James V 1512-42
King of Scotland

Born in Linlithgow, the son of James IV, he was less than two years old when his father's death (1513) gave him the Crown, leaving him to grow up among the quarrelling pro-French and pro-English factions, during which time Scotland was reduced to a state of anarchy. Imprisoned (1525-28) by his former stepfather, the Earl of Angus, he eventually made his escape, and as an independent sovereign began to carry out a judicious policy which was largely framed by the need to increase the revenues of his all-but bankrupt kingdom. He continued and greatly extended his father's policy of making the Church a virtual department of state, and raised taxes from the Scottish Church to finance his College of Justice (1532). The pope, assured of James's support and anxious to prevent the spread of the Reformation in Scotland, allowed the king the right to make ecclesiastical appointments. James later used this to appoint five of his six illegitimate sons to high ecclesiastical office. In 1536 he visited France and married first Madeleine, the daughter of Francis I (1537), and after her death, Mary of Guise (1538). Both wives brought a substantial dowry and confirmed the Franco-Scottish alliance. Although reasonably popular with the common people and determined to end disorder on the frontier with England, his treatment of the nobility was increasingly brusque. Relations with England, which had been deteriorating from 1536, burst into open war after he failed to attend a conference with Henry VIII at York (1541). By 1542 the countries were at war and England invaded. After James's army was defeated at Solway Moss (1542), he retired to Falkland Palace and died, less because of illness than a lack of will to live, only a few days after the birth of his daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, who succeeded him. Sometimes seen as the most unpleasant of all Stuart kings, who overstepped many unwritten conventions, he was also a highly talented Renaissance monarch. The monuments to his reign are the literary works produced at his glittering court, such as the poems and plays of Sir David Lyndsay, and the ambitious, costly architectural transformation of Stirling Castle and the palaces of Holyrood, Falkland and Linlithgow.

Bibliography: Caroline Bingham, James V King of Scots, 1512-1542 (1971)