, notwithstanding
that a truce existed between the two countries.
The intelligence of his capture, coming in the train of many sorrows
and disasters, proved fatal to his unhappy father. "The news," we
are told, "was brought to him while at supper, and did so overwhelm
him with grief, that he was almost ready to give up the ghost into the
hands of the servant that attended him. But being carried to his
bed-chamber, he abstained from all food, and in three days died of
hunger and grief at Rothesay."*
* Buchanan.
James was detained in captivity about eighteen years; but though
deprived of personal liberty, he was treated with the respect due to
his rank. Care was taken to instruct him in all the branches of useful
knowledge cultivated at that period, and to give him those mental
and personal accomplishments deemed proper for a prince. Perhaps, in
this respect, his imprisonment was an advantage, as it enabled him
to apply himself the more exclusively to his improvement, and
quietly to imbibe that rich fund of knowledge, and to cherish those
elegant tastes, which have given such a lustre to his memory.
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