to fear, that they would be destroyed if they fell into the Duke of
Albany's power. But the very day on which Dacre wrote to Henry's
Council, advising that money should be sent to enable her to hold out,
the regent prepared to bombard her, and it was not till her friends had
forsaken her, flying for their lives and in terror of Albany's
proclamation, that placing the keys of the fortress in her little son's
hands, she desired him to give them to the regent, and to beg him to
show favour to himself, to his brother, and to her husband. The regent
answered that he would be good to the king, to his brother, and to
their mother; but that as for Angus, he "would not dalye with no
traitor." *

* Cotton MS. Calig. B 2, 369; B.M.


No sooner had Margaret given up her children, than she began to
manoeuvre how to steal them back and spirit them over the Border. While
pretending to be too ill to leave her palace at Linlithgow, where she
gave out she had "taken to her chamber" in anticipation of her
approaching confinement, she effected her escape into England, but her
plan for capturing the king and his brother failed. Nothing could now
exceed her desolate condition, as, wandering from place to place,
alone, ill, and worse than friendless, she sought in vain a refuge in
all that wild Border region where she might await her hour of peril.
Angus, seeing the turn affairs had taken, had thought it prudent to
abandon her to her fate, and, after helping her to escape, returned to
Scotland in the hope of coming to terms with Albany. His wife was at
last thankful to accept Lord Dacre's rough hospitality in his gloomy
castle of Harbottle. Here in the midst of a brutal soldiery, with no
woman to render her the most needful service, she gave birth to a