CHAPTER XIV. JAMES IV.


The new king, with Angus for his Governor, Argyll for his Chancellor, and
with the Kers and Hepburns in office, was crowned at Scone about June 25,
1488. He was nearly seventeen, no child, but energetic in business as in
pleasure, though lifelong remorse for his rebellion gnawed at his heart.
He promptly put down a rebellion of the late king's friends and of the
late king's foe, Lennox, then strong in the possession of Dumbarton
Castle, which, as it commands the sea-entrance by Clyde, is of great
importance in the reign of Mary and James VI. James III. must have paid
attention to the navy, which, under Sir Andrew Wood, already faced
English pirates triumphantly. James IV. spent much money on his fleet,
buying timber from France, for he was determined to make Scotland a power
of weight in Europe. But at the pinch his navy vanished like a mist.

Spanish envoys and envoys from the Duchess of Burgundy visited James in
1488-1489; he was in close relations with France and Denmark, and caused
anxieties to the first Tudor king, Henry VII., who kept up the Douglas
alliance with Angus, and bought over Scottish politicians. While James,
as his account-books show, was playing cards with Angus, that traitor was
also negotiating the sale of Hermitage Castle, the main hold of the
Middle Border, to England. He was detected, and the castle was intrusted
to a Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell; it was still held by Queen Mary's
Bothwell in 1567. The Hepburns rose to the earldom of Bothwell on the
death of Ramsay, a favourite of James III., who (1491) had arranged to