Note 9 — Front matter

'While king James was observing the effects of his artillery, (at the siege of Roxburgh-castle) one of the rudely-contrived cannons of that age, consisting of bars of iron, girded with circles of metal, suddenly burst: a fragment struck his thigh,—and the great effusion of blood produced a death almost instantaneous. The earl of Angus, who stood next to James, was wounded.

'It is impossible to express the grief of the camp, or of the kingdom, at the premature loss of a beloved sovereign, in the flower of his age, aggravated by the circumstances and the strange fatality of the case. The young regretted a youthful prince, and an ardent leader: the old sighed at the prospect of another minority.

'Could any consolation have arisen, it must have proceeded from the spirit of the queen, Mary of Gueldres, who, immediately upon the tidings, arrived in the camp with the infant heir of the monarchy, and showing him to the soldiers, while tears gushed from her eyes, she conjured them by every domestic tie, by the memory of their sovereign, by the fame of Scottish valour, not to depart from their design, but to destroy this calamitous fortress. The castle was taken and levelled with the ground.'

Pinkerton's Hist. of Scotland, v. ii. p. 244.