CHAPTER V.
FROM THE DEATH OF JAMES V. TO THE ABDICATION OF
QUEEN MARY.
internal discord. The fatal events of Flodden had placed the Crown of Scotland on his
infant brow, at the early age of eighteen months, and he again bequeathed its onerous
dignities to the unfortunate May, then only an infant of a few daya old, the sole heir of
his crown, and of more than all his misfortunes.
With a sad presentiment of the future, the broken-hearted Monarch received on his
death-bed the intelligence, that his Queen had given birth to a daughter in Linlithgow
Palace, and exclaimed in the bitterness of his heart, " It came with a lass, and it will go
with a lass I "
(' Woe is me I " exclaimed Henry VIII., when the news of the King's death reached
the English Court, '' for I will never have any King in Scotland so set to me again, nor
one whom I favoured so well ! " Yet the advantages that such an occurrence afforded were
not lost sight of by that wily Monarch. His recent success had placed a number of the
Scottish nobility in his power, and these he now sought to secure to his interests, by granting
them their freedom, and loading them with costly gifts. And from this t h e forward,
until the final accession of James VI. to the crown of England, an English party
continued to be maintained among the Scottish nobility, plotting the overthrow of every
patriotic scheme, the ready tools of their country's enemies ; and if occasionally they are
VIaaETTE-The Blwk Turnpike, where Qu-B Idary dept after her surrender at Carberry Hill.
