The Castle of Harleck stood on a lofty cliff, the base of which was then washed by the ocean, though now a marshy tract of ground intervenes. From the sea, with such a rock to scale, the strong-hold was well-nigh impregnable; while on the land side it was defended by massive walls, by a large fosse, and by round towers and turrets, which covered every approach. Owen Glendower had, during four years, maintained the place against the fifth Henry; and the sturdy "Davydd" would not have shrunk from defending it against a Yorkist army, even if led by Warwick in person. At Harleck Margaret passed months, brooding over the past, uncertain as to the present, and anxious about the future. At times, indeed, she must have forgotten her misfortunes, as, from the battlements of the castle, she gazed with the eye of a poetess over the intervening mountains to where the peaks of Snowdon seem to mingle with the clouds. At length she was startled by intelligence of the settlement made by Parliament, and by a summons from York, as Protector, to appear at Westminster with her son. Margaret might well crimson with shame and anger. The terms on which the dispute between York and Lancaster had been compromised recalled all the injurious rumors as to the birth of her son; and her maternal feelings were shocked at the exclusion of the boy-prince from the throne he had been born to inherit.[6] Submission was, under these circumstances, impossible to such a woman. She was not yet thirty, decidedly too young to abandon hope; and she was conscious of having already, in seasons of danger, exhibited that energy which is hope in action. The idea of yet trampling in the dust the three magnates by whom she had been humbled, took possession of her mind; and, unaided save by beauty, eloquence, and those accomplishments which, fifteen years earlier, had made her famous at the courts of Europe, she started for the north with the determination of regaining the crown which she had already found so thorny. The distressed queen embarked on the Menai; and her destination was Scotland. One day in the autumn of 1460, James, King of Scots, the second of his name, while attempting to wrest Roxburgh Castle from the English, was killed by the bursting of a cannon, and succeeded by his son, a boy in his seventh year. The obsequies of the deceased monarch were scarcely celebrated, when intelligence reached the Scottish court that Margaret of Anjou had, with her son, arrived at Dumfries; that she had met with a reception befitting a royal personage; and that she had taken up her residence in the College of Lincluden.