Angus was now free to make several expeditions to the remoter parts of the kingdom, with the view of asserting the law and restoring order. He seems always in these to have taken the king as a symbol of authority and the best means of keeping him under his own eye. We hear of them first in the north, where he put an end to a feud between the Leslies and the Forbes, and then, more than once, in 1527 and 1528 in Liddesdale and the borders, hunting the freebooters from their mountain lairs. On one occasion he hung fourteen and carried twelve as hostages besides those slain in the field. Extermination was the only remedy for this disease. On 11 March 1528 the queen at last obtained, through the help of Albany, a divorce from the Cardinal of Ancona, appointed judge by Clement VII. The decree does not state on what grounds it proceeded, probably because none could be stated. The assertion of Lesley that a prior divorce to which Angus consented had been granted by Beaton as archbishop of St. Andrews is extremely improbable. Though Angus seems to have been willing to make great concessions to the queen, there was one point on which he would never yield, the validity of their marriage. His infidelity if pleaded would have been met by recrimination, but it is forgotten that this was no ground of divorce by the canon law. His alleged pre-contract to a daughter of Lord Hume is not proved. He gave the strongest practical evidence that he never consented to a divorce by not marrying again till after the queen's death.
Towards the end of March or beginning of April the queen, who had been some time before secretly married to Henry Stuart, and was living with him at Stirling, was besieged by her son. She was compelled to surrender and ask pardon for her new husband on her knees. Lesley relates this as having occurred at Edinburgh, not Stirling, but it is difficult to believe the queen was there in possession of the castle of the capital, while she had always maintained a hold on Stirling as part of her dower lands. Nor does he mention the presence of Angus, but it seems almost certain that Angus and not James was the chief author of the siege; for within a few weeks James took refuge with his mother at Stirling, condoned her marriage by creating her new spouse Lord Methven, and actively engaged in asserting his own power by the proscription of Angus and the Douglases. From Stirling he wrote to Henry VIII that a projected expedition by him and Angus to the borders was put off, and that the dissatisfaction of part of the realm and the council with Angus was the cause. On 19 June a proclamation was issued in the king's name, with the advice of his brother, Beaton, and the Earls of Arran, Eglinton, Moray, and others, forbidding Angus or any Douglas to come within seven miles of the royal person, because ‘they had spoilt the realm for their own profit.’ The nobles were summoned to meet the king at Stirling on 29 June and accompany him to Edinburgh. On 9 July a proclamation was issued at Edinburgh forbidding any one to converse with Angus, his brother, or his uncle on pain of death. Dunbar, the king's tutor, and now archbishop of Glasgow, was appointed chancellor instead of Angus, and Lord Maxwell provost of Edinburgh in place of Douglas of Kilspindie. Angus was ordered by the council to live north of the Spey, and send his brother George and his uncle Kilspindie as hostages to Edinburgh. Instead of complying he fortified himself at Tantallon. At a meeting of parliament in September, Angus, his brother and uncle, and his kinsman, Alexander Drummond, were tried and forfeited for treason. They declined, though offered a safe-conduct, to appear, but Angus sent his secretary, Ballantyne, to protest against the trial. The lands of Angus and his adherents were divided among the chief nobles. Thus, with hardly any opposition, the young monarch accomplished a coup d'état which at last made him master of his kingdom. He was less successful in reducing the strongholds of Angus. Tantallon twice resisted a siege headed by the king in person, who at the second siege lost his artillery and the chief commander of that arm, David Falconer, by a surprise. Angus chivalrously returned the king most of the guns and the master of the artillery. Coldingham Priory, which had been taken in the interval between the two sieges, was recovered by Angus. For several months the conflict went on without decisive result, and hostilities were interrupted by more than one attempt at reconciliation. At last, on a renewal of the truce with England for five years, it was made a condition that Tantallon should be surrendered, but that Henry's receiving Angus in England should not be deemed a violation of the truce, and that if the forfeiture was remitted it was to be after submission, and at the request of Henry. Angus now returned, towards the end of May 1539, to Berwick, and though he went so far as to trust himself alone on a visit to James, and confirmed the surrender of Tantallon, the king would not carry out his part of the treaty, and Angus returned to England. Further efforts of Henry to procure his pardon were equally unavailing, for James demanded not only the removal of Angus
