James, in the mean time, proceeded with his system of hostility to the
nobles, availing himself of every opportunity which presented itself of humbling
them, and of lessening their power. He threw into prison his own nephews,
the earl of Douglas, and Sir John Kennedy, and procured the forfeiture of the
estates of the earl of March. The reasons for the first act of severity are now
unknown. That for the second was, that the earl of March's father has been
engaged in rebellion against the kingdom during the regency of Albany. The
policy of James in arraying himself against his nobles, and maintaining an attitude of hostility towards them during his reign, seems of very questionable propriety, to say nothing of the apparent character of unmerited severity which it
assumes in many instances. He no doubt found on his arrival in the kingdom,
many crimes to punish amongst that class, and much feudal tyranny to suppress;
but it is not very evident that his success would have been less, or the object
which he aimed at less surely accomplished, had he done this with a more lenient
hand. By making the nobles his friends in place of his enemies, he would assuredly have established and maintained the peace of the kingdom still more
effectually than he did. They were men, rude as they were, who would have
yielded a submission to a personal affection for their prince, which they would,
and did refuse to his authority as a ruler. James erred in aiming at governing
by fear, when he should have governed by love. A splendid proof of his error
in this particular is presented in the conduct of his great grand-son, James IV.
who pursued a directly opposite course with regard to his nobles, and with
results infinitely more favourable to the best interests of the kingdom. Only
one event now of any moment occurs until the premature death of James; this
is the siege of Roxburgh. To revenge an attempt which had been made by the English to intercept his daughter on her way to France, he raised an army of, it has been computed, two hundred thousand men, and marching into England,
besieged the castle of Roxburgh; but after spending fifteen days before that stronghold, and expending nearly all the missive arms in the kingdom, he was compelled to abandon the siege, and to return with his army without having effected
any thing at all commensurate with the extent of his preparations, or the prodigious force which accompanied him. The melancholy catastrophe in which his existence terminated was now fast approaching, the result of his own harsh conduct and unforgiving disposition.
The nobles, wearied out with his oppressions, seem latterly to have been restrained only by a want of unanimity amongst themselves from revenging the injuries they had sustained at his hands, or by a want of individual resolution to strike the fatal blow. At length one appeared who possessed the courage necessary for the performance of this desperate deed. This person was Sir Robert Graham, uncle to the earl of Strathern. He also had been imprisoned by James, and was therefore his enemy on personal as well as general grounds.
At this crisis of the dissatisfaction of the nobles, Graham offered, in a meeting of the latter, to state their grievances to the king, and to demand the redress of these grievances, provided those who then heard him would second him in so doing. The lords accepted his offer, and pledged themselves to support him. Accordingly, in the very next parliament Graham rose up, and having advanced to where the king was seated, laid his hand upon his shoulder, and said "I arrest you in the name of all the three estates of your realm here assembled in parliament, for as your people have sworn to obey you, so are you constrained by an equal oath to govern by law, and not to wrong your subjects, but in justice to maintain and defend them." Then turning round to the assembled lords, "Is it not thus as I say ?" he exclaimed ; but the appeal remained unanswered. Either awed by the royal presence, or thinking that Graham had gone
