doubt had acquired painful associations to him from the time of his
enforced residence there--and to have resumed or completed the buildings
in which he had taken so much pleasure--especially the great hall of
Stirling Castle, with all its grotesque and curious ornamentation, which
seems to prove that Scotland was still much behind in refinement, though
with a barbaric inspiration of her own. Whether the renewed tumults
began by the appropriation of certain Church lands hitherto in the power
of the Homes, for the endowment of the King's new chapel, it is
difficult to tell, a similar reason having been already alleged for
disturbances in which the Duke of Albany was the antagonist of that
powerful family; at all events a very small matter was enough to awake
again all the old rancours. The malcontents headed by the same men who
had already inflicted so much suffering and shame upon the King began to
draw together in alarming numbers. Roused from among his more congenial
occupations by this renewed commotion, James sent a herald to ask the
reason of their assembling: but the herald was disrespectfully treated
and his letters torn in pieces, an insult which seems to have convinced
the King that the strongest measures of defence were necessary. He is
said to have strongly fortified Stirling, where Prince James, the heir
of the kingdom, now a boy of fifteen or sixteen, was. Perhaps the King
was suspicious of the boy, perhaps his old terrors as to the danger to
his life which was to arise from his own family had returned to him: for
the restrictions under which young James was left were exceedingly
severe and arbitrary. No man was to be allowed to enter the castle,
great or small, till the King's return, nor was the Prince to be allowed
to pass the gates "to no game, nor to meet with no man." Pitscottie says
that Edinburgh Castle was also strengthened, and the King's treasury
placed in it and all his valuables laid up there. When these precautions
were taken James embarked "in ane ship of Captane Woode's"--probably the
most legitimate way in which he could have travelled, the vessel being
that of the Admiral, Andrew Wood, the greatest sailor in Scotland--and
went to Fife, from whence he marched to the north, calling the nobles of
the northern counties round him, and gathering an army with which to
oppose the greater lords and lairds who awaited him on the other side of
the Firth of Forth. James's unusual energy must have equall