JAMES I: (13941437). King of Scotland from I 40It In 1-137. Ile was the third son of Robert 111., and in 1402 became loin to the throne on the death of his elder brother, the Duke of Ilothesay, supposed to have been murdered at the instigation of his uncle. the Duke of Albany. In 1405 or 1106, while on his way to France. the vessel in which he embarked was taken by the English, and James was carried to London and sent to the Tower. Ile was well treated. but held a prisoner for eighteen or nineteen years. In 14•0 he accompanied Henry V. in his expedi tion to Frame. On the death of III.. in 140G. the government devolved on the Duke of Albany. and on his death, in 1420, his son Murdoch succeeded to the Regency. In 1424. on giving hostages for payment of £40.000, James was allowed to return to Scotland. Previous to leaving England he married Jane, daughter of the Earl of Somerset. fourth son of John of Gaunt. To the excellent education which he had received in England James probably was indebted for the development of his very Con siderable powers of mind. His poems, Ch•ist's Kirk on the Green, and others (the authorship of which, however, is disputed), and it ingis ()lur (i.e. the King's quire or book), show him to have been possessed of high poetic talent. With the acts of his first Parliament, in 1421, the regular series of Scotch statutes begins. Many excellent laws were passed for the regula tion of trade, and for the internal economy of the Kingdom; while these were followed up by an exeeutive rigiu. wiilcic Sodand had never known
before. No sooner did .lames feel himself firmly seated on the throne than he resolved to execute vengeance on the Albany family. By a Parliament held at. Perth, in 1425 the late Regent Murdoch, his father-in-law, the Earl of Lennox. and about I wenty-tive other nobles of their family were found guilty of certain crimes laid to their charge, and several of them were beheaded. The next fens years of dames's reign are among the most really peaceful in the history of Scotland pre. vious to the union of its crown with that of Eng land; the efforts of the King being entirely direete• to the repression of the internal disorders of the Kingdom, especially of t he II ighlands, where scarcely any law except that of the strongest had hitherto been known. in 1436 James's eldest daughter, Margaret, was married to the Dauphin of France, afterwards, Louis NI. Among those whom the severe policy of the King had offended was Sir Robert Graham, who had been banished in 1135 and had suffered the loss of his estate. (hi 20. 1437. at Perth. the royal cham ber was invaded by a hand of armed men headed bn (Iraham, and the King was dragged from his hiding-place and put to death. James was un questionably the most able of the Stuart. family. Both his intellectual and his praetical uhilities were of a very high order. Ilis works have been edited by Skeat for the Scottish Text Society (Edinburgh, ISS4).