When John Maxwell, fourth Lord Herries of Terregles, sat down to write his memoirs, he recollected royal minorities as troubled times. This former warden of the West March could justifiably consider himself an authority on the subject, since he and his contemporaries had gained considerable experience of child kings. For fifty years of the sixteenth century, Scotland lacked an adult monarch. James v became king aged seventeen months; his daughter, Mary, succeeded him when six days old; in turn, Mary's son, James VI, was crowned a month after his first birthday. Royal minorities were a hazard attendant upon hereditary monarchy and occurred throughout Europe, yet dynastic chance ensured that the Scots experienced an unprecedented quantity of child rulers. During these long years of royal infancy, the Scots made alternative arrangements for governance. In addressing the ‘problem’ of royal minority, the Scots' preferred option was to appoint an individual to exercise the monarch's powers on their behalf. The individuals so endowed with the monarchical prerogative were variously entitled governor, tutor, or, most commonly, regent. This book is the first sustained study of the office they held.

Traditionally, regents have received a bad press from historians. This negative view has a distinguished pedigree, since by the sixteenth century the association between minority and political disturbance had already developed into a literary trope. The opening quotation from Herries is only one example among many. For the scripturally inclined, such as the fifteenth-century chronicler Walter Bower, or the Observantine friar Adam Abell writing in the 1530s, Ecclesiastes 10:16 provided a compelling watchword: ‘Woe is the land where the king is a child, for there never peace nor justice reigned.’ John Lesley, bishop of Ross, writing c.1568–78, gravely recalled the ‘greyt trouble and civill seditione in the realme’ which had troubled Scotland during James II's minority; meanwhile, Lesley averred, the minority of Mary, Queen of Scots, was characterised by ‘diverse factionis’.