Apart from the perennial discontents of Magyars and Sla y s, the confusion and corruption of the administration, and the misery caused by the ruin of the finances, had made the Habsburg dynasty unpopular even in its German states, and in Vienna itself a large section of public opinion was loudly in favour of the claims of Charles of Bavaria.
Mar's highlanders began to desert; his council was a confusion of opinions and discontents, and when, after many dangers and in the worst of health, James joined the Jacobites at Perth, it was only to discourage his friends by his gloom, and to share their wintry flight before Argyll to Montrose.
As the Renaissance had its precursory movements in the medieval period, so the German Reformation was preceded by Wickliffe and Huss, by the discontents of the Great Schism and by the councils of Constance and Basel.
The less popular device of turning old manorial arable land into sheep-runs was also known, but does not yet seem to have grown so common as to provoke the popular discontents which were to prevail under the Tudors.
And he added a durable masterpiece to political literature in a pamphlet which he called Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770).
