When Parliament met these questions were accordingly discussed over again, with confirmation of what had been already done. It was decided that Angus should be summoned before them to answer for his misdeeds, under the penalty if he did not appear of being "put to the horn and banished during the King's will." Angus was not so rash as to trust himself within the power of his enemies, as his kinsmen of the house of Douglas had already done on two fatal occasions: and as neither he nor his retainers put in an appearance, they were accordingly attainted, their lands forfeited to the Crown, their name put under the public ban, their great castle of Tantallon seized, and themselves proclaimed through all the country as traitors whom no man should receive or succour. The complete downfall which overtook this great house after the young King's abandonment of it is very remarkable, and shows how important was the royal position, notwithstanding the manner in which it had been _exploite_, and the mere nominal power of its actual possessor. The house of Angus crumbled into the dust as soon as their young prisoner escaped their hands. They took refuge in England, where they vainly attempted on various occasions to negotiate for their return, but with no success. The name continued obnoxious to James during his whole life. Sir Walter has done his best to rehabilitate that name in the noble Douglas of _The Lady of the Lake_, who has been identified with Archibald of Kilspindie, "the uncle of the banished Earl," the story of whose appearance at the games at Stirling is said to have some foundation of reality. But the historians of the house, who alone mention this, state the facts in a very different way. Thus the Angus branch of the Douglas family fell, as the Earls of Douglas had fallen, and for a generation there was little heard of it save in mutterings of treason in moments of difficulty, which never came to much--until in the following reign the indomitable race rose again in another branch and under another name, and furnished in the Regent Morton one of the strongest as well as the most questionable figures of a deeply disturbed time. Never was a race more difficult to subdue.