Such were some of the influences at work during the eighteen years while the Scottish Prince with keen intelligence was drinking in the best culture of his age, and at the same time studying the superior civilization and government of the land of his captivity. He seems to have studied also to some effect the affairs of his own kingdom. He was released in 1424, crowned at Scone, and a new epoch commenced. He had resolved to break the power of the nobles, and with extraordinary energy he set about his task! There was a long and unsettled account with his own relatives. He knew well who had humiliated and broken his father's heart, and starved to death his brother Rothesay, {275} and, as he believed, had also conspired with Henry IV. for his own capture and eighteen years' captivity. The old conspirator who had been the chief author of these things had recently died, but his son wore his title. So the Duke of Albany (the King's cousin) and a few of the most conspicuous of the conspirators were seized, tried, and one after another five of the King's kindred died by the axe, in front of Stirling Castle. It was one of those outbursts of wrath after a long period of wrongdoing, terrible but wholesome. An unscrupulous nobility had wrenched the power from the Crown, and it must be restored, or the kingdom would perish. This disease, common to European monarchies, could only be cured by just such a drastic remedy; successfully tried later in France, by Louis XI. (fifteenth century), by Ivan the Terrible in Russia (sixteenth century), and by slower methods accomplished in England, commencing with William the Conqueror, and completed when great nobles were cringing at the feet of Henry VIII. There are times when a tyrant is a benefactor. And when a centralized, or even a despotic, monarchy {276} supplants an oligarchy, it is a long step in progress. This ablest of the Stuart kings was assassinated in 1437 by the enemies he had shorn of power, his own kindred removing the bolts to admit his murderers. He was the only sovereign of the Stuart line who inherited the heroic qualities of his great ancestor Robert Bruce, a line which almost fatally entangled England, and sprinkled the pages of history with tragedies, four out of the fourteen dying violent deaths, two of broken hearts, while two others were beheaded.