The escape of James from Falkland took place between Easter and June in the year 1527. In 1528, the Douglases being clean swept out of the country, the young King went on a professed hunting expedition to the Borders, where, besides innumerable deer, its ostensible reason, his ride through the southern district carried punishment and death to many a Border reiver and especially to the famous John or Johnnie Armstrong, the Laird of Kilnokie, and chief or at least best-known representative of his name. Whether it was wise policy to hang the reiver who was the terror of the Borders, yet "never molested no Scottis man," it is not necessary to decide. He was a scourge to the English, of whom it was said that there was none from the Scottish Border to Newcastle who did not "pay ane tribute to be free of his cumber." Johnnie Armstrong had the folly to come into the King's presence with such a train, his men so completely armed and so many in number, as to compete with royal magnificence, not very great in Scotland in those days. "What wants yon knave that a king should have?" said the young James, who had certainly had enough of such powerful subjects: and he would not listen to either excuse or explanation from the Borderer, whose defiance as he was led to his execution, and the wail of his wild followers after him, sounds still in the stirring strains of song and ballad. No doubt it was justice that James did--but justice somewhat stern and out of time. The young Court now blazing out into full splendour, with a legitimate head and every prospect of prosperity, became again the resort of foreign chivalry and magnificent envoys, among them a legate from the Pope to assure the allegiance of James to the Holy See, which his uncle of England had deserted. Henry at the same time did not neglect by constant messengers and vague promises, now of the hand of the Princess Mary, now of an English dukedom, to secure his nephew to his side. After that princess, whom her father tried his utmost to put out of the succession by divorcing her mother, James was the next heir, and Henry did not forget that possibility. The hand of the young princess had already been several times offered to the Scots King without any certainty either in the proposal or its acceptance. One cannot help wondering what might have been the issue had that unhappy Mary, to whom history has given so grim a nickname, been thus wedded in early youth to a gracious and gallant Stewart. In all history there occurs by times a gleam like this of possible deliverance from fate, an opening by which the subjects of tragedy might have secured an escape had they but known. One wonders had she thus escaped the wrongs and bitterness of her early career whether Mary would have got free from those traces of blood and madness which have left so dark a shadow upon her name; or whether, in the conflict that was to follow, her fierce Tudor passion would have embittered every strife.