g the country "right fellonly," notwithstanding
the King's presence. The result, at all events, was complete submission
on the part of the new Earl, accompanied by a promise to bear no enmity,
a promise often made but altogether impossible in the fifteenth century
to mortal flesh and blood.

It was scarcely possible however, short of a moral miracle, that such a
thing could happen as the abandonment of the entire policy of the house
of Douglas at a moment when their minds were embittered by so great a
tragedy. The new Earl was not a mere soldier, still less a courtier, but
a man of some culture, originally intended, it is said, for the Church,
though this does not seem to have withheld him from taking part in the
tumults of the time. Nor did it restrain him from marrying his brother's
widow, the hapless Maid of Galloway, whose share of the Douglas lands
made her indispensable to her two warlike cousins, though it seems
uncertain whether either of the two marriages, which necessitated two
dispensations from the Pope, was anything but nominal. After his
submission James Douglas was employed as his brother had been in the
arrangement of terms of truce with England, which was too great a
temptation for him, and led to further treasonable negotiations. He
would seem also to have renewed his brother's alliances with the rebels
of the north: and in a very brief period the nominal peace and doubtful
vows were all thrown to the winds, and this time there seems to have
been no question of partial rebellion, but every indication that a civil
war, rending the entire country in two, was about to break forth.
Douglas had the strong backing of England behind him, the support of the
Highland hordes always ready to be poured upon the peaceful country, and
many great lords in his immediate train. He had raised an army of, it is
said, forty thousand men, an enormous army for Scotland, and it was
evident that the struggle was one of life and death.

At this moment it would seem that King James for the first time lost
heart. He had been fighting during all the beginning of the year 1455,
reducing the west and south, the Douglas country, to subjection and
desolation. But when he found himself menaced by an army as great as
anything he could muster, with the angry north in the background and
clouds of half-savage warriors on the horizon, the King's heart sank. He
is said to have left Edinburgh in disgust and depression, and taken ship
at Lei