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In 1406, Prince James of Scotland had been sent to France for his own safety (principally from his uncle, the Duke of Albany, who had already murdered James\'s elder brother, David). James never reached France as he was captured by English shipping off King\'s Lynn. James spent the next eighteen years of his life in the Tower of London, at the English court and in English military service in France.On the death of Henry V, the king\'s ransom was negotiated and James returned to Scotland (with an English wife, Joan Beaufort). Over the next seven years, the king reformed Scottish administrative practice and engaged in a massive blood-letting exercise against the relations of Albany.Neither the reforms nor the vendetta endeared the king to his (extremely depleted) nobility.
The situation was made worse by the fact that, after 1431, James became increasingly lazy in terms of government. In 1437, at the Blackfriars Monastery in Perth, James was surprised by a group of discontented lords (led by the king\'s uncle - thus brother of Albany - the Earl of Atholl) and brutally stabbed to death in a blocked up sewer.
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