may be no better,” answered Kilspindie, “I will defend myself against the best earl in Scotland.”  With these words they encountered fiercely, till Angus, with one blow, severed the thigh of his antagonist, who died upon the spot.  The earl then addressed the attendant of Kilspindie:  “Go thy way:  tell my gossip, the king, that here was nothing but fair play.  I know my gossip will be offended; but I will get me into Liddisdale, and remain in my castle of the Hermitage till his anger be abated.”—­Godscroft, Vol.  II. p. 59.  The price of the earl’s pardon seems to have been the exchange mentioned in the text.  Bothwell is now the residence of Lord Douglas.  The sword, with which Archibald, Bell-the-Cat, slew Spens, was, by his descendant, the famous Earl of Morton, presented to Lord Lindsay of the Byres, when, about to engage in single combat with Bothwell, at Carberry-hill—­Godscroft, Vol.  II. p. 175.]

Nor did James fail in affording his subjects on the marches marks of his royal justice and protection. [Sidenote:  1510] The clan of Turnbull having been guilty of unbounded excesses, the king came suddenly to Jedburgh, by a night march, and executed the most rigid justice upon the astonished offenders.  Their submission was made with singular solemnity.  Two hundred of the tribe met the king, at the water of Rule, holding in their hands the naked swords, with which they had perpetrated their crimes, and having each around his neck the halter which he had well merited.  A few were capitally punished, many imprisoned, and the rest dismissed, after they had given hostages for their future peaceable demeanour.—­Holinshed’s Chronicle, Lesly.

The hopes of Scotland, excited by the prudent and spirited conduct of James, were doomed to a sudden and fatal reverse.  Why should we recapitulate the painful tale of the defeat and death of a high-spirited prince?  Prudence, policy, the prodigies of superstition, and the advice of his most experienced counsellors, were alike unable to subdue in James the blazing zeal of romantic chivalry.  The monarch, and the flower of his nobles, [Sidenote:  1513] precipitately rushed to the fatal field of Flodden, whence they were never to return.

The minority of James V. presents a melancholy scene.  Scotland, through all its extent, felt the truth of the adage, “that the country is hapless, whose prince is a child.”  But the border counties, exposed from their situation to the incursions of the English, deprived of many of their most gallant chiefs, and harassed by the intestine struggles of the survivors, were reduced to a wilderness, inhabited only by the beasts of the field, and by a few more brutal warriors.  Lord Home, the chamberlain and favourite of James IV., leagued with the Earl of Angus, who married the widow of his sovereign, held, for a time, the chief sway upon the east border.  Albany, the regent of the kingdom, bred in the French court, and more accustomed to wield the pen than the sword,