When James V succeeded his father he was but one year old, and his guardian, in accordance with the desire of James IV, was the queen-mother, Margaret Tudor. Her subsequent career is one long tale of intrigue, too elaborate and intricate to require a full recapitulation here. The war lingered on, in a desultory fashion, till May, 1515. Lord Dacre ravaged the borders, and the Scots replied by a raid into England; but there is nothing of any interest to relate. From the accession of Francis I, in 1515, the condition of politics in Scotland, as of all Europe, was influenced and at times dominated by his rivalry with the Emperor. The unwonted desire of France for peace and alliance with England placed the Scots in a position of considerable difficulty, and the difficulty was accentuated by the more than usually distracted state of the country during the minority of the king. In August, 1514, Margaret (who had in the preceding April given birth to a posthumous child to James IV) was married to the Earl of Angus, the grandson of Archibald Bell-the-Cat. It was felt that the sister of Henry VIII and the wife of a Douglas could scarcely prove a suitable guardian of a Stewart throne, and the Scots invited the Duke of Albany, son of the traitor duke, and cousin of the late king, to come over to Scotland and undertake the government. Despite some efforts of Henry to prevent him, Albany came to Scotland in May, 1515. He was a French nobleman, possessed large estates in France, and, although he was, ere long, heir-presumptive to the Scottish throne, could speak no language but French. When he arrived in Scotland he found against him the party of Margaret and Angus, while the Earls of Lennox and Arran were his ardent supporters. The latter nobleman was the grandson of James II, being the son of the Princess Mary and James, Lord Hamilton, and he was, therefore, the next heir to the throne after Albany. The interests of both might be endangered should Margaret and Angus become all-powerful, and so we find them acting together for some time. Albany was immediately made regent of Scotland, and the care of the young king and his brother, the baby Duke of Ross, was entrusted to him. It required force to obtain possession of the children, but the regent succeeded in doing so in August, in time to defeat a scheme of Henry VIII for kidnapping the princes. The queen-mother fled to England, where, in October, she bore to Angus a daughter, Margaret, afterwards Countess of Lennox and mother of the unfortunate Darnley. She then proceeded to pay a visit to Henry VIII. Meanwhile, in Scotland, Albany was finding many difficulties. Arran was now in rebellion against him, and now in alliance with him. In May, 1516, Angus himself, leaving his imperious wife in England, made terms with the regent. The infant Duke of Ross had died in the end of 1515, and only the boy king stood between Albany and the throne. In 1517 Albany returned to France to cement more closely the