While James IV. lived she had comparatively few opportunities of
betraying State secrets, but from the disaster of Flodden to her death,
her history is one long series of intrigues, the outcome of her ruling
passions--vanity and greed. Her first short-sighted act of treachery
after the death of James was to appropriate to her own use the treasure
which he had entrusted to her for his successors, the queen thereby
incurring life-long retribution in her ineffectual attempts to wring
her jointure from an exchequer which she had herself wantonly
impoverished. Hence the tiresome and ridiculous wrangling in connection
with her "conjunct feoffment," neither Margaret nor Henry being
conscious, in the complete absence of all sense of humour on their
part, that the situation was occasionally grotesque. Stolidly unmindful
of the effect they produced on the minds of others in the pursuit of
their own selfish ends, they pursued the tenor of their way with
bucolic doggedness. The doggedness ended in the defeat of all Henry's
enemies; in Margaret's case it ended in her own.

The eleven months which elapsed between the 9th September 1513 to the
4th August 1514, were the most eventful of her whole life. The
catastrophe of Flodden left her, perhaps not without cause, the least
mournful woman in Scotland, for James IV., with all the heroism that
attaches to his name, had little claim to be called a faithful husband.
Unhindered, therefore, by any excess of grief, she was the better able
to attend to the affairs of State, and to hasten the coronation of her
little son, a baby of one year and five months. In December she
convened the Parliament of Scotland to meet at Stirling Castle, and
formally took up the dignity of regent with the consent of the
assembled nobility of the realm. At this sitting the greatest unanimity
prevailed. In the Acts of the Privy Council of Scotland, under date
12th January 1514, occurs the following entry: "To advise of the