We have already alluded to the king's conduct towards the family and friends of the regent Duke of Albany immediately on his accession to the throne. At a later period of his reign we have another signal instance of the king's energy and promptitude of purpose in his conduct towards the Lord of the Isles. About the year 1427 the Lord of Isla was slain by a person of the name of Campbell, who had, it seems, a commission from the king to apprehend Isla; but, it is added, he exceeded his powers in putting that chieftain to death. The circumstance occasioned great disturbance throughout the highlands and isles. Determined to restore order, and to enforce the laws in those wild districts, the king summoned a parliament at Inverness, to which the Lord of the Isles and the other highland chiefs were cited to appear. On their arrival, to the number of about forty, they were seized by a stratagem of the king, and committed to prison in separate apartments. The Lord of the Isles and some others were at length liberated; but, deeply feeling the indignity he had suffered, the Lord of the Isles, immediately on his return home, gathered together his friends and vassals, and at the head of a vast force wasted all the crown lands near Inverness, and made an attempt also to destroy the town. Information of this inroad being communicated to the king, orders were instantly given to repair to the spot; and leading his troops in person, he succeeded by forced marches in coming up with the rebels in Lochaber, at a time when they least expected such a thing. The consequence was that at length the rebels made an
unconditional surrender, and the Lord of the Isles was obliged to make his submission on his beaded knees at the court of Holyrood House.
The king's vigour and determination were not a little obnoxious to the nobles, who saw in it the speedy ruin of their usurped authority. But it is probable that his devotion to the ecclesiastics wounded them more keenly than all the exercise of his royal power. They felt bumbled, not so much before the sovereign as before the clergy. A conspiracy was accordingly formed against him, under the Duke of Athol, the king's uncle, and on the 21st of February 1437, the king was murdered, in the fourty-fourth year of his age. A year or two afterwards also his adviser Wardlaw, bishop of St. Andrews, died ; and immediately on this event Bishop Cameron, Wardlaw's favourite, was turned out of the chancellorship which he had held from the institution of the Court of the Session, and Sir William Crichton, a layman, aud the first who had held the great seal for a long period, was constituted chancellor ; the Court of Session expired, and the course of the old common law was re-established.