James II. left three sons; the eldest, James III., aged nine, was crowned at Kelso (August 10, 1460); his brothers, bearing the titles of Albany and Mar, were not to be his supports.  His mother, Mary of Gueldres, had the charge of the boys, and, as she was won over by her uncle, Philip of Burgundy, to the cause of the House of York, while Kennedy and the Earl of Angus stood for the House of Lancaster, there was strife between them and the queen-mother and nobles.  Kennedy relied on France (Louis XL), and his opponents on England.

The battle of Towton (March 30, 1461) drove Henry VI. and his queen across the Border, where Kennedy entertained the melancholy exile in the Castle of St Andrews.  The grateful Henry restored Berwick to the Scots, who could not hold it long.  In June 1461, while the Scots were failing to take Carlisle, Edward IV. was crowned, and sent his adherent, the exiled Earl of Douglas, to treat for an alliance with the Celts, under John, Lord of the Isles, and that Donald Balloch who was falsely believed to have long before been slain in Ireland.

It is curious to think of the Lord of the Isles dealing as an independent prince, through a renegade Douglas, with the English king.  A treaty was made at John’s Castle of Ardtornish—­now a shell of crumbling stone on the sea-shore of the Morvern side of the Sound of Mull—­with the English monarch at Westminster.  The Highland chiefs promise allegiance to Edward, and, if successful, the Celts are to recover the ancient kingdom from Caithness to the Forth, while Douglas is to be all-powerful from the Forth to the Border!

But other intrigues prevailed.  The queen-mother and her son, in the most friendly manner, met the kingmaker Warwick at Dumfries, and again at Carlisle, and Douglas was disgraced by Edward, though restored to favour when Bishop Kennedy declined to treat with Edward’s commissioners.  The Treaty of England with Douglas and the Celts was then ratified; but Douglas, advancing in front of Edward’s army to the Border, met old Bishop Kennedy in helmet and corslet, and was defeated.  Louis XI., however, now deserted the Red for the White Rose.  Kennedy followed his example; and peace was made between England and Scotland in October 1464.  Kennedy died in the summer of 1465.

There followed the usual struggles between confederations of the nobles, and, in July 1466, James was seized, being then aged fourteen, by the party of the Boyds, Flemings, and Kennedys, aided by Hepburn of Hailes (ancestor of the turbulent Earl of Bothwell), and by the head of the Border House of Cessford, Andrew Ker.