[Sidenote: The work of the Stuarts.]

Their work had been the building up of the Scottish realm, its change
from a medley of warring nobles into an ordered kingdom. Never had
freedom been bought at a dearer price than it was bought by Scotland in
its long War of Independence. Wealth and public order alike disappeared.
The material prosperity of the country was brought to a standstill. The
work of civilization was violently interrupted. The work of national
unity was all but undone. The Highlanders were parted by a sharp line of
division from the Lowlanders, while within the Lowlands themselves
feudalism overmastered the Crown. The nobles became almost wholly
independent. The royal power, under the immediate successors of Bruce,
sank into insignificance. From the walls of Stirling the Scotch kings of
that earlier time looked out on a realm where they could not ride
thirty miles to north or to south save at the head of a host of armed
men. With James the First began the work of building the monarchy up
again from this utter ruin; but the wresting of Scotland from the grasp
of its nobles was only wrought out in a struggle of life and death. Few
figures are more picturesque than the figures of the young Scotch kings
as they dash themselves against the iron circle which girds them round
in their desperate efforts to rescue the Crown from serfdom. They carry
their life in their hands; a doom is on them; they die young and by
violent deaths. One was stabbed by plotters in his bedchamber. Another
was stabbed in a peasant's hut where he had crawled for refuge after
defeat. Another was slain by the bursting of a cannon. The fourth James
fell more nobly at Flodden. The fifth died of a broken heart on the news
of Solway Moss. But hunted and slain as they were, the kings clung
stubbornly to the task they had set themselves.

[Sidenote: The Stuarts and the Reformation.]

They stood almost alone. The Scottish people was too weak as yet to form
a check on the baronage; and the one force on which the Crown could
reckon was the force of the Church. To enrich the Church, to bind its
prelates closely to the monarchy by the gift of social and political
power, was the policy of every Stuart. A greater force than that of the
Church lay in the dogged perseverance of the kings themselves. Little by
little their work was done. The great house of Douglas was broken at
last. The ruin of lesser houses followed in its train, and under the
fifth of