Some historians have been more sympathetic to James III, seeing him as a cultured man in the relatively crude atmosphere of the Scottish nobility at that time, and defended him against some criticisms. The leading Scottish historian Norman Macdougall published a revisionist biography of James III in which he argues that, far from being a weak king, he was actually something of a tyrant. Macdougall dismissed the "favourites of low birth" as the invention of chroniclers in the next century whose knowledge of the facts was poor. He argues that all we can say for sure is that James had some dealings with an architect or mason called Cochrane, and the rest is later invention. Macdougall found two records of a Thomas Cochrane; one reference suggests that Cochrane was an usher of the king's chamber door, and the other that a Thomas Cochrane had forfeited the lands of Cousland near Dalkeith. Cochrane of Cousland, Macdougall concludes, may have been the usher and met his end at Lauder Bridge. Macdougall also follows the development of the story in later writers and points particularly to William Drummond of Hawthornden's "History of the 5 Jameses" for setting the final elaboration of the story. Macdougall argues that Hawthornden increased the status of Cochrane to that of an architect in order to rescue the king's reputation.