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

interests, establishing authority over their neighbouring barons. It could not be otherwise.
    James’s reign saw the opening of a question that was to dominate the foreign policy of the Scots government for the next seventy years. Ever since the brief reign of John Balliol, Scotland had been allied to France and both countries had been intermittently at war with England. Those wars had been interrupted by frequent truces, but there had been no settled peace. The border counties, either side of the Anglo-Scottish frontier, were the scene of raids and skirmishes, occasionally full-blown battles, even when there was no regular state of war between the two nations. Dissident or disaffected subjects of either the Scots or English king could find a refuge across the border and would be used, as James III’s brother Alexander had been, to stir up trouble in their own country.
    This pattern persisted in the early years of James IV’s reign. John Ramsay, the only one of James III’s favourites to have escaped the lynch mob led by Bell-the-Cat at Lauder, was stripped of the earldom of Bothwell his master had granted him, and resentfully departed to the English court, where he proposed to the new king, Henry VII, that he should kidnap James and his brother. Meanwhile Bell-the-Cat himself was in negotiations with England. These dissidents may have received little encouragement from Henry VII, who was keener on peace than war, but their mere presence in England was an irritant.
    James responded by taking up the cause of the mysterious Perkin Warbeck, who claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, the younger son of Edward IV and one of the Princes in the Tower, reputedly murdered by order of their uncle Richard III. Perkin had been recognised as her nephew by Margaret of Burgundy, Edward IV’s sister, though the identification was not worth much as evidence, for she had not seen Richard since he was an infant. Nevertheless, she acclaimed him as her ‘White Rose of York’, and this gave the boy credibility – at least among those adherents of the Yorkist cause who were more than willing to be convinced. In any case he was a handsome young man, with some charm of manner, and on his travels through western Europe seeking support he had been welcomed by the Habsburg Emperor Maximilian, whose response was so enthusiastic that he may fairly be said to have fallen in love with the boy. Now Warbeck arrived in Scotland touting his claims and eager to seek James’s support for his attempt to win the English throne, which was ‘rightfully’ his. To his gratification, he was hailed as Richard IV of England.
    If the boy wasn’t the prince he claimed to be, he yet made a good show of royalty. James in his turn made him welcome. Was he convinced by Warbeck’s claim? It’s impossible to say. Only one thing suggests that he may have been: he arranged for the boy to marry Lady Katharine Gordon, one of the daughters of the Earl of Huntly. Since she was a cousin of the King, if a distant one, this was tantamount to admitting the young man into the royal family.
    Would James have done this if he had been sure that Warbeck was an impostor? Or did the young man’s claims and bearing merely appeal to the streak of knight-errantry in the King’s character? Whatever the answer, it was clear that Warbeck might be of use either as an ally or at least as a bargaining counter. There were some in the King’s Council who were less impressed and asserted that the boy was not what he claimed to be. They were certainly unwilling to engage in war with England on his behalf. But James was not to be deterred from championing his guest. He might have reflected, cynically, that there were advantages either way. If Warbeck was successful, he would owe his throne to the King of Scots; if the war went badly, then Henry might be prepared to pay for the surrender of the Pretender. But James was no cynic, and it is likely that he thought there was a fair chance that the boy