The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain by Allan Massie

murdered father.
    He had already celebrated his sixteenth birthday when he came to the throne. The circumstances of his accession were awkward, for the rebellion that had resulted in his father’s murder had been that only of a discontented faction, members of which now seized, or were rewarded with, some of the great offices of state. Those who had been loyal to James III could not be expected to approve. The records of the Scots parliament refer to the ‘unhappy field’ of Sauchieburn, ‘in the quhilk the King our soverane lord happinit to be slane’. If this prudently glossed over the murder, it fell short of excusing it. It was perhaps to emphasise the legitimacy of the succession that the young King was crowned at Scone, the historic crowning place of Scottish kings dating back to legendary times, till Edward I of England had taken possession of the coronation stone – the Stone of Destiny – and carried it off to Westminster Abbey. Despite the stone’s absence, Robert the Bruce had been crowned at Scone, but neither James II nor James III had been – perhaps because they were only small children when they became king. The decision that James IV’s coronation be celebrated there was thus of some significance. Scone would not see another coronation till 1650, when Charles II was crowned there after the execution of his father.
    James IV had one advantage over his immediate predecessors, and indeed his successors. He was, at sixteen, old enough to assume control of the government himself. Scotland was therefore spared yet another minority, and James’s personal reign of twenty-five unchallenged years was to be the longest of any Scots monarch since Alexander III in the thirteenth century.
    In other respects too he was in a much stronger position than any of his Stewart ancestors. Whatever the failings and mis fortunes of James III, his reign had not interrupted the process set in motion by James I. It had been that king’s intention to elevate the Crown above the nobility, and, despite the minorities and baronial faction-fighting, this had been achieved by the time of James IV. Through the recovery of Crown lands alienated in the reigns of the two Roberts and during the minorities, the confiscation of estates of condemned rebels, and the securing of the payment of customs duties to the Crown, the Stewarts were now far richer than any of their nobility. The King was no longer merely first among equals as the two Roberts had been.
    Moreover, by cultivating the smaller landowners and the representatives of the burghs in parliament, and by encouraging trade and prosperity, the Stewarts had associated themselves with the progressive forces in the country, and might now fairly be seen as the representative of these forces and the guarantor of order. This was reflected in James IV’s establishment of a permanent civil court, which in his son’s reign would become the Court of Session, still today the fount and arbiter of Scots law.
    Nevertheless, though James was more powerful than any previous Scottish king, direct royal control was limited to the Lowlands, and did not even extend to the border counties, which remained lawless and anarchic. Scotland was still a country of localities. James tried to ensure that the same law was observed throughout the kingdom and was himself active in dispensing justice, but he still had to rely on the co-operation of the nobility, who continued to hold their own law courts, punish wrongdoers and settle disputes. He made several military expeditions into the Highlands; yet was no more successful than James I had been in establishing enduring royal authority there. He did end the semi-independent Lordship of the Isles, but he had to entrust administration to local magnates – the chief of Clan Campbell in Argyll, Mackenzie of Kintail in the eastern Highlands, and the Earl of Huntly, head of the Gordon family, in the north-east. While serving the King, these men also served their own