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Accordingly when Earl Angus came to attend the Parliament he was confronted by his adversaries in possession of the town and of the castle, with his wife, the most violent adversary of all, in the fortress shut up from his access or approach. He was accompanied, Pitscottie tells us, "with all his kin and friends to the number of five hundred spears, weill accompanied and arrayed."
No one seems to know what these attempts were. Pitscottie gives this extraordinary event a short paragraph. The grave Pinkerton fills a page or two with an apology or defence of James for permitting such an act. But we are not told what was the evidence, or how the sovereign's life was threatened.
Of Paul Methuen, who first "reformed" the Church in Dundee, Pitscottie writes that he "ministered the sacraments of the communion at Dundee and Cupar, and caused the images thereof to be cast down, and abolished the Pope's religion so far as he passed or preached."
But whether Pitscottie is verbally correct or not it is very evident that Henry did not hesitate to rate his nephew in exceedingly sharp and discourteous terms, as for instance bidding him not to make a brute of himself by listening to the priests who would lead any man by the nose who gave them credence.
Pitscottie is very particular in his description, and places the economy of the little castle before us, among its woods with its simplicity, its precautions, the homeliness of the household.
But James's mission was not only to destroy but to restore. He divided the lands thus taken from the House of Douglas, according to Pitscottie, "among their creditors and complainers, till they were satisfied of all things taen from them, whereof the misdoers were convict."
James set forth all his grievances, his subjection to the will of Angus, his separation from his own friends, the appearance he had been made to assume of enmity to his real champions, and vowed at the end, says Pitscottie, in the fervour of his indignation and resentment, that Scotland should not hold them both.
"Thus there was peace and rest in the country the space of three-quarters of a year," says Pitscottie. This, however, is a mistake, for the time of the King's retirement was only three or four months, from St. Magdalene's Day to Michaelmas. Short or long, it was one of the most curious moments of interregnum that history knows.
Andrews the greatest ship ever seen in those days when she drove ashore one stormy night off Bamborough. And of her passengers, one, the Abbot of St. Colomb, was long held to ransom by James Carr, a deed the consequences of which, in those days of an all-powerful Church, might be dreadful to contemplate. Pitscottie says the "Bishop's Barge" cost her owner something like £10,000 sterling.
"'Adieu, he said, 'farewell; it came with a lass and it will pass with a lass. And so", adds Pitscottie, "he recommended himself to the mercy of Almighty God, and spake little from that time forth, but turned his back unto his lords, and his face unto the wall." Six days later the end came.
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