which Douglas offered to the government, resolved at last to destroy him; and having inveigled the earl into the castle of Edinburgh, they subjected him to a mock trial for treason, and beheaded him along with his brother, November 24, 1440.
William Douglas, eighth earl, was one of the most powerful and tyrannical members of this powerful and imperious family. He was appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and strove by every available means to curtail and humble the royal power, but his treasonable schemes were discovered and thwarted by the wisdom and integrity of Bishop Kennedy of St. Andrews. Finding his power on the wane, Douglas, attended by a splendid retinue, undertook a pilgrimage to Rome. During his absence his retainers behaved in such a turbulent and disorderly manner that the castle of Douglas was demolished by the king's orders. On his return the earl came under submission to his sovereign, and was again received into favour; but he speedily resumed his treasonable designs, and set at defiance both the restraints of law and the authority of the king. He attempted to assassinate Crichton the chancellor; hanged Sir John Herries in contempt of an order of the king, James II. requiring his release; and beheaded Maclellan, tutor of Bomby, in circumstances peculiarly aggravating. He was invited to court by James, for the purpose of trying the effect of a personal remonstrance with him respecting his illegal conduct; but having returned a haughty refusal to the king's entreaty that he would renounce his treasonable league with the earls of Crawford and Ross, James, whose temper was naturally fiery, lost all self-command and stabbed the earl with his dagger. The atrocious murder was completed by the attendant nobles in the castle of Stirling, 13th February, 1452.
James Douglas, ninth earl, brother of the preceding, took up arms to avenge his death. A peace was patched up between the king and his too powerful subject, but it was not of long duration. The earl entered into treasonable negotiations with the Yorkist party in England, and received from them the promise of a supply of money and troops. He then took the field at the head of an army so formidable that the king is said to have hesitated whether he should abide the conflict or retire to France. But through the sagacious policy of Bishop Kennedy, Lord Hamilton and other powerful barons were detached from the Douglas cause, and the earl, deserted by his friends, fled into England; his three brothers were defeated at Arkinholme by the earl of Angus, and one of them was killed and another taken prisoner and executed. The vast estates of the family were forfeited to the crown in June, 1455. The following year the earl made an inroad into Berwickshire at the head of a considerable force, but was defeated by the earl of Angus, and again compelled to take refuge in England, where he remained an exile for nearly thirty years. In 1514, accompanied by the duke of Albany, brother of James III., he made a last attempt to regain his lost power, but was defeated by a body of the border barons at Lochmaben (July 22), and taken prisoner by Kirkpatrick of Kirkmichael. The king, pitying the misfortunes of the aged and once powerful baron, merely commanded him to be confined in the monastery of Lindores in Fife, where he died four years after; and with him expired the principal branch of his great house. The earldom had existed for ninety-eight years, making an average of only eleven years to each possessor of the title. A great part of their estates and influence fell to—
George Douglas, Earl of Angus, the head of a younger branch of the Douglas family, descended from William, first earl of Douglas, by his third wife, Margaret, countess of Angus. The prominent part taken by the earl of Angus in the overthrow of the elder branch of his family, gave rise to a popular saying founded on the different complexion of the two branches of the house of Douglas, "That the Red Douglas had put down the Black." The extensive grants bestowed upon this noble for the important services he had rendered to the crown, rendered the house of Angus nearly as powerful and as formidable as the elder branch of the family had long been to the independence of the crown and the tranquillity of the kingdom. The earl, who had a high military reputation, held the office of lieutenant-general of the kingdom after the death of James II., and died in 1462. His son—
Archibald Douglas, fifth earl of Angus, surnamed Bell-the-Cat, became the most powerful nobleman in Scotland, and was commonly called the Great Earl of Angus. Various anecdotes were told illustrative of his stature, strength, and courage, as well as fierce and turbulent disposition. Spens of Kilspindie, a favourite of James IV., having spoken of him lightly, Angus met him while hawking, and compelling him to single combat, at one blow cut asunder his thighbone, "as wood-knife lops the sapling sprig," and killed him on the spot. The king was exceedingly displeased, and as the price of his pardon for this slaughter, and for his disloyal intrigues with England, compelled the earl to exchange the lordship of Liddesdale and his castle of Hermitage for that of Bothwell. Angus took a prominent part in the various rebellions of the turbulent nobles against James III. He was their ringleader in the seizure of the king, and the murder of Cochrane and other royal favourites at Lauder. And it was his reply to the well-known fable of the mice and the cat, told by Lord Gray at the consultation of the conspirators, that procured for Angus his familiar cognomen of Bell-the-Cat. He was the principal agent employed by the king's brother, the duke of Albany, in his treasonable intrigues with the English government, and he was one of the leaders of the rebel army in the battle of Sauchie, in which James III. was defeated and slain. The administration of James IV. was much more vigorous than that of his unfortunate father, and when the young prince had arrived at the years of discretion, he gradually withdrew his confidence from the faction which had placed him on the throne. Angus resented so highly the coldness with which he was treated, that he withdrew into England and entered into a treasonable treaty with Henry VII. On his return, however, he was committed a prisoner to his own castle of Tantallan, and obliged to submit to a considerable diminution of the family greatness. Under the popular yet energetic rule of James, the turbulent baron was compelled to act the part of a peaceful subject. He attempted to dissuade the king from his impolitic invasion of England, and earnestly remonstrated against the rash and imprudent resolution of James to wait the attack of the English at Flodden. James was so enraged at the remonstrance of the old warrior that he scornfully replied—"Angus, if you are afraid you may go home." The earl burst into tears at this insult, and quitted the camp that night; but his two sons, who remained behind, fell in the battle, together with two hundred gentlemen of the name of Douglas. The aged noble, brokenhearted at the calamities of his house and his country, retired into the abbey of St. Mains in Galloway, where he died about a year after the battle of Flodden, 1514.—(Holinshed, vol. vi.; Pitscottie, vol. ii.)
Archibald Douglas, sixth earl of Angus, grandson of old Bell-the-Cat, was possessed of great personal attractions and showy accomplishments; but these were marred by the characteristic vices of his family, lawless ambition and lust of power. He married with indecent haste in 1514 Margaret, the widow of James IV.; but disappointed in obtaining the regency, which he expected as the result of this alliance, he soon showed himself a careless and unfaithful husband, and Margaret, who was as capricious and high-spirited as he, obtained a divorce in 1525. Angus was the mainstay of the English party among the nobles, and by his violence and ambition distracted the peace of the nation for many years. He was at one time driven into exile, but after the lapse of two years he returned to Scotland, and soon resumed his former course. In 1527 he was appointed lord chancellor of Scotland, and raised the power of his house to such a height as to threaten to destroy both the independence of the crown and the liberties of the people. But the young king, James V., succeeded in escaping out of the hands of the Douglases, who had held him in irksome thraldom, stripped Angus of the authority which he had so grossly abused, and compelled him once more to take refuge in England, where he remained till the death of James. He followed his usual turbulent and selfish course during the minority of Mary; but though at first friendly to the designs of Henry VIII., he was so enraged at the manner in which his estates were ravaged by the English that he took the field against them, and inflicted upon the savage invaders a bloody defeat at Ancrum Moor in February, 1544-45. Margaret Douglas, his daughter by the queen dowager, was the mother of Lord Darnley, husband of Queen Mary.
William Douglas, eleventh earl of Angus, was raised by Charles I. in 1633 to the rank of Marquis of Douglas. He was a Roman catholic, and having espoused the royal cause in the great civil war, attempted to hold out his castle against the covenanters in 1639, but they obtained possession of it by a sudden attack. He was nominated lieutenant of the Borders by
