JAMES II

son of the former, ruled Scotland from 1449 to 1460. Amid warring factions, he allied himself with the Douglas as a choice of evils, but, feeling himself overridden, he induced the Earl of Douglas to come to Stirling Castle and stabbed him to death with his own hand. He was a warlike king, even to his death. He was killed in his twenty-ninth year, by the bursting of a newfangled cannon at the siege of Roxburgh.