me wild god of the
mists suddenly gleaming through the fragrant smoke between the bishop's
white robes and the kneeling King, what a strange interruption to the
mass! The King, at the request of the Queen we are told, gave him his
life, as the adjuration addressed to him and all the force of the
surroundings gave James little choice but to do; for he could not have
offended the sentiment of his people by refusing the boon which was
demanded in that Name, however doubtful he might be of the expediency of
granting it. "Then the King began to muse," says Boece. He must have
been devout indeed to have been able to return to the course of the
service with the Islesman before him on his knees, and all that wild
half of the kingdom, with its dangerous habits and fierce tribal laws,
thus suddenly made visible--a spectre which had often before troubled
the King's peace. James had not to learn for the first time that
apparent submission from such a suppliant did not necessarily mean any
real change, and must have thoroughly felt the hollowness of that
histrionic appearance and all the difficulties which beset his own
action in the matter. The conclusion was, that the life of the Lord of
the Isles was spared, but he was committed to safe keeping in the strong
Castle of Tantallon, with, however, the unfailing consequence, that his
brother took the field with all his caterans in his stead.

James reigned in Scotland for thirteen years--a reign full of commotion
and movement, by which many in high place were humiliated, the spoils of
the feudal tyrants taken from them, and the wrongs of the suffering
commonalty redressed, proceedings which procured for the King many
enemies among the nobility before the force of popular sentiment was
strong enough to balance this opposition by its support. He began in
Scotland that struggle which for some time had been going on in England
against the power of the nobles, who were still in the north something
like a number of petty kings ruling in their own right, making little
account of national laws, and regarding the King with defiance as almost
a hostile power. One of the greatest risks of such a struggle is that it
raises now and then a fiery spirit stung by the sense of injury and the
rage of deprivation into a wild passion of revenge which bursts every
restraint. The Grahams of Strathearn in the north had fallen specially
under the rectifying process of James's new laws of property: and out of