The Caged Lion
Charlotte M. Yonge
Paperback
(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, Jan. 19, 2015)
The novel opens in the year 1421. England, though engaged in warfare in France, enjoys peace and prosperity at home, but Scotland is in a state of anarchy. Its king, James I, the caged lion of the title, has been a prisoner in England since boyhood, though the king, Henry V, treats him as a friend. The chief character, Malcolm Stewart, is a timid, sickly, scholarly youth, who feels that the best way to protect his tenants and his sister is to give her in marriage to their soldierly cousin Patrick, and himself become a monk. This is found to be no solution. Lilias is placed in a nunnery, Patrick goes to fight the English in France, and Malcolm enters the service of his royal kinsman, James I.