many of the English, that the deposed king was still alive; and, by keeping the man in his power, he could at any time alarm Henry by threatening to throw him, like a firebrand, into England,

and to support his cause with an invading army. Thus, the Regent Albany, as well after the death of his brother King Robert as before that event, treated the adventurer in public as the indisputable Richard, and legitimate king of England. The man, whoever or whatever he was, though narrowly watched, was liberally entertained at the public expense, and the money so spent was entered in the High Chamberlain's books as "for the maintenance of Richard King of England."* Most if not all of the Scotish nobles seem to have sincerely believed the strange story for a time, for they were eager to credit what flattered their vanity and gave them a means of annoying the English king, and few of them could have been competent to an investigation of the historical doubt: notwithstanding some attempts which have been made of late years to establish the probability of this story, we feel fully convinced that the stranger entertained at the Scotish court was an adventurer and an impostor, and that Richard II. perished in Pontefract Castle-most probably by starvation. But whether the true Richard, or only an impostor and a phantom, he could be made dangerous to Henry IV., whose throne was not yet firmly established, and who was regarded as a usurper not only by most foreign princes, but also by a very considerable portion of his own subjects. The original bargain between him and the equally wily Regent of Scotland appears to have been this-Do you keep your pretended Richard out of my way, and I will keep your nephew and heir to the Scotish crown out of your way. Other views may have arisen in Henry's fertile and politic mind afterwards, and he may even have contemplated the annexation of Scotland to his own dominions by keeping the heir of the old king in his hands; or he may have hoped that, by educating his captive as an Englishman, he would lose his nationality, and be prepared either to submit to him in after years, or to hold his

*P. F. Tytler, Hist. Scot., and Life of James I., in Scotish Worthies-Lord Dover, Paper in Transactions of Roy. Soc. of Literature.