In an effort to aid the king, the parliament passed an act making it a treasonable offense to challenge James III with respect to his acquisition of Coldingham Priory. The Earl of Home, his brother—the now displaced prior of Coldingham—and their kinsman Patrick Hepburn—LairdHailes—were suddenly gone from court. James III sent his herald to Home Castle with a harsh message demanding their immediate return. The Homes were in contempt of parliament. The King’s herald, to hear him tell it upon his return to Edinburgh, barely escaped with his life. The Homes had torn up the Royal Warrant, boxed his ears, and stripped him of his cloak of office before sending him away.
“There will be war before summer,” the Earl of Angus told Tavis Stewart. “Home will nae accept this decision, and Jemmie hae gone too far now to retreat or even compromise. We’ll soon hae no choice and will hae to choose sides ourselves. The king hae already sent the prince to Stirling.”
“Jamie?” the Earl of Dunmor asked.
“Aye. Ormond and young John are wi’ their sire, but Jamie hae been sent away. He is nae allowed outside the castle gates, and can only walk upon the ramparts and fly his falcons for exercise, I am told,” Archibald Douglas replied.
“Poor lad,” Tavis sympathized. “He grows so irritable if too many days go by and he canna ride.” Then he pierced the Earl of Angus with a sharp look. “And what will ye do, Archie, when ye must choose sides?”
“Like ye, Tavis, I will wait and see. I dinna find treason a pleasant thought.”
Arabella, sitting at the highboard with the two men, was strangely silent, for she usually had an opinion on everything. In her own mind she had examined the situation and found that although the king was lacking in many ways, he was a good man and should not be threatened by his nobility for acting in Scotland’s best interests and not theirs. Angus was so certain of some sort of military encounter. The thought of war frightened her. She had lost her father to war. The thought of losing her husband did not please her.
In late January the Earl of Home, along with Lords Lyle and Grey and the Hepburn of Hailes came to Stirling Castle at the head of a large body of men. Lord Home, for all his anger toward the long over Coldingham Priory, was a decent man known for his honesty as well as his boldness. The prince welcomed him, or so it appeared to those who viewed the encounter. Master John Shaw, the governor of the castle, admitted the earl and his party despite the king’s express orders that no one, except those coming under royal insignia, be admitted. Master Shaw was not a rebel. He was just so overcome by the Earl of Home’s powers of reason and great charm that he forgot he would have to answer to the king for Prince James’ departure.
Several hours later the prince, dressed all in scarlet, left Stirling Castle at the head of the great troop of men. Behind him rode the Earl of Home, Lords Hailes, Lyle, and Grey. As they exited the castle ramp, their men, seeing the prince leading the four lords, cheered, as did the castle’s guard. A small girl, known for her gift of second sight, daughter of one of the castle guards, called out after the prince in the Celtic tongue, “Blessings on ye, O King!” but young Jamie Stewart did not stop to acknowledge her words, if he even heard them. Those about the child, however, were shaken.
The prince and his adherents went to Linlithgow Palace, where they set up their headquarters and waited, but nothing happened. Scotland’s lords were strangely silent as they mulled over this turn of events. Suddenly they were not certain of anything, for though James III did not suit them, the prince was young. Perhaps too young to rule. Jamie Stewart and his supporters sat waiting at Linlithgow for those who never came, while the king went north to Aberdeen to reassure himself of the loyalty of the northern lords, all the while ignoring his eldest son and his heir’s precipitous behavior.
February was gray and grim, with periods of snow followed by periods of mild weather that left the countryside a thawed mush. Word came to Dunmor Castle that the prince was ill.
“It hae ever been thus,” the Earl of Dunmor told his wife. “Jamie hae the constitution of a bull when he is happy, but let him be unhappy, and he suffers physically from a flux of the bowels, aches and pains in his head, neck, and joints.”
“It is his own guilty conscience,” Arabella said unsympathetically. “He is in defiance of his own father and consorting with those who would rebel against the king. I wish you could go to him and tell him so, but I know you cannot.”
“Nay, I canna,” he agreed. “If I were to show myself at Linlithgow, there would be those who would say I was supporting my nephew, and in opposition to my brother.”
March brought better weather, and the prince, his health improved, celebrated his birthday. His greatest gift was the arrival of the Earl of Angus to his banner, to be followed shortly thereafter by the Earl of Argyll. The kings of England and France, however, sent messages of reprimand to Prince James for his seeming rebellion against his father. The king, in the company of his northern lords and their armies, came to within five miles of Linlithgow, the royal army camping beside the Firth of Forth while the king took up residence in a nearby castle.
A skirmish was fought, the prince’s army being led by the Earl of Angus, while the Earl of Home, to his immense irritation, was forced to remain at Linlithgow protecting the prince. A truce was negotiated in which the king would relinquish his full powers to his eldest son and heir, who would act as regent until he was considered old enough to be crowned king, at which point James III would abdicate in the son’s favor. The agreement, attested to by four witnesses for either side, was signed and sealed, but the king, upon his return to Edinburgh, disavowed the agreement and announced that he would fight his son first before he turned over his kingdom to him. The Earl of Dunmor finally sent his nephew a message of support, albeit reluctantly.
“How can you support him against your own brother?” Arabella demanded of her husband.
“Jemmie is nae longer worthy of my support,” Tavis Stewart said grimly. “He did nae hae to sign that agreement wi’ Jamie, but he did. He was, therefore, by all the laws of chivalry, bound to keep his word. For God’s sake, Arabella, he is the king! If the king canna keep his word, then what can the world expect of such a king? He hae lost his creditability.”
“He is your brother,”she said furiously, “and he is God’s chosen King of Scotland. When you rebel against your brother, you not only commit the sin of Cain, you defy God’s will!”
“I will nae support a man who canna keep his word,” Tavis Stewart said.
“And I cannot support your rebellious nephew,” she answered him.
“I speak for the Stewarts of Dunmor,” the earl told his wife.
“You do not speak for me, my lord,” she replied angrily.
“Aye, I will admit to that,” he agreed, “for nae one knowing ye, Arabella Stewart, would say ye were wi’ out a tongue of yer own.”
The Countess of-Dunmor reached for the nearest object to come to hand, a silver candlestick, and threw it with her unerring aim, directly at her husband, who, after almost three years of marriage to the woman he called his “wee English spitfire”, had considerably sharpened reflexes and ducked.
The prince sent word throughout Scotland that he was at odds with an unjust king. He invited all who would support him to join him, and Tavis Stewart left Dunmor with a thousand men following his banner and in his wake. It was not considered a large force, for the great northern earls and their counterparts in the borders could muster easily up to thirty thousand clansmen to follow them, but it was considered psychologically important that the king’s beloved half brother was supporting his nephew rather than his elder sibling, who had always been so good to him.
It was openly acknowledged, however, that the Countess of Dunmor supported the king and had quarreled violently and publicly with her husband prior to his going. In this opinion she stood alone, for even her husband’s stepfather and half brothers followed Prince James and his forces to victory at Saunchieburn on the eleventh day of June in the year of our Lord, 1488. There was a shadow upon the new king’s victory, however. James III, having been convinced by his advisors to leave the battlefield after the battle was well under way and obviously lost, had been found murdered beside the millstream of Bannockburn. There were five stab wounds to his chest and stomach, any one of which could have been the death blow. He was buried quickly, but with honor.
On the twenty-fifth day of the month, King James IV was crowned at Scone. It was a hurried affair, for the Scots feared the English king might try to intervene. The new king’s younger brothers—the other James, who was now Duke of Ross, and young John—were brought to join their sibling lest some unhappy faction use them against their eldest brother, which was entirely possible. Scotland’s lords were already feuding even as the new king was being crowned.
There had been no parliament yet to appoint the new office holders, and there was, therefore, no new order of precedence. The earls and the other nobles fought for places like jealous children. The Earl of Angus was insulted by the Earl of Home’s proprietary manner, for despite the fact that Archibald Douglas had been acting as the new king’s regent, Home considered that since he had taken the former prince from Stirling in January, the act that precipitated the events leading up to today, he was the greater of the two. Home had also quarreled with his brother, the Prior of Coldingham at this point, and the Earl of Argyll was no longer on speaking terms with Lord Grey, although no one knew why. At least a third of Scotland’s nobility were not in attendance at Scone, and a number of bishops were missing as well. The young king, in an effort to give some semblance of dignity to his coronation, banned all from the chapel of Scone at his anointing, save his two younger brothers. His lords, however, noisily jostled with one another in the doorway, craning their necks in an attempt to see the king as he was anointed, murmuring loudly with their discontent over their banishment.
Afterward, in the Great Hall of Scone, James IV sat calmly accepting the Rite of Fealty from Scotland’s lords, both great and small. The king was garbed in all black. Above him the clan banners of all those present swung almost imperceptibly in the air currents caused by the heat of the day rising from the hall and the open windows. The largest banner, however, was the king’s own, the Lion Rampant, gold upon blood red.
