the accession of Francis I, in 1515, the condition
of politics in Scotland, as of all Europe, was influenced
and at times dominated by his rivalry with the Emperor.
The unwonted desire of France for peace and alliance
with England placed the Scots in a position of considerable
difficulty, and the difficulty was accentuated by
the more than usually distracted state of the country
during the minority of the king. In August, 1514,
Margaret (who had in the preceding April given birth
to a posthumous child to James IV) was married to
the Earl of Angus, the grandson of Archibald Bell-the-Cat.
It was felt that the sister of Henry VIII and the
wife of a Douglas could scarcely prove a suitable guardian
of a Stewart throne, and the Scots invited the Duke
of Albany, son of the traitor duke, and cousin of
the late king, to come over to Scotland and undertake
the government. Despite some efforts of Henry
to prevent him, Albany came to Scotland in May, 1515.
He was a French nobleman, possessed large estates
in France, and, although he was, ere long, heir-presumptive
to the Scottish throne, could speak no language but
French. When he arrived in Scotland he found against
him the party of Margaret and Angus, while the Earls
of Lennox and Arran were his ardent supporters.
The latter nobleman was the grandson of James II, being
the son of the Princess Mary and James, Lord Hamilton,
and he was, therefore, the next heir to the throne
after Albany. The interests of both might be
endangered should Margaret and Angus become all-powerful,
and so we find them acting together for some time.
Albany was immediately made regent of Scotland, and
the care of the young king and his brother, the baby
Duke of Ross, was entrusted to him. It required
force to obtain possession of the children, but the
regent succeeded in doing so in August, in time to
defeat a scheme of Henry VIII for kidnapping the princes.
The queen-mother fled to England, where, in October,
she bore to Angus a daughter, Margaret, afterwards
Countess of Lennox and mother of the unfortunate Darnley.
She then proceeded to pay a visit to Henry VIII.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, Albany was finding many difficulties.
Arran was now in rebellion against him, and now in
alliance with him. In May, 1516, Angus himself,
leaving his imperious wife in England, made terms
with the regent. The infant Duke of Ross had
died in the end of 1515, and only the boy king stood
between Albany and the throne. In 1517 Albany
returned to France to cement more closely the old
alliance, and remained in France till 1521. Margaret
immediately returned to Scotland, and, had she behaved
with any degree of wisdom, might have greatly strengthened
her brother’s tortuous Scottish policy.
But a Tudor and a Douglas could not be other than an
ill-matched pair, and Margaret was already tired of
her husband. In 1518, she informed her brother
that she desired to divorce Angus. Henry, whose
own matrimonial adventures were still in the future,