There is a long-standing consensus among Scottish historians regarding the poor, not to say utterly bad, reputation of James III. To some extent this is understandable, since James had the ironic misfortune to be the father of a son whose reign is generally (and rightly) upheld as marking the Golden Age of late medieval Scotland: the question is, however, whether the glory of the son has not darkened the reputation of the father? The present contribution does not seek to restore the balance by impugning the reputation of James IV – albeit that the latter's personal morality was far from irreproachable, his piety was of a suspiciously ostentatious sort, and his command of military strategy led to the total disaster of Flodden; rather, it will suggest that there are in the life of James III aspects that have not been fully understood, but deserve to be taken into consideration if a more just appreciation of this much censured monarch is to be attained.

In several respects the behaviour of James III differed strikingly from that of his son. Perhaps most obviously, he preferred to stay in Edinburgh as much as possible, rather than travel restlessly round his kingdom. James III, of course, had no need to make highly visible pilgrimages to the tombs of northern and southern saints (in casu SS Duthac and Ninian) to atone for his part (real or imputed) in the heinous crimes of regicide and parricide; nor had he any need to wear a heavy chain round his waist. While such penitential mortifications contribute to the modern fascination with James IV, the very absence of such exercises on the part of James III should perhaps be construed as a sign of merit. Inevitably the king, by staying in his capital, could not expect to reap the political rewards of exposure to the crowd. In modern idiom, he seems to have been little inclined to ‘press the flesh’, and he has been accused of parsimony: there are known for him none of the charmingly spontaneous donations of his son, who lavished money on minstrels, menials and mistresses. However, that James III might have been building up a fund with which to finance some great, but ultimately unrealised, enterprise (for example in relation to Gueldres) is a possibility for which no historian seems to make allowance.