s on the south side. It was called the
Flodden Wall, and kept the memory of that great catastrophe and disaster
before the minds of the citizens for many a day.

But for some reason or other the English army which had cut Scotland to
pieces at Flodden went no farther. The victory was no doubt a very
costly one, and perhaps Henry VIII did not wish to drive the kingdom of
which his sister would now be Regent to extremity, or do anything more
to increase the desperate hostility of a country which was capable of
giving him so much trouble. At all events Surrey's army was disbanded,
and Scotland was left to resume her struggle within herself: which
proved the wildest and most miserable turmoil and anarchy which her
troubled records had yet known.

It would be at once hopeless and unnecessary to enter into any sketch of
the endless tumults of this time of distress. There was a momentary lull
in which, though all the old personal feuds arose again, the poor little
King and his mother were left undisturbed--she in possession of a
regency more or less nominal, and in a state of health which must have
subdued her activities, for her second son was not born till several
months after her husband's death. But this child was only a few months
old when Margaret, young, beautiful, impassioned, and impetuous,
compromised her position by a sudden marriage with the young Earl of
Angus--still almost a boy, and with nothing but his good looks to
recommend him--an event which at once aroused all sleeping enmities and
precipitated the usual struggle for the possession of the infant king. I
will attempt nothing but an indication of one or two scenes in Edinburgh
which took place during this struggle. Undeterred by the evil
associations which surrounded that name, the Scottish lords bethought
themselves of the French Duke of Albany, the nearest member of the royal
family, the son of that duke who had been the terror of James III, who
had conspired with England, and who finally had established himself in
France and died there. His son was a French subject, the son of a French
mother, inheriting through her great estates in France and a position
which was little inferior in dignity, and much superior in comfort, to
that of the harassed monarch of a most turbulent kingdom. But he was
James Stewart, the nearest in blood to the crown, and his name seems,
temporarily at least, to have united all parties, even the Queen, though
his presence was fatal