the resources of the greater nobles. The king's best policy was to ally himself with one faction to destroy another, as James II overthrew the great house of Douglas. We cannot speak of any definite coalescence of the nobles against the king. The jealousy of noble house to noble house was always greater than their common dislike of the Crown. So far were they from being able to unite, that a comparatively insignificant family like the Crichtons or the Livingstones were now and again able to place themselves at the head of affairs. The frequent occurrence of royal minorities was at once a cause and a consequence of this condition of matters. The reigns of the first five kings of the name of James cover, nominally, a period of one hundred and thirty-six years. For fifty-seven years during that time the sovereign was a minor, and two of the five kings met their death at the hands of rebellious subjects. One of them--James III--can scarcely be said to have ruled at all. The weakness of the Crown is the formula of the explanation of which we are in search. That weakness was a consequence, largely, of the action of Edward I of England. The Bruce was occupied with guarding against the enemy, and could not offend the nobles, whose desertion would have been fatal to the cause of Scotland. The War of Independence was the source of the bitter hatred which separated Scotland from England from the fourteenth century to the seventeenth, and disputes with England were directly responsible for the premature death of the second, the fourth, and the fifth James, and for the exile of James I--that is to say, for four out of the six minorities between 1406 and 1560. It is obvious that, in such circumstances, each of the ever-changing factions who strove for political importance had an object in availing themselves of the advantage of parliamentary and legal sanction. The delegation of work to committees made it certain that the party in power could absolutely rely on having its own way, and the form of law was desirable as legalizing their present action, and as forming some kind of defence, should misfortune overtake them. Similarly the king, when he chanced to be powerful, found in his parliament a most useful instrument for carrying out his wishes. It was, for ruling faction and for powerful king alike, the best method of registering and declaring the will or the policy of the rulers of Scotland for the time being. A parliament, and just this kind of parliament, was always wanted by the government.