pirited conduct
of James, were doomed to a sudden and fatal reverse. Why should
we recapitulate the painful tale of the defeat and death of a
high-spirited prince? Prudence, policy, the prodigies of superstition,
and the advice of his most experienced counsellors, were alike unable
to subdue in James the blazing zeal of romantic chivalry. The monarch,
and the flower of his nobles, [Sidenote: 1513] precipitately rushed to
the fatal field of Flodden, whence they were never to return.

The minority of James V. presents a melancholy scene. Scotland,
through all its extent, felt the truth of the adage, "that the country
is hapless, whose prince is a child." But the border counties, exposed
from their situation to the incursions of the English, deprived of
many of their most gallant chiefs, and harassed by the intestine
struggles of the survivors, were reduced to a wilderness, inhabited
only by the beasts of the field, and by a few more brutal warriors.
Lord Home, the chamberlain and favourite of James IV., leagued with
the Earl of Angus, who married the widow of his sovereign, held, for
a time, the chief sway upon the east border. Albany, the regent of the
kingdom, bred in the French court, and more accustomed to wield the
pen than the sword, feebly endeavoured to controul a lawless nobility,
to whom his manners appeared strange, and his person [Sidenote:
1516] despicable. It was in vain that he inveigled the Lord Home to
Edinburgh, where he was tried and executed. This example of justice,
or severity, only irritated the kinsmen and followers of the deceased
baron: for though, in other respects, not more sanguinary than the
rest of a barbarous nation, the borderers never dismissed from their
memory a deadly feud, till blood for blood had been exacted, to the
uttermost drachm[5]. Of this, the fate of Anthony d'Arcey, Seigneur de
la Bastie, affords a melancholy example. This gallant French cavalier
was appointed warden of the east marches by Albany, at his first
disgraceful retreat to France. Though De la Bastie was an able
statesman, and a true son of chivalry, the choice of the regent was
nevertheless unhappy. The new warden was a foreigner, placed in the
office of Lord Home, as [Sidenote: 1517] the delegate of the very man,
who had brought that baron to the scaffold. A stratagem, contrived by
Home of Wedderburn, who burned to avenge the death of his chief, drew
De la Bastie towards Langton, in the Merse. Here he found himse