Scotland had never exerted itself to take advantage either of the wars which England carried on with France or of the civil commotions between the contending families.  James I avoided all hostilities with foreign nations.  After the murder of that excellent Prince, the minority of his son and successor, James II, and the distractions incident to it, retained the Scots in the same state of neutrality.  But when the quarrel commenced between the houses of York and Lancaster, and became absolutely incurable but by the total extinction of one party, James, who had now risen to man’s estate, was tempted to seize the opportunity, and he endeavored to recover those places which the English had formerly conquered from his ancestors.  He laid siege to the castle of Roxburghe in 1460, and had provided himself with a small train of artillery for that enterprise; but his cannon was so ill-framed that one of them burst as he was firing it, and put an end to his life in the flower of his age.

His son and successor, James III, was also a minor on his accession; the usual distractions ensued in the government:  the Queen Dowager, Anne of Gueldres, aspired to the regency; the family of Douglas opposed her pretensions; and Queen Margaret, when she fled into Scotland, found there a people little less divided by faction than those by whom she had been expelled.  Though she pleaded the connections between the royal family of Scotland and the house of Lancaster, she could engage the Scottish council to go no further than to express their good wishes in her favor; but on her offer to deliver to them immediately the important fortress of Berwick, and to contract her son in marriage with a sister of King James, she found a better reception; and the Scots promised the assistance of their arms to reinstate her family upon the throne.  But Edward did not pursue the fugitive King and Queen into their retreat; he returned to London, where a parliament was summoned for settling the government.

On the meeting of this assembly, Edward found the good effects of his vigorous measure in assuming the crown, as well as of his victory at Touton, by which he had secured it.  The parliament no longer hesitated between the two families, or proposed any of those ambiguous decisions which could only serve to perpetuate and to inflame the animosities of party.  They recognized the title of Edward, by hereditary descent, through the family of Mortimer, and declared that he was king by right, from the death of his father, who had also the same lawful title; and that he was in possession of the crown from the day that he assumed the government, tendered to him by the acclamations of the people.  They reinstated the King in all the possessions which had belonged to the crown at the pretended deposition of Richard II.