Name Prefix:<NPFX> King Of Scots
Name Suffix:<NSFX> I, Black Knight of Lorn
To secure his safety, his father Robert III sent him to France, but his ship was intercepted and he found himself imprisoned in England. There he remained from 1406 until 1424. However, even though a prisoner, he received a very good education and became an important Scottish poet. At last---in 1424 with an English wife, Joan Beaufort, at his side---he was allowed to return to Scotland. A ransom of 40,000 pounds had to be paid. James I was out for revenge; the family of Regent Albany, who had been responsible for his lengthy imprisonment, was destroyed and their possessions confiscated. He pursued those rivals descended from Robert II and several were executed.
Once, at a banquet, one noble struck another across the face. James had the offending noble seized, the hand that had delivered the blow laid on the table, and the other noble was ordered to chop it off with
his sword. Also, Paul Craw, a learned doctor, preaching against the Church of Rome, was arrested, tried and burnt to death at the stake.
In 1426 James I commanded that every Baron should kill all the wolf whelps they could find, and four times a year he commanded that a wolf hunt be kept; any tenant of the Baron's not attending was to pay a fine of one sheep. Also, every landlord was commanded to kill every young crow. If a crow was found in a tree, the tree was to be taken away from him, or he himself could fell the tree and pay a fine of five shillings to the king.
In about 1427 he decreed that no Scotsman was allowed to buy cloth or other goods from an Englishman, and no Englishman was allowed to sell any goods in Scotland unless he had special permission. No one was allowed to send gold or silver out of Scotland nor allowed to sell a horse to a foreigh country unless it was more than three years old.
No one in Scotland was allowed to wear silk, furs or pearls unless they were a Lord of a Knight; and farmers were not allowed to wear coloured clothes but only plain ones made athome.
In 1428 every man or boy in Scotland was to be fined fourpence every time they played football and, to improve his people's aim, but to no avail, every man or boy over 12 years of
age was required to shoot three arrows at a target every public holiday.
In 1431 rebels supporting the Lord of The Isles defeated James I's soldiers and then attacked and ravaged the lands of Clan Cameron. Two years later, in 1433, Clan Mackay and Clan Sutherland engaged in a great battle near Longue, each clan had about 1,500 men but the Mackays almost wiped out the Sutherlands.
He tried to improve the kingdom's finances, even to extorting money from a protesting church. Slowly he restored peace by stopping abuses and showing concern for the Scottish people. However, nobles were still stirring up problems and, in 1437, a group of these under the Earl of Atholl murdered James I. Late at night they forced an entry and stabbed James to death in a vault beneath his bedchamber where the Queen had tried to hide him. It was a violent end for a man opposed to violence and a mismanaged plot which killed the king yet spared his six-year-old son, James II.