boy in Holyrood, the five little maidens who
were dependent upon her, and resumed the burden of life now so strangely
different, so dull and blank, so full of alarms and struggles. Her elder
child, the little Princess Margaret, had been sent to France three or
four years before, at the age of ten, to be the bride of the Dauphin--a
great match for a Scottish princess--and it is possible that her next
sister, Eleanor, who afterwards married the Duc de Bretagne, had
accompanied Margaret--two little creatures solitary in their great
promotion, separated from all who held them dear. But the four infants
who were left would be burden enough for the mother in her unassured and
unprotected state. It would seem that she was not permitted to be with
her boy, probably because of the jealousy of the Lords, who would have
no female Regent attempting to reign in the name of her son: but had
fixed her residence in Stirling under the shield of Livingstone, who as
Governor of the kingdom ought to have exercised all the functions of the
Regency, and especially the most weighty one, that of training the King.
Crichton, however, who was Chancellor, had been on the spot when James
II was crowned, and had secured his guardianship by the might of the
strong hand, if no other, removing him to Edinburgh Castle, where he
could be kept safe under watch and ward. The Queen, who would seem to
have been throughout of Livingstone's faction, and who no doubt desired
to have her son with her, both from affection and policy, set her wits
to discover a "moyane," as the chroniclers say, of recovering the
custody of the boy. The moyane was simple and primitive enough, and
might well have been pardoned to a mother deprived of her natural
rights: but it shows at the same time the importance attached to the
possession of the little King, when it was only in such a way that he
could be secured. Queen Jane set out from Stirling "with a small train"
to avert suspicion, and appeared at the gates of Edinburgh Castle
suddenly, without warning as would seem, asking to be admitted to see
her son. The Chancellor, wise and wily as he was, would appear to have
acknowledged the naturalness of this request, and "received her," the
chronicler says, "with gladness, and gave her entrance to visit her
young son, and gave command that whensoever the Queen came to the castle
it should be patent to Her Grace." Jane entered the castle accordingly,
with many protestations of her des