Whether this crime was premeditated or merely passionate is unknown, as
in the case of Bruce's murder of the Red Comyn before the high altar.
Parliament absolved James on slender grounds. James, the brother of the
slain earl, publicly defied his king, gave his allegiance to Henry VI. of
England, withdrew it, intrigued, and, after his brothers had been routed
at Arkinholm, near Langholm (May 18, 1455), fled to England. His House
was proclaimed traitorous; their wide lands in southern and south-western
Scotland were forfeited and redistributed, the Scotts of Buccleuch
profiting largely in the long-run. The leader of the Royal forces at
Arkinholm, near Langholm, was another Douglas, one of "the Red
Douglases," the Earl of Angus; and till the execution of the Earl of
Morton, under James VI., the Red Douglases were as powerful, turbulent,
and treacherous as the Black Douglases had been in their day. When
attacked and defeated, these Douglases, red or black, always allied
themselves with England and with the Lords of the Isles, the hereditary
foes of the royal authority.

Meanwhile Edward IV. wrote of the Scots as "his rebels of Scotland," and
in the alternations of fortune between the Houses of York and Lancaster,
James held with Henry VI. When Henry was defeated and taken at
Northampton (July 10, 1460), James besieged Roxburgh Castle, an English
hold on the Border, and (August 3, 1460) was slain by the explosion of a
great bombard.

James was but thirty years of age at his death. By the dagger, by the
law, and by the aid of the Red Douglases, he had ruined his most powerful
nobles--and his own reputation. His early training, like that of James
VI., was received while he was in the hands of the most treacherous,
bloody, and unscrupulous of mankind; later, he met them with their own