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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Royal Edinburgh, by Margaret Oliphant
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Royal Edinburgh
+       Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets
+
+Author: Margaret Oliphant
+
+Illustrator: George Reid
+
+Release Date: June 5, 2008 [EBook #25701]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROYAL EDINBURGH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ROYAL EDINBURGH
+
+HER SAINTS, KINGS, PROPHETS AND POETS
+
+
+'Mine own romantic town.' MARMION
+
+
+
+BY
+MRS. OLIPHANT
+AUTHOR OF 'MAKERS OF FLORENCE,' 'MAKERS OF VENICE,' ETC.
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
+BY
+GEORGE REID, R.S.A.
+
+
+LONDON
+MACMILLAN AND CO.
+AND NEW YORK
+
+1891
+
+_All rights reserved_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_First Edition (Medium 8vo) 1890_
+_Second Edition (Crown 8vo) 1891_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: ST. GILES'S FROM THE LAWNMARKET]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+TO MY OLD FRIEND
+
+ALEXANDER MACMILLAN
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PART I
+                                                                    PAGE
+MARGARET OF SCOTLAND, ATHELING--QUEEN AND SAINT                        1
+
+
+PART II
+
+THE STEWARDS OF SCOTLAND
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+JAMES I. POET AND LEGISLATOR                                          38
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+JAMES II: WITH THE FIERY FACE                                         80
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+JAMES III: THE MAN OF PEACE                                          126
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+JAMES IV: THE KNIGHT-ERRANT                                          155
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+JAMES V: THE LAST OF THE HEROIC AGE                                  200
+
+
+PART III
+
+THE TIME OF THE PROPHETS
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+UNDER THE QUEEN REGENT                                               258
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+UNDER QUEEN MARY                                                     310
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE TRIUMPH AND END                                                  350
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE SCHOLAR OF THE REFORMATION                                       374
+
+PART IV
+
+THE MODERN CITY
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A BURGHER POET                                                       435
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE GUEST OF EDINBURGH                                               471
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE SHAKSPEARE OF SCOTLAND                                           491
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+ST. GILES'S FROM THE LAWNMARKET                           _Frontispiece_
+
+ROYAL EDINBURGH                                                      xiv
+
+QUEEN MARGARET'S CHAPEL, EDINBURGH CASTLE                              1
+
+PILLAR IN NAVE, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY                                      5
+
+DUNFERMLINE ABBEY                                                      7
+
+WEST TOWER, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY                                         11
+
+THE NAVE, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY--LOOKING WEST                             13
+
+QUEEN MARGARET'S CAVE                                                 15
+
+WEST DOORWAY, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY                                       17
+
+INTERIOR OF QUEEN MARGARET'S CHAPEL, EDINBURGH CASTLE                 25
+
+ARMS OF QUEEN MARGARET OF SCOTLAND                                    37
+
+THE BASS ROCK                                                         53
+
+HOLYROOD                                                              77
+
+EDINBURGH CASTLE FROM THE SOUTH-WEST                                  81
+
+INNER BARRIER, EDINBURGH CASTLE                                       87
+
+EDINBURGH CASTLE FROM THE VENNEL                                      97
+
+ST. ANTHONY'S CHAPEL AND ST. MARGARET'S LOCH                         115
+
+MONS MEG                                                             123
+
+THE CANONGATE TOLBOOTH                                               127
+
+ARMS OF JAMES IV OF SCOTLAND                                         155
+
+OLD HOUSE IN LAWNMARKET                                              161
+
+ST. ANTHONY'S CHAPEL                                                 165
+
+OLD HOUSES AT HEAD OF WEST BOW                                       171
+
+BAKEHOUSE CLOSE                                                      183
+
+WHITE HORSE CLOSE                                                    195
+
+SALISBURY CRAGS                                                      201
+
+REID'S CLOSE, CANONGATE                                              211
+
+DOORWAY, SIR A. AITCHESON'S HOUSE                                    217
+
+LINLITHGOW PALACE                                                    227
+
+FALKLAND PALACE                                                      253
+
+ST. ANDREWS                                                          287
+
+KNOX'S HOUSE, HIGH STREET                                            307
+
+HOLYROOD PALACE AND ARTHUR'S SEAT                                    311
+
+LOCHLEVEN                                                            331
+
+QUEEN MARY'S BATH                                                    335
+
+WEST DOORWAY, HOLYROOD CHAPEL                                        341
+
+DOORWAY, HOLYROOD PALACE                                             349
+
+MORAY HOUSE, CANONGATE                                               359
+
+THE PENDS, ST. ANDREWS                                               365
+
+INTERIOR OF ST. GILES'S                                              369
+
+KNOX'S PULPIT                                                        372
+
+NORTH DOORWAY, HERIOT'S HOSPITAL                                     381
+
+STIRLING CASTLE                                                      417
+
+GREYFRIARS CHURCHYARD                                                433
+
+EDINBURGH: GENERAL VIEW                                              437
+
+ALLAN RAMSAY'S SHOP                                                  439
+
+CROWN OF ST. GILES'S                                                 445
+
+SMOLLETT'S HOUSE                                                     453
+
+ALLAN RAMSAY'S HOUSE                                                 461
+
+ALLAN RAMSAY'S MONUMENT                                              469
+
+DOORWAY, LADY STAIR'S CLOSE                                          471
+
+LADY STAIR'S CLOSE                                                   477
+
+DUGALD STEWART'S MONUMENT                                            483
+
+BURNS'S MONUMENT                                                     489
+
+ST. GILES'S FROM PRINCES STREET                                      493
+
+THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH                                          497
+
+PLAYFAIR'S MONUMENT, CALTON HILL                                     503
+
+SIR WALTER SCOTT'S HOUSE                                             515
+
+GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH                                             519
+
+SIR WALTER SCOTT                                                     520
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ROYAL EDINBURGH
+
+[Illustration: QUEEN MARGARET'S CHAPEL, EDINBURGH CASTLE.]
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+MARGARET OF SCOTLAND, ATHELING--QUEEN AND SAINT
+
+
+It is strange yet scarcely difficult to the imagination to realise the
+first embodiment of what is now Edinburgh in the far distance of the
+early ages. Neither Pict nor Scot has left any record of what was going
+on so far south in the days when the king's daughters, primitive
+princesses with their rude surroundings, were placed for safety in the
+_castrum puellarum_, the maiden castle, a title in after days proudly
+(but perhaps not very justly) adapted to the supposed invulnerability of
+the fortress perched upon its rock. Very nearly invulnerable, however,
+it must have been in the days before artillery; too much so at least for
+one shut-up princess, who complained of her lofty prison as a place
+without verdure. If we may believe, notwithstanding the protest of that
+much-deceived antiquary the Laird of Monkbarns, that these fair and
+forlorn ladies were the first royal inhabitants of the Castle of
+Edinburgh, we may imagine that they watched from their battlements more
+wistfully than fearfully, over all the wide plain, what dust might rise
+or spears might gleam, or whether any galley might be visible of reiver
+or rescuer from the north. A little collection of huts or rude forts
+here and there would be all that broke the sweeping line of Lothian to
+the east or west, and all that width of landscape would lie under the
+eyes of the watchers, giving long notice of the approach of any enemies.
+"Out over the Forth I look to the north," the maidens might sing,
+looking across to Dunfermline, where already there was some royal state,
+or towards the faint lines of mountains in the distance, over the soft
+swelling heights of the Lomonds. No doubt Edinburgh, Edwinesburgh, or
+whatever the antiquaries imagine it to have been, must have been sadly
+dull if safe, suspended high upon the rock, nearer heaven than earth. It
+is curious to hear that it was "without verdure"; but perhaps the young
+ladies took no account of the trees that clothed the precipices below
+them, or the greenness that edged the Nor' Loch deep at their feet, but
+sighed for the gardens and luxuriance of Dunfermline, where all was
+green about their windows and the winding pathways of the dell of
+Pittendreich would be pleasant to wander in. This first romantic aspect
+of the Castle of Edinburgh is, however, merely traditional, and the
+first real and authentic appearance of the old fortress and city in
+history is in the record, at once a sacred legend and a valuable
+historical chronicle, of the life of Margaret the Atheling, the first of
+several Queen Margarets, the woman saint and blessed patroness of
+Scotland, who has bequeathed not only many benefits and foundations of
+after good to her adopted country, but her name--perhaps among
+Scotswomen still the most common of all Christian names.
+
+No more moving and delightful story was ever written or invented than
+the history of this saint and Queen. She was the daughter of Edward,
+called the Outlaw, and of his wife a princess of Hungary, of the race
+which afterwards produced St. Elizabeth: and the sister of Edgar
+Atheling, the feeble but rightful heir of the Saxon line, and
+consequently of the English throne. The family, however, was more
+foreign than English, having been brought up at the Court of their
+grandfather, the King of Hungary, one of the most pious and one of the
+richest Courts in Christendom; and it was not unnatural that when
+convinced of the fact that the most legitimate of aspirants had no
+chance against the force of William, they should prefer to return to the
+country of their education and birth. It was no doubt a somewhat forlorn
+party that set out upon this journey, for to lose a throne is seldom a
+misfortune accepted with equanimity, and several of the beaten and
+despondent Saxons had joined the royal exiles. Their voyage, however,
+was an unprosperous one, and after much beating about by winds and
+storms they were at last driven up the Firth of Forth, where their ship
+found shelter in the little bay at the narrowing of the Firth, which has
+since borne the name of St. Margaret's Hope.
+
+Lying here in shelter from all the winds behind the protecting
+promontory, with perhaps already some humble shrine or hermit's cell
+upon Inchgarvie or Inchcolm to give them promise of Christian kindness,
+with the lonely rock of Edinburgh in the distance on one side, and the
+soft slopes of the Fife coast rising towards the King's palace at
+Dunfermline on the other, the travellers must have awaited with some
+anxiety, yet probably much hope, the notice of the barbaric people who
+came to the beach to stare at their weather-beaten ships, and hurried
+off to carry the news inland of such unwonted visitors. It is the very
+spot which is now disturbed and changed by the monstrous cobwebs of iron
+which bear the weight of the Forth Bridge and make an end for ever of
+the Queen's Ferry, which Margaret must have crossed so often, and by
+which a personage more familiar, Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck, once, as we all
+know, made his way to the North; but these are modern reflections such
+as have nothing to do with that primitive morning, fresh no doubt as
+to-day with sun and dew, when Malcolm's messengers came hurrying down to
+see what were these intruders, and what their purpose, and whether
+anything was to be apprehended from a visit apparently so unusual. The
+eager and curious emissaries had apparently no warrant to board the
+strangers, but gazed and wondered at the big ship and all its
+equipments, so unlike their own rude galleys; then hastened back again
+with an excited and exciting description of the greatness of the
+passengers on board and all their splendid array. Malcolm, cautious yet
+excited too, sent forth, as we are told in the _Scotichronicon_, "his
+wisest councillors" to make further inquiries. They too were astonished
+by the splendour of all they saw, and especially by the mien of a
+certain lady among these strangers, "whom, by her incomparable beauty,
+and the pleasantness of her jocund speech, I imagined to be the chief of
+the family," said the spokesman; "nor was it wonderful," adds the
+chronicler, "that they should believe her to be the chief who was
+destined to be Queen of Scotland and also heir of England." Perhaps it
+was the after light of these events that conveyed that high appreciation
+of Margaret's qualities into the story, for she must have been quite
+young, and it is very unlikely that in presence of her mother, and the
+brother whom they all considered as the King of England, a young girl,
+however gifted, would have taken upon her the chief place.
+
+[Illustration: PILLAR IN NAVE, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY]
+
+The report he received, however, had so much effect upon King Malcolm
+that he went himself to visit the strangers in their ship. He was not a
+mere barbaric prince, to be dazzled by the sight of these great persons,
+but no doubt had many a lingering recollection in his mind of Siward's
+great house in Northumberland, where he had taken refuge after his
+father's murder. It is curious and bewildering to go back in that dawn
+of national life to familiar Shaksperian regions, and to think that this
+primitive King who had so much in him of the savage, along with all his
+love and gentleness, was the son of that gracious Duncan who addressed
+his hostess like a kingly gentleman though her hospitality was to be so
+fatal. King Malcolm came down, no doubt with such state as he could
+muster, to see the wandering foreign princes. He was not unlearned, but
+knew Latin and the English tongue, though he could not read, as we are
+afterwards told. He had already reigned for fourteen years, after about
+as long a period of exile, so that he could not now be in his first
+youth, although he was still unmarried. He came down with his suite to
+the shore amid all the stir of the inquiring country folk, gathered
+about to see this strange thing--the ship with its unusual equipments,
+and the group of noble persons in their fine clothes who were to be seen
+upon the deck. The Athelings were carrying back with them to Hungary all
+the gifts with which the Emperor, Henry III, had loaded their father
+when he went to England, and had jewels and vessels of gold and many
+fine things unknown to the Scots. And Margaret, even though not so
+prominent as the chroniclers say, was evidently by the consent of all a
+most gracious and courteous young lady, with unusual grace and vivacity
+of speech. The grave middle-aged King, with his recollections of a
+society more advanced than his own, which probably had made him long for
+something better than his rude courtiers could supply, would seem at
+once to have fallen under the spell of the wandering princess. She was
+such a mate as a poor Scots King, badgered by turbulent clans, could
+scarcely have hoped to find--rich and fair and young, and of the best
+blood in Christendom. Whether the wooing was as short as the record we
+have no means of knowing, but in the same year, 1070, Margaret was
+brought with great rejoicing to Dunfermline, and there married to her
+King, amid the general joy.
+
+[Illustration: DUNFERMLINE ABBEY]
+
+The royal house at Dunfermline, according to the chronicle, was
+surrounded by a dense forest and guarded by immense cliffs. The latter
+particular, however, it is difficult to accept, for the dell in which
+the ruins of the mediæval palace (a building much more recent, it is
+needless to say, than that of Malcolm) still stand, though picturesque
+in its acclivities and precipices, is as far as possible from including
+any cliffs that could be called immense. The young Queen made a great
+change in the internal arrangements of what was no doubt a grim
+stronghold enough, soft as was the country around. Probably the absence
+of decoration and ornament struck her painfully, accustomed as she was
+to palaces of a very different kind--for almost the first thing we hear
+in the contemporary history written by her confessor Theodoric,
+afterwards a monk at Durham, is of the workshops and rooms for
+embroidery and all the arts which were established in Dunfermline,
+presumably in the palace itself under Margaret's own eye, for the
+beautifying of the great church which she founded there, and also no
+doubt for her own house. Certain women of good birth were judged worthy
+to share the Queen's work, and lived with her, it would seem, in a kind
+of seclusion, seeing only such chosen visitors as Margaret brought with
+her to cheer their labours, and forswearing all idle talk and frivolity.
+The Queen had such austerity mingled with her graciousness and such
+grace with her severity, says her monkish biographer, loving an
+antithesis, that all feared and respected her presence. "Her life was
+full of moderation and gentleness, her speech contained the very salt of
+wisdom; even her silence was full of good thoughts."
+
+This biographer--according to the conscientious and painstaking
+investigations of the Bollandist Fathers, who examine in their careful
+way all the guarantees and traditions of the manuscript with a jealousy
+worthy of the most enlightened historians--is not Turgot, who is usually
+credited with it, but Theodoric, a monk of Durham, who must have shared
+with Turgot, at some period of his life, the office of spiritual
+director and confidant to the Queen. It is curious that both these
+writers should have passed from the northern Court to the community at
+Durham, of which Turgot was prior and Theodoric a simple brother; yet
+not so strange either, for Durham was largely patronised and enriched by
+Margaret and her husband, their kingdom at this period reaching as far
+south. Of Turgot's Life, which was presumably written in the vernacular,
+there seems nothing existing; but that of Theodoric is very full, and
+contains many details which set before us the life of the simple Court,
+with its many labours and charities: the King full of reverence and
+tender surprise and admiration of all his wife's perfections; the young
+saint herself, sweet and bright in modest gravity amid a tumultuous
+world little respectful of women, full of the excessive charity of the
+age and of her race, and of those impulses of decoration and
+embellishment which were slow to develop among the ruder difficulties of
+the north. Theodoric himself must have been more or less of an artist,
+for in speaking of the "golden vases" and ornaments for the altars of
+her new church which Margaret devised, "I myself carried out the work,"
+he says. These must have been busy days in Malcolm's primitive palace
+while the workmen were busy with the great cathedral close by, the mason
+with his mallet, the homely sculptor with his chisel, carving those
+interlaced and embossed arches which still stand, worn and gray, but
+little injured, in the wonderful permanency of stone, in the nave of the
+old Abbey of Dunfermline: while the Queen's rooms opened into the hall
+where her ladies sat over their embroidery, among all the primitive dyes
+that art had caught from herbs and traditional mixtures, on one
+hand--and on the other into noisier workshops, where workmen with
+skilful delicate hammers were beating out the shining gold and silver
+into sacred vessels and symbols of piety. Margaret along with her stores
+of more vulgar wealth, and the ingots which were consecrated to the
+manufacture of crucifix and chalice, had brought many holy relics: and
+no doubt the cases and shrines in which these were enclosed afforded
+models for the new, over which Father Theodoric, with his monkish cape
+and cowl laid aside, and his shaven crown shining in the glow of the
+furnace, was so busy. What a pleasant stir of occupation and progress,
+the best and most trustworthy evidences of growing civilisation, must
+have arisen within the shelter of the woods which framed that centre of
+development and new life: the new abbey rising day by day, a white and
+splendid reality in the clearing among the trees; the bells, symbols of
+peace and pleasantness, sounding out over the half-savage country; the
+chants and songs of divine worship swelling upward to the skies.
+Margaret's royal manufactory of beautiful things, her tapestries and
+metal work, her adaptation of all the possibilities of ornament latent
+in every primitive community, with the conviction, always ennobling to
+art, that by these means of sacred adornment she and her assistants and
+coadjutors were serving and pleasing God, no doubt consoled her ardent
+and active spirit for the loss of many comforts and graces with which
+she must have been familiar. At the same time her new sphere of
+influence was boundless, and the means in her hand of leavening and
+moulding her new country almost unlimited--a thing above all others
+delightful to a woman, to whom the noiseless and gradual operation of
+influence is the chief weapon in the world.
+
+[Illustration: WEST TOWER, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY]
+
+There is nothing, however, in this history more charming than the
+description of the relations between the royal pair. King Malcolm had
+probably known few graces in life except those, a step or two in advance
+of his own, which were to be found in Northumberland in the house of
+Earl Siward; and after the long practical struggle of his reign between
+the Scots and Celts, who had already so far settled down together as to
+constitute something which could be called a kingdom, he had no doubt
+fallen even from that higher plane of civilisation. Such rude state as
+the presence of a queen even in those primitive days might have procured
+had been wanting, and all his faculties were probably absorbed in
+keeping peace between the unruly chieftains, and fostering perhaps here
+and there the first rising of a little community of burghers, strong
+enough by union to defend themselves. Uneasy, there can be little doubt,
+was often the head which bore the circlet of troubled supremacy among
+all those half-subdued tribes; and his dwelling in the heart of the
+"dense forest," amid all the noisy retainers in the hall and jealous
+nobles in the council chamber, would leave little room for beauty or
+sweetness of any kind. When the stranger princess suddenly came in like
+an enchantment, with her lovely looks and "jocund eloquence"--full of
+smiles and pleasant speech, yet with a dignity which overawed every rude
+beholder--into these rude and noisy halls, with so many graceful ways
+and beautiful garments and sparkling jewels, transforming the very
+chambers with embroidered hangings and all the rare embellishments of a
+lady's bower, with which no doubt the ship had been provided, and which
+mediæval princesses, like modern fine ladies, carried about with
+them--the middle-aged man of war was evidently altogether subdued and
+enraptured. To see her absorbed in prayer--an exercise which Malcolm had
+perhaps felt to be the occupation of monks and hermits only--to see her
+bending over her beautiful book with all its pictures, reading the
+sacred story there, filled him with awe and a kind of adoration. He
+could not himself read, which made the wonder all the more; but though
+incapable of mastering what was within, he loved to handle and turn over
+the book from which his beautiful wife derived her wisdom, touching it
+with his rude hands with caressing touches, and kissing the pages she
+loved. When he found one manuscript which she particularly esteemed, he
+"sent for his goldsmith" and had the vellum encased in gold and
+ornamented with jewels; then carried it back to her with such fond
+pleasure as may be easily imagined. Margaret on her part did what she
+could to secure to her King some of the punctilios of reverential
+respect due in her knowledge to a monarch. She suggested the formation
+of a royal guard to protect the King's person and surround him with
+honour and observance. She filled the palace with her wealth, adorning
+it in every way, providing fine clothes for the retainers and so
+enriching the house that the table was served with dishes of gold and
+silver. And it would seem that the reputation of a new and splendid
+Court thus suddenly evolved among the northern mists got abroad, and
+brought merchants with their wares up the Firth, and quickened, if it
+did not altogether originate, the first feeble current of trade which
+was the precursor and origin of all our after wealth in Scotland.
+
+[Illustration: THE NAVE, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY--LOOKING WEST]
+
+[Illustration: QUEEN MARGARET'S CAVE]
+
+This was not all, however, that Margaret did for the commonwealth. If we
+may trust her biographer, it was she who established that great
+principle of reform so important in all states, and generally one of the
+later fruits of civilisation, that the soldiers should be prevented from
+exacting or putting under requisition the peaceful people about, and
+that all they had should be honestly paid for, which was the last thing
+likely to be thought of by a mediæval prince. Altogether Margaret's
+influence was exerted for the best purposes to induce her husband "to
+relinquish his barbarous manners and live honestly and civilly," as the
+chronicler says. It was perhaps not so good an exercise of her power
+when she opened arguments, apparently through Malcolm as interpreter,
+with the native clergy of Scotland, the hermits and ecclesiastics of
+Columba's strain, and the mysterious Culdees of whom we know so little.
+The one certain fact fully established concerning them being, that they
+kept Easter at a different date from that appointed by Rome. The King,
+though no scholar, would seem to have been a linguist in his way, since
+he spoke both languages, that is the Saxon, and the Celtic or Pictish,
+again a most difficult question to determine--with a smattering of
+Latin; and was thus able to act as Margaret's mouthpiece in her
+arguments. She found fault with the Celts not only for the date of their
+Easter, but for their habit of not communicating at that festival. It is
+very curious to note in their answer the very same reason which has
+prevailed in later days among all the changes of faith and ceremonial,
+and is still put forth in Highland parishes as an excuse for the small
+number of communicants. The Celtic priests and bishops defended their
+flocks by producing the words of St. Paul, in which that Apostle says
+that those who eat and drink unworthily eat and drink condemnation to
+themselves. So, according to Theodoric, the Celtic party in the Church
+answered Margaret, and so would their descendants, the "Men" of the
+Highlands, answer at this day. The integrity of the tradition is very
+remarkable. On the other hand, they offended the devout Queen by their
+neglect of Sunday, a reproach which cannot be addressed to their
+descendants.
+
+[Illustration: WEST DOORWAY, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY]
+
+These theological discussions between the fair and learned Queen and the
+Highland ecclesiastics and anchorites, carried on by means of her chief
+convert the warrior King, whom love for her had taught to respect and
+share in her devotion, must have afforded many picturesque and striking
+scenes, though unfortunately there was no modern observer there to be
+interested and amused, but only Theodoric standing by, himself very hot
+upon the atrocity of a miscalculated Easter, and perhaps helping his
+royal mistress here and there with an argument. Naturally his story is
+especially full upon the religious side of Margaret's life--her much
+prayer, her humility and reverence during the services of the Church, an
+intent and silent listener to all teachings, only a little disposed to
+rebel now and then when her confessor passed too lightly over her
+faults. As for her charities, they were boundless. It was not for
+nothing that the blood of St. Ursula, and that which was to give life to
+still another saint, Elizabeth of Hungary, was in her veins. It is
+needless to say that nobody in those days had discovered the evil of
+indiscriminate almsgiving, which was, on the contrary, considered one of
+the first of Christian virtues. Margaret was the providence of all the
+poor around her. Her biographer tells us naïvely, with no sense that the
+result was not one to be proud of, that the fame of her bounty and
+kindness brought the poor in crowds to every place where she was. When
+she went out they crowded round her like children round their mother.
+When she had distributed everything she had of her own she took garments
+and other things from her courtiers and attendants to give away, a
+spoliation to which they consented willingly, knowing that the value of
+everything thus appropriated would be returned to them--an excellent
+reason for acquiescence. This "rapine of piety" was so strong in her
+that she sometimes even appropriated to her poor certain of the gold
+pieces which it was the King's custom to offer at Easter to the
+Church--a pious robbery which Malcolm pretended not to perceive until he
+caught her in the act, when he accused her with a laugh of tender
+amusement for her rapacity. In all the touches by which the sympathetic
+priest delineates the union of this pair there is something at once
+humorous and pathetic in the figure of the King, the rough old warrior,
+always following with his eyes the angelic saintly figure by his side,
+all believing, half adoring, and yet not without that gleam of amusement
+at the woman's absolute unhesitating enthusiasm--an amusement mingled
+with admiration and respect, but still a smile--a delighted surprise at
+all her amazing ways, and wonder what she will do next, though
+everything in his eyes was perfect that she did--such as may still be
+seen in the eyes of many a world-worn husband looking on at the
+movements of that directer, more simple, yet more subtle being, and the
+quick absolutism and certainty of the bright spirit at his side. The
+grey-bearded old soldier, leader of many a raid and victor in many a
+struggle, with this new revelation of beauty and purity bursting upon
+his later life, becomes to us a recognisable and friendly human soul in
+these glimpses we have of him, unintentional and by the way. Theodoric
+himself must have liked Malcolm, half-barbarian as he was, and even
+admired the look of ardent supplication which would come into the King's
+face, "a great intentness and emotion," such as seemed to him
+extraordinary in a secular person, and which his wife's beautiful
+example and the contagion of her piety alone could have developed.
+
+Among Margaret's many duties there was one which throws a very strange
+light upon the time. Just before her arrival in Scotland, King Malcolm
+had been carrying fire and sword through Northumberland in one of the
+many raids over the Border which were the commonplace of the time--if
+indeed we may speak of the Border at such an unsettled and shifting
+period when the limits of the kingdoms were so little certain. The issue
+of this raid was that Scotland, probably meaning for the most part
+Lothian, the southern portion of the country, was filled with English
+captives, apportioned as slaves, or servants at least, through the
+entire population, so that scarcely a house was without one, either male
+or female. The Queen interested herself particularly in these captives,
+as was natural; sometimes paying the ransom exacted for them, and in all
+cases defending and protecting them. Her emissaries went about among
+them inquiring into their condition and how they were treated, visiting
+them from house to house: and all that Margaret could do to mitigate the
+evils of their captivity was done. Nothing can be more strange than to
+realise a time when Northumbrian prisoners of war could be house slaves
+in Lothian. No doubt what was true on one side was true on the other,
+and Scotch captives had their turn of similar bondage.
+
+In those days the ancient county which her children love to call the
+Kingdom of Fife was far more than Edinburgh, then a mere fortress
+standing up on an invulnerable rock in the middle of a fertile plain,
+the centre of the national life. Not only was the King's residence at
+Dunfermline, but the great Cathedral of St. Andrews was the
+ecclesiastical capital, gradually working out that development of Roman
+supremacy and regularity which soon swept away all that was individual
+in the apostleship of St. Columba and the faith of his followers. That
+the King and Queen were frequently at Edinburgh is evident from the fact
+that Margaret had her oratory and chapel on the very apex of the rock,
+and had there established a centre of worship and spiritual life. St.
+Andrews, however, was the centre of influence, the shrine to which
+pilgrims flowed, and the pious Queen, in her care for every office of
+religion and eagerness to facilitate every exercise of piety, gave
+special thought to the task of making the way easy and safe towards that
+holy metropolis. The Canterbury of the north was divided from the other
+half of Malcolm's kingdom by that sea which in these later days, at much
+cost of beauty, money, and life, has been bridged over and
+shortened--"the sea which divides Lothian from Scotland" according to
+the chronicler, "the Scottish Sea" as it is called by others, the mighty
+Firth, which to the rude galleys of the little trading villages along
+its shores must have been a sea dangerous and troubled, full of risks
+and perils. The Queen, we are told, erected houses of shelter on either
+side of this angry strait, and established what we should call a line of
+passenger boats to take the pilgrims over at the expense of the State.
+One wonders how much or how little of State policy might mingle in this
+pious act, for no doubt the establishment of an easy and constant means
+of communication between the wealthy Lothians and the then centre of
+national life must have been of unspeakable use in consolidating a
+kingdom still so imperfectly knit together and divided by the formidable
+line of the great estuary. It is one drawback of a religious chronicler
+that no such motive, large and noble as it might be, is thought of,
+since even national advantage counted so much less than the cultivation
+of piety. And it is very likely that Margaret thought of nothing else,
+and reckoned a prayer at the shrine of the patron saint as far more
+important than the intercommunications thus established and the
+knowledge of each other thus acquired by the different parts of a
+kingdom which still retained the differences of separate nationalities.
+A mingled aim, a practical motive, might not have accomplished half so
+much; but no doubt among Malcolm's men, his greybeards pondering in
+council, or perhaps himself thinking of many things as he protected all
+his wife's schemes, there was a dawning perception, along with the
+undoubted advantages of piety, of a national use in the quickened
+intercourse and securely established communications. If so he would
+probably blame himself for a mixed motive by the side of Margaret's pure
+and absolute heavenly-mindedness, yet take pleasure in the secondary
+unacknowledged good all the same.
+
+Thus their life went on for nearly a quarter of a century in a course of
+national development to which everything contributed, even the love of
+splendour which Margaret brought with her, and her artistic tastes, and
+the rage for decoration and beautiful surroundings which had then begun
+to be so strong an element in national progress. She had many children
+in the midst of all these labours and public interests, seven sons and
+two daughters, whom she brought up most carefully in all the perfection
+of her own faith. Three of these sons succeeded one after the other to
+the Scottish throne, and proved the efficacy of her teaching by piety as
+strong and as liberal as her own. It was in the year 1093 that
+Margaret's beautiful and touching life came to an end, in great sorrow
+yet triumph and pious victory over trouble. Before this time, but at a
+date not indicated in the narrative, she had parted with her friend and
+biographer Theodoric, probably not very long before her own death, as we
+are told that she was oppressed by forebodings, or rather premonitions
+of death and sorrow, of which she spoke to him with tears. When the
+moment of separation came both penitent and confessor so long united in
+the closest bonds of sympathy wept sore. "Farewell," said the Queen; "I
+shall not live long, but you will live long after me. Remember my soul
+in your prayers, and take care of my children; cease not to teach and
+admonish them, especially when they are raised to great estate." He made
+the promise with tears, not daring to contradict her by happier
+auguries, and in this way took his last farewell of the Queen, and never
+saw her more. He continues his story, however, taking it from the lips
+of a priest who remained with her during the rest of her life, probably
+also a Saxon, since he became a monk of St. Cuthbert's on Margaret's
+death.
+
+The narrative goes on with an account of the declining health of the
+Queen. For more than six months she had been unable to mount a horse, or
+sometimes to rise from her bed, and in the midst of this illness the
+King set forth upon one of his raids into England, on what provocation
+or with what motive it is difficult to tell, except that the provocation
+was perpetual and the motive persistent the leading rule of life. His
+two elder sons accompanied him on this expedition, which for some reason
+Margaret had opposed, "much dissuading" him from going; but this time,
+unfortunately, had not been hearkened to. Probably she set out along
+with him, on her way to Edinburgh to pass the time of his absence there,
+which was a place where news could be had more readily than beyond the
+sea in Fife. The solitary castle, high perched upon its hill, whence
+messengers could be seen approaching, or, better still, the King's
+banners coming back, was a fitter home for an anxious wife than the
+palace over the Firth among its woods. How long she remained there we
+are not told, and there are now unhappily no articulate remains at all
+of the old stronghold which must have risen upon that height, with its
+low massive walls and rude buildings. The oldest relic in Edinburgh is
+that little sanctuary, plain and bare as a shed, deprived of all
+external appearance of sanctity, and employed for vulgar uses for many
+centuries, which has been at length discovered by its construction, the
+small dark chancel arch and rude ornament, to have been a chapel, and
+which there seems no doubt is at least built upon the site consecrated
+for Margaret's oratory, if not the very building itself. It is small
+enough and primitive enough, with its little line of toothed ornament,
+and its minute windows sending in a subdued light even in the very flush
+of day, to be of any antiquity. I believe that even the fortunate
+antiquary who had the happiness of discovering it does not claim for
+this little chapel the distinction of being the very building itself
+which Margaret erected. Yet it must have been one very similar,
+identical in form and ornament, so that the interested spectator may
+well permit himself to picture the sick and anxious Queen, worn out with
+illness and weighed down by sore forebodings, kneeling there in the
+faint light before the shadowed altar, trying to derive such comfort as
+was possible from the ministrations of the priests, and following with
+her prayers her husband and her boys, so young still and not hardened to
+war, who might be falling by the hands perhaps of her own kindred, in
+the country which was hers, yet which she scarcely knew. In the
+intervals of these anxious prayers, when her failing strength permitted,
+how wistfully the Queen and her ladies must have gazed from the walls
+far around on every side to watch for the first appearance of any
+messenger or herald of return. From the woods of Dunfermline and its
+soft rural landscape, and the new abbey with its sweet singing and all
+its magnificence, it must have been a change indeed to dwell imprisoned
+so near the sky, within the low, stern rugged walls of the primitive
+fort, with a few rude houses clinging about it, and the little chapel on
+the rock, small and dark, as the only representative of the stately
+arches and ornate services which she loved. But the little chapel is
+deeply involved in all the later history of Margaret's life.
+
+[Illustration: INTERIOR OF QUEEN MARGARET'S CHAPEL, EDINBURGH CASTLE]
+
+One day her attendants remarked that she was even more sad than her
+wont, and questioning her received a reply which must have made them
+tremble. "Perhaps to-day," she said, "a great evil has fallen upon the
+Scots, such as has not happened to them for years." Her hearers, however
+it alarmed them, made as light as they could of this prophetic
+foreboding, which might be but a deepened impression of the prevailing
+despondency in her heart. No doubt it was a melancholy night in the
+fortress, where the women who had husbands or sons or brothers in the
+distant army would cluster together in the antechamber and watch for the
+attendants who came and went behind the curtain into the sick chamber
+where the Queen, visibly sinking day by day, lay sleepless and sad,
+listening for every sound. Terrors surrounded the castle for the
+personal safety of its occupants as well as for their brethren in the
+wars; and no doubt there would be whispers of the King's brother, Donald
+Bane, and of the watchful jealous Celtic chiefs all ready to rise with
+him, should an opportunity occur, and dash the stranger brood from the
+throne. All these sad prognostications were quickly realised. Next
+morning brought messengers in fear and distress from the army to say
+that the King had fallen at Alnwick in Northumberland, and to prove that
+Margaret's prophecy had been fulfilled at the very time it was spoken.
+It was November, dark and cheerless both within and without, and the
+Queen would seem to have been prostrated for a day or two by the sad
+news: but on the fourth day she rose from her bed and tottered to the
+little chapel on the rock to hear mass for the last time, and receive
+the Holy Sacrament in preparation for death. She then returned to her
+rooms with the pallor of death already on her face, and bidding all
+around--"me," says the priest, "and the others who stood by"--to
+recommend her to Christ, asked that the black rood should be brought to
+her. This was the most holy of all the relics which she had brought with
+her to Scotland. It was a case of pure gold in the form of a cross,
+ornamented with marvellous work, bearing the image of the Saviour
+curiously carved in ivory, and enclosing a portion of the true cross
+(proved to be so by many miracles). The Queen took it in her hands,
+pressed it to her dying breast, and touched with it her eyes and face.
+While thus devoutly employed, with her thoughts diverted from all
+earthly things, Margaret was brought back to her sorrow by the sudden
+entrance of her son Ethelred, who had returned from the defeated army to
+carry to his mother the dreadful news of the death not only of his
+father but of his elder brother. The sight of his mother in extremity,
+almost gone, no doubt confused the poor boy, still little more than a
+stripling, and with that weight of disaster on his head--and he answered
+to her faltering inquiry at first that all was well. Margaret adjured
+him by the holy cross in her arms to tell her the truth: then when she
+heard of the double blow, burst out in an impassioned cry. "I thank
+Thee, Lord," she said, "that givest me this agony to bear in my death
+hour." Her life had been much blessed; she had known few sorrows; it was
+as a crown to that pure and lovelit existence that she had this moment
+of bitterest anguish before God gave to His beloved sleep.
+
+While this sad scene was enacting within, the country was full of tumult
+and conspiracy without. Donald Bane, the brother of Malcolm, had no
+doubt chafed at the Saxon regime under which the King had fallen, for
+years, and struggled against the influences brought in from abroad in
+the retinue of the foreigner, as has been done in every commonwealth in
+history at one time or another. He represented the old world, the Celtic
+rule, the traditions of the past. Some of the chroniclers indeed assert
+that Malcolm was illegitimate and Donald Bane the rightful heir to the
+crown. He was, at all events, a pretender kept in subjection while
+Malcolm's strong hand held the sceptre, but ready to seize the first
+opportunity of revolution. No doubt the news of the King's death, and of
+that of his heir, would run like wildfire through the country; but it
+would seem that the attempt of Donald must have been already organised,
+since his siege of Edinburgh, where most of his brother's children were
+with their mother, placed there for safety in the King's absence, had
+already begun. Upon the death of the Queen, Donald was not likely to
+have treated the royal children who stood in his way with much mercy;
+and the state of affairs was desperate when young Ethelred, the third of
+her sons, not yet arrived at man's estate, closed his mother's eyes, and
+found himself at the head of the weeping family shut up within the
+castle, surrounded by precipices on every side except that upon which
+his angry uncle lay with all the forces of the discontented in Scotland
+at his back, all the lovers of the old regime and enemies of the
+stranger, and with a fierce contingent from Norway to support his Celtic
+horde. In the simplicity of the narrative we hear not a word of the
+troubled councils which must have been held while the boy prince in his
+sorrow and the sudden dreadful responsibility laid on his young
+shoulders turned to such wise advisers as might have followed Margaret
+into the stronghold, and took thought how to save the children and carry
+off the precious remains of the Queen. The expedient to which they had
+recourse was one which their assailants evidently thought impossible.
+That the rock upon which Edinburgh Castle stands should have been
+considered inaccessible by practical mountaineers like the followers of
+Donald Bane seems curious: but in those days the art of climbing for
+pleasure had not been discovered, and it had no place in the methods of
+warfare. It seemed enough to the assailants to hold the gates and the
+summit of the eastern slopes, where probably there must already have
+been some clusters of huts or rough half-fortified dwellings descending
+from the Castle Hill, foreshadowing a Lawnmarket at least if not yet a
+Canongate. No one would seem to have thought of the possibility of any
+descent on the other side from that perpendicular rock.
+
+But despair sharpens the wits, and no doubt after many miserable
+consultations a desperate expedient was found. Even now nothing but a
+goat, or a schoolboy, or perhaps a young private fearful of punishment,
+could find a way down the wonderful curtain of rock which forms the west
+side of Edinburgh Castle; and to guide the children and their
+attendants, a sorrowful little group of mourners, distracted with grief
+and fear, and Margaret's body in its litter, down those rocks where
+there was scarcely footing for an alert and experienced climber, must
+have been one of the most difficult as it was one of the boldest of
+undertakings. While the rebel host raged on the other side, and any
+traitor might have brought the enemy round to intercept that slow and
+painful descent, it was accomplished safely under cover of "a great
+myst," Heaven, as all thought, helping the forlorn fugitives by that
+natural shield. Mists are no rare things, as everybody knows, on these
+heights. Perhaps it was the well-known easterly haar, the veil of salt
+sea fog which Edinburgh so often wraps round her still, which, blowing
+up from the mouth of the Firth, enveloped the travellers and hid them in
+its folds of whiteness, impenetrable by the closest watcher, till they
+had safely reached the level ground, and stealing down to the Queen's
+Ferry escaped to loyal Fife and their home in Dunfermline. Needless to
+say that this mist was a miraculous agency to all the family and
+servants of the Queen. To us it adds a touch of local colour, the
+well-known symbol of a familiar scene. Edinburgh was then nothing but a
+castle upon a rock, and now is one of the fairest and most celebrated of
+historical cities; but still its perpendicular crags rise inaccessible
+against the setting sun, and still the white mist comes sweeping up from
+the sea.
+
+It is to the credit of the priests that this is the only miracle that is
+connected with the name of Margaret, if we except the pretty legend
+which tells how a hundred years later, when her descendants removed the
+remains of the saint from the place where they had been deposited to lay
+them before the high altar in Dunfermline, the coffin in which they were
+placed could not be carried past the humble spot in which lay, brought
+back from Northumberland, the bones of her King. The cortege stopped
+perforce, the ceremonial had to be interrupted, for all the force of all
+the bearers could not carry even in death the faithful wife from her
+husband; and the only thing it was found that could be done was to
+transport Malcolm along with the partner of his life to the place of
+honour, to which on his own account that rude soldier had but little
+claim. Many saints have had whims as to the place of their interment,
+and showed them in a similar way, but this is all sweetness and tender
+fidelity and worthy to be true. The royal pair were carried off
+afterwards, stolen away like so much gold or silver, by Philip of Spain
+to enrich his gloomy mausoleum-palace, and can be traced for a long time
+in one place or another receiving that strange worship which attaches to
+the most painful relics of humanity. But where they now lie, if in the
+bosom of the kindly earth or among other dreadful remains in some
+sanctuary filled with relics, no one knows.
+
+Margaret had done in her lifetime great things for Scotland. She had
+introduced comforts and luxuries of every kind, and the decorative arts,
+and a great deal of actual wealth, into a very poor and distracted
+country. The earliest charter which is found in the Scottish archives is
+one of Malcolm and Margaret, showing how the time of settlement and
+established order began in their reign. She had helped to give the
+distracted and divided kingdom, made up of warring sects, that
+consolidation and steadiness which enabled it to take its place among
+recognised nations. She turned the wavering balance between Celt and
+Saxon to what has proved to be the winning side, the side of progress
+and advancement. The Donalds and Duncans were swept away after a brief
+and bloody interval and were no more possible in Scotland after her, and
+the reign of the Anglo-Saxon was assured. She was apparently the
+instrument too, though there is little information on this subject, of
+drawing the Church of Scotland into that close union with Rome which had
+been already accomplished in England; a step which, if it lost some
+doubtful freedom and independence in ecclesiastical matters, secured
+still more completely a recognised place in Catholic Christendom to the
+northern kingdom. "The pure Culdee" of whom we know so little did not
+survive, any more than did the Celtic kings, her influence and the
+transformation she effected. Her life and legend formed the
+stepping-stone for Scotland into authentic history as into a
+consolidated and independent existence. The veil of fable and
+uncertainty cleared away before the mild shining of her name and story.
+Like Edinburgh coming suddenly into sight, as in some old and primitive
+picture, high upon its rock, with the slope of the Castle Hill on one
+side and the precipices round, and the white mist sweeping up from the
+sea, Scotland itself becomes recognisable and grows into form and order
+by the light of her peaceful and gracious presence.
+
+And it is something worth noting that this image of purity and
+excellence was no monkish vision of the purity of the cloister, but that
+more complete and at the same time more humble ideal of the true wife,
+mother, and mistress, whose work was in and for the world and the
+people, not withdrawn to any exceptional refuge or shelter--which has
+always been most dear to the Anglo-Saxon race. The influence of such an
+example in a country where manners and morals were equally rudimentary,
+where the cloister proved often the only refuge for women, and even that
+not always a safe one--was incalculable, and the protection of a
+virtuous Court something altogether novel and admirable. The gentlewomen
+who worked at their tapestry under Margaret's eye, and learned the
+gentler manners of other Courts and countries of old civilisation by her
+side, and did their wooing modestly with the sanction of her approval,
+must have changed the atmosphere of the north in the most wonderful way
+and quickened every current of national development though the influence
+was remote and the revolution unperceived. The chroniclers go back with
+a fond persistence to the story of Margaret and her sons, and the number
+of her family and the circumstances of her marriage and of her death.
+Before her there is little but fable; after her the stream of history
+flows clear. The story of Macbeth, which is, yet is not, the
+Shakspearian drama, and accordingly takes quite a curious distinct flow
+of its own, like a new and imperfect version of something already
+familiarly known, is the only episode of secular history that has any
+reality before we come, in the next generation, to herself and her King.
+The earlier annals of Adamnan, the life of Columba and the records of
+his sacred isle, belong to those ever-living ever-continuing legends of
+the saints in which the story of the nations counts for little. But
+Margaret was fortunately secular, and though a saint, a great and
+influential personage in the front of everything, and also a woman in
+the fullest tide of life to whom all human events were happening; who
+lived by love and died of grief, and reigned and rejoiced and triumphed
+as well as suffered and prayed.
+
+There followed, however, a terrible moment for that new Scottish-Saxon
+royal family, when both their parents were thus taken from them. Donald
+Bane set up a brief authority, restoring the old kingdom and banishing,
+after the familiar use and wont of such revolutions, his brother's
+children from Scotland. Of these children, however, but three sons are
+mentioned: Edgar, Alexander, and David, who must all have been under age
+at the time. Ethelred, who had the dangerous office of conveying his
+brothers and sisters along with his mother's body to Dunfermline, died
+or was killed immediately after this feat, and was laid with the King
+and Queen before the rood altar in Dunfermline; and of Edmund, an elder
+son, we have but a confused account, Wynton and Fordun both describing
+him as "a man of gret wertu," who died in religion, having taken the
+cowl of a monk of Cluny; whereas William of Malmesbury accuses him of
+treachery and complicity in the murder of his base-born brother Duncan.
+However this might be, he was at least swept from the succession, in
+which there is no mention of him. Malcolm's lawful heirs were thus
+reduced to the three boys whom their uncle, Edgar Atheling, had received
+in England. But Donald Bane was not long permitted to enjoy his conquest
+in peace. Duncan, the illegitimate son (but this counted for little in
+those days) of Malcolm, who was a hostage in England, after his uncle
+had held the sovereign power for six months, made a rush upon Scotland
+with the help of an English army, and overcame and displaced Donald; but
+in his turn was overcome after a reign of a year and a half, Donald Bane
+again resuming the power, which he held for three years more. By this
+time young Edgar, Margaret's son, had come to man's estate, and with the
+help of the faithful Saxons who still adhered to his uncle, Edgar
+Atheling, and encouraged by dreams and revelations that the crown was to
+be his, came back to Scotland and succeeded finally in overcoming Donald
+and securing his inheritance. The period of anarchy and trouble lasted
+for five years, and no doubt the civilisation and good order which
+Malcolm and Margaret had toiled to establish were for the moment much
+disturbed. But after Edgar's succession the interrupted progress was
+resumed. "He was a man of faire havyng," says old Wynton, and in his
+time the Saxon race came again to great honour and promotion, at once by
+his own firm establishment upon the Scottish throne, and by the marriage
+of his sister Maud to the new King of England, Henry I., which restored
+the Saxon succession and united right to might in England. Thus after a
+moment of darkness and downfall the seed of the righteous took root
+again and prospered, and the children of St. Margaret occupied both
+thrones. Edgar, like so many of his race, died childless; but he was
+peacefully succeeded by his brother Alexander, who, though as much
+devoted to church-building and good works as the rest of his family, was
+apparently a more warlike personage, since he was called Alexander the
+Fierce, an alarming title, and was apparently most prompt and
+thoroughgoing in crushing rebellion and other little incidents of the
+age. He was succeeded in his turn by the youngest of Margaret's sons,
+David, that "sair sanct for the crown," who covered Scotland with
+ecclesiastical foundations.
+
+    "He illumynyd in his dayes
+    His landys wyth kirkis and abbayis;
+    Bishoprychs he fand bot foure or three,
+    Bot or he deyd nyne left he."
+
+Among the many other foundations made by King David was the house of the
+Holy Rood which has been so familiar a name in Scottish history--built
+low in the valley at the foot of the surrounding hills and that castle
+in which the Queen died pressing the black rood--most precious
+possession--to her dying breast. Whether a recollection of that scene,
+which might well have impressed itself even on the memory of a child,
+and of the strange wild funeral procession, with all its associations of
+grief and terror, which had stumbled down the dangerous rocks in the
+mist thirty-five years before, was in David's mind, it would be vain to
+inquire. The black rood of itself, besides these touching and sacred
+associations, was a relic of almost unequalled sanctity, and well
+warranted the erection of a holy house for its guardianship and
+preservation. How far the street, which would be little more than a
+collection of huts, had crept down the Castle Hill towards the new
+monastery in the valley there is no evidence to show, but no doubt both
+the castle and the religious house were soon surrounded by those humble
+scattered dwellings, and David's charter itself makes it plain that
+already the borough of Edinburgh was of some importance. Part of the
+revenues of the monastery were to be derived from the dues and taxes of
+the town, and it was also endowed with "one half of the tallow, lard,
+and hides of the beasts slain in Edinburgh," an unsavoury but no doubt
+valuable gift. The canons of the Abbey of Holyrood, or Holyrood House as
+it is called from the beginning with a curious particularity, had also
+permission to build another town between themselves and Edinburgh, which
+would naturally cluster round the Canon's Gate--the road that led to St.
+Cuthbert's, at the farther end of the North Loch, where every man could
+say his mass; or more directly still to the dark little chapel upon the
+castle rock, made sacred by all its memorials of the blessed Margaret.
+The nucleus of the future capital is thus plainly apparent between the
+two great forces of that age, the Church, the great instrument of
+congregation and civilisation, and the Stronghold, in which at any
+moment of danger refuge could be taken. It is curious to realise the
+wild solitude of this historical ridge, with its rude houses coming into
+being one by one, the low thatched roofs and wattled walls which in the
+course of time were to give place to buildings so stately. The Canongate
+would be but a country road leading up towards the strong and gloomy
+gate which gave entrance to the _enceinte_ of the castle--itself like
+some eagle's nest perched high among the clouds.
+
+The line of Margaret went on till her sons held their Courts and dated
+their charters from Holyrood House, and Parliaments were held and laws
+made in the Castle of Edinburgh, and the scattered huts upon the Castle
+Hill had grown into a metropolis. They were a pious and in many respects
+an enlightened race, and they came to great honour and renown on both
+sides of the house. Maud, Margaret's daughter, became Queen of England,
+and her grand-daughter Empress, while Scotland developed and flourished
+in the hands of the saintly Queen's sons and their descendants. There
+are unfortunate individuals in the most prosperous races, and Scotland
+never sustained greater humiliation than in her attempts to rescue
+William called the Lion, a sorry lion for his kingdom, when he allowed
+himself to be caught in a trap and made the prisoner of the English
+king. But the children of Malcolm and Margaret retained their character
+through many generations, and were a Godfearing house, full of faith and
+devotion, careful of their people's interests, and dear to their hearts.
+They prospered as the virtuous and excellent so often do even in this
+world, and covered Scotland with endowments--endowments which indeed
+proved a snare to the church on after occasions, but which at that
+period were probably the best means in which money could be invested for
+the benefit of the people, since alms and succour and help and teaching
+in every way came from the monks in the primitive circumstances of all
+nations. They were not only the guardians of learning; they were
+examples in husbandry, in building, in every necessary craft; nursing
+the sick, receiving the stranger, and, as the very title-deed of their
+existence, feeding the poor. In those uncomplicated times there was no
+such fear of pauperising the natives of the soil as holds our hands now,
+and everything had to be taught to the primitive labourer, who might
+have to leave the plough in the middle of the furrow and be off and away
+on his lord's commands at any moment, leaving his wife and children to
+struggle on with the help of the good fathers who taught the boys, or
+the gentle sisters who trained the girls to more delicate work, feeding
+the widow and her brood. David and his brothers, and the devout kings
+who immediately followed, probably did what was best for their agitated
+kingdom in establishing so many centres of assured and quiet living,
+succour and peace, even if what was salvation for their age became the
+danger of another time. Those foundations continued through the whole of
+the period during which the lineal descendants of Margaret held the
+throne. Her lineage, it is true, has never died out: but the strain
+changed with the death of the last Alexander, and another change came
+over Scotland not so profound as that which attended the coming of the
+Saxon princess, yet great and remarkable--the end of an age of
+construction, of establishment, of knitting together; the beginning of a
+time disturbed with other questions, with complications of advancing
+civilisation, nobles and burghers, trade and war.
+
+[Illustration: ARMS OF QUEEN MARGARET OF SCOTLAND
+
+(From the Ceiling of St. Machar's Cathedral, Old Aberdeen)]
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+THE STEWARDS OF SCOTLAND
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+JAMES I. POET AND LEGISLATOR
+
+
+The growth of Edinburgh is difficult to trace through the mists and the
+tumults of the ages. The perpetual fighting which envelops the Scotland
+of those days as in the "great stour" or dust, which was Sir Walter
+Scott's conception of a battle, with gleams of swords and flashes of
+fire breaking through, offers few breaks through which we can see
+anything like the tranquil growth of that civic life which requires
+something of a steady and settled order and authority to give it being.
+The revolutions which took place in the country brought perpetual
+vicissitude to the Castle of Edinburgh, and no doubt destroyed and drove
+from their nests upon the eastern slopes of the rock the settlers who
+again and again essayed to keep their footing there. When the family of
+St. Margaret came to a conclusion, and the great historical struggle
+which succeeded ended in the establishment of Robert Bruce upon the
+throne, that great victor and statesman destroyed the Castle of
+Edinburgh with other strongholds, that it might not afford a point of
+vantage to the English invader or other enemies of the country's
+peace--a step which would seem to have been premature, though probably,
+in the great triumph and ascendency in Scotland which his noble
+character and work had gained, he might have hoped that at least the
+unanimity of the nation and its internal peace were secured, and that
+only an enemy would attempt to dominate the reconciled and united
+country. The Castle was, however, built up again and again,
+re-established and destroyed, a centre of endless fighting during the
+tumultuous reigns that followed, though it is only on the accession of a
+new race, a family so deeply connected with the modern history of Great
+Britain that no reader can be indifferent to its early appearances, that
+Edinburgh begins to become visible as the centre of government, the
+royal residence from whence laws were issued, and where the business of
+the nation was carried on. Following what seems to be one of the most
+wonderful rules of heredity--a peculiarity considerably opposed to the
+views which have been recently current on that subject--Robert Bruce was
+too great a man to have a son worthy of him: and after the trifling and
+treacherous David the inheritance of his kingdom came through his
+daughter to a family already holding a high place--the Stewards of
+Scotland, great hereditary officials, though scarcely so distinguished
+in character as in position. The tradition that their ancestor Banquo
+was the companion of Macbeth when the prophecy was made to him which had
+so great an effect upon that chieftain's career, and that to Banquo's
+descendants was adjudged the crown which Macbeth had no child to
+inherit, is far better known, thanks to Shakspeare, than any fact of
+their early history. It is probably another instance of that inventive
+ingenuity of the original chroniclers, which so cleverly imagined a
+whole line of fabulous kings, to give dignity and importance to the
+"ancient kingdom" thus carried back to inarticulate prehistoric ages. In
+this way the Stewarts, actually a branch of a well-known Norman family,
+were linked to a poetic and visionary past by their supposed
+identification with the children of Banquo, with all the circumstantial
+details of an elaborate pedigree. According to the legend, the dignity
+of Grand Steward of Scotland was conferred by Malcolm Canmore upon a
+descendant of the ancient thane, and the lineage of the family is traced
+through all the dim intervening ages with scrupulous minuteness. The
+title of Steward of Scotland was enough, it would seem, to make other
+lordships unnecessary, and gradually developed into that family surname
+with which we are now so familiar, which has wrought both Scotland and
+England so much woe, yet added so intense an interest to many chapters
+of national history. The early Stewards are present by name in all the
+great national events: but have left little characteristic trace upon
+the records, as of remarkable individuals. They took the cross in
+repeated crusades, carrying their official coat with its chequers, the
+brand of the Chief Servitor of the Scottish Court, through the wars of
+the Holy Land, till they came finally into the highest favour and
+splendour in the days of Bruce, whose cause, which was also the cause of
+the independence of Scotland, they maintained. Walter, who then held the
+office of Steward, was knighted on the field of Bannockburn. He was
+afterwards, as the story goes, sent to receive on the Border, after
+peace had been made, various prisoners who had been detained in England
+during the war, and among them Marjory Bruce, the daughter of the
+patriot-king. It would be easy to imagine the romance that followed: the
+young knight reverently escorting the young princess across the
+devastated country, which had not yet had time to recover its cruel
+wounds, but yet was all astir with satisfaction and hope: and how his
+account of what had happened in Scotland, and, above all, of that
+memorable field where he had won from the Bruce's own famous sword the
+touch of knighthood, would stir the maiden's heart. A brave young
+soldier with great hereditary possessions, and holding so illustrious an
+office, there was no reason why he should despair, however high-placed
+his affections might be. It takes a little from the romance to be
+obliged to acknowledge that he was already a widower; but marriages were
+early and oft-repeated in those days, and when Marjory Bruce died her
+husband was still only about twenty-three. It was thus that the crown
+came to the family of the Stewards of Scotland, the Stewarts of modern
+times: coming with a "lass" as her descendant said long afterwards, and
+likely to "go with a lass" when it was left to the infant Mary: though
+this last, with all her misfortunes, was the instrument not of
+destruction but transformation, and transferred that crown to a more
+splendid and enlarged dominion.
+
+It was in the reign of Marjory's son, the grandson and namesake of the
+Bruce, and of his successors, that Edinburgh began to be of importance
+in the country, slowly becoming visible by means of charters and
+privileges, and soon by records of Parliaments, laws made, and public
+acts proceeding from the growing city. Robert Bruce, though he had
+destroyed the castle, granted certain liberties and aids to the
+burghers, both in repression and in favour pursuing the same idea, with
+an evident desire to substitute the peaceful progress of the town for
+the dangerous domination of the fortress. Between that period and the
+reign of the second Stewart, King Robert III, the castle had already
+been re-erected and re-destroyed more than once. Its occupation by the
+English seemed the chief thing dreaded by the Scots, and it was again
+and again by English hands that the fortifications were restored--such a
+stronghold and point of defence being evidently of the first importance
+to invaders, while much less valuable as a means of defence. In the year
+1385 the walls must have encircled a large area upon the summit of the
+rock, the _enceinte_ probably widening, as the arts of architecture and
+fortification progressed, from the strong and grim eyrie on the edge of
+the precipice to the wide and noble enclosure, with room for a palace as
+well as a fortress, into which the great castles of England were
+growing. The last erection of these often-cast-down walls was made by
+Edward III on his raid into Scotland, and probably the royal founder of
+Windsor Castle had given to the enclosure an amplitude unknown before.
+The Scots king most likely had neither the money nor the habits which
+made a great royal residence desirable, especially in a spot so easily
+isolated and so open to attack; but he gave a charter to his burghers of
+Edinburgh authorising them to build houses within the castle walls, and
+to pass in and out freely without toll or due--a curious privilege,
+which must have made the castle a sort of _imperium in imperio_, a town
+within a town. The little closets of rooms which in a much later and
+more luxurious age must have sufficed for the royal personages whom fate
+drove into Edinburgh Castle as a residence, are enough to show how
+limited were the requirements in point of space of the royal Scots. The
+room in which James VI of Scotland was born would scarcely be occupied,
+save under protest, by a housemaid in our days. But indeed the Castle of
+Edinburgh was neither adapted nor intended for a royal residence. The
+abbey in the valley, from which the King could retire on receipt of evil
+tidings, where the winds were hushed and the air less keen, and gardens
+and pleasant hillsides accessible, and all the splendour of religious
+ceremonies within reach, afforded more fit and secure surroundings even
+for a primitive court. The Parliament met, however, within the fortress,
+and the courts of justice would seem to have been held within reach of
+its shelter. And thither the burghers carried their wealth, and built
+among the remains of the low huts of an earlier age their straight steep
+houses, with high pitched roofs tiled with slabs of stone, rising gray
+and strong within the _enceinte_, almost as strong and apt to resist
+whatever missiles were possible as the walls themselves, standing out
+with straight defiant gables against the northern blue.
+
+King Robert III was a feeble, sickly, and poor-spirited king, and he had
+a prodigal son of that gay, brilliant, attractive, and impracticable
+kind which is so well known in fiction and romance, and, alas! also so
+familiar in common life. David, Duke of Rothesay, was the first in the
+Scotch records who was ever raised to that rank--nothing above the
+degree of Earl having been known in the north before the son and brother
+of the King, the latter by the fatal title of Albany, brought a new
+degree into the roll of nobility. Young David, all unknowing of the
+tragic fate before him, was then a daring and reckless youth, held
+within bounds, as would appear, by the influence of a good and wise
+mother, and if an anxiety and trouble, at least as yet no disgrace to
+the throne. He was the contemporary of another madcap prince, far better
+known to us, of whose pranks we are all more than indulgent, and whose
+name has the attraction of youth and wit and freedom and boundless
+humour to the reader still. David of Scotland has had no one to
+celebrate his youthful adventures like him whose large and splendid
+touch has made Prince Hal[1] so fine a representative of all that is
+careless and gay in prodigal youth, with its noble qualities but half in
+abeyance, and abounding spirit and humour and reckless fancy making its
+course of wild adventure comprehensible even to the gravest. Perhaps the
+licence of the Stewart blood carried the hapless northern prince into
+more dangerous adventures than the wild fun of Gadshill and Eastcheap.
+And Prince David's future had already been compromised by certain sordid
+treacheries about his marriage when he first appears in history, without
+the force of character which changed Prince Hal into a conquering leader
+and strong sovereign, but with all the chivalrous instincts of a young
+knight. He had been appointed at a very early age Lieutenant of the
+Kingdom to replace his father, it being "well seen and kenned that our
+lorde the Kyng for sickness of his person may not travail to govern the
+realm," with full provision of counsellors for his help and guidance;
+which argues a certain confidence in his powers. But the cares of
+internal government were at this point interrupted by the more urgent
+necessity of repelling an invasion, a danger not unusual, yet naturally
+of an exciting kind.
+
+[1] We here take Shakspeare's Prince Hal for granted, as we feel disposed
+at all times to take the poet's word in defiance of history; though no
+doubt the historical argument is calculated to throw a chill of doubt
+upon that gay and brilliant image.
+
+On this occasion the invader was Henry IV of England, the father of the
+other prodigal, whose object is somewhat perplexing, and differs much
+from the usual raid to which the Scots were so well accustomed. So far
+as appears from all the authorities, his invasion was a sort of
+promenade of defiance or bravado, though it seems unlike the character
+of that astute prince to have undertaken so gratuitous a demonstration.
+He penetrated as far as Leith, and lay there for some time threatening,
+or appearing to threaten, Edinburgh Castle; but all that he seems to
+have done was to make proclamation by his knights and heralds in every
+town they passed through, of the old, always renewed, claim of
+allegiance to the English crown which every generation of Scots had so
+strenuously and passionately resisted. The fact that he was allowed to
+penetrate so far unmolested is as remarkable as that the invasion was an
+entirely peaceful one and harmed nobody. When Henry pitched his camp at
+Leith, Albany was within reach with what is called a great army, but did
+not advance a step to meet the invader--in face of whom, however, young
+David of Rothesay, and with him many potent personages, retired into
+Edinburgh Castle with every appearance of expecting a siege there. But
+when no sign of any such intention appeared or warlike movement of any
+kind, nothing but the gleam of Henry's spears, stationary day by day in
+the same place, and a strange tranquillity, which must have encouraged
+every kind of wondering rumour and alarm, the young Prince launched
+forth a challenge to the English king and host to meet him in person
+with two or three hundred knights on each side, and so to settle the
+question between them and save the spilling of Christian blood. Henry,
+it is said, replied with something of the sarcasm of a grave and
+middle-aged man to the hasty youth, regretting that Prince David should
+consider noble blood as less than Christian since he desired the
+effusion of one and not the other. The position of the young man shut up
+within the walls of the fortress in enforced inactivity while the hated
+Leopards of England fluttered in the fresh breezes from the Firth, and
+Henry's multitudinous tents shone in the northern sun--an army too great
+to be encountered by his garrison and noble attendants alone--while dark
+treason and evil intent in the person of Albany kept the army of
+Scotland inactive though within reach, was one to justify any such
+outbreak of impatience. David must have felt that should the invader
+press, there was little help to be expected from his uncle, and that he
+and his faction would look on not without pleasure to see the castle
+fall and the heir of Scotland taken or slain. But King Henry's object or
+meaning is more difficult to divine. Save for his proclamations, and the
+quite futile summons to King Robert to do homage, he seems to have
+attempted nothing against the country through which he was thus
+permitted to march unmolested. The little party of knights with their
+attendant squires and heralds riding to every market-cross upon the way,
+proclaiming to the astonished burghers or angry village folk the
+invader's manifesto, scarcely staying long enough to hear the fierce
+murmurs that arose--a passing pageant, a momentary excitement and no
+more--was a sort of defiant embassage which might have pleased the fancy
+of a young adventurer, but scarcely of a king so wary and experienced;
+and his own stay in the midst of the startled country is still more
+inexplicable. When the monks of Holyrood sent a mission to him to beg
+his protection, lying undefended as they did in the plain, his answer to
+them was curiously apologetic. "Far be it from me," he said, "to be so
+inhuman as to harm any holy house, especially Holyrood in which my
+father found a safe refuge.... I am myself half Scotch by the blood of
+the Comyns," added the invader. The account which Boece gives of the
+expedition altogether is amusing, and strictly in accord with all that
+is said by other historians, though they may not take the same amiable
+view. I quote from the quaint translation of Bellenden.
+
+    "A schort time efter King Harry came in Scotland with an army.
+    Howbeit he did small injury to the people thairof, for he desirit
+    nowt but his banner to be erected on their walls. Alwayis he was ane
+    plesand enneme, and did gret humaniteis to the people in all places
+    of Scotland where he was lodgit. Finally he showed to the lords of
+    Scotland that he come in their rialm more by counsel of his nobles
+    than ony hatred that he bore to Scottes. Soon efter he returnit
+    without any further injure in England."
+
+It is very seldom that a Scotch historian is able to designate an
+English invader as "a pleasant enemy," and whether there was some scheme
+which came to nothing under this remarkable and harmless raid, or
+whether it was only the carrying out of Henry's own policy "to busy
+giddy minds with foreign quarrels"
+
+    "Lest rest and lying still might make them look
+    Too near unto my state,"
+
+it is difficult to say. The nobles pent up in Edinburgh Castle with the
+hot-headed young Prince at their head did not know what to make of the
+pleasant enemy. The alarm he had caused, compelling their own withdrawal
+into the stronghold, wrath at the mere sight of him there in the heart
+of Scotland, the humiliating inaction in which they were kept by a foe
+which neither attacked nor withdrew, must have so chafed the Prince and
+his companions that the challenge thrown forth like a bugle from the
+heights to break this oppressive silence and bring about the lingering
+crisis one way or another must have been a relief to their excitement if
+nothing else. One of the bewildered reasons alleged for the invasion is
+that young David had written letters to France in which he called
+Bolingbroke a traitor--letters which had fallen into Henry's hands; but
+this is as unlikely to have brought about the invasion as any other
+frivolous cause, though no doubt it might make the young Prince still
+more eager to take upon himself the settling of the quarrel. We have no
+reason to suppose that any foreboding of his fate had crossed the mind
+of the youth at this period of his career, yet to watch the army of
+England lying below, and to know his uncle Albany close at hand, and to
+feel himself incapable--with nothing but a limited garrison at his
+command and no doubt the wise Douglas and the other great noblemen
+holding him back--of meeting the invader except by some such fantastic
+chivalrous expedient, must have been hard enough.
+
+And how strange is the scene, little in accordance with the habits and
+traditions of either country: the English camp all quiet below, as if on
+a holiday expedition, the Scots looking on in uneasy expectation, not
+knowing what the next moment might bring. The excitement must have grown
+greater from day to day within and without, while all the inhabitants,
+both citizens and garrison, kept anxious watch to detect the first sign
+of the enemy's advance. Henry, we are told, was called away to oppose a
+rising in Wales; not indeed that rising which we all know so well in
+which Prince Hal, more fortunate than his brother prodigal, had the
+means of showing what was in him; but even the suggestion approaches
+once more strangely and suggestively the names of the two heirs whose
+fate was so different--the one almost within sight of a miserable
+ending, the other with glory and empire before him. Prince Henry did not
+apparently come with his father to Scotland, or there might perhaps have
+been a different ending to the tale, and it would not have needed Harry
+Hotspur to rouse his namesake from his folly. There was, alas! no such
+noble rival to excite David of Scotland to emulation, and no such happy
+turning-point before him. No one, not even a minstrel or romancer, has
+remembered it in his favour that he once defied the English host for the
+love of his country and the old never-abandoned cause of Scottish
+independence. Already it would seem a prodigal who was a Stewart had
+less chance than other men. Whether some feeble fibre in the race had
+already developed in this early representative of the name, or whether
+it was the persistent ill-fortune which has always pursued them, making
+life a continual struggle and death a violent ending, the fatal thread
+which has run through their history for so many generations comes here
+into the most tragic prominence, the beginning of a long series of
+tragedies. It adds a softening touch to the record of David's unhappy
+fate that the death of his mother is recorded as one of the great
+misfortunes of his life. In the same year in which these public
+incidents occurred the Queen died, carrying with her the chief influence
+which had restrained her unfortunate son. She was Annabella Drummond, a
+woman of character and note, much lamented by the people. And to add to
+this misfortune she was followed to the grave within a year by the great
+Earl of Angus, David's father-in-law, and the Bishop of St. Andrews, to
+whom, as the Primate of Scotland, the young Prince's early instruction
+had probably been committed, as his loss is noted along with the others
+as a special disaster.
+
+Thus the rash and foolish youth was left to face the world and all its
+temptations with no longer any one whom he feared to grieve or whom he
+felt himself bound to obey. His father, a fretful invalid, had little
+claim upon his reverence, and his uncle Albany, the strong man of the
+family, was his most dangerous enemy, ever on the watch to clear out of
+his path those who stood between him and the throne: or such at least
+was the impression which he left upon the mind of his time. Thus
+deprived of all the guides who had power over him, and of the only
+parent whom he could respect, the young Duke of Rothesay, only
+twenty-three at most, plunged into all those indulgences which are so
+fatally easy to a prince. It is supposed that the marriage into which a
+false policy had driven him was not the marriage he desired. But this
+was a small particular in those days, as it has proved even in other
+times less rude. He ran into every kind of riot and dissipation, which
+the councillors appointed to aid him could not check. After no doubt
+many remonstrances and appeals this band of serious men relinquished the
+attempt, declaring themselves unable to persuade the Prince even to any
+regard for decency: and the ill-advised and feeble King committed to
+Albany, who had been standing by waiting for some such piece of good
+fortune, the reformation of his son. The catastrophe was not slow to
+follow. Rothesay was seized near St. Andrews on the pretence of stopping
+a mad enterprise in which he was engaged, and conveyed to Falkland,
+where he died in strict confinement, "of dysentery or others say of
+hunger" is the brief and terrible record--blaming no one--of the
+chroniclers, on Easter Eve 1401. It would be vain to attempt to add
+anything to the picture of the young unfortunate and his end which Sir
+Walter Scott has given. We can but rescue out of obscurity the brief
+moment in which that young life was at the turning-point and might have
+changed into something noble. Had his challenge been accepted, and had
+he died sword in hand outside the castle gates for Scotland and her
+independence, how touching and inspiring would have been the story! But
+fortune never favoured the Stewarts; they have had no luck, to use a
+more homely expression, such as falls to the lot of other races, and
+what might have been a legend of chivalry, the record of a young hero,
+drops to the horror of a miserable murder done upon a victim who foils
+even the pity he excites--a young debauchee almost as miserable and
+wretched as the means by which he died.
+
+There was this relic of generosity and honour about the unfortunate
+Prince, even in his fallen state, that he refused to consent to the
+assassination of the uncle, who found no difficulty, it would appear, in
+assassinating him; thus showing that wayward strain of nobleness among
+many defects and miseries which through all their tragic career was to
+be found even in the least defensible of his race.
+
+King Robert, who had for some time been retired from the troubles of the
+throne, a poor man, infirm in health and in purpose, virtually deposed
+in favour of the son who was Lieutenant or the brother who was Regent of
+the kingdom, and from whom all his domestic comfort had been taken as
+well as his power, was driven to desperation by this blow. He had lost
+his wife and his best counsellors; he had never been strong enough to
+restrain his son, nor resist his brother. David, his first-born and
+heir, the gay and handsome youth who was dazzling and delightful to his
+father's eyes even in his worst follies, had been, as no doubt he felt,
+delivered over to his worst enemy by that father's own tremulous hand;
+and the heart-broken old man in his bereavement and terror could only
+think of getting the one boy who remained to him safe and out of harm's
+way, perhaps with the feeling that Albany might once again persuade him
+to deliver over this last hope into his hands if he did not take a
+decisive step at once. The boy-prince was at St. Andrews, pursuing his
+studies, under the care of the bishop, when his brother was murdered;
+and from thence he was sent, when the preparations were complete, across
+the Firth to the Bass, there to await a ship which should take him to
+France. It was a forlorn beginning for the Prince of Scotland to be thus
+hastily taken from his books and the calm of a semi-monastic life and
+hurried off to that wild rock in the middle of the waves, probably with
+his brother's awful story thrilling in his ears and his terrible uncle
+within reach, pushing forward a mock inquiry in Parliament into the
+causes of Rothesay's death. How easy it would have been for that uncle
+with the supreme power in his hands to seize the boy who now stood alone
+between him and the throne; and with what burning at the heart, of
+impotent rage and fierce indignation, the little Prince, old enough to
+know and feel his father's helplessness, his own abandonment, and his
+brother's terrible end, must have been conveyed away to the sea
+stronghold among the bitter eastern blasts. James, the first of the
+name, was not one of the feeble ones of the family. With all the romance
+and poetry of his race he conjoined a great spirit and a noble
+intelligence, and even at twelve, in the precocious development of that
+age of blood, when even a royal stripling had to learn to defend himself
+and hold his own, he must have had some knowledge why it was that he had
+to be sent thus clandestinely out of his native country: he, the hope of
+Scotland, in terror for his life.
+
+The little garrison on the rock and the governor to whom the Prince's
+safety was confided must have watched with many an anxious vigil among
+the trading vessels stumbling heavily down the Firth from Leith, for
+that sail which was to carry their charge, into safety as they thought.
+Whether there was any navy belonging to the Crown at this period, or
+whether the King himself possessed some galley that could venture on the
+voyage to France, we are not told. But no doubt the ship when it arrived
+bore some sign by which the Prince's guardians, and unfortunately others
+besides, could recognise it. It could not be in any way a cheerful
+embarkation. It was in the dark days of Lent, in March, when the north
+is most severe: and the grey skies and blighting wind would be
+appropriate to the feelings of the exiles as they put forth from their
+rock amid the wild beating of the surf, anxiously watched by the
+defenders of the place, who no doubt had at the same time to keep up a
+vigilant inspection landward, lest any band of spearmen from Albany
+should arrive upon the adjacent shore in time to stop the flight. The
+grey rock, the greyer leaden sea, the whirling flight of wild sea birds
+white against the dark horizon, the little boat, kept with difficulty
+from dashing against the cliffs and rocky boulders, the attendant ship,
+driven up and down by the waves, and distant Fife, with its low hills in
+tones of neutral tint upon the horizon--would all increase the sadness
+of the parting: but no doubt there was a long breath of relief breathed
+by everybody about when the vessel continued its course, and slowly
+disappeared down the Firth. Whatever might happen elsewhere, at least
+the heir was safe.
+
+[Illustration: THE BASS ROCK]
+
+But this hope soon proved futile. Whether it was some traitorous
+indication from Albany, or information from another source, or pure
+hazard, which directed the English ships to this one vessel with its
+royal freight, it had but rounded the headland of Flamborough when it
+fell into the hands of the enemy. Palm Sunday 1405 was the date of this
+event, but it was not till the end of Lent 1423, almost exactly eighteen
+years after, that James came back. The calamity seemed overwhelming to
+the nation and to all who were not pledged to Albany throughout
+Scotland. It was the death-warrant of poor old King Robert in his
+retirement. He lingered out a weary year in sickness and sorrow, and
+when the anniversary of his son's loss came round again, died at
+Rothesay, in Bute, amid the lovely lakes and islets of western
+Scotland--a scene of natural peace and tranquillity, which, let us hope,
+shed some little balm upon the heart of the helpless superseded
+sovereign. Perhaps he loved the place because it had given his title to
+his murdered boy, the hapless David, so gallant and so gay. There is
+something more than ordinarily pathetic and touching in the misfortunes
+of the feeble in an age of iron. As civilisation advances they have
+means of protecting themselves, but not in a time which is all for the
+strongest. One son buried, like any peasant's son, ignobly in the Abbey
+of Lindores: the other in an English prison, at the mercy of the "auld
+enemy," whom Scotland had again and again resisted to the death: and his
+kingdom entirely gone from him, in the hands of his arrogant and
+imperious brother; there was nothing left for poor King Robert but to
+die.
+
+Thus James became at thirteen, and in an English castle, the King of
+Scotland. His prison, however, proved a noble school instead of an
+ignoble confinement to his fine and elevated spirit. The name of Stewart
+has never been so splendidly illustrated as by this patriotic and
+chivalrous Prince. No doubt it is infinitely to the credit of the
+English kings, both Henrys, IV and V, that he received from them all the
+advantages of education that could have been given to a prince of their
+own blood--advantages by which he profited nobly, acquiring every art
+and cultivation that belonged to his rank, besides that divine art which
+no education can communicate, and which is bestowed by what would seem a
+caprice, were it not divine, upon prince or ploughman as it pleases God.
+For above all his knightly and kingly qualities, his studies in chivalry
+and statesmanship, which prepared him to fill the throne of Scotland as
+no man save his great ancestor Bruce had yet filled it, James Stewart
+was a poet of no mean rank, not unworthy to be named even in the
+presence of Chaucer, and well worthy of the place which he has kept in
+literature. We need not enter here into that part of his history which
+concerns another locality full of great and princely associations--the
+noble Castle of Windsor, where the royal youth first saw and sang the
+lady of his love, "the fairest and the sweeteste yonge flour," of whom
+he has left one of the most tender and beautiful descriptions that is to
+be found in all the course of poetry. It is more to our present purpose
+to tell how, amid all the charms of that courtly residence, so far
+superior to anything which primitive Scotland could offer in the way of
+dignity or luxury, the boy-king remained faithful to his country, and
+maintained the independence for which she had so long struggled. It is
+said that the one advantage taken of his captivity and youth was to
+press the old oft-repeated arguments concerning the supposed supremacy
+of England, and the homage due from the kings of Scotland, upon the boy
+who bore that title sadly amid the luxury and splendour of what was
+still a prison, however gracious and kind his jailers might be. No
+circumstances could have been better suited to impress upon James's mind
+the conviction that submission was inevitable: and it would have been
+almost more than mortal virtue on the part of his captors had they not
+attempted to bring about so advantageous a conviction. King Henry V,
+under whom it is said the attempt was made, had been most generously
+liberal to and careful of the boy. He was a man so brilliant in
+reputation and success that a generous youth might well have been led by
+enthusiasm into any homage that was suggested, too happy to feel himself
+thus linked to so great a king; and James was very young, distant from
+his own country and all native advisers, his very life as well as his
+liberty in the power of those who asked this submission from him, and
+the force of circumstances so great that even his own people might have
+forgiven, and Holy Church could scarcely have hesitated to dispense him
+from keeping, an obligation entered into under such pressure. But the
+royal youth stood fast, and was not to be moved by any argument. Boece,
+whose authority is unfortunately not much to be depended upon, has a
+still more distinct and graphic story of judgment and firmness on the
+part of the young captive. He had been, according to this account, taken
+to France in the train of King Henry, who after the defeat the English
+had sustained near Orleans, chiefly through the valour of the Scots who
+had joined the French army, sent for James, and desired him "to pass to
+the Scots, and to command them to return to Scotland. King Harry
+promised, gif the said James brought this matter to good effect, not
+only to remit his ransom but to send him to Scotland with great riches
+and honour." James answered courteously, with expressions of goodwill
+and gratitude for the humanity shown towards him, but "I marvel not
+little," he said, "that thou considerest not how I have no power above
+the Scots so long as I am ane private man and holden in captivity." The
+chronicler adds: "Then said King Henry, 'Maist happy people shall they
+be that happens to get yon noble man to their prince.'" It is a pity
+that we have no more trustworthy proof of this charming story.
+
+As a matter of fact James attained his freedom only after the death of
+Albany, when the resistance or the still more effectual indifference to
+his liberation of the man who alone could profit by his death in prison,
+or by any unpopular step he might be seduced into making to gain his
+freedom, was dead, and had ceased from troubling. It would perhaps,
+however, be false to say that his imprisonment had done him nothing but
+good. So far as education went this was no doubt the case; but it is
+possible that in his subsequent life his reforms were too rapid, too
+thorough-going, too modern, for Scotland. The English sovereigns were
+richer, stronger, and more potent; the English commonalty more perfectly
+developed, and more capable of affording a strong support to a monarch
+who stood against the nobles and their capricious tyranny. James might
+not have been the enlightened ruler he was but for his training in a
+region of more advanced and cultivated civilisation; but had he been
+less enlightened, more on the level of his subjects, he might have had a
+less terrible end and a longer career.
+
+He returned to Scotland--with the bride of whom he had made so beautiful
+a picture, preserving her lovely looks and curious garments, and even
+the blaze of the Balas ruby on her white throat, to be a delight to all
+the after generations--in 1423, during Lent; and on Passion Sunday,
+which Boece calls _Care_ Sunday, entered Edinburgh, where there was "a
+great confluence of people out of all parts of Scotland richt desirous
+to see him: for many of them," says the chronicle, "had never seen him
+before, or else at least the prent of his visage was out of their
+memory." There must indeed have been but few who could recognise the
+little prince who had been stolen away for safety at twelve in the
+accomplished man of thirty in all the fulness of his development, a
+bridegroom, and accustomed to the state and prestige of a richer Court
+than anything that Scotland could boast, who thus came among them full
+of the highest hopes and purposes, and surrounded by unusual splendour
+and wealth. It is true there was the burden behind him of a heavy ransom
+to pay, but her English kindred, we may well believe, did not suffer the
+Lady Jane to appear in her new kingdom without every accessory that
+became a queen; and a noble retinue of adventurous knights, eager to try
+their prowess against the countrymen of that great Douglas whose name
+was still so well known, would swell the train of native nobles who
+attended the sovereign. Old Edinburgh comes to light in the glow of this
+arrival, not indeed with any distinctness of vision, but with something
+of the aspect of a capital filled to overflowing with a many-coloured
+and picturesque crowd. The country folk in their homespun, and all the
+smaller rank of gentlemen, with their wives in the French hoods which
+fashion already dictated, thronged the ways and filled every window to
+see the King come in. It was more like the new setting up of a kingdom,
+and first invention of that dignity, than a mere return: and eager
+crowds came from every quarter to see the King, so long a mere name, now
+suddenly blazing into reality, with all the primitive meaning of the
+word so much greater and more living than anything that is understood in
+it now. The King's Grace! after the long sway of the Regent, always
+darkly feared and suspected, and the feeble deputyship full of abuses of
+his son Murdoch, it was like a new world to have the true Prince come
+back, the blood of Bruce, the genuine and native King, not to speak of
+the fair Princess by his side and the quickened life they brought with
+them. From the gates of the castle where they first alighted, down the
+long ridge--through the half-grown town within its narrow walls, where a
+few high houses, first evidences of the growth of the wealthy burgher
+class, alternated with the low buildings which they were gradually
+supplanting--through the massive masonry of the Port with its
+battlements and towers to the country greenness and freshness of the
+Canon's Gate which led to the great convent of the valley, there could
+be no finer scene for a pageant. Holyrood was one of those great
+monastic establishments in which kings could find a lodgment more
+luxurious than in their own castles, and though there would scarcely
+seem as yet to have been any palace attached to that holy house, it was
+already a frequent residence of royalty, and with all its amenities of
+parks and gardens would be more fit for the reception of a young queen
+coming straight from princely Windsor than the narrow chambers in the
+castle. Among the many presents which she is said to have brought with
+her from England there is a special mention of fine tapestries for the
+adornment of her new habitation.
+
+Thus the royal pair took possession of their kingdom, and of the
+interest and affection of the lively and eager crowd for which Edinburgh
+has always been famous--a populace more like that of a French town than
+an English, though with impulses sometimes leading to tragedy. James
+would scarcely seem to have been settled in that part of the ancient
+establishment of the abbey which was appropriated to the lodging of the
+King, or to have exhausted the thanksgivings of Easter and the
+rejoicings of the restoration, when he set himself to inquire into the
+state of the country and of the royal finances, to which he had been so
+long a stranger. There was no Civil List in those days nor votes of
+supply, and the state of the Crown lands and possessions, "the King's
+rents," was doubly important in view of the ransom yet to be paid, of
+which only a fourth part had been remitted as the portion of the Queen.
+The result of this investigation was anything but satisfactory. It was
+found that during the reign of Albany many of these possessions had been
+alienated, made into fiefs, and bestowed upon the leaders of the faction
+which supported the Regent. "There was nothing left to sustain the
+Crown," says Boece, "except the customs of burrows. He was naething
+content of this," adds the chronicler with pithy conciseness, "howbeit
+he shewed good will (gud vult) for the time." James had already griefs
+enough against the family of his cousin without this startling
+discovery; and his "gud vult" would seem rather to have been the serious
+self-control of a man who was biding his time than any pretence of
+friendliness with his unfaithful relations and stewards. Amid the early
+pageants and festivities it is indeed recorded that he knighted Walter
+Stewart among the other candidates for that honour, the flower of the
+noble youth, a band of twenty-six gentlemen of the best houses in
+Scotland; but this was probably a step which was inevitable, as it would
+have been impossible to leave his own nearest relative out of the list
+until he had finally made up his mind how the family of Albany was to be
+treated. It is stated that the complaints and grievances of the people
+brought him to a decision on this point, and helped him to carry out his
+revenge upon the house which had, in popular belief at least, the guilt
+of his brother's blood upon it as well as that of his own long
+confinement. Walter Stewart, whose only other appearance in history is
+that of a rebellious and undutiful son whom his father was incapable of
+keeping in subjection, was arrested in Edinburgh Castle about a year
+after James's restoration, and after an interval of several months his
+arrest was followed by that of Duke Murdoch and his son Alexander, both
+of whom were also seized in Edinburgh Castle, where they had probably
+retired for safety. A few of their retainers arrested with them were
+speedily liberated, and it became apparent that upon this doomed family
+alone was King James's wrath directed. They were tried at Stirling, by a
+court of their peers, under the presidency of the King himself. The
+offences charged against them were misgovernment and oppression of the
+people, the greatest of public sins: but it was no less the end of a
+long tragedy. The younger branch of the race had been engaged in a
+struggle with the elder for the last two generations at least: and it
+had been the royal line that had suffered most during that period.
+Bitterly, in blood and heartbreak and long suppression, they had been
+weighed down under superior force: but now the time of reprisals had
+come. As they stood there confronting each other, the stern young King
+on one side and his kinsmen on the other, with a quarter of a century of
+wrong between them, the shadow of the young prince at Falkland, and the
+old father at Rothesay, and the eighteen years of captivity full in the
+minds of all, what a day of reckoning at last! It makes the retribution
+almost more tragic, like the overwhelming fate of the Greek drama, that
+the men upon their trial had nothing to do with these crimes, unless it
+might be the last. Murdoch of Albany had not exerted himself to liberate
+James, but that was his only evident offence, and his sons were not
+instrumental, so far as appears, in any injury to their royal cousin.
+The sins of the fathers were to be visited upon the children. We are
+told that the two sons, young men in the flower of their youth, were
+executed one day, and their father and maternal grandfather, a very old
+man, the Earl of Lennox, whose share in the matter it is difficult to
+make out, on the next. Thus James settled summarily the question between
+himself and his kinsmen. The house of Albany ended upon the scaffold,
+and however just their doom might have been, there was something
+appalling in this swift and sweeping revenge, carried out rigorously
+without a sign of hesitation by a young king, a happy bridegroom, an
+accomplished and gay cavalier.
+
+It must indeed be allowed, notwithstanding his poetry and his evident
+love of everything that was lovely and of good report, that the reign of
+the first James was a stern one. Every witness agrees as to his
+accomplishment, and that he was the flower of knighthood, of splendour
+and courtesy, the most chivalrous, the most daring, the most graceful
+and gracious of all his Court: and his genius as a poet is even more
+generally acknowledged. The King's "Quhair" as a poem is quite capable
+of standing on its own merits, and needs no additional prestige as the
+performance of a king. Had he been but a wandering minstrel Chaucer
+would have had no need to be ashamed of his pupil. It is full of
+delightful descriptions of nature and love and youth: the fresh morning
+as it rises upon the castled heights, the singing of the birds and
+fluttering of the leaves, the impulse of a young heart even in the
+languor of imprisonment to start up and meet the sun, with all the
+springs of new life which at that verdant season come with every new
+day--the apparition of the beautiful one suddenly appearing in the old
+immemorial garden with all its flowers, herself the sweetest and the
+fairest of flowers, all are set before us, with a harmony and music not
+to be excelled. The young Prince chafing at his imprisonment, dreaming
+of all the fantastic wonderful things he might do were he free, yet
+still so full of irrepressible hope that his impatience and his longings
+are but another form of pleasure, takes shape and identity as distinct
+as if he had been one of the figures in that famous pilgrimage to
+Canterbury, which had been part of his training in this delightful art.
+If James had never reigned at all he would still have lived through all
+these centuries in the guise in which he stood at his window on that May
+morning, and suddenly, amid his youthful dreams, beheld the lovely
+vision of the Lady Jane emerging from under the young spring verdure of
+the trees. There is a certain window not generally supposed to be that
+at which the royal captive stood--a window in the Norman Tower of
+Windsor Castle, now fitly garnished and guarded by sympathetic hands,
+from which the spectator looking out upon the deep moat-garden
+underneath in the circle about the old donjon will scarcely be able to
+withstand the thrill of feeling which attends a poetic scene and
+incident fully realised. Nothing could be more green, more fresh, more
+full of romance and association, than this garden where all is youthful
+as the May, yet old in endless tradition, the garden of the Edwards and
+Henrys, where Chaucer himself may have thought over his accounts or
+taken the delightful image of his young squire "synging" who was, "or
+flouting all the day" from among some group of bright-faced lads in
+their bravery, where the countess who dropped her garter may have
+wandered, and the hapless Henry, the mild and puny child who was born
+there while James was undergoing his far from harsh captivity, played.
+James Stewart's name, had he been no king, would have been associated
+with this place, as that of his master in poetry is with the flowery
+ways of Kent.
+
+Nor was his inspiration derived alone from the well of English
+undefiled. A still more wonderful gift developed in him when he got home
+to his native country. Though the tones of Scotch humour were much less
+refined, and its utterances at that early period could be scarcely more
+than the jests and unwritten ballads of the populace, yet his early
+acquaintance with them must have lingered in the young Prince's mind,
+acquiring additional zest from the prepossessions of exile and the
+longing for home. And when the polished singer of the King's "Quhair"
+found himself again in his native land he seems to have burst forth with
+the most genuine impulse into the broad fun, rustical and natural and
+racy of the soil, which perhaps was more congenial to his Scottish
+audience. "Peblis to the Play" and "Christis Kirk on the Green" are
+poems full of the very breath of rural life and the rude yet joyous
+meetings of the country folk at kirk and market, which with wonderfully
+little difference of sentiment and movement also inspired Burns. He must
+have had a mind full of variety and wide human sympathy almost
+Shakspearian, who could step from the musings of Windsor and the
+beautiful heroine, all romance and ethereal splendour, to the lasses in
+their gay kirtles, and Hob and Raaf with their rustic "daffing," as true
+to the life as the Ayrshire clowns of Burns, and all the clumsy yet
+genial gambols of the village festival. It is one of the most curious
+and least to be expected transformations of poetic versatility--for it
+is even amazing how he could know the life into which he thus plunged
+joyous, as if he had been familiar with it from his childhood. King
+James was not without an object amid all the laughter and the pranks of
+his holiday. The King's cheerful ridicule of the clumsy fellows who
+could not draw the bow was intended, with a prick of scorn under the
+laughter, to rouse up his rustic lieges to emulation, not to be behind
+the southern pock-puddings whose deadly arrows were, in every encounter
+between Scots and English, the chief danger to the fighting men of the
+north. It is curious that this difference should have existed and
+continued with such obstinacy through all these fighting centuries; the
+Scotch spearmen were all but invulnerable in their steady square, like a
+rock, but they had little defence against the cloth-yard shafts of the
+English bowmen, which neither exhortation nor ridicule, neither prizes
+to win nor disaster to fear, could teach them to adopt. James laboured
+hard, in ways more practical than his poems, to introduce this new arm,
+but in vain. It was kept up languidly in holiday contentions, like that
+of Christis Kirk on the Green, while his life lasted; but when his reign
+was over and the momentary stimulus withdrawn the bows were all thrown
+away.
+
+The King's command of this humorous vein, so dear to his people, with
+its trenchant sketches from the life and somewhat rough jests, is
+wonderful, when his courtly breeding and long separation even from such
+knowledge of rustic existence as a prince is likely to obtain is
+considered. And the many-sided nature which made these humours so
+familiar and easy to him is a strange discovery in the midst of all the
+tragic circumstances of his life and reign. The union of the most
+delicate poetry and romance with that genial whim and fancy is unusual
+enough: but it is still more unusual to find the stern Justiciar,
+avenger of blood and redresser of wrong, the reconstructer of a
+distracted country, capable not only of the broad fun of the rustic
+ballad-maker, but of so tolerant and humorous a view of the humble
+commons, the underlying masses upon which society is built. For the
+first aspect of affairs in Scotland could not be a cheerful one:
+although it was rather with the nobles and gentlemen, the great
+proprietors of the country, who had to be summoned to exhibit their
+charters and prove their titles, partly no doubt with the view of
+discovering what Crown lands had been alienated by the Albany party,
+that the King's quarrel was, than with the humbler subjects of the
+nation.
+
+Yet there is no doubt, with all these lights and softening influences of
+character and genius, that his reign was a stern one. James had
+everything to reform in the country to which he came with so many new
+ideas and so enlarged a knowledge of what the internal economy of a
+nation might be made. It is rather against the general historical
+estimate of the talents and power of the Regent Albany that the new King
+should have found, as appears, so much to do for the reorganisation of
+the commonwealth--regulating the laws, appointing courts of justice,
+inquiring into the titles of property, and in every other way giving
+consistency and order to the affairs of Scotland. However, the lavish
+grants made to the great Scots lords and the licence given them to rule
+their vassals as they pleased arose not from weakness but from Albany's
+deliberate policy of securing a strong party on his side, a policy
+exactly opposed to that of James, whose heart was set on subduing these
+fierce nobles, and perhaps of developing the people at large, the nation
+itself, if that is not too modern an ambition. The reign of Law, broken
+and disturbed by a hundred storms, but still henceforward with a
+statute-book to fall back upon and some fitful authority at its command,
+began in Scotland in his day.
+
+There are some curious details in the _Scotichronicon_ about the taxes,
+now, it would seem, for the first time levied upon the general mass of
+the people. In 1424, the year after James's return, a tax of twelvepence
+in the pound was imposed by the Parliament at Perth, for the maintenance
+of the King's state and payment of his ransom, upon all goods, lands,
+and annual revenues of whatever description, both spiritual and
+temporal, which was passed with the consent of the estates, no doubt
+under the stimulus of the general rejoicing at the King's return. This
+impost was to last for two years. An income tax so general and
+all-embracing could scarcely be expected to be popular, but for the
+first year it was paid, we are told, with readiness, certain of the
+greatest nobles in the kingdom being appointed in their various
+districts to the office of collecting. That the Church should have taken
+her share in the payment of this tax says much for the loyalty of the
+Scotch priesthood and their unity with the people at this crisis of the
+national history. In the second year, however, grumblings arose. It is
+comprehensible that a nation unaccustomed to this pressure should
+respond to it in a moment of enthusiasm, yet become uneasy under the
+repetition when the enthusiasm had probably died away, especially if a
+fear arose that it might become permanent. King James, however, adopted
+a course not at all usual with governments when the power to exact has
+once been placed in their hands. When the popular murmur came to his
+ears he stopped at once the unpopular demand. How the paying of the
+ransom was carried on, and how the maintenance of the King's state we
+need not inquire. The Crown lands were no doubt extensive still. Some
+years later another experiment of the same kind was made; the new tax,
+however, being only twopence in the pound, and its object the payment of
+expenses of a mission sent to France to negotiate a marriage between the
+baby-princess Margaret and the equally juvenile dauphin--an object which
+does not appear to have appealed to the sympathies of the people, since
+we are told that it was the cause of immediate murmurs, the King not
+only stopped the unpopular tax but returned the money to those who had
+paid it--a most admirable but seldom followed example.
+
+The curious system afterwards employed by all the Scots kings of tours
+or "raids" of justice throughout the kingdom seems to have originated in
+James's energetic reign, but he carried not only the officers of the
+law, but occasionally his entire Parliament with him, moving about to
+the different centres of Scotland with great impartiality. Sometimes
+they met at Edinburgh, in the Great Parliament Hall in the Castle, and
+made "many good laws if they could have been kept," says the chronicler;
+sometimes at Perth, a favourite residence of the King; and on one
+memorable occasion so far north as Inverness, where, impatient of
+continual disquietude in the Highlands, James went to chastise the
+caterans and bring them within the reach of law. This he did with a
+severe and unsparing hand, seizing a number of the most eminent chiefs
+who had been invited to meet him there, and executing certain dangerous
+individuals among them without mercy. These summary measures would seem
+to have borne immediate fruit in the almost complete subjugation of the
+Highlands. But it was hard to reckon with such a restless element as the
+clans, and hanging and heading were very ineffectual measures among
+people with whom "another for Hector" was the simplest suggestion of
+natural law.
+
+It was after this stern Parliament of Inverness that there occurred at
+Edinburgh one of the most curious and picturesque scenes that it is
+possible to imagine. One of the chiefs tried at that assize was the
+greatest and most important of all, the Lord of the Isles, sometimes
+called Donald and sometimes Alexander by the chroniclers, who on his
+promise to amend his ways, and no longer harbour caterans or head
+forays, was, no doubt out of respect for his almost princely position,
+set at liberty. But no sooner was the fierce chieftain set free, "within
+a few days after," says the chronicler, than he took and burnt the town
+of Inverness, in which the Parliament had been held, and showed his
+impenitence by an utter abuse of the mercy accorded to him. When,
+however, he heard that the King himself with all the forces of the
+kingdom was coming against him, Donald hastily disbanded his men and
+took refuge in the watery fastnesses of his islands: and it would seem
+that he must have felt the tide of national sentiment to be against him,
+and his power not equal to make any stand against all the force of
+peaceful and law-abiding Scotland under the energetic new King. The wily
+Highlander made his submission in the way which, no doubt, he thought
+most likely to disarm authority and gain exemption. He choose Easter
+day, the greatest of religious festivals, for his appearance as a
+penitent, and in the middle of the service in the Chapel of Holyrood
+appeared suddenly, almost without clothing, and knelt down before the
+King "where he was sittand at his orison," praying for grace in the name
+of Him who rose from the dead that day. So strange an interruption in
+the midst of all the glories of the Easter mass throws a strange and
+wild light upon the varieties of national life in Scotland. That
+half-savage figure, with plaid and weapons cast aside, defenceless, at
+the King's mercy, in all the primitive abandonment yet calculation of
+early patriarchal times; while all that the art and culture of a
+splendid age could do to give magnificence to the most imposing
+ceremonial of the Church surrounded this strange apparition, the incense
+rising, the music pealing, the Court in all its glory of flashing jewels
+and splendid stuffs filling the lofty area. Like some wild god of the
+mists suddenly gleaming through the fragrant smoke between the bishop's
+white robes and the kneeling King, what a strange interruption to the
+mass! The King, at the request of the Queen we are told, gave him his
+life, as the adjuration addressed to him and all the force of the
+surroundings gave James little choice but to do; for he could not have
+offended the sentiment of his people by refusing the boon which was
+demanded in that Name, however doubtful he might be of the expediency of
+granting it. "Then the King began to muse," says Boece. He must have
+been devout indeed to have been able to return to the course of the
+service with the Islesman before him on his knees, and all that wild
+half of the kingdom, with its dangerous habits and fierce tribal laws,
+thus suddenly made visible--a spectre which had often before troubled
+the King's peace. James had not to learn for the first time that
+apparent submission from such a suppliant did not necessarily mean any
+real change, and must have thoroughly felt the hollowness of that
+histrionic appearance and all the difficulties which beset his own
+action in the matter. The conclusion was, that the life of the Lord of
+the Isles was spared, but he was committed to safe keeping in the strong
+Castle of Tantallon, with, however, the unfailing consequence, that his
+brother took the field with all his caterans in his stead.
+
+James reigned in Scotland for thirteen years--a reign full of commotion
+and movement, by which many in high place were humiliated, the spoils of
+the feudal tyrants taken from them, and the wrongs of the suffering
+commonalty redressed, proceedings which procured for the King many
+enemies among the nobility before the force of popular sentiment was
+strong enough to balance this opposition by its support. He began in
+Scotland that struggle which for some time had been going on in England
+against the power of the nobles, who were still in the north something
+like a number of petty kings ruling in their own right, making little
+account of national laws, and regarding the King with defiance as almost
+a hostile power. One of the greatest risks of such a struggle is that it
+raises now and then a fiery spirit stung by the sense of injury and the
+rage of deprivation into a wild passion of revenge which bursts every
+restraint. The Grahams of Strathearn in the north had fallen specially
+under the rectifying process of James's new laws of property: and out of
+this house there suddenly arose the tragic figure of an avenger whose
+brief but terrible career occupies but a single page in history, yet
+contains all the elements of a fatal drama. Sir Robert Graham, of whose
+antecedents there is little record, was not the head of the house, but a
+younger brother of daring character, and one of those fanatics of race
+to whom the glory of their house is a religion. The first we hear of him
+is a sudden appearance in the Parliament of January 1435, when he made a
+fiery and violent speech, ending by an impeachment of the King himself
+for injustice and robbery. Such an assault would find little support in
+the public assembly of the States, in the awe of the royal presence, and
+Graham had to escape for his life, finding means of flight into the
+Highlands, the ever-ready refuge for rebels. There he launched wild
+threats against James, which the King, probably well accustomed to
+missiles of the kind, paid little attention to. The monarch was warned
+too, we are told, by another wild apparition, which suddenly appears out
+of the mists for this purpose--a Highland witch of the order of those
+who drove Macbeth's ambition to frenzy, but whose mission now was to
+warn James of the mischief brewing against him. The King was brave and
+careless, used to the continual presence of danger, keeping his
+Christmas merrily at Perth with all the sports and entertainments with
+which it was possible to cheat the gloomy weather, and made little but
+additional mirth both of the prophecy and the threats. Evidently the
+Court found pleasure in the fair city on the Tay. They were still
+lingering there, having taken up their residence in the monastery of the
+Black Friars, at the end of February. In Scotland as elsewhere the great
+religious houses seem to have been the best adapted to give hospitality
+to kings. It was long after this date before anything that could be
+called an independent royal residence was built at Holyrood itself: for
+generations the King and Court were but guests in the stately abbey,
+which was, like the monastery of the Black Friars, so convenient and
+commodious a house both for entertainment and shelter that its great
+chambers became the natural, as they were the most stately and pleasant,
+lodging that could be provided for a monarch.
+
+The tragedy that followed is well known. At the end of a pleasant
+evening when there had been music--in which James himself was the first
+connoisseur in Scotland, inventing, some say, the national lilt, the
+rapidly rising and falling strain which is so full of pathos yet so
+adaptable to mirth--"and other honest solaces of grete pleasance and
+disport," the sound of trampling feet and angry voices broke upon the
+conventual stillness outside and the cheerful talk of the friendly group
+within. The King was taken at a disadvantage, apparently without even a
+gentleman of his Court near him, nothing but his wife and her ladies
+lingering for a last moment of pleasant conversation before they went to
+bed. It is easy to imagine the horror with which the little party must
+have listened to the rush of the savage band, hoping perhaps at first
+that it was but some tumult in the street, or affray between the
+townsfolk and the caterans--never very far off and often threatening St.
+John's town--till the cries and clashing of the arms came nearer, and
+wild torch-light flared through the high windows and proved the fatal
+object of the raid. The groans of a few easily despatched sentinels, the
+absence of any serious opposition or stand in defence, the horrible
+discovery of bolts and bars removed and the King at the mercy of his
+enemies, must have followed in a few terrible moments. No incident in
+history is better known than that piteous attempt of one distracted
+girl, a Douglas, born of a heroic race, to bar the door with her own
+slim arm, thrusting it through the holdfasts from which the bolt had
+been taken away: poor ineffectual bar! yet enough to gain a moment when
+moments were so precious, and while there was still a chance of saving
+the King.
+
+The narrative of the death struggle, and the distracted attempts to find
+a place of concealment for the victim, are too heartrending to be
+repeated here. James fell, it is said, with sixteen wounds in him,
+hacked almost to pieces, yet facing his murderers so desperately that
+some of them bore the marks of his dying grip when they were brought to
+the scaffold to be killed in their turn with every circumstance of
+horror conceivable some time later. The execution of these miserable
+traitors, one of them the King's own uncle Athole, took place at
+Edinburgh for the greater solemnity and terror of the punishment, which
+was accomplished by every kind of torture. The Queen, too, after the
+horrible scene of which she had been a witness, and almost more than a
+witness--for she had thrown herself before her husband and had been
+wounded in the terrible struggle--gathered her children and fled to
+Edinburgh Castle to put the little heir of the kingdom, now James II, in
+security. The hapless child was sadly crowned at Holyrood at six years
+old, with a hastily adapted ceremonial, the first of many such
+disastrous rites to come.
+
+The time of James's reign had been one of rising prosperity throughout
+the realm. Law and order had been established in recognised courts and
+tribunals, the titles of property had been ascertained and secured, not
+without loss, no doubt, to many arrogant lords who had seized upon stray
+land without any lawful title, or on whom it had been illegally bestowed
+during the Albany reign--but to the general confidence and safety. And
+the condition of the people had no doubt improved in consequence. It is
+difficult to form any estimate of what this condition was. All foreign
+witnesses give testimony of an unpleasing kind, and represent the
+country as wretched, squalid, and uncivilised: but on the other hand
+nothing can be more unlike this report than the most valuable and
+unintentional evidence furnished by King James's own poems, with their
+tale of village merry-makings and frays which convey no impression of
+abject poverty, nor even of that rudest level of life where material
+wants are so pressing as to exclude all lighter thoughts. "On Mayday,"
+says King James, "when everybody is bound to Peblis to the play,"
+
+    "At Beltane quhan ilke bodie bownis
+         To Peblis to the play,
+    To heir the singing and sweit soundis,
+         The solace suth to say.
+    Be firth and forest furth they found,
+         They graythit them full gay;
+    God wot that wald they do that stound,
+         For it was thair feist day
+                              They said
+         Of Peblis to the Play."
+
+All the lasses of the west, he goes on to tell us, were up at cockcrow,
+and no men might rest for the chatter and the noise of their
+preparations. One cried that her curch was not starched enough, another
+that a hood was best, another bewailed herself as "so evil sunburnt"
+that she was not fit to be seen. The young folk stream along "full bold"
+with the bagpipes blowing, and every village adding its contingent, "he
+before and she before to see which was most gay."
+
+    "Some said that they were mercat folk,
+    Some said the Quene of May
+                           Was cumit
+    Of Peblis to the Play."
+
+When they arrive at the "taverne hous" they give orders that the board
+be served, and to see that the napery is white, "for we will dyn and
+daunce." At "Christis Kirk on the Green" there is a similar description,
+the lasses coming out as before, "weshen clean," in their new grey
+kirtles "well prest with many plaits," with their gloves of doeskin and
+morocco shoes. All these incidental traits, and the atmosphere of the
+merry ballads, though both end in a fray, contradict with vigour the
+cold and wretched picture given by outsiders of a country where the
+people warmed themselves by burning sulphureous stones dug out of the
+ground, where the houses had a cow's hide stretched for a door, and all
+was squalid misery and nakedness. There was plenty of fighting going on
+it is evident--not a lowland fair without its broken heads (a habit
+that, according to Sir Walter Scott, no mean authority, lasted into the
+nineteenth century)--and much oppression, the great lords reigning like
+absolute tyrants in the midst of subjects without resource or
+protection; but the case of the peasantry notwithstanding all these
+evils does not seem to have been a bad one. A certain vigorous capacity
+of revival, which history shows us continually as existing on the broad
+level of the soil, must have brought them back to rough ease and
+comfort, and the freedom of the natural healthful atmosphere which makes
+itself apparent in transcripts of life so little likely to be forced or
+optimistic. In all times and circumstances there can be little doubt
+that the amount of simple enjoyment to be got out of life, especially by
+the young, who form at least the half of every community, far exceeds
+the elements of wellbeing which outsiders see in it. And the protection
+of the Church, the comparative quiet to be enjoyed on church lands, the
+charities and succour of the cloister, must have made an incalculable
+addition to the possibilities of existence. Everything in James's reign
+was calculated to increase the stability and good order which are the
+best guarantees of national life; even his severities cultivating a
+sense of security in the weak and a wholesome consciousness of the
+necessity of self-restraint in the strong. For the first time for many
+generations the nobles were kept within bounds, and exceptional
+cruelties became if not impossible, yet of so certain discovery and
+punishment that lesser tyrants at least must have trembled. The law that
+might makes right fell into temporary disuse, and a better law, that of
+the courts that sat periodically over all the kingdom, and--appealing
+still more strongly to the imagination--a king that shut his ears to no
+petition and interfered with a strong hand to right the wronged, began a
+new era for the commonalty of Scotland. Even the unfavourable
+description so often quoted of Eneas Silvius, reports the common people
+as having "abundance of flesh and fish," no small ingredient of
+wellbeing, and records rather a complete absence of luxuries than that
+want which reduces the vital strength of a nation. The same authority
+tells of exportations of "hides, wool, salt fish, and pearls," the
+latter a curious item, although there were as yet no manufactures, and
+even such necessaries as horse-shoes and every kind of harness had to be
+imported from Flanders. But the Scots in their farmhouses and cottages
+made the cloth with which they were clothed, and their "blew caps," the
+well-known blue bonnet which has lasted to our own days. And they
+retained the right which, according to her monkish chronicler, St.
+Margaret had been the first to secure for them--of immunity from all
+military requisitions, and even, which is a curious contradiction of the
+supposed tyrannies of the nobles, held an absolute property in their own
+goods which out of the island of Great Britain no peasantry in the world
+possessed. The French allies who were in Scotland in the end of the
+fourteenth century were struck with angry consternation to hear
+themselves hailed by a set of clodhoppers, and bidden to keep the paths
+and not trample down the growing corn, and to find that, however willing
+the Scots men-at-arms might be to harry England when occasion offered,
+not the greatest lord in the French contingent could carry off a cow or
+a brace of pullets without compensation. We cannot but think that the
+country in which the peasant's barnyard was thus defended was at least
+as forward in the best elements of civilisation as those in which there
+were hangings of arras and trenches of silver, but no security for
+anything in homesteads or workshop which might be coveted by the
+seigneur.
+
+[Illustration: HOLYROOD]
+
+Edinburgh, as has been said, never seems to have been a favourite
+habitation of this enlightened and accomplished Prince. Perhaps Queen
+Jane found the east winds too keen on the heights, or the Abbey of the
+Holy Rood too low in the valley. The heir was born there it is true, and
+we have note of various Parliaments and visits, but no settled residence
+in the capital. One incident is mentioned by the chroniclers which must
+have afforded a picturesque scene, when the King himself presided,
+before the gates of Edinburgh Castle, at a duel between a knight called
+Henry Knokkis or Knox (curious precursor in the dimness of distance of
+another of his name!), who had been accused by an Edinburgh burgess of
+treasonable speeches against the King--and his accuser. But who this
+accuser was, and by what privilege he was allowed to meet a gentleman
+and knight in single combat we have no information. Perhaps he was
+himself of noble blood, a younger son, a man before his time, seeking
+the peaceful profits of trade instead of those of the marauder, as it
+has become the fashion of a later age to do. It is almost impossible not
+to fancy that there must have been a touch of the burlesque in this
+combat, which James himself interfered to stop, separating the
+combatants. He was very careless it would seem of treasonable speeches,
+apt to treat them lightly and very probably smiled a little at the zeal
+of the citizen who was more jealous of his honour than he was himself.
+The platform before the gates would still make a splendid area for any
+feat of arms, if the winds did not interfere before the King and blow
+the combatants away: and the old-world crowd with their many colours,
+the jerkins slashed and embroidered with the blazon of all the great
+families in Scotland, the plumed caps and dazzling helmets of courtier
+and knight, the border of blue bonnets outside, and all the shining
+array of fair ladies around and behind the throne, would present a more
+striking picture than the best we could do nowadays. Let us hope the sun
+shone and warmed the keen clear air, and threw into high relief the
+towers and bastions against the northern blue.
+
+Edinburgh by this time had grown into the proportions of a town. The
+houses which the citizens had the privilege of building within the
+castle precincts would appear to have been low, to secure the protection
+of the walls; and by certain precautionary regulations for their
+preservation from fire it would seem that many of them were still
+thatched. The King's residence there, judging from the straitened
+accommodation, which was all that existed in a much more advanced
+period, must have been small and poor, though there already existed a
+Parliament Hall, in which probably other great assemblies were held. The
+city walls were continued along the crest of the ridge in narrow lines,
+deflecting a little only on the south side, where the limits were broken
+by several wealthy and well-cultivated enclosures where brotherhoods
+were established--White and Black Friars, sons of Augustine and Dominic,
+with their great detached houses, their gardens always an example of
+husbandry, and chapels filling the air with pleasant sound of bells.
+King James had himself endowed, besides many existing foundations, a
+monastery for the Franciscans or Grey Friars, which has always continued
+to be one of the chief ecclesiastic centres of Edinburgh. It was so fine
+a building, as the story goes, that the humble-minded Minors declined at
+first to take possession of it as being too magnificent for an Order
+vowed to poverty; though as their superior was a monk from Cologne, sent
+for by the King on account of his learning and sanctity, and accustomed
+to the great convents of the Continent, such an objection is curious. On
+the south side of the town, at some distance outside the walls, on the
+platform afterwards occupied by the buildings of the old High School,
+stood amid its blossoming gardens the Church of St. Mary in the Field,
+afterwards so fatally known as the Kirk of Field, a great house so
+extensive and stately that it had already served on several occasions as
+a royal lodging. St. Giles's, one of the oldest foundations of all,
+stood among its graves, at the foot of the Castle Hill in the centre of
+the life of ancient Edinburgh, as it does still. These clusters of
+sacred buildings, encircled by their orchards and gardens, made a fringe
+of verdure, of charity and peace, sanctuaries for the living and
+resting-places for the dead, round the strong and dark fortifications of
+the little royal town, which hitherto had held for its life upon that
+ridge of rock, a dangerous eminence lying full in every invader's way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+JAMES II: WITH THE FIERY FACE
+
+
+It is clear that the public opinion of Scotland, so far as there was
+such a thing in existence, had no sympathy whatever with the murderers
+of James. The instruments of that murder were in the first place
+Highland caterans, with whom no terms were ever held and against whom
+every man's hand was armed. And the leaders who had taken advantage of
+these wild allies against their natural monarch and kindred were by the
+very act put beyond the pale of sympathy. They were executed ferociously
+and horribly, according to the custom of the time, the burghers of Perth
+rising at once in pursuit of them, and the burghers of Edinburgh looking
+on with stern satisfaction at their tortures--these towns feeling
+profoundly, more perhaps than any other section of the community, the
+extraordinary loss they had in the able and vigorous King, already, like
+his descendant and successor, the King of the commons, their stay and
+encouragement. If there was among the nobility less lamentation over a
+ruler who spared none of them on account of his race, and was sternly
+bent on repressing all abuse of power, it was silent in the immense and
+universal horror with which the event filled Scotland. It would seem
+probable that the little heir, only six years old, the only son of King
+James, was not with his parents in their Christmas rejoicings at Perth,
+but had been left behind at Holyrood, for we are told that the day after
+his father's death the poor little wondering child was solemnly but
+hastily crowned there, the dreadful news having flown to the centre of
+government. He was "crownd by the nobilitie," says Pitscottie, the great
+nobles who were nearest and within reach having no doubt rushed to the
+spot where the heir was, to guard and also to retain in their own hands
+the future King. He was proclaimed at once, and the crown, or such
+substitute for it as could be laid sudden hands upon, put on his infant
+head. The scene is one which recurred again and again in the history of
+his race, yet nothing can take from it its touching features. At six
+years old even the intimation of a father's death, especially when
+taking place at a distance, would make but a transitory impression upon
+the mind; yet we may well imagine the child taken from his toys, wrapped
+from head to foot in some royal mantle, with a man's crown held over his
+baby head, receiving with large eyes of wonder and fright easily
+translated into tears, the sacred oil, the sceptre which his little
+fingers could scarcely enclose. Alas for the luckless Stewarts! again
+and again this affecting ceremony took place before the time of their
+final promotion which was the precursor of their overthrow. They were
+all kings almost from their cradle--kings ill-omened, entering upon
+their royalty with infant terror and tears.
+
+[Illustration: EDINBURGH CASTLE FROM THE SOUTH-WEST]
+
+When they had crowned the little James, second of the name, the lords
+held a convention "to advise whom they thought most able both for
+manheid and witt to take the government of the commonwealth in hand."
+They chose two men for this office, neither of whom was taken from a
+very great family, or had, so far as can be known, any special
+importance--Sir Alexander Livingstone, described as Knight of Callender,
+and Sir William Crichton, Chancellor of Scotland. Perhaps it was one of
+the compromises which are so common when parties are nearly equal in
+power which thus placed two personages of secondary importance at the
+head of affairs: but any advantage which might have been secured by this
+selection was neutralised by the division of power, which added to all
+the evils of an interregnum the perplexity of two centres of government,
+so that "no man knew," as says Pitscottie, "whom he should obey." One of
+the Regents reigned in Edinburgh, the other in Stirling--one had the
+advantage of holding possession of the King, the other had the doubtful
+good of the support of the Queen. It may be imagined what an
+extraordinary contrast this was to the firm and vigilant sway of a
+monarch in the fulness of manhood, with all the prestige of his many
+gifts and accomplishments, his vigorous and manful character and his
+unquestioned right to the government and obedience of the country. It
+had been hard work enough for James I., with all these advantages, to
+keep his kingdom well in hand: and it would not be easy to exaggerate
+the difficulties now, with two rival and feeble powers, neither great
+enough to overawe nor united enough to hold in check the independent
+power of the great houses which vied with each other in the display of
+dominion and wealth. In a very brief time all the ground gained by King
+James was lost again. Every element of anarchy arose in new force, and
+if it had been hard to secure the execution of the laws which would have
+been so good had they been kept in the time when their chief
+administrator was the King himself, it may be supposed what was the
+difficulty now, when, save in a little circuit round each seat of
+authority, there was virtually no power at all. Pitscottie gives a
+curious and vivid picture of the state of affairs in this lamentable
+interval.
+
+    "In the mean time many great dissensions rose amongst us, but it was
+    uncertain who were the movers, or by what occasion the chancellor
+    exercised such office, further than became him. He keeped both the
+    Castle of Edinburgh and also our young King thereintill, who was
+    committed to his keeping by the haill nobilitie and ane great part
+    of the noble men assisted to his opinion. Upon the other side, Sir
+    Alexander Livingstoun bearing the authoritie committed to him by
+    consent of the nobilitie, as said is, contained another faction, to
+    whose opinion the Queen mother with many of the nobility very trewly
+    assisted. So the principals of both the factions caused proclaime
+    lettres at mercat crosses and principal villages of the realm that
+    all men should obey conforme to the aforesaid letters sent forth by
+    them, under the pain of death. To the which no man knew to whom he
+    should obey or to whose letters he should be obedient unto. And also
+    great trouble appeared in this realm, because there was no man to
+    defend the burghs, priests, and poor men and labourers hauntind to
+    their leisum (lawful) business either private or public. These men
+    because of these enormities might not travel for thieves and
+    brigands and such like: all other weak and decrepit persons who was
+    unable to defend themselves, or yet to get food and sustentation to
+    themselves, were most cruelly vexed in such troublous times. For
+    when any passed to seek redress at the Chancellor of such injuries
+    and troubles sustained by them, the thieves and brigands, feigning
+    themselves to be of another faction, would burn their house and
+    carry their whole goods and gear away before ever they returned
+    again. And the same mischief befell those that went to complain to
+    the Governor of the oppression done to them. Some other good men
+    moved upon consideration and pitie of their present calamities
+    tholed (endured) many such injuries, and contained themselves at
+    home and sought no redresse. In the midst of these things and
+    troubles, all things being out of order, Queen-Mother began to find
+    out ane moyane (a means) how she should diminish the Chancellor's
+    power and augment the Governor's power, whose authority she
+    assisted."
+
+The position of Queen Jane in the circumstances in which her husband
+left her, a woman still young, with a band of small children, and no
+authority in the turbulent and distracted country, is as painful a one
+as could well be imagined. Her English blood would be against her, and
+even her beauty, so celebrated by her chivalrous husband, and which
+would no doubt increase the immediate impulse of suitors, in that
+much-marrying age, towards the beautiful widow who was of royal blood to
+begin with and still bore the title of Queen. That she seems to have had
+no protection from her royal kindred is probably explained by the fact
+that Henry VI was never very potent or secure upon his throne, and that
+the Wars of the Roses were threatening and demanding the whole attention
+of the English Government. Wounded in her efforts to protect her husband
+by her own person, seeing him slaughtered before her eyes, there could
+not be a more terrible moment in any woman's life, hard as were the
+lives of women in that age of violence, than that which passed over Jane
+Beaufort's head in the Blackfriars Monastery amid the blood and tumult
+of that fatal night. The chroniclers, occupied by matters more weighty,
+have no time to picture the scene that followed that cruel and horrible
+murder, when the distracted women, who were its only witnesses, after
+the tumult and the roar of the murderers had passed by, were left to
+wash the wounds and compose the limbs of the dead King so lately taking
+his part in their evening's pastime, and to look to the injuries of the
+Queen and the torn and broken arm of Catherine Douglas, a sufferer of
+whom history has no further word to say. The room with its imperfect
+lights rises before us, the wintry wind rushing in by those wide-open
+doors, waving about the figures on the tapestry till they too seemed to
+mourn and lament with wildly tossing arms the horror of the scene--the
+cries and clash of arms as the caterans fled, pausing no doubt to pick
+up what scattered jewels or rich garments might lie in their way: and by
+the wild illumination of a torch, or the wavering leaping flame of the
+faggot on the hearth, the two wounded ladies, each with an anxious group
+about her--the Queen, covered with her own and her husband's blood; the
+girl, with her broken wrist, lying near the threshold which she had
+defended with all her heroic might. They were used to exercise the art
+of healing, to bind up wounds and bring back consciousness, these
+hapless ladies, so constantly the victims of passion and ambition. But
+amid all the horrors which they had to witness in their lives, horrors
+in which they did not always take the healing part, there could be none
+more appalling than this. Neither then nor now, however, is it at the
+most terrible moment of life, when the revolted soul desires it most,
+that death comes to free the sufferer. The Queen lived, no doubt, to
+think of the forlorn little boy in Holyrood, the five little maidens who
+were dependent upon her, and resumed the burden of life now so strangely
+different, so dull and blank, so full of alarms and struggles. Her elder
+child, the little Princess Margaret, had been sent to France three or
+four years before, at the age of ten, to be the bride of the Dauphin--a
+great match for a Scottish princess--and it is possible that her next
+sister, Eleanor, who afterwards married the Duc de Bretagne, had
+accompanied Margaret--two little creatures solitary in their great
+promotion, separated from all who held them dear. But the four infants
+who were left would be burden enough for the mother in her unassured and
+unprotected state. It would seem that she was not permitted to be with
+her boy, probably because of the jealousy of the Lords, who would have
+no female Regent attempting to reign in the name of her son: but had
+fixed her residence in Stirling under the shield of Livingstone, who as
+Governor of the kingdom ought to have exercised all the functions of the
+Regency, and especially the most weighty one, that of training the King.
+Crichton, however, who was Chancellor, had been on the spot when James
+II was crowned, and had secured his guardianship by the might of the
+strong hand, if no other, removing him to Edinburgh Castle, where he
+could be kept safe under watch and ward. The Queen, who would seem to
+have been throughout of Livingstone's faction, and who no doubt desired
+to have her son with her, both from affection and policy, set her wits
+to discover a "moyane," as the chroniclers say, of recovering the
+custody of the boy. The moyane was simple and primitive enough, and
+might well have been pardoned to a mother deprived of her natural
+rights: but it shows at the same time the importance attached to the
+possession of the little King, when it was only in such a way that he
+could be secured. Queen Jane set out from Stirling "with a small train"
+to avert suspicion, and appeared at the gates of Edinburgh Castle
+suddenly, without warning as would seem, asking to be admitted to see
+her son. The Chancellor, wise and wily as he was, would appear to have
+acknowledged the naturalness of this request, and "received her," the
+chronicler says, "with gladness, and gave her entrance to visit her
+young son, and gave command that whensoever the Queen came to the castle
+it should be patent to Her Grace." Jane entered the castle accordingly,
+with many protestations of her desire for peace and anxiety to prevent
+dissensions, all which was, no doubt, true enough, though the
+chroniclers treat her protestations with little faith, declaring her to
+have "very craftilie dissembled" in order to dispel any suspicion the
+Chancellor may have entertained. It would seem that she had not borne
+any friendship to him beforehand, and that her show of friendship now
+required explanation. However that might be, she succeeded in persuading
+Crichton of her good faith, and was allowed to have free intercourse
+with her son and regain her natural place in his affections. How long
+they had been separated there is no evidence to show, but it could
+scarcely be difficult for the mother to recover, even had it fallen into
+forgetfulness, the affection of her child. When she had remained long
+enough in the castle to disarm any prejudices Crichton might entertain
+of her, and to persuade the little King to the device which was to
+secure his freedom, the Queen informed the Chancellor that she was about
+to make a pilgrimage to the famous shrine of Whitekirk, "the white kirk
+of Brechin," Pitscottie says, in order to pray for the repose of the
+soul of her husband and the prosperity of her son, and asked permission
+to carry away two coffers with her clothes and ornaments, probably
+things which she had left in the castle before her widowhood, and that
+means of conveyance might be provided for these possessions to Leith,
+where she was to embark. This simple request was easily granted, and the
+two coffers carried out of the castle, and conveyed by "horss" to the
+ship in which she herself embarked with her few attendants. But instead
+of turning northward Queen Jane's ship sailed up the Firth, through the
+narrow strait at Queensferry, past Borrowstounness, where the great
+estuary widens out once more, into the quiet waters of the Forth,
+winding through the green country to Stirling on its hill. She was "a
+great pairt of the watter upward before ever the keepers of the castle
+could perceive themselves deceived," says Pitscottie. As the ship neared
+Stirling, the Governor of the kingdom came out of the castle with all
+his forces, with great joy and triumph, and received the King and his
+mother. For one of the coffers, so carefully packed and accounted for,
+contained no less an ornament than the little King in person, to whose
+childish mind no doubt this mode of transport was a delightful device
+and pleasantry. One can imagine how the Queen's heart must have throbbed
+with anxiety while her son lay hidden in the bed made for him within the
+heavy chest, where if air failed, or any varlet made the discovery
+prematurely, all her hopes would have come to an end. She must have
+fluttered like a bird over her young about the receptacle in which her
+boy lay, and talked with her ladies over his head to encourage and keep
+him patient till the end of the journey was near enough, amid the
+lingering links of Forth, to open the lid and set him free. It is not a
+journey that is often made nowadays, but with all the lights of the
+morning upon Demayat and his attendant mountains, and the sun shining
+upon that rich valley, and the river at its leisure wending, as if it
+loved them, through all the verdant holms and haughs, there is no
+pleasanter way of travelling from Edinburgh to Stirling, the two
+hill-castles of the Scottish crown.
+
+[Illustration: INNER BARRIER, EDINBURGH CASTLE]
+
+It would be pleasant to think that Queen Jane meant something more than
+the mere bolstering up of one faction against another in the distracted
+kingdom by the abduction of her son. It is very possible indeed that she
+did so, and that to strengthen the hands of the man who was really
+Regent-Governor of Scotland, but whose power had been stolen from his
+hands by the unscrupulousness of Crichton, seemed to her a great
+political object, and the recovery of the supreme authority, which would
+seem to have appeared to all as infallibly linked with the possession of
+the young King, of the greatest importance. It is evident it was
+considered by the general public to be so; but there is something
+pitiful in the struggle for the poor boy, over whose small person those
+fierce factionaries fought, and in whose name, still so innocent and
+helpless as he was, so many ferocious deeds were done.
+
+No sooner was he secure in Stirling than the Governor called together a
+convention of his friends, to congratulate each other and praise the wit
+and skill of "that noble woman, our soverain mother," who had thus set
+things right. "Whereby I understand," he says piously, "that the wisest
+man is not at all times the sickerest, nor yet the hardy man happiest,"
+seeing that Crichton, though so great and sagacious and powerful, should
+be thus deceived and brought to shame. "Be of good comfort therefore,"
+adds this enlightened ruler; "all the mischief, banishment, troubles,
+and vexation which the Chancellor thought to have done to us let us do
+the like to him." He ended this discourse by an intimation that he was
+about to besiege Edinburgh. "Let us also take up some band of
+men-of-war, and every man after his power send secret messages to their
+friends, that they and every one that favours us may convene together
+quietly in Edinburgh earlie in the morning, so that the Chancellor
+should not know us to come for the sieging of the castle till we have
+the siege even belted about the walls; so ye shall have subject to you
+all that would have arrogantly oppressed you."
+
+This resolution was agreed to with enthusiasm, the Queen undertaking to
+provision the army "out of her own garners"; but the Governor had no
+sooner "belted the siege about the castle," an expression which renders
+most graphically the surrounding of the place, than the Chancellor,
+taken by surprise, prostrated by the loss of the King, and finding it
+impossible to draw the powerful Earl of Douglas to his aid, made
+overtures of submission, and begged for a meeting "in the fields before
+the gates," where, with a few chosen friends on either side, the two
+great functionaries of the kingdom might come to an agreement between
+themselves.
+
+By this time there would seem to have begun that preponderating
+influence of the Douglas family in Scotland which vexed the entire reign
+of the second James, and prompted two of the most violent and tragic
+deeds which stain the record of Scottish history. James I. was more
+general in his attempt at the repression and control of his fierce
+nobility, and the family most obnoxious to him was evidently that of his
+uncle, nearest in blood and most dangerous to the security of the
+reigning race. The Douglas, however, detaches himself in the following
+generation into a power and place unexampled, and which it took the
+entire force of Scotland, and all the wavering and uncertain expedients
+of law, as well as the more decisive action of violence quite lawless,
+to put down. Whether there was in the pretensions of this great house
+any aim at the royal authority in their own persons, or ambitious
+assertion of a rival claim in right of the blood of Bruce, which was as
+much in their veins as in those of the Stewarts, as some recent
+historians would make out, it is probably now quite impossible to
+decide. The chroniclers say nothing of any such intention, nor do the
+Douglases themselves, who throughout the struggle never hesitated to
+make submission to the Crown when the course of fortune went against
+them. The Chancellor had been deeply stung, it is evident, by the answer
+of Douglas to his appeal, in which the fierce Earl declared that discord
+between "you twa unhappie tyrants" was the most agreeable thing in the
+world to him, and that he wished nothing more than that it should
+continue. Deprived of the sanction given to all his proceedings by the
+name of the King, outwitted among his wiles, and exposed to the ridicule
+even of those who had regarded his wisdom with most admiration, Crichton
+would seem to have turned fiercely upon the common opponent, perhaps
+with a wise prescience of the evil to come, perhaps only to secure an
+object of action which might avert danger from himself and bring him
+once more into command of the source of authority--most likely with both
+objects together, the higher and lower, as is most general in our
+mingled nature. The meeting was held accordingly outside the castle
+gates, the Chancellor coming forth in state bearing the keys of the
+castle, which were presented, Buchanan says, to the King in person, who
+accompanied the expedition, and who restored the great functionary to
+his office. The great keys in the child's hand, the little treble pipe
+in which the reappointment would be made, the tiny figure in the midst
+of all these plotters and warriors, gives a touch of pathos to the many
+pictorial scenes of an age so rich in the picturesque; but the earlier
+writers say nothing of the little James's presence. There was, however,
+a consultation between the two Regents, and Douglas's letter was read
+with such angry comments as may be supposed. The Earl's contempt
+evidently cut deep, and strongly emphasised the necessity of dealing
+authoritatively with such a high-handed rebel against the appointed
+rulers.
+
+It would appear, however, that little could be done against the
+immediate head of that great house, and the two rulers, though they had
+made friends over this common object, had to await their opportunity,
+and in the meantime do their best to maintain order and to get each the
+chief power into his own hands. Crichton found means before very long to
+triumph over his adversaries in his turn by rekidnapping the little
+King, for whom he laid wait in the woods about Stirling, where James was
+permitted precociously to indulge the passion of his family for hunting.
+No doubt the crafty Chancellor had pleasant inducements to bring forward
+to persuade the boy to a renewed escape, for "the King smiled," say the
+chroniclers, probably delighted by the novelty and renewed
+adventure--the glorious gallop across country in the dewy morning, a
+more pleasant prospect than the previous conveyance in his mother's big
+chest. Thus in a few hours the balance was turned, and it was once more
+the Chancellor and not the Governor who could issue ordinances and make
+regulations in the name of the King.
+
+Nothing, however, could be more tedious and trifling in the record than
+these struggles over the small person of the child-king. But the story
+quickens when the long-desired occasion arrived, and the two rulers,
+rivals yet partners in power, found opportunity to strike the blow upon
+which they had decided, and crush the great family which threatened to
+dominate Scotland, and which was so contemptuous of their own sway. The
+great Earl, Duke of Touraine, almost prince at home, the son of that
+Douglas whose valour had moved England, and indeed Christendom, to
+admiration, though he never won a battle--died in the midst of his
+years, leaving behind him two young sons much under age as the
+representatives of his name. It is extraordinary to us to realise the
+place held by youth in those times, when one would suppose a man's
+strength peculiarly necessary for the holding of an even nominal
+position. Mr. Church has just shown in his Life of Henry V how that
+prince at sixteen led armies and governed provinces; and it is clear
+that this was by no means exceptional, and that the right of boys to
+rule themselves and their possessions was universally acknowledged and
+permitted. The young William, Earl of Douglas, is said to have been only
+about fourteen at his father's death. He was but eighteen at the time of
+his execution, and between these dates he appears to have exercised all
+the rights of independent authority without tutor or guardian. The
+position into which he entered at this early age was unequalled in
+Scotland, in many respects superior to that of the nominal sovereign,
+who had so many to answer to for every step he took--counsellors and
+critics more plentiful than courtiers. The chronicles report all manner
+of vague arrogancies and presumptions on the part of the new Earl. He
+held a veritable court in his castle, very different from the
+semi-prison which, whether at Edinburgh or Stirling, was all that James
+of Scotland had for home and throne--and conferred fiefs and knighthood
+upon his followers as if he had been a reigning prince. "The Earl of
+Douglas," says Pitscottie, "being of tender age, was puffed up with new
+ambition and greater pride nor he was before, as the manner of youth is;
+and also prideful tyrants and flatterers that were about him through
+this occasion spurred him ever to greater tyranny and oppression." The
+lawless proceedings of the young potentate would seem to have stirred up
+all the disorderly elements in the kingdom. His own wild Border county
+grew wilder than ever, without control. Feuds broke out over all the
+country, in which revenge for injuries or traditionary quarrels were lit
+up of the strong hope in every man's breast not only of killing his
+neighbour, but taking possession of his neighbour's lands. The caterans
+swarmed down once more from the mountains and isles, and every petty
+tyrant of a robber laird threw off whatever bond of law had been forced
+upon him in King James's golden days. This sudden access of anarchy was
+made more terrible by a famine in the country, where not very long
+before it had been reported that there was fish and flesh for every man.
+"A great dearth of victualls, pairtly because the labourers of the
+ground might not sow nor win the corn through the tumults and cumbers of
+the country," spread everywhere, and the state of the kingdom called the
+conflicting authorities once more to consultation and some attempt at
+united action.
+
+The meeting this time was held in St. Giles's, the metropolitan church,
+then, perhaps, scarcely less new and shining in its decoration than now,
+though with altars glowing in all the shadowy aisles and the breath of
+incense mounting to the lofty roof. There would not seem to have been
+any prejudice as to using a sacred place for such a council, though it
+might be in the chapter-house or some adjacent building that the barons
+met. It is to be hoped that they did not go so far as to put into words
+within the consecrated walls the full force of their intention, even if
+it had come to be an intention so soon. There was but a small following
+on either side, that neither party might be alarmed, and many fine
+speeches were made upon the necessity of concord and mutual aid to
+repress the common enemy. The Chancellor, having restolen the King,
+would no doubt be most confident in tone; but on both sides there were
+equal professions of devotion to the country, and so many admirable
+sentiments expressed, that "all their friends on both sides that stood
+about began to extol and love them both, with great thanksgiving that
+they both regarded the commonwealth so mickle and preferred the same to
+all private quarrels and debates." The decision to which they came was
+to call a Parliament, at which aggrieved persons throughout the country
+might appear and make their complaints. The result was a crowd of woeful
+complainants, "such as had never been seen before. There were so many
+widows, bairns, and infants seeking redress for their husbands, kin, and
+friends that were cruelly slain by wicked murderers, and many for
+hireling theft and murder, that it would have pitied any man to have
+heard the same." This clamorous and woeful crowd filled the courts and
+narrow square of the castle before the old parliament-hall with a murmur
+of misery and wrath, the plaint of kin and personal injury more sharp
+than a mere public grief. The two rulers and their counsellors no doubt
+listened with grim satisfaction, feeling their enemy delivered into
+their hands, and finding a dreadful advantage in the youth and
+recklessness of the victims, who had taken no precaution, and of whom it
+was so easy to conclude that they were "the principal cause of these
+enormities." Whether their determination to sacrifice the young Douglas,
+and so crush his house, was formed at once, it is impossible to say.
+Perhaps some hope of moulding his youth to their own purpose may have at
+first softened the intention of the plotters. At all events they sent
+him complimentary letters, "full of coloured and pointed words,"
+inviting him to Edinburgh in their joint names with all the respect that
+became his rank and importance. The youth, unthinking in his boyish
+exaltation of any possibility of harm to him, accepted the invitation
+sent to him to visit the King at Edinburgh, and accompanied by his
+brother David, the only other male of his immediate family, set out
+magnificently and with full confidence with his gay train of knights and
+followers--among whom, no doubt, the youthful element
+predominated--towards the capital. He was met on the way by
+Crichton--evidently an accomplished courtier, and full of all the habits
+and ways of diplomacy--who invited the cavalcade to turn aside and rest
+for a day or two in Crichton Castle, where everything had been prepared
+for their reception. Here amid all the feastings and delights the great
+official discoursed to the young noble about the duties of his rank and
+the necessity of supporting the King's government and establishing the
+authority of law over the distracted country, sweetening his sermon with
+protestations of his high regard for the Douglas name, whose house, kin,
+and friends were more dear to him than any in Scotland, and of affection
+to the young Earl himself. Perhaps this was the turning-point, though
+the young gallant in his heyday of power and self-confidence was all
+unconscious of it; perhaps he received the advice too lightly, or
+laughed at the seriousness of his counsellor. At all events, when the
+gay band took horse again and proceeded towards Edinburgh, suspicion
+began to steal among the Earl's companions. Several of them made efforts
+to restrain their young leader, begging him at least to send back his
+young brother David if he would not himself turn homeward. "But," says
+the chronicler, "the nearer that a man be to peril or mischief he runs
+more headlong thereto, and has no grace to hear them that gives him any
+counsel to eschew the peril."
+
+[Illustration: EDINBURGH CASTLE FROM THE VENNEL]
+
+The only result of these attempts was that the party of boys spurred on,
+more gaily, more confidently than ever, with the deceiver at their side,
+who had spoken in so wise and fatherly a tone, giving so much good
+advice to the heedless lads. They were welcomed into Edinburgh within
+the fatal walls of the Castle with every demonstration of respect and
+delight. How long the interval was before all this enthusiasm turned
+into the stern preparations of murder it seems impossible to say--it
+might have been on the first night that the catastrophe happened, for
+anything the chroniclers tell us. The followers of Douglas were
+carefully got away, "skailled out of the town," sent for lodging outside
+the castle walls, while the two young brothers were marshalled, as
+became their rank, to table to dine with the King. Whether they
+suspected anything, or whether the little James in his helpless
+innocence had any knowledge of what was going to happen, it is
+impossible to tell. The feast proceeded, a royal banquet with "all
+delicatis that could be procured." According to a persistent tradition,
+the signal of fate was given by the bringing in of a bull's head, which
+was placed before the young Earl. Mr. Burton considers this incident as
+so picturesque as to be merely a romantic addition; but no symbol was
+too boldly picturesque for the time. When this fatal dish appeared the
+two young Douglases seem at once to have perceived their danger. They
+started from the table, and for one despairing moment looked wildly
+round them for some way of escape. The stir and commotion as that tragic
+company started to their feet, the vain shout for help, the clash of
+arms as the fierce attendants rushed in and seized the victims, the
+deadly calm of the two successful conspirators who had planned the
+whole, and the pale terrified face of the boy-king, but ten years old,
+who "grat verie sore," and vainly appealed to the Chancellor for God's
+sake to let them go, make one of the most impressive of historical
+pictures. The two hapless boys were dragged out to the Castle Hill,
+which amid all its associations has none more cruel, and there beheaded
+with the show of a public execution, which made the treachery of the
+crime still more apparent; for it had been only at most a day or two,
+perhaps only a few hours, since the Earl and his brother in all their
+bravery had been received with every gratulation at these same gates,
+the welcome visitors, the chosen guests, of the King. The populace would
+do little but stare in startled incapacity to interfere at such a scene;
+some of them, perhaps, sternly satisfied at the cutting off of the
+tyrant stock; some who must have felt the pity of it, and had
+compunction for the young lives cut off so suddenly. A more cruel
+vengeance could not be on the sins of the fathers, for it is impossible
+to believe that the Regents did not take advantage of the youth of these
+representatives of the famous Douglas race. Older and more experienced
+men would not have fallen into the snare, or at all events would have
+retained the power to sell their lives dear.
+
+If the motives of Livingstone and Crichton were purely patriotic, it is
+evident that they committed a blunder as well as a crime: for instead of
+two boys rash and ill-advised and undeveloped they found themselves in
+face of a resolute man who, like the young king of Israel, substituted
+scorpions for whips, persecuting both of them without mercy, and finally
+bringing Livingstone at least to destruction. The first to succeed to
+William Douglas was his uncle, a man of no particular account, who kept
+matters quiet enough for a few years; but when his son, another William,
+succeeded, the Regents soon became aware that an implacable and powerful
+enemy, the avenger of his two young kinsmen, but an avenger who showed
+no rash eagerness and could await time and opportunity, was in their
+way. The new Earl married without much ceremony, though with a papal
+dispensation in consequence of their relationship, the little Maid of
+Galloway, to whom a great part of the Douglas lands had gone on the
+death of her brothers, and thus united once more the power and
+possessions of his name. He was himself a young man, but of full age, no
+longer a boy, and he would seem to have combined with much of the steady
+determination to aggrandise and elevate his race which was
+characteristic of the Douglases, and their indifference to commonplace
+laws and other people's rights, an impulsiveness of character, and
+temptation towards ostentation and display, which led him at once to
+submission and to defiance at unexpected moments, and gave an element of
+uncertainty to his career. Soon after his succession it would seem to
+have occurred to him, after some specially unseemly disputes among some
+of his own followers, that to get himself into harmony with the laws of
+the realm and gain the friendship of the young King would be a good
+thing to do. He came accordingly to Stirling where James was, very sick
+of his governors and their wiles and struggles, and throwing himself at
+the boy's feet offered himself, his goods and castles, and life itself,
+for the King's service, "that he might have the licence to wait upon His
+Majesty but as the soberest courtier in the King's company," and
+proclaimed himself ready to take any oath that might be offered to him,
+and to be "as serviceable as any man within the realm." James, it would
+seem, was charmed by the noble suitor, and all the glamour of youth and
+impulse which was in the splendid young cavalier, far more great and
+magnificent than all the Livingstones and Crichtons, who yet came with
+such abandon to the foot of the throne to devote himself to its service.
+He not only forgave Douglas all his offences, but placed him at the head
+of his government, "used him most familiar of any man," and looked up to
+him with the half-adoring admiration which a generous boy so often feels
+towards the first man who becomes his hero.
+
+This happened in 1443, when James was but thirteen. It would be as easy
+to say that Douglas displaced with a rush the two more successful
+governors of the kingdom, and took their places by storm--and perhaps it
+would be equally true: yet it would be vain to ignore James as an actor
+in national affairs because of his extreme youth. In an age when a boy
+of sixteen leads armies and quells insurrections, a boy of thirteen,
+trained amid all the exciting circumstances which surrounded James
+Stewart, might well have made a definite choice and acted with full
+royal intention, perhaps not strong enough to be carried out by its own
+impulse, yet giving a real sanction and force to the power which an
+elder and stronger man was in a position to wield. We have no such means
+of forming an idea of the character and personality of the second James
+as we have of his father. No voice of his sounds in immortal accents to
+commemorate his loves or his sadness. He appears first passively in the
+hands of conspirators who played him in his childhood one against the
+other, a poor little royal pawn in the big game which was so bloody and
+so tortuous. His young memory must have been full of scares and of
+guileful expedients, each party and individual about him trying to
+circumvent the other. Never was child brought up among wilder chances.
+The bewildering horror of his father's death, the sudden melancholy
+coronation, and all the nobles in their sounding steel kneeling at his
+baby feet, which would be followed in his experience by no expansion or
+indulgence, but by the confinement of the castle; the terrible
+loneliness of an imprisoned child, broken after a while by the sudden
+appearance of his mother, and that merry but alarming jest of his
+conveyance in the great chest, half stifled in the folds of her
+embroideries and cloth of gold. Then another flight, and renewed stately
+confinement among his old surroundings, monotony broken by sudden
+excitements and the babble in his ears of uncomprehended politics, from
+which, however, his mind, sharpened by the royal sense that these
+mysterious affairs were really his own, would no doubt come to find
+meaning at a far earlier age than could be possible under other
+circumstances. And then that terrible scene, most appalling of all, when
+he had to look on and see the two lads, not so much older than himself,
+young gallants, so brave and fine, to whom the boy's heart would draw in
+spite of all he might have heard against them, so much nearer to himself
+than either governor or chancellor, those two noble Douglases, suddenly
+changed under his eyes from gay and welcome guests to horrified victims,
+with all the tragic passion of the betrayed and lost in their young
+eyes. Such a scene above all must have done much to mature the
+intelligence of a boy full like all his race of spirit and independence,
+and compelled to look on at so much which he could not stop or remedy.
+Thus passive and helpless, yet with the fiction of supremacy in his
+name, we see the boy only by glimpses through the tumultuous crowd about
+him with all their struggles for power, until suddenly he flashes forth
+into the foreground, the chief figure in a scene more violent and
+terrible still than any that had preceded it, taking up in his own
+person the perpetual and unending struggle, and striking for himself the
+decisive blow. There is no act so well known in James's life as that of
+the second Douglas murder, which gives a sinister repetition, always
+doubly impressive, to the previous tragedy. And yet between the two what
+fluctuations of feeling, what changes of policy, how many long
+exasperations, ineffectual pardons, convictions unwillingly formed, must
+have been gone through. That he was both just and gentle we have every
+possible proof, not only from the unanimous consent of the chronicles,
+but from the manner in which, over and over again, he forgives and
+condones the oft-repeated offences of his friend. And there could be few
+more interesting psychological studies than to trace how, from the
+sentiments of love and admiration he once entertained for Douglas, he
+was wrought to such indignation and wrath as to yield to the weird
+fascination of that precedent which must have been so burnt in upon his
+childish memory, and to repeat the tragedy which within the recollection
+of all men had marked the Castle of Edinburgh with so unfavourable a
+stain.
+
+We are still far from that, however, in the bright days when Douglas was
+Lieutenant-Governor of the kingdom, and the men who had murdered his
+kinsmen were making what struggle they could against his enmity, which
+pursued them to the destruction of one family and the frequent hurt and
+injury of the other. How Livingstone and his household escaped from time
+to time but were finally brought to ruin, how Crichton wriggled back
+into favour after every overthrow, sometimes besieged in his castle for
+months together, sometimes entrusted with the highest and most
+honourable missions, it would be vain to tell in detail. James would
+seem to have yielded to the inspiration of his new prime minister for a
+period of years, until his mind had fully developed, and he became
+conscious, as his father had been, of the dangers which arose to the
+common weal from the lawless sway of the great nobles, their continual
+feuds among themselves, and the reckless independence of each great
+man's following, whose only care was to please their lord, with little
+regard either for the King and Parliament or the laws they made. During
+this period his mother died, though there is little reason to suppose
+that she had any power or influence in his council, or that her loss was
+material to him. She had married a second time, another James Stewart
+called the Black Knight of Lorne, and had taken a considerable part in
+the political struggles of the time always with a little surrounding of
+her own, and a natural hope in every change that it might bring her son
+back to her. It is grievous that with so fair a beginning, in all the
+glow of poetry and love, this lady should have dropped into the position
+of a foiled conspirator, undergoing even the indignity of imprisonment
+at the hands of the Regents whom she sometimes aided and sometimes
+crossed in their arrangements. But a royal widow fallen from her high
+estate, a queen-mother whose influence was feared and discouraged and
+every attempt at interference sternly repressed, would need to have been
+of a more powerful character than appears in any of her actions to make
+head against her antagonists. She died in Dunbar in 1446, of grief, it
+is said, for the death of her husband, who had been banished from the
+kingdom in consequence of some hasty words against the power of the
+Douglas, of whom however, even while he was still in disgrace, Sir James
+Stewart had been a supporter. Thus ended in grief and humiliation the
+life which first came into sight of the world in the garden of the great
+donjon at Windsor some quarter of a century before, amid all the
+splendour of English wealth and greatness, and all the sweet
+surroundings of an English May.
+
+James was married in 1450, when he had attained his twentieth year, to
+Mary of Gueldres, about whom during her married life the historians find
+nothing to say except that the King awarded pardon to various
+delinquents at the request of the Queen--an entirely appropriate and
+becoming office. No doubt his marriage, so distinct as a mark of
+maturity and independence, did something towards emancipating James from
+the Douglas influence; and it is quite probable that the selection of
+Sir William Crichton to negotiate the marriage and bring home the bride
+may indicate a lessening supremacy of favour towards Douglas in the mind
+of his young sovereign. Pitscottie records a speech made to the Earl and
+his brothers by the King, when he received and feasted them after their
+return from a successful passage of arms with the English on the Border,
+in which James points out the advantage of a settled rule and lawful
+authority, and impresses upon them the necessity of punishing robbers
+and reivers among their own followers, and seeing justice done to the
+poor, as well as distinguishing themselves by feats of war. By this time
+the Douglases had once more become a most formidable faction. The head
+of the house had so successfully worked for his family that he was on
+many occasions surrounded by a band of earls and barons of his own
+blood, his brothers having in succession, by means of rich marriages or
+other means of aggrandisement, attained the same rank as himself, and,
+though not invariably, acting as his lieutenants and supporters, while
+his faction was indefinitely increased by the followers of these cadets
+of his house, all of them now important personages in the kingdom. It
+was perhaps the swelling pride and exaltation of a man who had all
+Scotland at his command, and felt himself to have reached the very
+pinnacle of greatness, which suggested the singular expedition to France
+and Rome upon which Douglas set forth, in the mere wantonness of
+ostentation and pride, according to the opinion of all the chroniclers,
+to spread his own fame throughout the world, and show the noble train
+and bravery of every kind with which a Scottish lord could travel. It
+was an incautious step for such a man to take, leaving behind him so
+many enemies; but he would seem to have been too confident in his own
+power over the King, and in his greatness and good fortune, to fear
+anything. No sooner was he gone, however, than all the pent-up
+grievances, the complaints of years during which he had wielded almost
+supreme power in Scotland, burst forth. The King, left for the first
+time to himself and to the many directors who were glad to school him
+upon this subject, was startled out of his youthful ease by the tale of
+wrong and oppression which was set before him. No doubt Sir William
+Crichton would not be far from James's ear, nor the representatives of
+his colleague, whom Douglas had pursued to the death. The state of
+affairs disclosed was so alarming that John Douglas, Lord Balvenie, the
+brother of the Earl, who was left his procurator and representative in
+his absence, was hastily summoned to Court to answer for his chief.
+Balvenie, very unwilling to risk any inquisition, held back, until he
+was seized and brought before the King. His explanations were so little
+satisfactory, that he was ordered at once to put order in the matter,
+and to "restore to every man his own:" a command which he received
+respectfully, but as soon as he got free ignored altogether, keeping
+fast hold of the ill-gotten possessions, and hoping, no doubt, that the
+momentary indignation would blow over, and all go on as before. James,
+however, was too much roused to be trifled with. When he saw that no
+effect was given to his orders he took the matter into his own hands.
+The Earl of Orkney with a small following was first sent with the King's
+commission to do justice and redress wrongs: but when James found his
+ambassador insulted and repulsed, he took the field himself, first
+making proclamation to all the retainers of the Douglas to yield to
+authority on pain of being declared rebels. Arrived in Galloway, he rode
+through the whole district, seizing all the fortified places, the narrow
+peel-houses of the Border, every nest of robbers that lay in his way,
+and, according to one account, razed to the ground the Castle of Douglas
+itself, and placed a garrison of royal troops in that of Lochmaben, the
+two chief strongholds of the house. But James's mission was not only to
+destroy but to restore. He divided the lands thus taken from the House
+of Douglas, according to Pitscottie, "among their creditors and
+complainers, till they were satisfied of all things taen from them,
+whereof the misdoers were convict." This, however, must only have
+applied, one would suppose, to the small losses of the populace, the
+lifted cows and harried lands of one small proprietor and another. "The
+King," adds the same authority, "notwithstanding of this rebellion, was
+not the more cruel in punishing thereof nor he was at the beginning:"
+while Buchanan tells us that his clemency and moderation were applauded
+even by his enemies.
+
+This is throughout the opinion which we find of James. He was capable of
+being moved to sudden violent indignation and hasty action, as was too
+distinctly demonstrated afterwards; but the hasty outburst once over
+came back at once without rancour to his natural benignity, always
+merciful, slow to anger, ready to hear whatever the accused might have
+to say for himself, and to pardon as long as pardon was possible.
+Notwithstanding the rebellious and audacious contempt of all authority
+but their own shown by the Douglas party, notwithstanding the standing
+danger of their insolent power, their promises so often broken, their
+frequent submissions and actual defiance, his aim in all his dealings
+with them was rather to do justice to the oppressed than to punish the
+guilty. His genial temper, and that belief in his kind which is always
+so ingratiating a quality, is proved by the account Major gives of his
+life on those military expeditions which from this time forth occupied
+so much of his time. He lived with his soldiers as an equal, that
+historian tells us, eating as they did, without the precaution of a
+taster, which Major thinks highly imprudent, but which would naturally
+bind to the frank and generous monarch the confidence and regard of his
+fellow-soldiers, and the captains with whom he shared the sometimes
+scanty provisions of the campaign.
+
+News of these strange events was conveyed to Douglas, now in England on
+his return from the pilgrimage of pride and ostentation to which, though
+it was professedly for the Papal jubilee, no one attempts to give a
+religious character. He was returning at his leisure, lingering on his
+way, not without suspicion of secret treaties with the English in
+support of the party of York, though all the prepossessions of Scotland
+and King James were on the other side: but hurried home on hearing the
+news, and was politic enough to make immediate submission as soon as he
+became aware of the seriousness of the crisis, promising everything that
+could be demanded of him in the way of obedience and respect of "the
+King's peace." Once more he was fully and freely pardoned, his lands,
+with some small diminution, restored, and the King's confidence given
+back to him with a too magnanimous completeness. In the Parliament held
+in Edinburgh in June 1451 he was present, and received back his charters
+in full amity and kindness, to the great satisfaction and pleasure of
+"all gud Scottis men." Later in the year, in his capacity of Warden of
+the Marches, he was employed to assuage the endless quarrels of the
+Border, but during his negotiations for this purpose secretly renewed
+his mysterious and treacherous dealings with England, of which there is
+no very clear account, but which was of all others the kind of treachery
+most obnoxious to his countrymen. So far as would appear, James obtained
+some hint of these clandestine proceedings, and was very angry, "highly
+commoved," as was natural: on hearing which Douglas appeared once more
+to ask pardon, with apparently an inexhaustible confidence in the
+clemency of the young man whom he had guided so long. But the idea of
+some "quyet draucht betwixt him and the King of Ingland," some secret
+understanding with the old enemy, was more serious still than domestic
+rebellion, and though he pardoned at the "great request" of the Queen
+and nobles, the King did not again restore so doubtful a representative
+to the great offices he had held. There would seem to have been a pause
+of consternation on the part of Douglas when he found for the first time
+the charm of his friendship and every petition for pardon ineffectual.
+To attribute the change to old Crichton, who had recovered much of his
+former influence and was again Chancellor, was easy, and the Earl who
+had but the other day sworn the King's peace with all, set an ambush for
+his old opponent, and would have succeeded in killing him but for
+Crichton's son, "ane young valiant man," who overcame the bravos, and
+housed his father safely in his Castle of Crichton. Douglas himself was
+afterwards almost surprised in Edinburgh by Crichton's followers, and
+saved himself only by a hurried departure not unlike a flight.
+
+This disappointment, and the loss of the King's favour, and the apparent
+solidity of his rivals in their place, half maddened the great noble,
+little accustomed to yield to any contradiction. He had been up to this
+time, save in so far as his private feuds and covetousness were
+concerned, on the side of lawful authority; the King's man so long as
+the King was his man, and did not interfere with the growth of his
+wealth and greatness. But now he would seem to have given up hope of
+recovering his hold upon his sovereign, and turned his eyes elsewhere
+for support. The Earl of Crawford in the north country, and the Lord of
+Isles who was also Earl of Ross in the west, were as powerful and as
+intractable as Douglas himself, and more often in open rebellion than in
+amity with the King, a constant danger and disturbance of all good order
+and law. Douglas in his anger made an alliance with these two, by which
+all bound themselves to resent and avenge any injury offered to either.
+It was probably an expedient of rage and despair--the desire of doing
+what was most baneful and insolent to his former friends, such as
+happens often when a breach occurs--as much as a political act; but it
+is evident that in every way Douglas was on the eve of open treachery,
+no longer disposed to keep any terms with the royal master whose
+patience had been exhausted at last. It required, however, a crowning
+outrage to arouse once more James's much-forgiving spirit.
+
+Among the gentlemen of Galloway, the most of whom rode with Douglas and
+supported him in all his high-handed proceedings, too near neighbours to
+venture upon independence, were a few who preferred to hold the other
+side, that of law and justice and the authority of the King. Among them
+was "one called Maclelan, who was tutor of Bombie for the time, and
+sister's son to Sir Patrick Gray, principal servitor to the King, and
+captain of his guard." The refusal of this man to serve in the
+rebellious host under the Earl was immediately punished by Douglas, who
+assailed his house and carried him off prisoner. The story reads like a
+romance, which, however, is no reason for receiving it with discredit. A
+more doubtful circumstance is that it is asserted to have happened in
+Douglas Castle, which had been very recently destroyed by James, and
+which was besides at a great distance from Edinburgh. I hazard a
+conjecture whether it may have happened in the Castle of Abercorn, since
+it must have been impossible for Douglas in Galloway to pursue Sir
+Patrick to the very gates of Edinburgh. Wherever the incident may have
+occurred, the story is, that Sir Patrick Gray, the uncle of the
+prisoner, hastened to the King with the story of his nephew's danger,
+and was at once sent off by James with "a sweit letter of supplication,"
+praying the Earl to deliver over the unfortunate gentleman to the
+messenger for love of the King. The Earl was at dinner when, "bloody
+with spurring, fiery red with haste," Sir Patrick arrived at the castle,
+where the drawbridge was lifted and the doors closed. "The Earle caused
+incontinent draw the boards, and rose and met the said Sir Patrick with
+great reverence and humilitie, because he was the King's principal
+servant and familiar to His Grace." I tell the rest of the tale in the
+words of Pitscottie:--
+
+    "He inquired at the said Patrick if he had dined, who answered that
+    he had not. Then the Earle said there was 'no talk to be had betwixt
+    ane full and ane fasting; therefore ye shall dine, and we shall
+    talke together at length.'
+
+    "In this meane tyme Sir Patrick Gray sat down to his dinner, and the
+    Earle treatted him and made him goode cheare, whereof Sir Patrick
+    was well contented, believing all things to succeed well thereafter.
+    But the Earle of Douglas on the other pairt took a suspicion and
+    conjecture what Sir Patrick's Gray's commission was, and dreading
+    the desyne thereof should be for his friend, the tutor of Bombie;
+    therefore in the meane time when they were at the dinner, talking of
+    merry matters, the Earle caused quietly take forth the tutor of
+    Bombie out of prison, and have him to the greene and there strooke
+    off his head and took the samine away from him, and syne covered a
+    fair cloth on his bodie that nothing might be seene of that
+    treasonable act that was done.
+
+    "In this meane time when dinner was done Sir Patrick Gray presented
+    the King's writing unto the Earle, who reverently received it and
+    considered the effect thereof. He gave great thanks to Sir Patrick
+    Gray, saying he was beholden to him that brought so familiar an
+    writing from his Prince to him, considering how it stood betwixt
+    them at that time: and as to the desire and supplication, it should
+    be thankfullie granted to the King, and the rather for Sir Patrick's
+    sake; and took him by the hand and led him furth to the greene where
+    the gentleman was lying dead, and shew him the manner, and said,
+    'Sir Patrick, you are come a litle too late; but yonder is your
+    sister's son lying, but he wants the head; take his body and do with
+    it what you will.' Sir Patrick answered again with ane sore heart,
+    and said, 'My Lord, ye have taken from him his head, dispone upon
+    the body as ye please;' and with that called for his horse and leapt
+    thereon. And when he was on horseback he said to the Earle on this
+    manner, 'My Lord, an I live ye shall be rewarded for your labour
+    that ye have used at this time, according to your demerits.' At this
+    saying the Earle was highly offended and cryed for horse. Sir
+    Patrick seeing the Earle's fury spurred his horse, but he was chased
+    neare to Edinburgh before they left him, and had it not been his
+    leid horse was so tryed and goode he had been taken."
+
+The scene that ensued when James--awaiting in Edinburgh the return of
+his messenger, without a doubt we may suppose of the obedience of
+Douglas the friend of his youth, the often-pardoned, owing so much to
+his clemency and friendship--saw Sir Patrick arrive breathless and
+haggard, scarcely escaping, though the King's messenger, with his life,
+and heard his story--the insolent contempt, the brutal jest, the cruel
+murder--is one that might well mark the turning-point even in a mind so
+magnanimous. The King had not been entirely without signs of inheriting
+his father's firmness and promptitude; but his gentleness of
+disposition, and strong inclination towards kindness and peace, had in
+general carried the day over his sterner qualities. He had shown both
+sides of his character when he pardoned Douglas and accepted his
+promises of reformation on his return, but cut him off from public
+service and closed all the doors of advancement against him. The
+defiance now addressed to him, the scorn of his letters and request, so
+audaciously shown, raised a sudden storm of indignation in his breast.
+Whether his future action was based on the decision of his council to
+which he submitted, sanctioning on his own part the treachery by which
+alone Douglas could be beguiled within his reach, as the chroniclers, to
+whom such a device was quite justifiable, tell us; or whether when he
+issued his safe-conduct he still hoped to be able to convince the Earl
+of his folly in resisting, and to bring him to a real and effectual
+change of mind, no one can now tell. But James was so little addicted to
+treachery, so fair, tolerant and merciful, that we may well give him the
+benefit of the doubt, and believe that it was with the intention of
+making another effort to bring Douglas back to his right mind and
+allegiance that the King invited him to Stirling, where it was strange
+indeed that with all his enormities on his conscience Douglas ventured
+to come, whatever were the safe-conducts given. "Some sayes he got the
+great seale thereunto before he would grant to come to the King," says
+the chronicle. The fact that he did come however, after all that had
+passed, says much for his confidence in King James and in his own power
+over him, for Douglas must have been very well aware that safe-conducts
+and royal promises were but broken reeds to trust to.
+
+When he arrived in Stirling, whatever lowering looks he might see around
+him--and it is scarcely possible to believe that Sir Patrick Gray for
+one could have entirely cleared his countenance of every recollection of
+their last meeting, of the men-at-arms thundering at his heels, and his
+nephew's body headless on the greensward--Douglas found no change in the
+King, who received and banqueted him "very royally," thinking if it were
+possible "with good deeds to withdraw him from his attempt that he
+purposed to do." After supper the King took his rebellious subject
+aside, into another room opening from that in which they had supped, and
+which is still exhibited in Stirling Castle to the curious stranger, and
+once more reasoned with him on his conduct. No private matter would seem
+to have been introduced, the treasonable league which the Earl had made
+with Crawford and Ross, rebels against the lawful authority of the
+kingdom, being the subject on which James put forth all his strength of
+argument. Douglas, Pitscottie tells us, answered "verrie proudlie," and
+the argument grew hot between the two men, of whom one had always
+hitherto been the conqueror in every such passage of arms. It was
+probably this long habit of prevailing that made the proud Earl so
+obstinate, since to submit in words had never heretofore been difficult
+to him. At last the dispute came to a climax, in the distinct refusal of
+Douglas to give up his traitor-allies. "He said he myt not nor wald
+not," says a brief contemporary record. "Then the King said, 'False
+traitor, if you will not, I sall,' and stert sodunly till him with ane
+knyf." "And they said," adds this chronicle with grim significance,
+"that Patrick Gray straik him next the King with ane pole ax on the
+hed." The other companions crowded round, giving each his stroke. And
+thus within a short space of years the second Earl of Douglas was killed
+in a royal castle, while under a royal safe-conduct, at a climax of
+hopeless discord and antagonism from which there seemed no issue. The
+exasperation of the King, the dead-lock of all authority, the absolutely
+impracticable point at which the two almost equal powers had arrived,
+account for, though they do not excuse, such a breach of faith. I prefer
+to believe that James had at least no decided purpose in his mind, but
+hoped in his own power to induce Douglas to relinquish these alliances
+which were incompatible with his allegiance; but that the sudden
+exasperation with which he became convinced of his own powerlessness to
+move him brought about in a moment the fatal issue (with who knows what
+sudden wild stimulus of recollection from the murder of which he had
+been a witness in his childhood?) which statesmen less impulsive had
+already determined upon as necessary, though probably not in this sudden
+way.
+
+[Illustration: ST. ANTHONY'S CHAPEL, AND ST. MARGARET'S LOCH]
+
+The "Schort Memorial of the Scottis Cronikles," called the Auchinleck
+Chronicle, gives a brief but striking account of the proceedings that
+followed. Earl Douglas's retainers and kinsmen would seem to have been
+struck dumb by the event, and probably fled in horror and dismay; but it
+was not till long after, when the King had left Stirling, that the
+younger brothers returned, on St. Patrick's Day in Lent, bringing with
+them the safe-conduct with all its seals, which they exhibited at the
+cross and dragged through the streets tied to a horse's tail, with many
+wild and fierce words against the King and all that were with him,
+ending by spoiling and burning the town. As James was no longer in it,
+however, nor apparently any one who could resist them, this was a cheap
+and unsatisfactory vengeance.
+
+Some months after, in the summer of 1452, a Parliament was held at
+Edinburgh, in which the three Estates passed a declaration that no
+safe-conduct had been given on that fatal occasion--a declaration which
+it is evident no one believed, and which probably was justified by some
+quibble which saved the consciences of those who asserted it. The new
+Earl, James Douglas, was summoned to appear at this Parliament, but
+answered by a letter under his seal and that of his brother, which was
+secretly affixed to the door of the Parliament House, "declynand from
+the King, saying that they held not of him, nor would hold with him,
+with many other slanderous words, calling them traitors that were his
+secret council." Some say it was upon the church doors that this
+defiance was attached. In any case it must have produced a wonderful hum
+and commotion through the town, where already no doubt the slaying of
+the Douglas had been discussed from every point of view--at the cross,
+and among the groups at the street corners, where there would be many
+adherents of the Douglas, and many citizens ready to discuss the new
+event and all its possible consequences. The Parliament was followed by
+a general muster upon the Burrowmuir, where the barons and their men
+gathered, with all their spears and steel caps glistening in the June
+sunshine, with an apparent intention of pursuing the race to its
+stronghold and making an end of it. The raid, which was led by the King
+in person, with an army of some thirty thousand men, accomplished little
+however, doing more mischief than good the chronicle says, treading down
+the new corn, and spoiling the country "right fellonly," notwithstanding
+the King's presence. The result, at all events, was complete submission
+on the part of the new Earl, accompanied by a promise to bear no enmity,
+a promise often made but altogether impossible in the fifteenth century
+to mortal flesh and blood.
+
+It was scarcely possible however, short of a moral miracle, that such a
+thing could happen as the abandonment of the entire policy of the house
+of Douglas at a moment when their minds were embittered by so great a
+tragedy. The new Earl was not a mere soldier, still less a courtier, but
+a man of some culture, originally intended, it is said, for the Church,
+though this does not seem to have withheld him from taking part in the
+tumults of the time. Nor did it restrain him from marrying his brother's
+widow, the hapless Maid of Galloway, whose share of the Douglas lands
+made her indispensable to her two warlike cousins, though it seems
+uncertain whether either of the two marriages, which necessitated two
+dispensations from the Pope, was anything but nominal. After his
+submission James Douglas was employed as his brother had been in the
+arrangement of terms of truce with England, which was too great a
+temptation for him, and led to further treasonable negotiations. He
+would seem also to have renewed his brother's alliances with the rebels
+of the north: and in a very brief period the nominal peace and doubtful
+vows were all thrown to the winds, and this time there seems to have
+been no question of partial rebellion, but every indication that a civil
+war, rending the entire country in two, was about to break forth.
+Douglas had the strong backing of England behind him, the support of the
+Highland hordes always ready to be poured upon the peaceful country, and
+many great lords in his immediate train. He had raised an army of, it is
+said, forty thousand men, an enormous army for Scotland, and it was
+evident that the struggle was one of life and death.
+
+At this moment it would seem that King James for the first time lost
+heart. He had been fighting during all the beginning of the year 1455,
+reducing the west and south, the Douglas country, to subjection and
+desolation. But when he found himself menaced by an army as great as
+anything he could muster, with the angry north in the background and
+clouds of half-savage warriors on the horizon, the King's heart sank. He
+is said to have left Edinburgh in disgust and depression, and taken ship
+at Leith for St. Andrews, to seek counsel from the best and most
+trustworthy of his advisers, a man whose noble presence appears in the
+distracted history with such a calm and sagacious steadfastness that we
+can well understand the agitated King's sudden impulse towards him at
+this painful period of his career. Bishop Kennedy had himself suffered
+from the lawlessness of the Douglas retainers: and he too had royal
+blood in his veins. He occupied one of the highest positions in the
+Church, and his wisdom and strength had made him one of the most
+prominent statesmen in the kingdom. James arrived hastily, according to
+the chronicle, unexpected, and with many signs of distress and anxiety.
+He betrayed to the Bishop his weariness of the ever-renewed struggle,
+and of the falsehood and treachery which, even if victorious, were all
+he had to encounter, the failure of every pledge and promise, the faith
+sworn one day which failed him the next, and the deep discouragement
+with all things round him which had taken possession of his mind. The
+wise prelate heard this confession of heart-sickness and despondency,
+and with a fatherly familiarity bade the young King sit down to meat,
+which he much wanted, while he himself went to his oratory to pray for
+enlightenment. That James thought no less than to throw up the struggle
+and retire from his kingdom, is what the old writers say. But when, with
+his bosom lightened by utterance of his trouble, and his courage a
+little restored by food and rest, the Bishop came back to him with a
+cheerful countenance from his prayers, the King took heart again.
+Kennedy produced to him the old image of the sheaf of arrows which,
+bound together, were not to be broken, but one by one could easily be
+snapt asunder, and advised him to make proclamation of a free pardon to
+all who would throw down their arms and make submission, and to march at
+once against the rebel host with full confidence of victory. Inspired by
+this advice, and by the companionship of the Bishop who went with him,
+the King set out to meet the rebels, though with an army inferior in
+number to theirs. Douglas, from some unexplained reason, wavered and
+hesitated, taking no active step, and gave Bishop Kennedy time to put
+his own suggestion in practice in respect to his nephew Lord
+Hamilton--who was one of Douglas's chief supporters--sending secret
+messengers to him to urge him to submission. Hamilton no doubt had
+already perceived signs of wavering purpose and insecurity in the
+heterogeneous host, in which were many whose hearts failed them at sight
+of the King's banners--men who were apt to rebellion without being wound
+up to the extreme point of civil war: but he had "ane kyndlie love to
+Earl Douglas" as well as a regard for his own honour, and would not
+lightly desert his friend. While thus uncertain he appealed to Douglas
+to know what he meant to do, warning him that the longer he hesitated,
+the less would be the forces at his disposal. Douglas replied haughtily
+that if he were tired of waiting he might go when he pleased--an
+indiscreet answer, which decided Hamilton to withdraw and throw himself
+upon the King's promised mercy. The same night he went over to the royal
+army, carrying with him so many that "on the morn thereafter the Earl
+Douglas had not ane hunder men by his own household," the whole host
+having melted away. Never was a greater risk for a monarchy nor a more
+easy and bloodless escape. The Earl fled to the depths of his own
+country and thence to England, where he lived long a pensioned
+dependant, after all his greatness and ambition, to reappear in history
+only like a ghost after many silent years.
+
+Amid all these bewildering and bitter struggles, in which much misery
+was no doubt involved, it is recorded of the King that he never lost his
+humane character, and that even in the devastations he was forced to
+sanction or command, the cruel reprisals carried out over all the south
+of Scotland, his severity was always tempered with mercy. "He was not so
+much feared as a king as loved like a father," says Major. This luminous
+trait appears through all the darkness of the vexed and furious time.
+The King was always ready to pardon at a word, to believe in the vows
+and receive the submission of the fiercest rebels. One curious evidence
+of the confidence felt in him was shown by the widow of the murdered
+Earl, Margaret Douglas, the Maid of Galloway, a woman doubly injured in
+every relation--the sister of the young Earl murdered at Edinburgh,
+married by his successor in order to reunite the Douglas patrimony, a
+great portion of which went to her as her brother's heir--and again
+forced into another and unlawful marriage by her husband's brother,
+immediately upon his death, for the same end. James received this
+fugitive kindly, restored to her part of the lands of her family, and
+finally married her--thus freeing her from the lawless bond into which
+she had been driven--to his own step-brother, John, Earl of Atholl, "the
+Black Knight of Lorne's son;" upon hearing of which another fugitive of
+a similar description appeared upon the scene.
+
+    "When the Earl of Ross's wyff understood the King to be some pairt
+    favourable to all that sought his grace she fled also under his
+    protection to eschew the cruel tyranny of her husband, which she
+    dreaded sometyme before. The King called to remembrance that this
+    woman was married not by her own counsel to Donald of the Isles (the
+    Earl of Ross). He gave her also sufficient lands and living whereon
+    she might live according to her estate."
+
+The case of women, and especially heiresses, in that lawless age must
+have been miserable indeed. Bandied about from one marriage to another,
+forced to accept such security as a more or less powerful lord could
+give, and when he was killed to fall victim to the next who could seize
+upon her, or to whom she should be allotted by feudal suzerain or
+chieftain, the mere name of a king who did not disdain a woman's plaint,
+but had compassion and help to give, must have conveyed hope to many an
+unhappy lady bound to a repugnant life. James would seem to have been
+the only man who recognised the misery to which such unconsidered items
+in the wild and tumultuous course of affairs might be driven.
+
+Thus King James and Scotland with him were delivered from the greatest
+and most dangerous of the powerful houses that held the country in fear.
+Shortly after he conquered, partly by arms, partly by the strain of a
+universal impulse, which seemed to rouse the barons to a better way,
+those great allies in the north who held the key of the Highlands, the
+Earl of Crawford and the Earl of Ross, so that at last something of a
+common rule and common sentiment began to move the country. It is almost
+needless to say that James took advantage of this temporary unity and
+enthusiasm in order to invade England--a thing without which no Scots
+King could be said to be happy. The negotiations by which he was at once
+stimulated and hindered--among others by ambassadors from the Duke of
+York to ask his help against Henry VI, with orders to arrest his army on
+their way--are too complicated to be entered upon; but at last the Scots
+forces set out and, after various successes, James found himself before
+Roxburgh, a town and castle which had remained in the hands of the
+English from the time when the Earl of March deserted his country for
+England in the reign of Robert III. The town was soon taken, but the
+castle, in which there was a brave garrison, stood out manfully. This
+invasion of the Borders, and opportunity of striking a blow at the "auld
+enemy," was evidently an act of the highest policy while yet the
+surgings of civil war were not entirely quieted, and a diversion of
+ideas as well as new opportunities of spoil were peculiarly necessary.
+Its first excellent result was that Donald of the Isles, the Earl of
+Ross and terror of the north country, whose submission had been but
+provisionally accepted, and depended upon some evidence of real desire
+for the interest of the common weal, suddenly appeared with "ane great
+armie of men, all armed in the Highland fashion," and claimed the
+vanguard, the place of honour, and to be allowed to take upon him "the
+first press and dint of the battell." James received this unexpected
+auxiliary with "great humanitie," but prudently provided, before
+accepting his offer, which apparently, however, was made in all good
+faith, that Donald should "stent his pavilliones a little by himself,"
+until full counsel had been taken on the subject. The army was also
+joined by "a great company of stout and chosen men," under the Earl of
+Huntly, whose coming "made the King so blyth that he commanded to charge
+all the guns and give the castle ane new volie." James would seem
+throughout to have felt the greatest interest in the extraordinary new
+arm of artillery which had made a revolution in warfare. He pursued
+siege after siege with a zeal in which something of the ardour of a
+military enthusiast and scientific inquirer mingled with the necessities
+of the struggle in which he was engaged. The "Schort Cronikle," already
+quoted, describes him as lingering over the siege of Abercorn, "striking
+mony of the towers down with the gret gun, the whilk a Franche man shot
+richt wele, and failed na shot within a fathom where it was charged him
+to hit." And when, in the exultation of his heart to see each new
+accession of force come in, he ordered "a new volie" against the stout
+outstanding walls, the excitement of the discharge, the eagerness of an
+adept to watch the effect, no doubt made this dangerous expression of
+satisfaction a real demonstration of pleasure.
+
+[Illustration: MONS MEG]
+
+King James had attained at this time a success which probably a few
+years before his warmest imagination could not have aspired to. He had
+brought into subjection the great families which had almost contested
+his throne with him. Douglas, the highest and most near himself, had
+been swept clean out of his way. The fiercest rebel of all, the head of
+the Highland caterans, with his wild host in all their savage array, was
+by his side, ready to charge under his orders. The country, drained of
+its most lawless elements, was beginning to breathe again, to sow its
+fields and rebuild its homesteads. Instead of the horrors of civil war
+his soldiers were now engaged in the most legitimate of all
+enterprises--the attempt to recover from England an alienated
+possession. Everything was bright before him, the hope of a great reign,
+the promise of prosperity and honour and peace.
+
+It is almost a commonplace of human experience that in such moments the
+blow of fate is near at hand. The big guns which were a comparatively
+new wonder, full of interest in their unaccustomed operation, were still
+a danger as well as a prodigy, and James would seem to have forgotten
+the precautions that were considered necessary in presence of an
+armament still only partially understood. The historian assumes, as
+every human observer is apt to do in face of such a calamity, a tone of
+blame. "This Prince," says the chronicle with a shrill tone of
+exasperation in the record of the catastrophe, "more curious than became
+the majestie of a king, did stand hard by when the artilliarie was
+discharging." And in a moment all the labours and struggles, and the
+hope of the redeemed kingdom and all the prosperity that was to come,
+were at an end. One can imagine the sudden dismay in the group around
+him, the rush of his attendants, his own feeble command to keep silence
+when some cry of horror rose from the pale-faced circle. His thigh had
+been broken, "dung in two," by the explosion of the gun, "by which he
+was struken to the ground, and died hastilie thereafter," with no time
+to say more than to order silence, lest the army should be discouraged
+and the siege prove in vain.
+
+So ended the troublous reign of the second James, involved in strife and
+warfare from his childhood, vexed by the treacheries and struggles over
+him of his dearest friends, full of violence alien to his mind and
+temper, which yet was justified by his example at the most critical
+moment of his life. He made his way through continual contention,
+intrigue, and blood, for which he was not to blame, to such a settlement
+of national affairs as might have consolidated Scotland and made her
+great--by patience and firmness and courage, and conspicuously by mercy,
+notwithstanding one crime. And when the helm was in his hands, and a
+fair future before him, fell, not ignominiously indeed, yet uselessly, a
+noble life thrown away, leaving once more chaos behind him. He was only
+twenty-nine when the thunderbolt thus falling from a clear sky destroyed
+all the hopes of Scotland; yet had reigned long, for twenty-three years
+of trouble, tumult, and distress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+JAMES III: THE MAN OF PEACE
+
+
+Again the noises cease save for a wail of lamentation over the dead. The
+operations of war are suspended, the dark ranks of the army stand aside,
+and every trumpet and fatal cannon is silent while once more a woman and
+a child come into the foreground of the historic scene. Once more, the
+most pathetic figure surely in history, a little startled boy clinging
+to his mother--not afraid indeed of the array of war to which he has
+been accustomed all his life, and perhaps with an instinct in him of
+childish majesty, the consciousness which so soon develops even in an
+infant mind, of unquestioned rank, but surrounded by the atmosphere of
+horror and affright in which he has been taken from among his
+playthings--stands forth to be hastily enveloped in the robes so
+pitifully over-large of the dead monarch. The lords, we are told, sent
+for the Prince in the first sensation of the catastrophe, and had him
+crowned at Kelso, feeling the necessity of that central name at least,
+round which to rally. They were not always respectful of the real King
+when they had him, yet the divinity which hedged the title, however
+helpless the head round which it shone, was felt to be indispensable to
+the unity and strength of the kingdom. Mary of Gueldres in her sudden
+widowhood would seem to have behaved with great dignity and spirit at
+this critical moment. She is said to have insisted that the siege should
+not be abandoned, but that her husband's death might at least accomplish
+what his heart had been set upon; and the army after a moment of
+despondency was so "incouraged" by the coming of the Prince "that they
+forgot the death of his father and past manfullie to the hous, and wan
+the same, and justified the captaine theroff, and kest it down to the
+ground that it should not be any impediment to them hereafter." The
+execution of the captain seems a hard measure unless he was a traitor to
+the Scottish crown; but no doubt the conflict became more bitter from
+the terrible cost of the victory.
+
+[Illustration: THE CANONGATE TOLBOOTH]
+
+Once more accordingly the kingdom was thrown into the chaos which in
+those days attended a long minority, the struggle for power, the
+relaxation of order, and all the evils that follow when one firm hand
+full of purpose drops the reins which half a dozen conflicting
+competitors scramble for. There was not, at first at least, anything of
+the foolish anarchy which drove Scotland into confusion during the
+childhood of James II, and opened the way to so many subsequent
+disasters, for Bishop Kennedy, the dead King's chief counsellor and
+support and a man universally trusted, was in the front of affairs,
+influencing if not originating all that was done: and to him, almost as
+a matter of course, the education of the little heir was at once
+confided. But Mary of Gueldres was a woman of resolution and force, and
+did not give up without a struggle her pretensions to the regency.
+Buchanan relates a scene which, according to his history, took place in
+Edinburgh on the occasion of the first Parliament after James's death.
+The Queen had established herself in the castle while Kennedy was in
+Holyrood, probably with his little pupil, but there is no mention made
+of James. On the second day of the Parliament Mary appeared suddenly in
+what would seem to have been, according to modern phraseology, "a packed
+house," her own partisans having no doubt been warned to be present by
+the action of some energetic "whip," and was, then and there, by a hasty
+Act, carried through at one sitting, appointed guardian and Regent,
+after which summary success she returned with great pomp to her
+apartments, though with what hope of having really attained a tenable
+position it is impossible to say. When the news was carried to Holyrood,
+Bishop Kennedy in his turn appeared before the Estates, which had been
+thus taken by surprise. It is evident that the populace of Edinburgh was
+excited by what had occurred--Mary's partisans no doubt rejoicing, while
+the people in general, always jealous of a foreigner and never very
+respectful of a woman, surged through the great line of street towards
+the castle with all the fury of a popular tumult. The High Street of
+Edinburgh was not unaccustomed to sudden encounters, clashing of swords
+between two passing lords, each with fierce followers, and all the risks
+of sudden brawls when neither would concede the "crown of the causeway."
+But the townsfolk seldom did more than look on, with perhaps an
+ill-concealed satisfaction in the wounds inflicted by their natural
+opponents upon each other. On this occasion, however, the tumult was a
+popular one, involving the interests of the citizens; and it is
+difficult to believe that the inclinations of the townsfolk would not
+rather lean towards the Queen, a woman of wealth and stately
+surroundings, likely to entertain princes and great personages and to
+fill Edinburgh with the splendour of a Court, than to the prelate,
+although his tastes also were magnificent, whose metropolis was not
+Edinburgh but St. Andrews, and who might consider frugality and sobriety
+the best qualities for the Court of a minor. At all events the crowd had
+risen and was ripe for tumult, when Bishop Kennedy persuaded them to
+pause, and reminded them of the mutual forbearance and patience and
+quiet which was above all necessary at such a troublous time. Other
+prelates would seem to have been in his train, for we are told it was
+the intercessions and explanations of "the bishops" which prevented the
+tumult from rising into a fight. The parties would seem to have been so
+strong, and so evenly divided, that the question was finally solved by a
+compromise, Parliament appointing a council of guardians, two on each
+side: Seaton and Boyd for the Queen; John Kennedy, brother of the
+Bishop, and the Earl of Orkney, for the others--an experiment which was
+no more successful than in the previous minority.
+
+The Queen-mother had soon, however, something to occupy her leisure in
+the visit, if visit it can be called, of Henry VI and his Queen and
+household, fugitives before the victorious party of York, who had sought
+refuge from the Scots, and lodging for a thousand attendants--a request
+which was granted, and the convent of the Greyfriars allotted to them as
+their residence. The Queen at the Castle would thus be a near neighbour
+of the royal fugitives, and it is interesting to think of the meeting,
+the sympathy and mutual condolences of the two women. Margaret, the
+fervid Provençal, with her passionate sense of wrong and restless
+energy, and the hopeless task she had of maintaining and inspiring to
+play his part with any dignity her too patient and gentle king; and
+Mary, the fair and placid Fleming, stung too in her pride and affections
+by the refusal of the regency, and her subordination to those riotous
+and unmannerly lords and the proud Bishop who had got the affairs of
+Scotland in his hand. The two Queens might have had some previous
+acquaintance with each other, at a time when both had fairer hopes; at
+all events they amused themselves sadly, as they sat and talked
+together, with fancies such as please women, of making a marriage
+between the little Edward, the future victim of Tewkesbury, then a child
+at his mother's knee, and the little Princess of Scotland who played
+beside him, in the good days when all these troubles should be past, and
+Henry or his son after him should have regained the English crown. One
+follows with regretful interest the noble figure of Margaret, under the
+guise in which that sworn Lancastrian Shakspeare has disclosed it to us,
+before her sweeter mood had disappeared under the pressure of fate, and
+when not curses but hopes came from her mouth in her young motherhood,
+and every recovery and restoration, and happy marriage and royal state,
+were possible for her boy. Mary too had been cut off in the middle of
+her greatness. They were two Queens discrowned, two fair heads veiled
+with misfortune, though nothing irremediable had as yet happened,
+nothing that should make the future a desert though the present might be
+dark; ready to live again in their children, and make premature treaties
+over the little blonde heads at their knee. So natural a scene comes in
+strangely to the records of violence and misery. Nothing more tragic
+could be than the fate of Margaret; and the splendour and happiness had
+been very shortlived in Mary's experience, soon quenched in sudden
+destruction; but to see the two young mothers planning over the heads of
+the little ones how the two kingdoms were to be united, and happiness
+come back in a future that was never to be, while they sat together in
+brief companionship in those strait rooms of Edinburgh Castle, which
+were so narrow and so poor for a queen's habitation, or within the
+precincts of the Greyfriars, looking out upon the peaceful Pentlands and
+the soft hills of Braid, is like the recurring melody in a piece of
+stormy music, the bit of light in a tempestuous picture. It teaches us
+to perceive that, however the firmament of a kingdom may be torn with
+storms, there are everywhere about, even in queens' chambers, scenes of
+tenderness and peace.
+
+Mary died in her own foundation of Trinity College Hospital--the
+beautiful church of which was demolished within living memory--three
+years after her husband, while her children were still very young: and
+thus all further struggles about the regency were ended. She does not
+seem indeed ever to have repeated her one stand for power. Bishop
+Kennedy, we may well believe, was not a man with whom there would be
+easy fighting. His sway procured a little respite for Scotland in the
+ordinary miseries of her career. The Douglases were safely out of the
+way and ended, and there was a truce of fifteen years with England which
+kept danger from that side at arm's length--not, the chroniclers assure
+us, from any additional love between the two countries, but because "the
+Inglish had warres within themselves daylie, stryvand for the crown."
+Kennedy lived some years after the Queen, guiding all the affairs of the
+kingdom so wisely that "the commounweill flourished greatly." He was a
+Churchman of the noblest kind, full of care for the spiritual interests
+of his diocese as well as for the secular affairs which were placed in
+his hands. "He caused all persones (parsons) and vicars to remain at
+their paroche kirks," says Pitscottie, "for the instruction and edifying
+of their flocks: and caused them preach the Word of God to the people
+and visit them that were sick; and also the said Bishope visited every
+kirk within the diocese four times in the year, and preached to the said
+parochin himself the Word of God, and inquired of them if they were
+dewly instructed by their parson and vicar, and if the poor were
+sustained and the youth brought up and learned according to the order
+that was taine in the house of God."
+
+With all this, and many other gifts beside, among which are noted the
+knowledge he had of the "civil laws, having practised in the same," and
+his experience and sagacity in all public affairs--he was a scholar and
+loved all the arts. "He founded," says Pitscottie, "ane triumphant
+college in Sanct Androis, called Sanct Salvatore's College, wherein he
+made his lear (library) very curiouslie and coastlie; and also he biggit
+ane ship, called the Bishop's Barge, and when all three were complete,
+to wit, the college, the lear, and the barge, he knew not which of the
+three was the costliest; for it was reckoned for the time by honest men
+of consideration that the least of the three cost him ten thousand pound
+sterling." Major gives the same high character of the great Bishop,
+declaring that there were but two things in him which did not merit
+approval--the fact that he held a priory (but only one, that of
+Pittenweem) _in commendam_, "and the sumptuositie of his sepulchre."
+That sepulchre, half destroyed--after having remained a thing of beauty
+for three hundred years--by ignorant and foolish hands in the end of the
+eighteenth century, may still be seen in the chapel of his college at
+St. Andrews, the only existing memorial of the time when all Scotland
+was governed from that stormy headland to the great advantage of the
+commonwealth. It is difficult to make out from the different records
+whether the young King remained in the Bishop's keeping so long as he
+lived, which was but until James had attained the age of thirteen, or
+whether the usual struggle between the two sets of guardians appointed
+by Parliament, the Boyds and Kennedies, had begun before the Bishop's
+death. It may be imagined, however, that the evident advantages to the
+boy of Bishop Kennedy's care would outweigh any formal appointment;
+although at the same time the idea suggests itself whether in the
+perversity of human nature this training was not in itself partly the
+cause of James's weaknesses and errors. He would learn at St. Andrews
+not only what was best in the learning of the time, but as much of the
+arts as were known in Scotland, and especially that noble art of
+architecture, which has been the passion of so many princes. And no
+doubt he would see the advancement of professors of these arts, of men
+skilful and cunning in design and decoration, the builders, the
+sculptors, and the musicians, whose place in the great cathedral could
+never be unimportant. A Churchman could promote and honour such public
+servants in the little commonwealth of his cathedral town with greater
+freedom than might be done elsewhere; and James, a studious and feeble
+boy, not wise enough to see that the example of his great teacher was
+here inappropriate and out of place, learned this lesson but too well.
+The King grew up "a man that loved solitariness and desired never to
+hear of warre, but delighted more in musick and politie and building nor
+he did in the government of his realm." It would seem that he was also
+fond of money, which indeed was very necessary to the carrying out of
+his pursuits. It is difficult to estimate justly the position of a king
+of such a temperament in such circumstances, whether he is to be blamed
+for abandoning the national policy and tradition, or whether he was not
+rather conscientiously trying to carry out his stewardry of his kingdom
+in a better way when he withheld his countenance from the perpetual wars
+of the Border, and addressed himself to the construction of noble halls
+and chapels and the patronage of the arts. He was at least so far in
+advance of his time, still concerned with the rudest interests of
+practical life as to be universally misunderstood: and he had the
+further misfortune of sharing the unpopularity of the favourites with
+whom he surrounded himself, as almost every monarch has done who has
+promoted men of inferior position to the high places of the State.
+
+James's supineness, over-refinement, and love of peaceful occupations
+were made the more remarkable from the contrast with two manly and
+chivalrous brothers, the Dukes of Mar and Albany, of fine person and
+energetic tastes, interested in all the operations of war, fond of fine
+horses and gallant doings, and coming up to all the popular expectations
+of what was becoming in a prince. Nothing is more difficult to make out
+at any time than the real motives and meaning of family discords: and
+this is still more the case in an age not yet enlightened by the clear
+light of history. The chroniclers, especially Boece, have much doubt
+thrown upon them by more serious historians, who quote them and build
+upon them nevertheless, having really no better evidence to go upon. The
+report of these witnesses is that James had been warned by witches, in
+whom he believed, and by one Andrew the Fleming, an astrologer, that his
+chief danger arose from his own family, and that "the lion should be
+devoured by his whelps." Pitscottie's account, however, indicates a
+conspiracy between Cochrane and the Homes, whom Albany had mortally
+offended, as the cause at once of these prophecies and the King's alarm.
+The only thing clear is that he was afraid of his brothers, and
+considered their existence a danger to his life. It would appear that he
+had already begun to surround himself with those favourites to whom was
+attributed every evil thing in his reign, when this poison was first
+instilled into his mind: and the blame was attributed rightly or wrongly
+to Cochrane, the chief of his "minions," who very probably felt it to be
+to his interest to detach from James's side the manly and gallant
+brothers who were naturally his nearest counsellors and champions.
+
+There is very little that is authentic known of the men whom James III
+thus elevated to the steps of his throne. Cochrane was an architect
+probably, though called a mason in his earlier career, and had no doubt
+been employed on some of the buildings in which the King delighted,
+being "verrie ingenious" and "cunning in that craft." Perhaps, however,
+to make the royal favour for a mere craftsman more respectable,
+according to the notions of the time, it is added in a popular story
+that the favourite was a man of great strength and stature, whose
+prowess in some brawl attracted the admiration of the timid monarch, to
+whom a man who was a tall fellow of his hands, as well as a person of
+similar tastes to himself, might well be a special object of approval. A
+musician, William Roger, an Englishman, whose voice had charmed the
+King--a weakness which at least was not ignoble, and was shared by
+various other members of his race--was the second of James's favourites:
+and there were others still less important--one the King's tailor--a
+band of persons of no condition, who surrounded him no doubt with
+flattery and adulation, since their promotion and maintenance were
+entirely dependent on his pleasure. King Louis XI was at that time upon
+the throne of France, a powerful prince whose little privy council was
+composed of equally mean men, and perhaps some reflection from the Court
+of the old ally of Scotland made young James believe that this was the
+best and wisest thing for a King to do. Louis was also a believer in
+astrologers, witches, and all the prophecies and omens in which they
+dealt. To copy him was not a high ambition, but he was in his way a
+great king, and it is conceivable that the feeble monarch of Scotland,
+never roused to the height of his father's or grandfather's example,
+took a little satisfaction in copying what he could from Louis. The
+example of Oliver le Dain might make him think that he showed his
+superiority by preferring his tailor, a man devoted to his service, to
+Albany or Angus. And if Louis trembled at the predictions of his Eastern
+sage, what more natural than that James should quake when the stars
+revealed a danger which every spaewife confirmed? No doubt he would know
+well the story of the mysterious spaewife who, had her advice been
+taken, might have saved James I. from his murderers. It is rarely that
+there is not a certain cruelty involved in selfish cowardice. In a
+sudden panic the mildest-seeming creature will trample down furiously
+any weaker being who stands in the way of his own safety, and James was
+ready for any atrocity when he was convinced that his brothers were a
+danger to his life and crown. The youngest, the handsome and gallant
+Mar, was killed by one treachery or another; and Alexander of Albany,
+the inheritor of that ill-omened title, was laid up in prison to be safe
+out of his brother's way.
+
+We find ourselves entirely in the regions of romance in this unfortunate
+reign. Sir Walter Scott has painted for us the uncomfortable Court of
+Louis with his barber and his prophet, and Dumas has reproduced almost
+the identical story in his _Vingt Ans Après_, of the Duke of Albany's
+escape from Edinburgh. There could scarcely be a more curious scene.
+Strangely enough James himself was resident in the castle when his
+brother was a prisoner there. One would have thought that so near a
+neighbourhood would have seemed dangerous to the alarmed monarch, but
+perhaps he thought, on the other hand, that watch and ward would be kept
+more effectually under his own eyes. Mar had died in the Canongate,
+perhaps in the Tolbooth there, according to tradition in a bath, where
+he was bled to death, probably in order that a pretence of illness or
+accident might be alleged; and Edinburgh, no doubt, was full of dark
+whispers of this strange end of one prince, and the danger of the other,
+shut up within the castle walls where the King's minions had full sway,
+and any night might witness a second dark deed. Prince Alexander's
+friends must have been busy and eager without, while he was not so
+strictly under bar and bolt inside that he could not make merry with the
+castle officials now and then, and cheat an evening with pleasant talk
+and a glass of good wine with a young captain of the guard. One day
+there came to him an intimation of the arrival of a ship at Leith with
+wine from France, accompanied by some private token that there was more
+in this announcement than met the ear. Albany accordingly sent a trusted
+servant to order two flasks of the wine, in one of which, contained in a
+tube of wax, was enclosed a letter, in the other a rope by which to
+descend the castle walls. The whole story is exactly as Dumas tells the
+escape of the Duc de Beaufort, though whether the romancer could have
+seen the old records of Scotland, or if his legend is sanctioned by the
+authentic history of France, I am unable to tell. Alexander, like the
+prince in the novel, invited the Captain of the Guard to sup with him to
+try the new wine--an invitation gladly accepted. After supper the
+Captain "passed to the King's chamber to see what was doing, who was
+then lodged in the castle," probably to get the word for the night. It
+is curious to think of the unconscious officer, so little aware of what
+was about to befall, going from the chamber of the captive to that of
+the King, where the little Court would be assembled at their music or
+their "tables," or where perhaps James was taking counsel over the
+leafage of a capital or the spring of an arch--and thence returning when
+all the rounds were made, the great gates barred and bolted, the
+sentries set, to the Prince in his prison, who was a finer companion
+still. Alexander plied the unsuspecting Captain with his wine, spiced or
+perhaps drugged to make it act the sooner, and along with him a warder
+or two who were in constant attendance upon the royal prisoner. A prince
+to drink with such carles! "The fire was hett, and the wyne was strong":
+and the united influence of the spiced drink and the hot room soon
+overcame the revellers, all but Alexander and his trusty man, who had
+taken care to refrain. In Dumas the gaoler was but gagged and bound: but
+in Scotland life went for little, and some of the authorities say that
+when the Prince saw the drunkards in his power, "he lap from the board
+and strak the captane with ane whinger and slew him, and also stiked
+other two with his own hand." He had been informed that he was to die
+the next day if he did not escape that night, which was some excuse for
+him.[2] When the men were thus disposed of, in one way or another, the
+Prince and his servant, "his chamber chyld," stole out with the rope to
+"a quiet place" on the wall. Coming out into the dark freshness and
+stillness of the night after that stifling and horrible room, seeing the
+stars once more and the distant glimmer of the sea, and feeling freedom
+at hand, it was little they would reck of the gaolers, always an
+obnoxious class. One would imagine that it must have been on the most
+precipitous side of the castle rock where there were few sentinels and
+the exit was easy, though the descent terrible. The faithful servant
+tried the rope first but found it too short, and fell, breaking his
+thigh. With what feelings Alexander must have stolen back to get his
+sheets with which to lengthen the rope, pushing through the smoke,
+almost despairing to get off in safety! One is relieved to hear that he
+took his crippled attendant on his back and carried him, some say to a
+safe place--or, as others say, all the way across country to where the
+ship rocked at the pier of Leith. They must have got down to some dark
+spot on the northern slopes, where there would be no city watchman or
+late passer-by to give the alarm, and all would be clear and still
+before them to the water's edge--though a long, weary, and darkling way.
+
+[2] Buchanan's account is not so bloodthirsty: he represents Alexander
+as entertaining his guests with stories of his restoration to favour,
+and approaching deliverance, and dismissing them in all mirth and
+friendliness though heavy with wine: so that his guards having
+incontinently fallen asleep at their posts he was able to make his
+escape.
+
+    "But on the morne when the watchman perceived that the towis were
+    hinging over the walls, then ran they to seek the Captane to show
+    him the matter and manner, but he was not in his own chamber. Then
+    they passed to the Duke's chamber and found the door open and ane
+    dead man lying in the chamber door and the captane and the rest
+    burning in the fire, which was very dollorous to them; and when they
+    missed the Duke of Albanie and his chamber chyld, they ran speedilie
+    and shewed the King how the matter had happened. But he would not
+    give it credence till he passed himself and saw the matter."
+
+These events happened in 1479, when Albany escaped to France, where he
+remained for some years. Up to this period all that is said of him has
+been favourable. His treatment by his brother was undeserved, and there
+is no sign of either treachery or rebellion in him in these early years.
+But when he had languished for a long time in France perhaps,
+notwithstanding a first favourable reception, sooner or later eating the
+exile's bitter bread--exasperation and despair must have so wrought in
+him that he began to traffic with the "auld enemy" of England, and even
+put his hand to a base treaty, by which his brother was to be dethroned
+and he himself succeed to the kingdom by grace of the English king--a
+stipulation which Albany must have well known would damn him for ever
+with his countrymen.
+
+In the meantime James had begun to breathe again in the relief he felt
+to be freed of the presence of both his brothers. He "passed through all
+Scotland at his pleasure, in peace and rest," says the chronicler. But
+it was not long that a king of Scotland could be left in this repose.
+The usual trouble on the Borders had begun again as soon as Edward IV
+was secure upon his throne, and the English king had even sent his ships
+as far as the Firth of Forth, where he burnt villages and spoiled the
+coast under the very eyes of James. Though he would so much rather have
+been left in quiet to complete his beautiful new buildings at Stirling
+and arrange the choir in his new chapel, where there was a double supply
+of musicians that the King might never want this pleasure, yet the
+sufferings of the people and the angry impulse of the discontented
+nobles were more than James could resist, and he set forth reluctantly
+towards the Border to declare war. He had become more and more shut up
+within his little circle of favourites after the death and disappearance
+of his brothers, and Cochrane had gradually acquired a more and more
+complete sway over the mind of his master and the affairs of the realm.
+The favourite had been guilty of all those extravagances which
+constitute the Nemesis of upstarts. He had trafficked in patronage and
+promotion, he had debased the currency, and he was supposed to influence
+the King to everything least honourable and advantageous to the country.
+Last injury of all, he had either asked from the King or accepted from
+him--at least, permitted himself to be tricked out in the name of Mar,
+the title of the young prince whose death he was believed to have
+brought about. The lords of Scotland had already remonstrated with the
+King on various occasions as to the unworthy favourites who usurped
+their place around his throne: and their exasperation seems to have
+risen to a height beyond bearing when they found "the mason," as
+Cochrane is called, with his new liveries and extravagance of personal
+finery, at the head of the army which was raised to avenge the English
+invasion, and in the closest confidence of the King. When they had got
+as far as Lauder the great lords, who were left out of all James's
+private councils, assembled in a council of their own in the parish
+church to talk over their grievances, and to consult what could be done
+to reform this intolerable abuse and to bring back the King to the right
+way. Some, it would appear, went so far as to meditate deposition,
+declaring that James was no longer fit to be their King, having
+renounced their counsel and advice, banished one brother and slain
+another, and "maid up fallowes, maissones, to be lords and earls in the
+place of noblemen." The result of the meeting, however, was that milder
+counsels prevailed so far as James was concerned: "They concluded that
+the King should be taine softlie without harm of his bodie, and conveyed
+to the Castle of Edinburgh with certain gentlemen," while Cochrane and
+the rest were seized and hanged over Lauder Brig.
+
+The question, however, remained, Who should be so bold as to take the
+first step and lay hands upon the favourite? It was now that Lord Gray,
+one of the conspirators, told, with that humour which comes in so grimly
+in many dark historic scenes, the story of the mice and the cat--how the
+mice conspired to save themselves by attaching a bell to the cat to warn
+them of her movements--until the terrible question arose which among
+them should attach to the neck of the enemy this instrument of safety.
+One can imagine the grave barons with half a smile looking at each other
+consciously, in acknowledgment of a risk which it needed a brave man to
+run. Angus, the head of the existing branch of the Douglas family, who
+had already risen into much of the power and importance of his forfeited
+kinsman, answered with equally grim brevity "I'se bell the cat." But
+while he spoke, the general enemy, mad with arrogance and
+self-confidence, and not believing in any power or boldness which could
+stop him in his career, forestalled the necessity. He came to the kirk,
+where no doubt he had heard there was some unauthorised assembly,
+arrayed in black velvet with bands of white, the livery he had chosen, a
+great gold chain round his neck, a hunting horn slung about him adorned
+with gold and jewels, and probably a marvel of mediæval art--and "rushed
+rudlie at the kirk door." The hum of fierce satisfaction which arose
+when the keeper of the door challenged the applicant for admission, and
+the answer, "The Earl of Mar," rang into the silence in which each man
+had been holding his breath, may be imagined. It was Archibald
+Bell-the-Cat, ever hereafter known by that name, who advanced to meet
+the swaggering intruder in all his pride of privilege and place, but
+with a welcome very different from that which the favourite expected,
+who had come, no doubt, to break up the whisperings of the conspirators
+and assert his own authority. Angus pulled the gold chain from
+Cochrane's neck, and said "a rop would sett him better," while another
+Douglas standing by snatched at the horn. Cochrane, astonished but not
+yet convinced that any real opposition was intended, asked between
+offence and alarm, perhaps beginning to doubt the sombre excited
+assembly, "My lords, is it jest or earnest?" It would seem that the grim
+and terrible event of the execution "over the Bridge of Lauder" though
+why this special locality was chosen we are not told, followed with an
+awful rapidity. The chief offender had fallen into the hands of the
+conspirators with such unhoped-for ease that they evidently felt no time
+was to be lost.
+
+    "Notwithstanding the lords held him quiet while they caused certain
+    armed men pass to the King's pavilion, and two or three wyse men
+    with them, and gave the King fair and pleasant words, till they had
+    laid hands on all his servants, and took them and hanged them over
+    the Bridge of Lauder before the King's eyes, and brought in the King
+    himself to the council. Thereafter incontinent they brought out
+    Cochrane and his hands bound with ane tow, behind his back, who
+    desired them to take ane of his own pavilion tows [cords] which were
+    of silk and bind his hands, for he thought shame to be bound with
+    ane hemp tow lyk ane thiefe. The lords answered and said, 'He was
+    worse than a thiefe, he was ane traitour and deserved no better.'"
+
+The last despairing bravado of the condemned man desiring that his hands
+might be bound with a silken cord at least, the horror and wrath of the
+pale King, helpless, looking on, forced into the assembly of the lords
+to witness their pitiless vengeance, are painfully tragical and
+terrible. All James's favourite attendants, the friends of his retired
+leisure and sharers in the occupations he loved, were thus executed
+before his eyes--all but a certain young Ramsay, who was at least a
+gentleman, and who, to save his life, leapt up behind his master upon
+the horse which the King was compelled to mount to see the dreadful deed
+accomplished. Ramsay's life was spared, not to the advantage of Scotland
+as became afterwards apparent.
+
+The historical student will not fail to note how close in almost every
+particular is this grim incident to the catastrophe of Piers Gaveston in
+England in a previous age.
+
+The state of affairs in Scotland after this extraordinary event was more
+extraordinary still, if possible. James was conveyed to Edinburgh,
+
+    "with certain lords in companie with him that took hold on him and
+    keeped him in the said castle and served and honoured him as ane
+    prince ought to be in all things: for he was not put there as a
+    prisoner, but for the maintaining of the commonweill: gave him leave
+    to use all his directions, gifts, and casualties at his pleasure.
+    For nothing was derogat from him by reason of his authority, and all
+    letters was given and proclamations made and printed in his name
+    lykas they were before at his inputting, nor no regent nor governour
+    was chosen at that time, but every lord within his own bounds was
+    sworn to minister justice and to punish theft and slaughter within
+    themselves, or else to bring the doers of the same to the King's
+    justice at Edinburgh."
+
+"Thus there was peace and rest in the country the space of
+three-quarters of a year," says Pitscottie. This, however, is a mistake,
+for the time of the King's retirement was only three or four months,
+from St. Magdalene's Day to Michaelmas. Short or long, it was one of the
+most curious moments of interregnum that history knows. James was
+conveyed back to Edinburgh with every show of respect, attended by the
+triumphant lords, who despised his milder virtues, his preferences and
+tastes, not one of whom could manage either pencil or lute, who cared
+for none of these things--while his strained eyes could still see
+nothing but the vision against the daylight, the impromptu gibbet of the
+high-arched bridge over the Border stream, where his familiar friends
+had been strung up with every sign of infamy. He had to contain within
+himself the rage, the shame, the grief and loneliness of his heart, and
+endure as he best could the exultation which his captors would scarcely
+attempt to conceal. The historians tell us little or nothing of the
+Queen, Margaret of Denmark, to whom James had been married for several
+years, and who had brought with her the full allegiance of the isles,
+the Hebrides, which up to that time had paid a tribute to the
+Scandinavian kingdom, and Orkney and Shetland which were the Queen's
+portion. Whether he found any comfort in her and in his children, when
+he was thus brought back to them to the castle, which would seem to have
+been their favourite residence, we are not told. At all events the shame
+of such a return, and of the captivity which was veiled by so many
+ironical appearances of freedom, must have been grievous to him, even as
+reflected in the eyes of his foreign wife, or the wondering questions on
+his sudden return of his baby son.
+
+How this strange state of things was brought to an end it is difficult
+to tell, for the story is confused and troublesome. According to
+Pitscottie, James's private friends advised him first to take counsel
+with the Earl of Douglas, the long-forfeited and banished Earl,
+represented as being then imprisoned in Edinburgh, which is clearly
+apocryphal: and afterwards with the Duke of Albany, to whom Pitscottie
+is throughout very favourable, making no mention of his undoubted
+treachery. For whatever may be the actual truth of all the curious and
+confused movements that were going on, it appears to be beyond doubt
+that Albany--though he had lately visited the English Court and formed a
+treasonable bargain with Edward IV to dethrone James, and to be himself
+made King in dependence upon England--now acted like a true brother.
+His first use of his alliance with Edward seems to have been for the
+advantage of the sovereign whom he intended to displace, a curious
+paradox of which we can offer no explanation. In this magnanimous act he
+had the support of the English who had engaged to help him, as the
+documents prove, in so different an enterprise: all which is very
+bewildering. Accompanied by the Duke of Gloucester and a small army, he
+suddenly appeared in Edinburgh to deliver the royal prisoner. There
+would seem to have been no fighting of any kind, nor any attempt on the
+part of Albany to dethrone his brother--nothing, indeed, but what would
+appear the most magnanimous action on his part, were not those secret
+treaties in existence bearing a silent testimony against him. When the
+lords heard of the coming of this expedition, which occurred in August
+1482 (Albany having escaped in 1479, three years before), they "drew
+themselves together to ane council," apparently to watch the proceedings
+of the invaders.
+
+    "Soon therafter compeired the Duke of Albanie and the Duke of
+    Gloucester within the town of Edinburgh, with the number of ane
+    thousand gentlemen, and entered within the Tolbooth thereof before
+    the lords of Scotland, who were sitting at ane council at that time,
+    and there very reverently saluted the Duke of Albanie, reverenced
+    him and welcomed him home, and required of him what was his
+    petition. He answered, 'I desire the King's grace, my brother, to be
+    put to libertie,' which was granted to him incontinent. But the
+    Chancellor answered and said, 'My lord, we will grant you your
+    desires; but as to that man that is with you, we know him not, nor
+    yet will we grant nothing to his desire.'"
+
+This speech, which breathes that undying defiance of English
+interference which was the very inspiration of Scotland, is too
+characteristic not to be genuine. "That man" was Richard, afterwards
+Richard III, "Crookback Richard," the bitter and powerful hunchback of
+Shakespeare, whom other authorities have endeavoured in vain to persuade
+us to regard in a more favourable light. Whatever he might be in other
+aspects, in Scotland he was merely Albany's companion, silently aiding
+in what seems a most legitimate and honourable mission. The only way the
+historians can find of reconciling this strangely virtuous and exemplary
+behaviour with the secret engagements between Albany and England is by
+the conjecture that the lords of Scotland were so evidently indisposed
+to favour Albany, and there was so little feeling shown towards him by
+any part of the population, that the treason was silently abandoned, and
+in the hopelessness of playing a treasonable part he played a
+magnanimous one, with the utmost grace and semblance of sincerity; which
+is a bewildering conclusion. In any case he was the deliverer of his
+brother. It would seem to be the fact, however, that James's deliverance
+was much aided by the attitude of the burghers of Edinburgh, who were,
+as so often, on the King's side--and to whom the character of a patron
+of the arts, and promoter of so many persons of their own class into his
+friendship, would naturally be as great a recommendation as it was an
+offence to the others. Their action at this period excited the King's
+gratitude so much that he conferred upon the city a special charter,
+securing the independence of their municipal government, as well as
+their right to levy customs in the port of Leith, and also, it is said,
+a sign of these privileges, in the shape of the standard called the Blue
+Blanket, which still remains in the possession of the Edinburgh guilds,
+with liberty to display it for their king, country, and city rights,
+when occasion calls.
+
+The two Dukes of Albany and Gloucester marched together to the castle,
+preceded by heralds, to claim the King from the officials who had him in
+charge. One can imagine the mingled relief and humiliation of James when
+delivered from that stronghold by the brother who had escaped from it by
+night, within a few hours of the time when he had been ordered for
+execution, and who in the meantime had been an exile. There is no reason
+to suppose that he was aware of the secret understanding with England to
+which his brother had set his seal, so that there was nothing to lessen
+the intensity of the coals of fire thus heaped upon his head. No doubt
+all Edinburgh was in the streets to watch that strange sight, as the
+King rode from the castle gates, past the great Church of St. Giles, and
+down the long line of the Canongate to Holyrood, making his emancipation
+visible to all. Apparently he had not left the castle since he was
+brought into it in shame and misery after the fatal episode at Lauder.
+One wonders how he looked upon the crowd which no doubt would throng
+after him with acclamations--whether thankfully and cheerfully in the
+pleasure of release, or with a revengeful sense of how little he owed to
+their easy applauses. It is said that Albany rode behind him on the same
+horse as an exhibition of amity. It is very probable that James would
+find bitterness in that too, as another humiliation.
+
+The King was no sooner free than he made it evident that he had not
+forgiven the humiliation and shame to which he had been subjected. He
+imprisoned in their turn a number of the lords who had been foremost in
+the death of Cochrane, and would have "justified" them we are told, but
+for the interference of Angus--now too great apparently for James to
+touch--and Albany. For some time after the latter remained with his
+brother, fulfilling the functions of chief counsellor and Prime
+Minister. But whether he displayed his ambition and evil intentions, or
+the old jealousy and terrors of James got the upper hand as the lords
+again became suspicious of him, it is difficult to tell. At all events
+Albany was forced to escape once more for his life, and again took
+refuge in France, where either now or previously, for the chronology is
+difficult to follow, he had made a great marriage. Here he disappears
+altogether from Scottish history, and not long after from life, having
+been killed by accident in a tournament. Had Albany been the elder
+instead of the younger brother it seems very probable that a dark
+chapter might have been left out of the history of Scotland, and a third
+patriotic and energetic King carried on the traditions of the first and
+second James.
+
+But it was scarcely to be looked for that, after all the dissensions
+between the King and the lords, everything should settle into harmony
+again. James is said to have removed to Stirling from Edinburgh, which
+no doubt had acquired painful associations to him from the time of his
+enforced residence there--and to have resumed or completed the buildings
+in which he had taken so much pleasure--especially the great hall of
+Stirling Castle, with all its grotesque and curious ornamentation, which
+seems to prove that Scotland was still much behind in refinement, though
+with a barbaric inspiration of her own. Whether the renewed tumults
+began by the appropriation of certain Church lands hitherto in the power
+of the Homes, for the endowment of the King's new chapel, it is
+difficult to tell, a similar reason having been already alleged for
+disturbances in which the Duke of Albany was the antagonist of that
+powerful family; at all events a very small matter was enough to awake
+again all the old rancours. The malcontents headed by the same men who
+had already inflicted so much suffering and shame upon the King began to
+draw together in alarming numbers. Roused from among his more congenial
+occupations by this renewed commotion, James sent a herald to ask the
+reason of their assembling: but the herald was disrespectfully treated
+and his letters torn in pieces, an insult which seems to have convinced
+the King that the strongest measures of defence were necessary. He is
+said to have strongly fortified Stirling, where Prince James, the heir
+of the kingdom, now a boy of fifteen or sixteen, was. Perhaps the King
+was suspicious of the boy, perhaps his old terrors as to the danger to
+his life which was to arise from his own family had returned to him: for
+the restrictions under which young James was left were exceedingly
+severe and arbitrary. No man was to be allowed to enter the castle,
+great or small, till the King's return, nor was the Prince to be allowed
+to pass the gates "to no game, nor to meet with no man." Pitscottie says
+that Edinburgh Castle was also strengthened, and the King's treasury
+placed in it and all his valuables laid up there. When these precautions
+were taken James embarked "in ane ship of Captane Woode's"--probably the
+most legitimate way in which he could have travelled, the vessel being
+that of the Admiral, Andrew Wood, the greatest sailor in Scotland--and
+went to Fife, from whence he marched to the north, calling the nobles of
+the northern counties round him, and gathering an army with which to
+oppose the greater lords and lairds who awaited him on the other side of
+the Firth of Forth. James's unusual energy must have equally roused and
+alarmed the rebels, against whom the royal name was as a strong tower.
+That such men as Angus and the other great nobles of Scotland, who had
+reduced their King to a puppet with such entire success, should now feel
+it necessary to get possession of Prince James in order to confer
+dignity, on their proceedings seems very strange; but perhaps when
+rebellion comes to the dignity of a pitched battle its flags and
+pretensions are of more importance than when it can so order matters as
+to put on an appearance of acting in the King's own interests, as at
+Lauder. And how far the Prince might be an independent actor in this
+troubled drama there is no evidence to show. He had arrived at an age
+when youths in these early-maturing days acted for themselves; even in
+our own a lad of sixteen would scarcely allow his name to be employed
+against his father without some protest, and could not be treated as a
+child in a conflict so momentous. Therefore it is scarcely possible to
+imagine that the Prince was entirely guiltless. And the spectator cannot
+but enter with warmth into the feelings of the King when he discovered
+what had been done, and that his heir was in the enemy's camp, giving
+substance and reason to their rebellion.
+
+There is a curious story told of how Lord Lindsay of the Byres, a fierce
+and grim baron of Fife, presented on the very eve of the battle "a great
+grey courser" to the King, assuring him that were he ever in extremity
+that horse would carry him, "either to fly or to follow," better than
+any horse in Scotland, "if well sitten"--a present which James accepted,
+and which comes in as part of the paraphernalia of fate. On the morning
+of the day of battle the King mounted this horse, and "rade to ane hill
+head to see the manner of the cuming" of his enemies against him. He saw
+the host defiling "in three battells," with six thousand men in each,
+their spears shining, their banners waving, Homes and Hepburns in the
+front, with Merse and Teviotdale and all the forces of the Border, and
+the men of Lothian in the rear: while in the main body rose the ensigns
+of all the great lords who had already beaten and humbled
+him--Bell-the-Cat and the other barons who had hanged his friends before
+his eyes--but now bearing his own royal standard, with his son among
+them, the bitterest thought of all. James sat upon his fleet horse,
+presented to him the night before with such an ominous recommendation,
+and saw his enemies bearing down upon him--his enemies and his son.
+"Then," says the chronicler, "he remembered the words which the witch
+had spoken to him many days before, that he should be suddenly destroyed
+and put down by the nearest of his kin." For this he had allowed the
+murder of young Mar and driven Alexander of Albany into exile; but who
+can wonder if in his stricken soul he now perceived or imagined that no
+man can cheat the Fates? His own son, his boy! Some nobler poignancy of
+anguish than the mere sick despair and panic of the coward must surely
+have been in his mind as he realised this last and crowning horror. The
+profound moral discouragement of a man caught in the toils, and for whom
+no escape was possible; the sickening sense of betrayal; the wide
+country before him, in which there might still be found some peaceful
+refuge far from these distractions and contradictions of men; the whirl
+of the dreadful yet beautiful sight, companies marching and ever
+marching, spears and helmets shining, banners waving, and all against
+him--a man who had never any pleasure in the pomp and circumstance of
+war. Who can wonder as these hurrying thoughts overwhelmed his mind, and
+the fleet courser pawed the turf, and the wild sweet air blew free in
+his face, inviting him to escape, to flee, to find somewhere comfort and
+peace--that such a man should have yielded to the mad impulse, and in an
+access of despair, longing for the wings of a dove that he might flee
+away and be at rest, have turned from the rising tumult and fled?
+
+Of all the ironies of Fate there could be none more bitter than that
+which drove the hapless fugitive, in growing consciousness of shame,
+like a straw before the wind, across the famous field of Bannockburn.
+What an association to be connected with that victorious name! He had
+aimed at Stirling, but wild with despair and panic and misery missed the
+way. As the grey courser entered the village of Bannockburn at full
+flight a woman drawing water let fall her "pig" or earthen pot in
+affright, and startled the horse; and the King "being evill sitten"
+(having a bad seat) fell from his saddle before the door of the mill.
+The sight of this strange cavalier in his splendid armour, covered with
+foam and dust, borne to the earth like a log by the weight of his
+armour, appalled the simple people, who dragged him inside the mill and
+covered him where he lay with some rough horsecloth, not knowing what to
+do. When he had come to himself James implored the wondering people to
+fetch him a priest before he died. "Who are you?" they asked, standing
+over him. What a world of time had passed in that wild ride! how many
+ages since the dying fugitive lying on the dusty floor and covered with
+the miller's rug was James Stewart, at the head of a gallant army! "This
+morning," he said, with a bitter comprehension of all that had passed
+since then, "I was your King." The miller's wife ran forth to her door
+calling for a priest, and some one who was passing by answered her call;
+but whether he was really a priest, or only one of the stragglers of the
+rebel army, seems uncertain. He came into the mill, hearing no doubt the
+cries of the astonished couple that it was the King, and kneeling down
+recognised the fallen monarch; but instead of hearing his confession,
+drew a knife and stabbed him three or four times in the breast. Thus
+miserably ended James Stewart, the third of the name.
+
+Of all the tragical conclusions to which his family had come this was
+the most deplorable, as his life had been the least satisfactory.
+Whether there was more than weakness to be alleged against him it is now
+impossible to tell; and whether his favourite companions and occupations
+proved a spirit touched to finer issues than those about him, or showed
+only, as his barons thought, a preference for low company and paltry
+pursuits of peace. But howsoever his patronage of the arts, the
+buildings he has left to Scotland, or the tradition of the music and
+gentle pleasures which he loved, may justify him to the reader, it is at
+least clear that his stewardry of his kingdom was a miserable failure,
+and his life a loss and harm to his country. Instead of promoting the
+much-interrupted progress of her development, so far as his individual
+influence went, he arrested and hindered it. And, difficult as the
+position of affairs had been when he succeeded at seven years old to his
+father's uncompleted labours, the situation which he left behind him,
+the country torn in two, one half of his subjects in arms against the
+other, his son's name opposed to his own, and every national benefit
+postponed to the settlement of this quarrel, was ten times more
+difficult and terrible. He was the first of his name whose influence was
+all unfavourable to the progress of the nation, not only by evil
+fortune, but by the disasters of a mind not sufficient for the weight
+and burden of his time. He thus died ignominiously, in the month of June
+1488, having reigned twenty-eight years and lived thirty-five--a short
+lifetime for so much trouble and general misfortune.
+
+[Illustration: ARMS OF JAMES IV OF SCOTLAND
+
+(From King's College Chapel, Old Aberdeen)]
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+JAMES IV: THE KNIGHT-ERRANT
+
+
+The graver records of the nation pause at the point to which we have
+arrived. The tale leaves both battlefield and council chamber, though
+there is an inevitable something of both in the chronicle as there is
+something of daily bread in the most festive day. But it is not with
+these grave details that the historian occupies himself. The most
+serious page takes a glow from the story it has to tell, the weighty
+matters of national life and development stand aside, and it is a knight
+of romance who stands forth to occupy the field. The story of James, the
+fourth of the name, is one of those passages of veritable history in
+which there is scarcely anything that might not be borrowed from a tale
+of chivalry. It is pure romance from beginning to end.
+
+Of the character and personality of the boy whose education was carried
+on under strict surveillance at Stirling we know nothing whatever, until
+he suddenly appears before us in the enemy's camp, whether with his own
+consent or not, or how much, if with his own consent, with any knowledge
+of what he was about, it is difficult to tell. His mother had died while
+he was still a child, and probably for the last few years of his much
+disturbed life James III had but little attention to spare for his son.
+If there is any truth in a curious story told by Pitscottie of a search
+on board Sir Andrew Wood's ship for the murdered King, while yet the
+fact of his death was unknown, and the Prince's wistful address to the
+great sailor, "Sir, are ye my father?" we might suppose that the boy had
+been banished altogether from his father's presence. But perhaps this is
+too slender a foundation to build upon. There can be no doubt, however,
+that after the battle, little honourable to either side, and lost by the
+King's party almost before begun, from which he fled in a panic so
+ignominious and fatal, there was a moment of great perplexity and
+dismay, when King James's fate remained a mystery, and the rebel nobles
+with the boy-prince among them knew not what to do or to say, in the
+doubt whether he was dead or alive, whether he might not reappear at any
+moment with a host from the Highlands or from France, or even England,
+at his back. When they had fully realised their unsatisfactory victory
+they marched to Edinburgh, with the Prince always among them and a chill
+horror about them, unaware what way to look for news of the King. The
+rush of the people to watch their return with their drooping banners and
+faces full of consternation, and wonder at the unaccustomed sight of the
+young Prince which yet was not exciting enough to counterbalance the
+anxiety, the wonder, the perpetual question what had become of the
+King--must have been as a menace the more to the perplexed leaders, who
+knew that a fierce mob might surge up into warfare at any moment, or a
+rally from the castle cut off their discouraged and weary troops. Where
+was the King? Had he perhaps got before them to Edinburgh? was he there
+on that height, misty with smoke and sunshine, turning against them the
+great gun, which had been forged for use against the Douglas: or ready
+to appear from over the Firth terrible with a new army; or in the ships,
+most likely of all, with the great admiral who lay there watching, ready
+to carry off a royal fugitive or bring back strange allies to revenge
+the scorn that had been done to the King? The lords decided to take
+their dispirited and broken array to Leith instead of going to Holyrood,
+and there collected together to hold a council of war. Among the
+confused reports brought to them of what one man and another had seen or
+heard was one, more likely than the rest, of boats which had been seen
+to steal down Forth and make for the _Yellow Carvel_ lying in the
+estuary, with apparently wounded men on board. They sent accordingly to
+summon Sir Andrew Wood to their presence. The sailor probably cared
+nothing about politics any further than that he held for the King--and
+furious with the Lords who had withstood his Majesty declined to come
+unless hostages were sent for his safety. When this was accorded, the
+old sea-lion, the first admiral of Scotland, came gruffly from his ships
+to answer their questions. Whether there was any resemblance between the
+two men, as he stood with his cloak wrapped round him defiant before the
+rebel lords, or if the Prince had, as is possible, been so long absent
+from his father that the vague outline of a man enveloped and muffled
+deceived him, it is impossible to say. But there is a tone of
+penetrating reality in the "Sir, are ye my father?" of the troubled boy,
+perhaps only then aroused to a full comprehension of his position and
+the sense that he was himself guiltily involved in the proceedings which
+had brought some mysterious and unknown fate upon the King. It is
+difficult to see why, accepting from Pitscottie all the rest of this
+affecting narrative, the modern historian should cut out this as
+unworthy of belief, "Who answered," continues the chronicler, "with
+tears falling from his eyes,"
+
+    "'Sir, I am not your father, but I was a servand to your father, and
+    sall be to his authoritie till I die, and ane enemy to them that was
+    the occasion of his doon-putting.' The lords inquired of Captain
+    Wood if he knew of the King or where he was. He answered he knew
+    nothing of the King nor where he was. Then they speired what they
+    were that came out of the field and passed into his ships. He
+    answered: 'It was I and my brother, who were ready to have waired
+    our lives with the King in his defence.' Then they said, 'He is not
+    in your ships?' who answered again, 'He is not in my ship, but would
+    to God he were in my ship safelie, I should defend him and keep him
+    skaithless frae all the treasonable creatures who has murdered him,
+    for I think to see the day when they shall be hanged and quartered
+    for their demerites.'"
+
+The lords would fain have silenced this rude sailor, but having given
+hostages for his safe return were obliged to let him go. There could not
+be a more vivid picture of their perplexity and trouble. They proceeded
+to Edinburgh after this rebuff, coming in, we may well believe, with
+little sound of trumpet or sign of welcome, and with many a threatening
+countenance among the crowds that gazed wistfully upon the boy in their
+midst, who, if the King were really dead, was the King--another James.
+There might be old men about watching from the foot of the Canongate the
+silent cortege trooping along the valley to Holyrood--men who remembered
+with all the force of boyish recollection how the assassins of James I.
+had been dragged and tormented through Edinburgh streets, and might
+wonder and whisper inquiries to their sons whether such a horrible sight
+might be coming again, and what part that pale boy had in the dreadful
+deed? It was but fifty years since that catastrophe, and already two
+long minorities had paralysed the progress of Scotland. How the crowding
+people must have eyed him, as he rode along, the slim stripling, so
+young, so helpless, in the midst of all these bearded men! What part did
+he have in it? Was his father done to death by his orders? Was he
+consenting at least to what was done? Was he aware of all that was to
+follow that hurried ride with the lords, into which he had been beguiled
+or persuaded? James III had to some degree favoured Edinburgh, where,
+notwithstanding his long captivity in the Castle, he had found defenders
+and friends. And there must have been many in the crowd who took part
+with the unfortunate monarch, so mysteriously gone out of their midst,
+and who looked with horror upon the boy who had something at least to do
+with the ruin and death of his father. It was a sombre entry upon the
+future dwelling to which this young James was to bring so much splendour
+and rejoicing.
+
+How these doubts were cleared up and certainty attained we have no sure
+way of knowing. Pitscottie's story is that when the false priest
+murdered the King, he took up the body on his back and carried it away,
+"but no man knew what he did with him or where he buried him." Other
+authorities speak of a funeral service in the Abbey of Cambuskenneth on
+the banks of the Forth--a great religious establishment, of which one
+dark grey tower alone remains upon the green meadows by the winding
+river; and there is mention afterwards of a bloody shirt carried about
+on the point of a lance to excite the indignant Northmen to rebellion.
+But notwithstanding these facts no one ventures to say that James's body
+was found or buried. Masses for the dead were sung, and every religious
+honour paid; but so far as anything is told us, these rites might have
+been performed around an empty bier. At last however, in some way, a
+dolorous certainty, which must by many have been felt as a relief, was
+attained, and the young King was crowned in Edinburgh in the summer of
+1488, some weeks after his father's death. At the same time a Parliament
+was called, and the Castle of Edinburgh, which all this time seems to
+have kept its gates closed and rendered no submission, was summoned by
+the herald to yield, "which was obediently done at the King's command,"
+says the chronicle. There was evidently no thought of rebellion or of
+resisting the lawful sovereign, so soon as it was certain which he was.
+The procession of the herald, perhaps the Lord Lyon himself, with all
+his pursuivants, up the long street to sound the trumpets outside the
+castle gates and demand submission, must have brightened the waiting and
+wondering city with the certainty of the new reign. But the bravery and
+fine colours of such a procession, though made doubly effective by the
+background of noble houses and all the lofty gables and great churches
+in the crowded picturesque centre at the foot of the Castle Hill, were
+not then as now strange to the "grey metropolis of the North." No
+country in Christendom would seem to have so changed under the influence
+of the Reformation as Scotland. The absence of pageant and ceremonial,
+the discouragement of display, the suppression of the picturesque in
+action, in the midst of one of the most picturesque scenes in the world,
+are all of modern growth. In the fifteenth century, and especially in
+the reign that was now begun, the town ran over with bright colour and
+splendid spectacle. When the lists were formed upon the breezy platform,
+overlooking the fair plains of Lothian, the great Firth, and the
+surrounding circle of hills, at the castle gate--how brilliant must have
+been both scene and setting, the living picture and the wonderful frame,
+and how every window would be crowded to see the hundred little
+processions of knights to the jousts and ladies to the tribunes, and the
+King and Queen riding with all their fine attendants "up the toun" all
+the way from Holyrood! Nor would the curiosity be much less when, coming
+in from the country, with every kind of quaint surrounding, the great
+nobles with their glittering retinue, the lairds each with a little
+posse of stout men-at-arms, as many as he could muster, the burgesses
+from the towns, the clergy from all the great centres of the Church, on
+mules and soft-pacing palfreys, would gather for the meetings of
+Parliament. It scarcely wanted a knight-errant like the fourth James,
+with his chivalrous tastes and devices, to fill the noble town with
+brightness, for all these fine sights were familiar to Edinburgh. But
+the brightest day was now to come.
+
+[Illustration: OLD HOUSE IN LAWNMARKET]
+
+The Parliament which assembled in all the emotion of that curious
+crisis, while still the wonder and dismay of the King's tragic
+disappearance were in the air, was a strange one. It was evidently
+convened with the intention of shielding the party which had taken arms
+against James III, while making a cunning attempt to throw the blame on
+those who had stood by him: these natural sentiments being combined with
+the determination, most expedient in the circumstances, to reconcile all
+by punishing none. The young King and the power now exercised in his
+name were in the hands of the lords who had headed the rebellion, Angus,
+Home, Bothwell, and the rest; and while their own safety was naturally
+their first consideration, they had evidently no desire to stir up
+troublesome questions even for the fierce joy of condemning their
+opponents. At one or other of the early Parliaments in this reign,
+either that first held by way of smoothing over matters and preparing
+such an account of all that had happened as might be promulgated by
+foreign ambassadors to their respective Courts--or one which followed
+the easy settlement of an attempt at rebellion already referred to, when
+the Lord of Forbes carried a bloody shirt, supposed to be that of King
+James, through the streets of Aberdeen, and raised a quickly-quelled
+insurrection--there occurs the trial of Sir David Lindsay, one of the
+most quaint narratives of a _cause célèbre_ ever written. The
+chronicler, whom we may quote at some length--and whose living and
+graphic narrative none even of those orthodox historians who pretend to
+hold lightly the ever-delightful Pitscottie, upon whom at the same time
+they rely as their chief authority, attempt to question in this
+case--was himself a Lindsay, and specially concerned for the honour of
+his name. The defendant was Lindsay of the Byres, one of the chief of
+James III's supporters, he who had given the King that ominous gift of a
+fleet courser on the eve of the battle. When he appeared at the bar of
+the house so to speak--before Parliament--the following "dittay" or
+indictment was made against him:--
+
+    "Lord David Lindsay of the Byres compeir for the cruel coming
+    against the King at Bannokburne with his father, and in giving him
+    counsall to have devored his sone, the King's grace, here present:
+    and to that effect gave him ane sword and ane hors to fortify him
+    against his sone: what is your answer heirunto?"
+
+A more curious reversal of the facts of the case could not be, and the
+idea that James the actual monarch could be a rebel against his own son,
+then simply the heir to the crown, is bewildering in its grave defiance
+of all reason. There is not much wonder that Lindsay, "ane rasch man,
+and of rud language, albeit he was stout and hardy in the field and
+exercised in war," burst forth upon the assembled knights and lords,
+upbraiding them with bringing the Prince into their murderous designs
+against the King. The effect of his speech on the assembly would seem to
+have been considerable, and it is very apparent that the party in power
+had no desire to make any fight, for the Chancellor anxiously excused
+Lindsay to the King as "ane man of the old world, that cannot answer
+formallie nor get speech reverentlie in your Grace's presence." This
+roused the brother of the culprit, a certain Mr. Patrick Lindsay,
+otherwise described as a Churchman, who was by no means content to see
+the head of his house thus described, nor yet that Lord Lindsay should
+come "in the King's will," thus accepting forfeiture or any other
+penalties that might be pronounced against him. Accordingly he
+interfered in the following remarkable way:--
+
+    "To that effect he stamped on his brother's foot to latt him
+    understand that he was not content with the decree which the
+    Chancellour proponed to him. But this stamp of Mr. Patrick's was so
+    heavy upon his brother's foot, who had ane sair toe which was
+    painful to him, wherefore he looked to him and said, 'Ye were over
+    pert to stampe upon my foot; were you out of the King's presence I
+    would overtake you upon the mouth.' Mr. Patrick, hearing the vain
+    words of his brother, pled on his knees before the King and the
+    Justice, and made his petition to them in this manner: 'Sir, if it
+    will please your Grace and your honorabill counsall, I desire of
+    your Grace, for His cause that is Judge of all, that your Grace will
+    give me leave this day to speak for my brother, for I see there is
+    no man of law that dare speak for him for fear of your Grace; and
+    although he and I has not been at ane this mony yeires, yet my heart
+    may not suffer me to see the native house whereof I am descended to
+    perish!' So the King and the Justice gave him leave to speak for his
+    brother. Then the said Mr. Patrick raise off his knees, and was very
+    blythe that he had obtained that license with the King's favour. So
+    he began very reverentlie to speak in this manner, saying to the
+    whole lords of Parliament, and to the rest of them that were
+    accusers of his brother at that time, with the rest of the lords
+    that were in the summons of forfaltrie, according to their dittay,
+    saying: 'I beseech you all, my lords, that be here present, for His
+    sake that will give sentence and judgment on us all at the last day,
+    that ye will remember now instantly is your time ... therefore now
+    do all ye would be done to in the administration of justice to your
+    neighbours and brethren, who are accused of their lives and
+    heritages this day, whose judgment stands in your hands. Therefore
+    beware in time, and open not the door that ye may not steik.' Be
+    this Mr. Patrick had ended his speeches, the Chancellour bid him say
+    something in defence of his brother, and to answer to the points of
+    the summons made and raised upon his brother and the rest of the
+    lords and barons. Then Mr. Patrick answered again and said: 'If it
+    please the King's grace, and your honours that are here present, I
+    say the King should not sit in judgment against his lords and
+    barons, because he has made his oath of fidelity when he received
+    the crown of Scotland that he should not come in judgment against
+    his lords and barons in no action where he is partie himself. But
+    here His Grace is both partie, and was at the committing of the
+    crime himself, therefore he ought not, neither by the law of God nor
+    of man, to sit in judgment at this time; wherefore we desire him, in
+    the name of God, to rise and depart out of judgment, till the matter
+    be further discussed conform to justice.'"
+
+[Illustration: ST. ANTHONY'S CHAPEL]
+
+This bold request apparently commended itself to the Parliament, for we
+hear that the Chancellor and lords considered it reasonable, and the
+King was accordingly desired "to rise up and pass into the inner
+tolbooth, which," adds Pitscottie, "was very unpleasant to him for the
+time, being ane young prince sittand upon his royall seat to be raised
+by his subjects." Mr. Patrick so pressed his advantage after this
+strange incident, and the argument of the young King's presence and
+complicity in all that had happened was so unanswerable, added to some
+inaccuracy in the indictment, of which the keen priest made the most,
+that the summons was withdrawn, and Lindsay along with all the other
+barons of his party would seem to have shared in the general amnesty, as
+probably was the intention of all parties from the beginning. For the
+victors, who were victors by a chance, were not powerful enough to carry
+matters with a high hand, and their opponents, though overcome, were too
+strong to be despised. It was better for all to gather round the new
+King, who had no evil antecedents nor anything to prevent a new
+beginning of the most hopeful kind. The scene ends with characteristic
+liveliness. "The lord David Lindsay was so blyth at his brother's
+sayings that he burst forth saying to him, 'Verrilie, brother, ye have
+fine pyet words. I should not have trowed, by St. Amarie, that you had
+sic words'"--an amusing tribute of half-scornful gratitude from the
+soldier to the Churchman whose pyet or magpie words were so wonderfully
+efficacious, yet so despicable in themselves, to change the fate of a
+gentleman! It is grievous to find that the King was so displeased at Mr.
+Patrick and his boldness that he sent him off to the Ross of Bute, and
+kept him imprisoned in that solitary yet beautiful region for a whole
+year.
+
+Notwithstanding, however, this little failure of respect to the
+sovereign, and the dismal uncertainty and anxiety in which his reign
+began, there seemed to be nothing but the happiest prospects opening
+before the young King. Out of the miserable struggle which brought him
+to the throne, he himself, most probably only awakened to the meaning of
+it after all was over, brought a lifelong remorse which he never threw
+off, and which was increased by the melancholy services of commemoration
+and expiation, the masses for his father's soul and solemn funeral
+ceremonials whether real or nominal, at all of which the youth would
+have to be present with a sore and swelling heart. We are told that he
+went and unburthened himself to the Dean of the Chapel Royal in
+Stirling, his father's favourite church, which James III had built and
+endowed, arranging the services and music with special personal care.
+The Dean received his confession with kindness seeing him so penitent,
+and gave him "good counsel and comfort," and remained his friend and
+spiritual adviser as he grew into manhood; but we are not told whether
+it was by his ordinance as a penance and constant reminder of his sin,
+or by a voluntary mortification of his own, that James assumed the iron
+belt which he wore always round him "and eikit it from time to time,"
+that is, increased its size and weight as long as he lived. This
+sensibility, which formed part of his chivalrous and generous character,
+the noble, sweet, and lovable nature which conquered all hearts, at once
+subdued and silenced his many critics, and furnished them with a
+reproach which spite and ill-will could bring up against him when
+occasion occurred. But the enemies were few and the lovers many who
+surrounded the young Prince when the contentions of the crisis were once
+over, and the warring factions conciliated by general condemnations in
+principle which hurt nobody so long as they were not accompanied by
+confiscations or deprivations. Such clemency in so young a king was a
+marvel to all, the chroniclers say, though indeed there could be little
+question of clemency on James's part in a mutual hushing-up, which was
+evidently dictated by every circumstance of the time and the only source
+of mutual safety.
+
+When, however, he had arrived at man's estate, and makes a recognisable
+and individual appearance upon the stage of history, the picture of him
+is one of the most attractive ever made, the happiest and brightest
+chapter in the tragic story of the Stewarts. Youth with that touch of
+extravagance which becomes it, that genial wildness which all are so
+ready to pardon, and an adventurous disposition, careless of personal
+safety, gave a charm the more to the magnificent young King, handsome,
+noble, brave, and full of universal friendliness and sympathy, who comes
+forth smiling in the face of fate, ready to turn back every gloomy
+augury and bring in another golden age. Pitscottie's description is full
+of warmth and vivid reality:--
+
+    "In this mean time was good peace and rest in Scotland and great
+    love betwixt the King and all his subjects, and was well loved by
+    them all: for he was verrie noble, and though the vice of
+    covetousness rang over meikle in his father it rang not in himself:
+    nor yet pykthankis nor cowards should be authorised in his companie,
+    nor yet advanced; neither used he the council but of his lords,
+    whereby he won the hearts of the whole nobilitie; so that he could
+    ride out through any part of the realme, him alone, unknowing that
+    he was King; and would lie in poor men's houses as he had been ane
+    travellour through the country, and would require of them where he
+    lodged, where the King was, and what ane man he was, and how he used
+    himself towards his subjects, and what they spoke of him through the
+    countrie. And they would answer him as they thought good, so by this
+    doing the King heard the common bruit of himself. This Prince was
+    wondrous hardie and diligent in execution of justice, and loved
+    nothing so well as able men and horses; therefore at sundry times he
+    would cause make proclamations through the land to all and sundry
+    his lords and barons who were able for justing and tourney to come
+    to Edinburgh to him, and there to exercise themselves for his
+    pleasure, some to run with the spear, some to fight with the
+    battle-axe, some with the two-handed sword, and some with the bow,
+    and other exercises. By this means the King brought the realm to
+    great manhood and honour: that the fame of his justing and tourney
+    spread through all Europe, which caused many errant knights to come
+    out of other parts to Scotland to seek justing, because they heard
+    of the kinglie fame of the Prince of Scotland. But few or none of
+    them passed away unmatched, and ofttimes overthrown."
+
+The town to which, under this young and gallant Prince, the stream of
+chivalry flowed, was yet more picturesque than the still and always
+"romantic town" of which every Scotsman is proud. The Nor' Loch
+reflected the steep rocks of the castle and the high crown of walls and
+turrets that surmounted them, with nothing but fields and greenery, here
+and there diversified by a village and fortified mansion between it and
+the sea. The walls, which followed the irregularities of the rocky
+ridge, as far as the beginning of the Canongate, were closed across the
+High Street by the picturesque port and gateway of the Nether Bow, the
+boundary in that direction of the town, shutting in all its busy life,
+its markets, its crowding citizens, its shops and churches. On the south
+at the foot of the hill, the burghers' suburb, where the merchants,
+lawyers, and even some of the nobles had their houses and gardens, lay
+outside the walls in the sunshine, protected only by the soft summits of
+the Braid and Pentland hills: what is now the Cowgate, not a savoury
+quarter, being then the South Side, the flowery and sheltered faubourg
+in which all who could afford the freedom of a country residence while
+still close to the town, expanded into larger life, as the wealthy
+tradesfolk of all ages, and persons bound to a centre of occupation and
+duty, always love to do. Towards the east, and gradually becoming as
+important and busy as the High Street itself, though outside the series
+of towers which guarded the city gate, lay the long line of the Court
+suburb, the lofty and noble Canongate descending towards the abbey and
+palace, where all that was splendid in Scotland congregated around the
+gay and gallant King. Outside the Netherbow Port, striking out in
+opposite directions, was the road which led to the seaport of Leith and
+that which took its name from the great Kirk of Field, St. Mary's Wynd,
+a pleasant walk along the outside of the fortifications to the great
+monastery on its plateau, with the Pleasance, a name suggestive of all
+freshness and greenery and rural pleasure, at its feet. Inside the town,
+between the castle gates and those of the city, were the crowded
+habitations of a mediæval town, the only place where business could be
+carried on in safety, or rich wares exhibited, or money passed from hand
+to hand. The Lawnmarket or Linen Market would be the chief centre of
+sale and merchandise, and there, no doubt, the booths before the lower
+stories, with all their merchandise displayed, and the salesmen seated
+at the head of the few deep steps which led into the cavernous depths
+within, would be full of fine dresses and jewellery, and the gold and
+silver which, some one complains, was worn away by the fine workmanship,
+which was then more prized than solid weight. The cloth of gold and
+silver, the fine satins and velvets, the embroidery, more exquisite than
+anything we have time or patience for now--embroidery of gold thread
+which we hear of, an uncomfortable sort of luxury, even upon the linen
+of great personages--would there be put forth and inspected by gallants
+in all their fine array, or by the ladies in their veils, half or wholly
+muffled from public inspection. Even the cheaper booths that adorned the
+West Bow or smaller wynds, where the country women bought their kirtles
+of red or green when they brought their produce to the market, would
+show more gay colours under their shade in a season than we with our
+soberer taste in years; and the town ladies, in their hoods and silk
+gowns, which were permitted even in more primitive times to the
+possessors of so much a year, must have been of themselves a fair sight
+in all their ornaments, less veiled and muffled from profane view than
+more high-born dames and demoiselles. No doubt it would be a favourite
+walk with all to pass the port and see what was doing among the great
+people down yonder at Holyrood, or watch a gay band of French knights
+arriving from Leith with their pennons displayed, full of some challenge
+lately given by the knights of Scotland, or eager to maintain on their
+own account the beauty of their ladies and the strength of their spears
+against all comers. Edinburgh can never have been so amusing, never so
+gay and bright, as in these fine times; though, no doubt, there was
+always the risk of a rush together of two parties of gallants, a mêlée
+after the old mode of Clear the Causeway, a hurried shutting of shops
+and pulling forth of halberds. For the younger population, at least, no
+doubt these risks were almost the best part of the play.
+
+[Illustration: OLD HOUSES AT HEAD OF WEST BOW]
+
+Thus Edinburgh breasted its ridge of rock--a fair sight across all the
+green country; its sentinel mountain crouching eastward between the
+metropolis and the sea, its suburbs growing and expanding; this full of
+the fine people of the Court, that of the quiet wealth and enjoyment
+which made no extravagant demonstration. It had never been so
+prosperous, never so much the centre of all that was splendid in the
+kingdom, as in the reign of the fourth James--the knight of romance, the
+gayest and brightest representative of the House of Stewart, though
+unable to defend himself from the tragic fate which awaited every
+sovereign of his name.
+
+Among the finest sights seen in Edinburgh must have been those which
+occurred very early in his reign, when the great Admiral, Sir Andrew
+Wood, he who had met so proudly the inquisition of the lords, came from
+sea with his prisoners and his spoils. Wood had not pleased the reigning
+party by his rough fidelity to the dead King, but they could not induce
+the other sea captains, by any promise of reward or advancement, to
+attack and punish, as was their desire, the greatest sailor in Scotland.
+And when an English expedition began to vex the Scottish coasts, there
+was no one but Wood to encounter and defeat them, which he did on two
+different occasions, bringing the captains of the rover
+vessels--probably only half authorised by the astute King Henry VII, who
+had evidently no desire to attack Scotland, but who had to permit a raid
+from time to time as the most popular thing to do--as prisoners to the
+courteous King, who though he "thanked Sir Andrew Wood greatly and
+rewarded him richlie for his labours and great proof of his manhood,"
+yet "propined (gave presents to) the English captain richlie and all his
+men and sent them all safelie home, their ships and all their
+furnishing, because they had shown themselves so stout and hardie
+warriours." "So he sent them all back to the King of England," says the
+chronicler, with full enjoyment of James's magnanimous brag and of thus
+having the better of "the auld enemy" both in prowess and in courtesy,
+"to let him understand he had as manlie men in Scotland as he had in
+England; therefore desired him to send no more of his captains in time
+coming." England was obliged to accept, it appeared, this bravado of the
+Scots, having no excuse for repeating the experiment, but was
+"discontented" and little pleased to be overcome both in courtesy and in
+arms.
+
+A more serious matter than this encounter at sea, which was really more
+a trial of strength than anything else, was the purely chivalric
+enterprise of James in taking up the cause of Perkin Warbeck, the
+supposed Duke of York, who imposed upon all Europe for a time, and on
+nobody so much as the King of Scotland. This adventurer, who was given
+out as the younger son of Edward IV escaped by the relenting of the
+murderers when his elder brother was killed in the Tower, was by
+unanimous consent of all history a youth of person and manners quite
+equal to his pretensions, playing his part of royal prince with a grace
+and sincerity which nobody could resist. The grave Pinkerton, so
+sarcastically superior to all fables, writing at the end of the
+eighteenth century, had evidently not even then made up his mind how to
+accept this remarkable personage, but speaks of him as "this unfortunate
+prince or pretender," and of James as "sensible of the truth of his
+report or misled by appearance," with an evident leaning to the side of
+the hero who played so bold a game. The young adventurer came to James
+with the most illustrious of guarantees. He brought letters from Charles
+VIII of France, and from the Emperor Maximilian, and was followed by a
+train of gallant Frenchmen and by everything that was princelike,
+gracious, and splendid. So completely was he received and believed at
+the Scottish Court that when there arose a mutual love, as the story
+goes, between him and the Lady Catherine Gordon, daughter of the Earl of
+Huntly, one of the most powerful peers in Scotland, and at the same time
+of royal blood, a cousin of the King, the marriage seems to have been
+accepted as a most fit and even splendid alliance. No greater pledge of
+belief could have been given than this. The King of Scots threw himself
+into the effort of establishing the supposed prince's claims as if they
+had been his own. Curious negotiations were entered into as to what the
+pretender should do if, by the help of Scotland, he was placed upon the
+English throne. He was to cede Berwick, that always-coveted morsel which
+had to change its allegiance from generation to generation as the
+balance between the nations rose and fell--and pay a certain sum towards
+defraying the expenses of the expedition, a bargain to which Perkin,
+playing his part much better than any king of the theatre ever did
+before, demurred, insisting upon easier terms--as he afterwards
+remonstrated when James harried the Borders, declaring that he would
+rather resign all hopes of the crown than secure it at the expense of
+the blood and goods of his people. A pretended prince who thus spoke
+might well be credited as far as faith could go. The story of this
+strange enterprise is chiefly told in the letters to Henry VII of
+England of Sir John Ramsay, the same who had been saved by James III
+when the rest of his favourites were killed, and who had more or less
+thriven since, though in evil ways, occupying a position at the Court of
+James IV whom he hated, and acting as spy on his actions, which were all
+reported to the English Court. Ramsay gives the English Government full
+information of all that his sovereign is about to do on behalf of the
+fengit (feigned) boy, and especially of the invasion of England which he
+is about to undertake "against the minds of near the whole number of his
+barons and people. Notwithstanding," Ramsay says, "this simple
+wilfulness cannot be removed out of the King's mind for nae persuasion
+or mean. I trust verrilie," adds the traitor, "that, God will, he be
+punished by your mean for the cruel consent of the murder of his
+father."
+
+Curiously enough Pitscottie, the most graphic and circumstantial of
+historians, says nothing whatever of this most romantic episode. Why he
+should have left it out, for it is impossible that it could have been
+unknown to him, we are unable to imagine; but so it is. Buchanan however
+enters fully into the tale. The wisest of James's counsellors, he tells
+us, were disposed to have nothing to do with this spurious young prince
+coming out of the unknown with his claim to be the rightful King of
+England; but many more were in his favour, specially with the reflection
+that the moment of England's difficulties was always one of advantage
+for the Scots. An army was accordingly raised, with which James marched
+into England, carrying Perkin with him with a train of about fourteen
+hundred followers, and hopes that the country would rise to greet and
+acknowledge their lost prince. But it is evident that the Northumbrians
+looked on without any response, and saw in the expedition but one of the
+many raids which they were always so ready to return on their side when
+occasion offered. The pretender, on whose behalf all this was done,
+shrank, it would appear, from the devastation, and with something like
+the generous compunction of a prince protested that he would rather lose
+the crown than gain it so--a protest which James must have thought a
+piece of affectation, for he replied with a jeer that his companion was
+too solicitous for the welfare of a country which would neither
+acknowledge him as prince nor receive him as citizen. Perkin must have
+begun to tire the patience of the finest gentleman in Christendom before
+James would have made such a contemptuous retort. He returned with the
+King, however, when this unsuccessful expedition--the only use of which
+was that it proved to James the fruitlessness of fighting on behalf of a
+pretender who had no hold upon the people over whom he claimed to
+reign--came to an end. It was followed by some slight reprisals on the
+part of the English, and after an interval by an embassy to make peace.
+Henry VII would seem to have been at all times most unwilling to have
+Scotland for an enemy, notwithstanding the strange motive suggested to
+him by the traitor Ramsay. "Sir," writes this false Scot, "King Edward
+had never fully the perfect love of his people till he had war with
+Scotland; and he made sic good diligence and provision therein that to
+this hour he is lovit; and your Grace may as well have as gude a tyme as
+he had." But the cunning old potentate at Westminster was not moved even
+by this argument. Instead of following the instructions of the virulent
+spy whose hatred of his native king and country reaches the height of
+passion, he sent a wise emissary, moderate like himself, the Bishop of
+Durham, to inquire into the reasons of the attack.
+
+And Edinburgh must have had another great sensational spectacle in the
+arrival not only of the English commissioners, but of such a great
+foreign personage as the Spanish envoy, one of the greatest grandees of
+the most splendid of continental kingdoms, who had come to England to
+negotiate the marriage of Catherine of Arragon with the Prince of Wales,
+and who continued his journey to Scotland with letters of amity from his
+sovereigns for James, and with the object of assisting in the
+peacemaking between the two Kings. Henry required James to give up the
+pretender into his hands--a thing which of course it was not consistent
+with honour to do--but it was evident that the King of Scots had already
+in his own mind given up the adventurer's cause. And after the
+negotiations had been concluded and peace made between England and
+Scotland, Perkin and his beautiful young wife and his train of followers
+set sail from Scotland in a little flotilla of three ships, intending it
+is said to go to Ireland, where he had been well received before coming
+to the Court of James. The imagination follows with irrestrainable pity
+the forlorn voyage of this youthful band of adventurers: the young
+husband trained to all the manners and ways of thinking of a prince,
+however little reality there might be in his claims; the young wife,
+mild and fair, the White Rose as she was called, with the best blood of
+Scotland in her veins; the few noble followers, knights, and a lady or
+two who shared their fortunes, setting out vaguely to sea, not knowing
+were to go, with the world before them where to choose. When they got to
+Ireland Prince Perkin heard of an insurrection in Cornwall, and hastened
+to put himself at the head of it, placing his wife for security in the
+quaint fortress, among the waters, of St. Michael's Mount. But the
+insurrection came to nothing, and "the unfortunate prince or adventurer"
+was taken prisoner. He was pardoned it is said, but making a wild
+attempt at insurrection again, was this time tried and executed. His
+White Rose, most forlorn of ladies, was taken by King Henry from her
+refuge at the end of the world, placed in charge of the Queen, and never
+left the English Court again. There is no record that she and her
+husband were ever allowed to meet. So ends one of the saddest and most
+romantic of historical episodes.
+
+This story takes up a large part of the early reign of James, who no
+doubt saw his error at the last, but in the beginning threw himself into
+Perkin's fortunes with characteristic impetuosity, and thought nothing
+too good, not even his own fair kinswoman, for the rescued prince. It
+was an error, however, that James shared with many high and mighty
+potentates who gave their imprimatur at first to the adventurer's cause.
+But even for the most genuine prince, when only a pretender, the
+greatest sovereigns are but poor supporters in the long run. James had a
+hundred things to do to make him forget that unfortunate adventure of
+Perkin. It was in the year 1497 that this incident ended so far as the
+Scottish Court was concerned, and James returned to the natural course
+of his affairs, not without occasional tumults on the Border, but with
+no serious fighting anywhere for a course of pleasant years. The old
+traditional strife between the King and the nobles no longer tore the
+kingdom asunder. Perhaps the first great event of his life, the waking
+up of his boyish conscience to find himself in the camp of a faction
+pitted against his own father, influenced him throughout everything, and
+made the duty of conciliation and union seem the first and most
+necessary; perhaps it was but the natural revulsion from those methods
+which his father had adopted to his hurt and downfall; or perhaps
+James's chivalrous temper, his love of magnificence and gaiety, made him
+feel doubly the advantage of courtiers who should be great nobles and
+his peers, not dependants made splendid by his bounty. At all events the
+King lived as no Stewart had yet lived, surrounded by all without
+exception who were most noble in the land, encouraging them to vie with
+him in splendour, in noble exercises and pastimes, and almost, it may be
+imagined--with a change of method, working by good example and genial
+comradeship what his predecessors had vainly tried to do by fire and
+sword--tempting them to emulate him also in preserving internal peace
+and a certain reign of justice throughout the country. There was no lack
+of barons in the Court of James. Angus and Home and Huntly, who had
+pursued his father to the death and placed himself upon the throne, were
+not turned into subservient courtiers by his gallantry and charm: but
+neither was there any one of these proud lords in the ascendant, or any
+withdrawn and sullen in his castle, taking no share in what was going
+on. The machinery of the State worked as it had never done before. There
+were few Parliaments, and not very much law-making. Enough laws had been
+made under his predecessors, "if they had but been kept," to form an
+ideal nation; the thing to do now was to charm, to persuade, to lead
+both populace and nobility into respecting them. It would be vain to
+imagine that this high purpose was always in James's mind, or that his
+splendour and gaieties were part of a plan for the better regulation of
+the kingdom. But that he was not without a wise policy in following his
+own character and impulses, and that the spontaneous good-fellowship and
+sympathy which his frank, genial, and easy nature called forth
+everywhere were not of admirable effect in the welding together of the
+nation, it would be unjust to say. If he had not the sterner nobility of
+purpose which made the first of his name conceive and partially carry
+into effect the ideal reign of justice which was the first want of his
+kingdom, he had yet a noble ambition for Scotland to make her honoured
+and feared and famous, and the success with which he seems to have
+carried out this object of his life for many years was great. He made
+the little northern kingdom known for a centre of chivalry, courtesy,
+courage, and, what was more wonderful, magnificence, as it had never
+been before. He penetrated that country with traditions and associations
+of himself in the character always attractive to the imagination, of
+that prince of good fellows, the wandering stranger, who came in unknown
+and sought the hospitality of farmer or ploughman, and made the humble
+board ring with wit and jest, and who thereafter was discovered by
+sudden gift, or grace, or unexpected justice, to be the King:--
+
+    "He took a bugle from his side, and blew both loud and shrill,
+    And four and twenty belted knights came trooping owre the hill;"
+
+    "Then he took out his little knife, let a' his duddies fa',
+    And he was the brawest gentleman that was among them a'."
+
+The goodman of Ballangeich,[3] the jovial and delightful Gaberlunzie,
+the hero of many a homely ballad and adventure, some perhaps a trifle
+over free, yet none involving any tragic treachery or betrayal, James
+was the playfellow of his people, the Haroun al Raschid of Scotch
+history. "By this doing the King heard the common brute (bruit) of
+himself." Thus he won not only the confidence of the nobles but the
+genial sympathy and kindness of the poor. A minstrel, a poet too in his
+way a man curious about all handicrafts, famous in all exercises, "ane
+singular good chirurgian, so that there was none of that profession if
+they had any dangerous case in hand but would have craved his advice
+"--he had every gift that was most likely to commend him to the people,
+who were proud of a king so unlike other kings, the friend of all. And
+nothing could exceed the activity of the young monarch, always occupied
+for the glory of Scotland whatever he was doing. It was he who built the
+great ship, the _Michael_, which was the greatest wonder ever seen in
+the northern seas; a ship which took all the timber in Fife to build her
+(the windswept Kingdom of Fife has never recovered that deprivation)
+besides a great deal from Norway, with three hundred mariners to work
+her, and carrying "ane thousand men of warre" within those solid sides,
+which, all wooden as they were, could resist cannon shot. "This ship lay
+in the road, and the King took great pleasure every day to come down and
+see her," and would dine and sup in her, and show his lords all her
+order and provisions; No doubt there were many curious parties from
+Edinburgh who followed the King to see that new wonder, and that groups
+would gather on the ramparts of the castle to point out on the shining
+Firth the great and lofty vessel, rising like another castle out of the
+depths. James had also the other splendid taste, which his unfortunate
+father had shared, of building, and set in order the castle at Falkland
+in the heart of the green and wealthy Fife--where there was great
+hunting and coursing, and perhaps as yet not much high farming in those
+days--and continued the adornments of Stirling, already so richly if
+rudely decorated in the previous reign.
+
+[3] This name and assumed character is generally supposed to belong to
+James V: but all the accompanying circumstances seem to point so much
+more to what is recorded of James IV, that I venture to attribute them
+to him. If it is an error there is this, at least, to be said in favour
+of it, that the story is as applicable to one as to the other monarch.
+
+But Edinburgh was the centre of all the feasting and splendour which
+distinguished his time. The lists were set before the castle gates, on
+that lofty and breezy plateau where all the winds blow. Sometimes there
+were bands of foreign chivalry breaking lances with the high Scottish
+nobles according to all the stately laws of that mimic war; sometimes
+warriors of other conditions, fighting Borderers or Highlanders, would
+meet for an encounter of arms, ending in deadly earnest, which was not
+discouraged, as we are told with grim humour, since it was again to the
+realm to be disembarrassed of these champions at any cost, and the best
+way was that they should kill each other amicably and have no rancour
+against Justiciar or King. Among the foreign guests who visited James
+was Bernard Stuart of Aubigny, Monsieur Derbine, as Pitscottie calls
+him, the representative of a branch of the royal race which had settled
+in France, whom James received, his kinsman being an old man, with even
+more than his usual grace, making him the judge in all feats of chivalry
+"at justing and tourney, and calling him father of warres, because he
+was well practised in the same." Another of the visitors, Don Pedro
+d'Ayala, the Spanish grandee who helped to conduct the quarrel over
+Perkin Warbeck to a great issue, wrote to his royal master a description
+of King James, which is highly interesting, and full of unconscious
+prophecy. The Spaniard describes the young monarch at twenty-five as one
+of the most accomplished and gallant of cavaliers, speaking Latin (very
+well), French, German, Flemish, Italian, and Spanish; a good Christian
+and Catholic, hearing two masses every morning; fond of priests--a
+somewhat singular quality unless such jovial priests and boon-companions
+as Dunbar, the poet-friar, were the subject of this preference; though
+perhaps the seriousness which mingled with his jollity, the band of iron
+under his silken vest, led him to seek by times the charm of graver
+company, the mild and learned Gavin Douglas and other scholars in the
+monasteries, where thought and learning had found refuge. The following
+details, which are highly characteristic, bring him before us with
+singular felicity, and, as afterwards turned out, with a curious
+foreseeing of those points in him which brought about his tragical end.
+
+    "Rarely even in joking a word escapes him which is not the truth. He
+    prides himself much upon it, and says it does not seem to him well
+    for kings to swear their treaties as they do now. The oath of a king
+    should be his royal word as was the case in bygone ages. He is
+    courageous even more than a king should be. I have seen him even
+    undertake most dangerous things in the late wars. I sometimes clung
+    to his skirts and succeeded in keeping him back. On such occasions
+    he does not take the least care of himself. He is not a good
+    captain, because he begins to fight before he has given his orders.
+    He said to me that his subjects serve him with their persons and
+    goods, in just or unjust quarrels, exactly as he likes; and that
+    therefore he does not think it right to begin any warlike
+    undertaking without being himself the first in danger. His deeds are
+    as good as his words. For this reason, and because he is a very
+    humane prince, he is much loved."
+
+[Illustration: BAKEHOUSE CLOSE]
+
+The perfect reason yet profound unreasonableness of this quality in
+James, so fatally proved in his after history, is very finely
+discriminated by the writer, who evidently had come under the spell of a
+most attractive personality in this young sovereign, so natural and
+manful, so generous and true. That James should acknowledge the penalty
+of the fatal power he had to draw a whole nation into his quarrel, just
+or unjust, by risking himself the first, is so entirely just according
+to every rule of personal honour, yet so wildly foolish according to all
+higher policy; exposing that very nation to evils so much greater than
+the worst battle. Flodden was still far off in the darkness of the
+unknown, but had this description been written after that catastrophe,
+it could not more clearly have disclosed the motives and magnanimity but
+tragic unwisdom of this prince of romance.
+
+The Spaniard adds much praise of James's temperance, a virtue
+indifferently practised by his subjects, and of his morality, which is
+still more remarkable. The amours and intrigues of his youth, Don Pedro
+informs his king, this young hero had entirely renounced, "or so at
+least it is believed," partly "from fear of God, and partly from fear of
+scandal," which latter "is thought very much of here"--a curious touch,
+which would seem to indicate a magnificent indifference to public
+opinion, not shared by the little northern Court, in the haughtier
+circles of Madrid. The picture is perhaps a little flattered; and it is
+hard to imagine how James could have picked up so many languages in the
+course of what some writers call a neglected education, confined to
+Scotland alone; but perhaps his father's fondness for clever artificers
+and musicians may have made him familiar in his childhood with foreign
+dependants, more amusing to a quick-witted boy than the familiar varlets
+who had no tongue but "braid Scots." "The King speaks besides," says
+Ayala, "the language of the savages who live in some parts of Scotland
+and in the islands"; clearly in every sense of the word a man of endless
+accomplishments and personal note, quite beyond the ordinary of kings.
+
+At no time, according to unanimous testimony, had Scotland attained so
+high a position of national wealth, comfort, and prosperity. The wild
+Highlands had been more or less subdued by the forfeiture of the
+traditionary Lord of the Isles, and the final subjection of that lawless
+region, nominally at least, to the King's authority, and with every
+precaution for the extension of justice and order to its farthest
+limits. A navy had suddenly sprung into being, signalising itself in its
+very birth by brilliant achievements and consisting of vessels few
+indeed, but of exceptional size and splendour, as great for their time
+as the great Italian ironclads are for this, and like them springing
+from something of the bravado as well as for the real uses of a rapidly
+growing power. And there had been peace, save for that little passage of
+arms on account of Perkin Warbeck, throughout all the reign of
+James--peace to which the warlike Scots seem to have accustomed
+themselves very pleasantly, notwithstanding that on the one side of the
+Border as on the other there was nothing so popular as war between the
+neighbour nations; but the exploits of Sir Andrew Wood with his _Yellow
+Carvel_, and the _Great Michael_ lying there proudly on the Firth, ready
+to sweep the seas, afforded compensation for the postponement of other
+struggles.
+
+It was in these circumstances that the negotiations for James's marriage
+with the little Margaret, Princess Royal of England, and in every way,
+as it turned out, a true Tudor, though then but an undeveloped child,
+took place. The gallant young King, then seven or eight and twenty, in
+the plenitude of his manhood, was not anxious for the bride of ten
+persistently offered to him by her royal father; and the negotiations
+lagged, and seemed to have gone on _à plusieurs reprises_ for several
+years. But at length by the persistent efforts of Henry VII, who saw all
+the advantages of the union, and no doubt also of councillors on the
+Scots side, who felt that the continued prosperity of the country was
+best secured by peace, it was brought about in 1504, when James must
+have been just over thirty and Margaret was twelve--a very childish
+bride, but probably precocious, and not too simple or ignorant, as
+belonged to her violent Tudor blood. He "was married with her
+solemnedlie by the advice of the nobilitie of England and Scotland, and
+gatt great summes of money with her: and promise of peace and unity made
+and ordained to stand between the two realms," says Pitscottie. The
+great sums, however, seem problematical, as the dower of Margaret was
+not a very large one, and the sacrifices made for her were
+considerable--the town of Berwick being given up to England as one
+preliminary step. The event, however, was one of incalculable importance
+to both nations, securing as it did the eventual consolidation in one of
+the realm of Great Britain, though nobody as yet foresaw that great
+consequence that might follow. Along with the marriage treaty was made
+one of perpetual peace between England and Scotland--a treaty indeed not
+worth the paper it was written upon, yet probably giving comfort to some
+sanguine spirits. Had the prudent old monarch remained on the throne of
+England as long as James ruled in Scotland it might indeed never have
+been broken; but Henry was already old, and his son as hot-headed as the
+cousin and traditionary adversary now turned into a brother. Margaret
+was conveyed into Scotland with the utmost pomp, and Edinburgh roused
+itself and put on decorations like a bride to receive the little maiden,
+so strangely young to be the centre of all these rejoicings: her lofty
+houses covered with flutterings of tapestries and banners and every kind
+of gay decoration, and her windows filled with bright faces, coifs, and
+veils, and embroideries of gold that shone in the sun. The dress worn by
+James, as he carried his young bride into Edinburgh seated on horseback
+behind him, is fully described for the benefit of after ages. He wore a
+jacket of cloth of gold bordered with purple velvet, over a doublet of
+purple satin, showing at the neck the collar of a shirt embroidered with
+pearls and gold, with scarlet hose to complete the resplendent costume.
+At his marriage he wore a jacket of crimson satin over a doublet of
+cloth of gold, with the same scarlet hose, and a gown of white damask
+brocaded with gold over all. No doubt the ladies were not behind in this
+contest of brave apparel. Grey Edinburgh, accustomed this long time to
+the dull tones of modern habiliments, sparkled and shone in those days
+of finery and splendour. The streets were meant for such fine shows; its
+stairheads and strong deep doorways to relieve the glories of sweet
+colour, plumes, and jewels. When the lists were set on the summit of the
+hill, the gates thrown up, the garrison in their steel caps and
+breastplates lining the bars, and perhaps the King himself tilting in
+the mêlée, while all the ladies were throned in their galleries like
+banks of flowers, what a magnificent spectacle! The half-empty streets
+below still humming with groups of gazers not able to squeeze among the
+throngs about the bars, but waiting the return of the splendid
+procession: and more and more banners and tapestries and guards of
+honour shining through the wide open gates of the port all the way down
+to Holyrood. There was nothing but holiday-making and pleasure while the
+feasting lasted and the bridal board was yet spread.
+
+While this heydey of life lasted and all was bright around and about the
+chivalrous James, there was a certain suitor of his Court, a merry and
+reckless priest, more daring in words and admixtures of the sacred and
+the profane than any mere layman would venture to be, whose familiar and
+often repeated addresses to the King afford us many glimpses into the
+royal surroundings and ways of living, as also many pictures of the
+noisy and cheerful mediæval town which was the centre of pleasures, of
+wit and gay conversation, and all that was delightful in Scotland.
+Dunbar's title of fame is not so light as this. He was one of the
+greatest of the followers of Chaucer, a master of melody, in some points
+scarcely inferior to the master himself whose praise he celebrates as
+
+          "Of oure Inglisch all the light
+    Surmounting every tong terrestrial
+      Alls far as Mayis morrow dois mydnyght."
+
+But it is unnecessary here to discuss the "Thrissil and the Rois," the
+fine music of the epithalamium with which he celebrated the coming of
+Margaret Tudor into Scotland, or the more visionary splendour of the
+"Golden Targe." The poet himself was not so dignified or harmonious as
+his verse. He possessed the large open-air relish of life, the broad
+humour, sometimes verging on coarseness, which from the time of James I.
+to that of Burns has been so singularly characteristic of Scots poetry:
+and found no scene of contemporary life too humble or too ludicrous for
+his genius--thus his more familiar poems are better for our purpose than
+his loftier productions, and show us the life and fashion of his town
+and time better than anything else can do. This is one, for example, in
+which he upbraids "the merchantis of renown" for allowing "Edinburgh
+their nobil town" to remain in the state in which he describes it:--
+
+    "May nane pass through your principall gates
+    For stink of haddocks and of skates,
+    For cryin' of carlines and debates,
+    For fensome flytings of defame.
+          Think ye not shame
+    Before strangers of all estates
+    That sic dishonour hurt your name?
+
+    "Your stinkand schule that standis dirk
+    Halds the light from your Parroche Kirk,
+    Your forestairs makis your houses mirk
+    Like na country but here at hame
+          Think ye not shame,
+    Sa little policie to work
+    In hurt and sklander of your name?
+
+    "At your hie Croce, where gold and silk
+    Should be, there is but curds and milk,
+    And at your Tron but cokill and wilk,
+    Pansches, puddings, of Jok and Jame.
+          Think ye not shame
+    Kin as the world sayis that ilk
+    In hurt and sklander of your name?"
+
+Thus old Edinburgh rises before us, beautiful and brave as she is no
+longer, yet thronged about the Netherbow Port, and up towards the Tron,
+the weighing-place and centre of city life, with fishwives and their
+stalls, with rough booths for the sale of rougher food, and with country
+lasses singing curds and whey, as they still did when Allan Ramsay
+nearly four hundred years after succeeded Dunbar as laureate of
+Edinburgh. Notwithstanding, however, these defects the Scottish capital
+continued to be the home of all delights to the poet-priest. When his
+King was absent at Stirling, Dunbar in the pity of his heart sang an
+(exceedingly profane) litany for the exile that he might be brought
+back, prefacing it by the following compassionate strain:--
+
+    "We that are here in Hevinis glory
+    To you that are in Purgatory
+    Commendis us on our hairtly wyiss,
+    I mean we folk in Paradyis,
+    In Edinburgh with all merriness
+    To you in Strivilling in distress,
+    Where neither pleasance nor delyt is,
+    For pity thus ane Apostle wrytis.
+
+    "O ye Heremeitis and Hankersaidillis
+    That takis your penance at your tabillis,
+    And eitis nocht meit restorative
+    Nor drinkis no wyne comfortative
+    Bot aill, and that is thyn and small,
+    With few courses into your hall;
+    But (without) company of lordis or knights
+    Or any other goodly wightis,
+    Solitar walkand your allone
+    Seeing no thing but stok and stone,
+    Out of your powerfull Purgatory
+    To bring you to the bliss of glory
+    Of Edinburgh the merry toun,
+    We sall begin ane cairfull soun,
+    And Dirige devout and meik
+    The Lord of bliss doing besiek
+    You to delyvre out of your noy
+    And bring you soon to Edinburgh joy,
+    For to be merry among us,
+    And so the Dirige begynis thus."
+
+Many are the poet's addresses to the King in happier circumstances when
+James is at home and in full enjoyment of these joys of Edinburgh. His
+prayers for a benefice are sometimes grave and sometimes comic, but
+never-failing. He describes solicitors (or suitors) at Court, all
+pushing their fortune. "Some singis, some dancis, some tells storyis."
+Some try to make friends by their devotion, some have their private
+advocates in the King's chamber, some flatter, some play the fool--
+
+    "My simpleness among the lave
+    Wist of na way so God me save,
+    But with ane humble cheer and face
+    Referris me to the Kyngis grace,
+    Methinks his gracious countenance
+    In ryches is my sufficence."
+
+Not always so patient, however, he jogs James's memory with a hundred
+remedies. "God gif ye war Johne Thomsounis man!" he cries with rueful
+glee through a lively set of verses--
+
+    "For war it so than weill were me
+    Bot (without) benefice I wald not be;
+    My hard fortune war endit then
+        God gif ye war Johne Thomsounis man!"
+
+John Thomson's man was, according to the popular saying, a man who did
+as his wife told him; and Dunbar was strong in the Queen's favour.
+Therefore happy had been his fate had James been of this character. We
+cannot, however, follow the poet through all his pleadings and witty
+appeals and remonstrances, until at last in despairing jest he commends
+"the gray horse Auld Dunbar" to his Majesty, and draws or seems to draw
+at last a consolatory reply, which is thus recorded at the end of the
+poem under the title of "Responsio Regis."
+
+    "Efter our writtingis, Treasurer
+    Tak in this gray horse, Auld Dunbar,
+    Which in my aucht with service trew
+    In lyart changit is his heu.
+    Gar house him now against this Yuill
+    And busk him like ane Bischoppis muill,
+    For with my hand I have indorst
+    To pay whatever his trappouris cost."
+
+Whether this response was really from James's hand or was but another
+wile of the eager suitor it is impossible to tell: but he did eventually
+have a pension granted him of twenty pounds Scots a year, until such
+time as a benefice of at least fifty pounds should fall to him; so that
+he was kept in hope. After this Dunbar tunes forth a song of welcome to
+"his ain Lord Thesaurair," in which terror at this functionary's
+inopportune absence--since quarterday we may suppose--is lost in
+gratulations over his return. "Welcome," he cries--
+
+    "Welcome my benefice and my rent
+    And all the lyflett to me lent,
+    Welcome my pension most preclair,
+          Welcome my awin Lord Thesaurair."
+
+Thus the reckless and jolly priest carols. A little while after he has
+received his money he sings "to the Lordes of the King's Chacker," or
+Exchequer--
+
+    "I cannot tell you how it is spendit,
+    But weel I wat that it is ended."
+
+These peculiarities, however, it need not be said do not belong entirely
+to the sixteenth century. The reader will find a great deal of beautiful
+poetry among the works of Dunbar. These lighter verses serve our purpose
+in showing once more how perennial has been this vein of humorous
+criticism, and frank fun and satire, in Scotland, in all ages, and in
+throwing also a broad and amusing gleam of light upon Edinburgh in the
+early fifteen hundreds, the gayest and most splendid moment perhaps of
+her long history.
+
+All these splendours, however, were hard to keep up, and though
+Edinburgh and Scotland throve, the King's finances after a while seem to
+have begun to fail, and there was great talk of a pilgrimage to the Holy
+Land--it is supposed by the historians as a measure of securing that the
+King might not have the uncomfortable alternative of cutting short his
+splendours at home. This purpose, if it was gravely entertained at all,
+and not one of the proposals of change with which, when need comes, the
+impecunious of all classes and ages amuse themselves to put off actual
+retrenchment, never came to anything. And very soon there arose
+complications of various natures which threw all Christendom into an
+uproar. Henry VIII, young, arrogant, and hot-headed, succeeded his
+prudent father in England, and the treaty with the Scots which made, or
+seemed to make, England safe on the Borders, gave the English greater
+freedom in dealing with the other hereditary foe on the opposite side of
+the Channel; while France on her side began to use all possible efforts
+to draw from the English alliance the faithful Scots, who had always
+been the means of a possible diversion, always ready to carry fire and
+flame across the Border, and call back the warring English to look after
+their own affairs. James, with perhaps his head slightly turned by his
+own magnificence and the prosperity that had attended him since the
+beginning of his career, seemed to have imagined that he was important
+enough to play the part of peacemaker among the nations of Europe. And
+there are many embassies recorded of a bustling bishop, Andrew Forman,
+who seems for some time to have pervaded Christendom, now at Rome, now
+at Paris, now in London, with various confused negotiations. It was a
+learned age, and the King himself, as has been seen, had very
+respectable pretensions in this way; but that there was another side to
+the picture, and that notwithstanding the translator of Virgil, the
+three Universities now established in Scotland, and many men of science
+and knowledge both in the priesthood and out of it, there remained a
+strong body of ignorance and rudeness, even among the dignified clergy
+of the time, the following story, which Pitscottie tells with much
+humour of Bishop Forman, James's chosen diplomatist, will show.
+
+    "This bishop made ane banquet to the Pope and all his cardinals in
+    one of the Pope's own palaces, and when they were all set according
+    to their custom, that he who ought (owned) the house for the time
+    should say the grace, and he was not ane good scholar, nor had not
+    good Latin, but begane ruchlie in the Scottise fashione, saying
+    Benedicite, believing that they should have said Dominus, but they
+    answered Deus in the Italian fashioun, which put the bishop by his
+    intendment (beyond his understanding), that he wist not well how to
+    proceed fordward but happened in good Scottis in this manner,
+    saying, what they understood not, 'The devil I give you all false
+    cardinals to, in nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.'
+    Then all the bishop's men leuch, and all the cardinals themselves;
+    and the Pope inquired whereat they leuch, and the bishop showed that
+    he was not ane good clerk, and that the cardinals had put him by his
+    text and intendment, therefore he gave them all to the devil in good
+    Scottis, whereat the Pope himself leuch verrie earnestlie."
+
+This did not prevent his Holiness, probably delighted with such a racy
+visitor, from making Forman Legate of Scotland; and it is to be feared
+that the meddling diplomatist with his want of education, was perhaps a
+better example of the clergy of Scotland, who about this time began to
+be the mark of all assailants as illiterate, greedy, vicious, and
+rapacious, than such a gentle soul as the other poet of the age,
+afterwards bishop of Dunkeld, the one mild and tranquil possessor of the
+great Douglas name.
+
+[Illustration: WHITE HORSE CLOSE]
+
+The imbroglio of events into which it is unnecessary for us to enter
+grew more and more complicated year by year, until at length it came to
+be a struggle between France and England for the ally who could be of
+most assistance to the one in the special way of injuring the other, and
+whom it was of the first advantage to both to secure. James was bound by
+the treaty of permanent peace which he had made at his marriage, and by
+that marriage itself, and no doubt the strong inclination of his wife,
+to England; but he was bound to France by a traditionary bond of a much
+stronger kind, by the memory of long friendship and alliance, and the
+persistent policy of his kingdom and race. The question was modified
+besides by other circumstances. England was, as she had but too often
+been, but never before in James's experience--harsh, overbearing, and
+unresponsive: while France, as was also her wont, was tender,
+flattering, and pertinacious. Henry refused or delayed to pay Queen
+Margaret a legacy of jewels and plate left to her by her father, and at
+the same time protected certain Borderers who had murdered a Scottish
+knight, and defended them against justice and James, while still
+summoning him to keep his word and treaty in respect to England; while
+on the other hand not only the King but the Queen of France appealed to
+James, he as to an ancient ally, she as to her sworn knight, to break
+that artificial alliance with his haughty brother-in-law. It may well
+have been that James in his own private soul had no more desire for such
+a tremendous step than the nobles who struggled to the last against it.
+But he had _les défauts de ses qualités_ in a high degree. He was
+nothing if not a knight of romance. And though, as the poet has said--
+
+    "His own Queen Margaret, who in Lithgow's bower
+    All silent sat, and wept the weary hour,"
+
+might be more to him than the politic Anne of France, or any fair lady
+in his route, it was not in him, a paladin of chivalry, the finest of
+fine gentlemen, the knight-errant of Christendom, to withstand a lady's
+appeal. Perhaps, besides, he was weary of his inaction, the only prince
+in Europe who was not inevitably involved in the fray; weary of holding
+tourneys and building ships (some of which had been lately taken by the
+English, turning the tables upon him) and keeping quiet, indulging in
+the inglorious arts of peace, while everybody else was taking the field.
+And Henry was arrogant and exasperating, so that even his own sister was
+at the end of her brief Tudor patience; and Louis was flattering,
+caressing, eloquent. When that last embassage of chivalry came with the
+ring from Anne's own finger, and the charge to ride three miles on
+English ground for her honour, it was the climax of many arguments. "He
+loves war," the Spaniard had said. "War is profitable to him and to the
+country"--a curious and pregnant saying. James would seem to have
+struggled at least a little against all the impulses which were pushing
+him forward to his doom. He promised a fleet to his lady in France for
+her aid--a fleet foolishly if not treacherously handled by Arran, and
+altogether diverted from its intended end; finally, that having failed,
+James flung away all precaution and yielded to the tide of many
+influences which was carrying him away.
+
+It is needless to tell over again the tale that everybody knows: how
+both heaven and hell were stirred by this ill-omened undertaking; how an
+aged saint, venerable and stately, suddenly appeared out of the crowd
+when the King was at his prayers in the Cathedral of Linlithgow, with a
+message from on high; and how when James had gone back to Holyrood, the
+High Street of Edinburgh resounded in the dead of night with trumpet
+note and herald's call from the grim Hades of mediæval imagination,
+summoning by name a long list of the Scottish nobility, of whom one man
+defied the portent and refused the call and was saved. James paid no
+heed to these warnings, whether supernatural or otherwise, or perhaps
+was too far committed to give any heed to them, carried away by the wild
+and fatal stream which had caught his feet, with something of that
+extraordinary impetus of natural tendency long restrained which acts
+with tenfold force when at last yielded to. It is unnecessary either to
+tell the story of all the foolish fatal lingerings upon the ill-omened
+way: trifling with treacherous ladies for whom he cared nothing, cartels
+from Surrey; the abandonment of a strong position, lest it should give
+him an advantage, in ever greater and greater folly of chivalry: the
+refusal to attack, or let his artillery attack, till his foes were all
+safely over the bridge: all exhibitions of high honour gone mad with the
+intoxication of fate. The Spaniard's letter comes back in full
+significance as we watch with aching hearts the fatal fray. "He said to
+me that his subjects serve him with their persons and goods, in just or
+unjust quarrels, exactly as he wishes, and that therefore he does not
+think it right to begin any warlike undertaking without being himself
+the first in danger." The knight-errant kept his _consigne_ of honour to
+the last. He betrayed his people to the most utter defeat they had ever
+encountered, but he was himself the first victim.
+
+Thus died the only Stewart king who ever seemed to have a fair prospect
+of escaping the fate of his unfortunate race. The worm in his
+conscience, the iron belt round his body, were perhaps only symptoms of
+a susceptible nature, of remorse which was excessive for the bewildered
+acquiescence in rebellion of an unawakened mind and an irresponsible
+age. And his life, if soiled by errors which were then and are now but
+lightly thought of in a prince, was in all public matters noble,
+honourable, and enlightened, with always the advantage of his country
+for its aim, even in the midst of the natural gaieties and extravagances
+of a happy temper and exuberant energy. He was extravagant,
+light-hearted, a lover of magnificence and display, all of which things,
+in the face of the political economist, sometimes prove themselves
+excellent for a country when the moment comes to press it forward into
+the ranks of high civilisation out of a ruder and more primitive
+development. The nobility with which his father struggled to the death
+he held in a leash of silk or of gold, often making them the instruments
+of the justice which they had so long resisted. There was peace in his
+time such as had never before been in Scotland, and redress of
+grievances, and extinction or suppression of mortal feuds and intestine
+struggles. It is sometimes given to a man in all light-heartedness, in
+what seems the spontaneous way of his own impulses and pleasures, to do
+what is best for his surroundings and his time, without any apparent
+strain of self sacrifice or gravity of duty. James Stewart, the fourth
+of his name, was one of these happy and beautiful natures: and though
+his life was one of almost unbroken prosperity and brightness, yet no
+man can say that his stewardry was not nobly held, and to the benefit of
+his kingdom and people. But not for this was the doom to pass by. The
+brightness and the prosperity came to an end in a sudden folly,
+infatuation, and madness, which belonged to him as his sunny nature did
+and his generosity of heart. And it was no evil chance, but the
+principle of his life, as we have seen, that in the calamity into which
+he drew his people he himself should be the first to fall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+JAMES V: THE LAST OF THE HEROIC AGE
+
+
+The course of Scottish history during the fifteenth and beginning of the
+sixteenth century is like that of a ship on a long voyage, full of
+vicissitudes and adventures. The little barque amid all the wild
+commotions of the sea, sometimes driven before the wind, sometimes
+stripped of every rag of canvas, sometimes beating helpless in the
+trough of the waves, rights herself when the storm is over, repairs her
+masts, re-strings her cordage, puts forth again sail after sail; and
+with a sure hand at the helm and a moderate breeze in her canvas, rises
+white and strong against the blueness of sea and sky, triumphant over
+all the assaults of external nature, animated by human will and courage,
+the most indomitable of all created things, and affording perhaps the
+best example of the survival and unconquerable power of these masters of
+the world: till again there arises in the heavens another hurricane,
+furious, ungovernable, rousing the sea to madness, striking once more
+the canvas from the yards, the masts from the deck, and leaving a mere
+hulk at the mercy of the waves which rush on her and over her with the
+wild rage of beasts of prey. Again and again these storms overtook the
+vessel of the State in Scotland, returning after every period of calm,
+after every recovery of authority, as wild, as tumultuous, as
+destructive as ever. Again and again they were overcome, the power of
+resistance restored, the equilibrium regained, only to fall once more
+into the raging of the elements. Each successive king, with perhaps one
+exception, had seized the helm as soon as his hand was fit for the
+strain, or even before it was strong enough for that office, and had
+gallantly brought the ship round and re-established the reign of a
+rational will and a certain unity of command over all the forces of the
+storms; but when he fell, left the helpless vessel again to be balloted
+about by all the winds of Fate.
+
+[Illustration: SALISBURY CRAGS]
+
+This was the case almost more wildly than ever when the fourth James
+Stewart died at Flodden. The heir, the helpless infant prince, was not
+two years old, and the flower of Scotland had been slain with their
+king. The mature warriors and statesmen, the wise counsellors, the men
+to whom the country might have looked in such an interregnum, were all
+gone. There remained only Churchmen and boys in the devastated country,
+a passionate English queen of Tudor blood, and no settled centre of
+government or reorganised power. Such lords as were left assembled
+hastily for that pathetic oft-repeated ceremony, the crowning of the
+child, taken out of his cradle to have the fatal circlet put upon his
+head--and committed some sort of regency, such as it was, to the Queen.
+And after a moment in which the country was paralysed with woe and every
+house full of mourning, Scotland plunged once more into the angry waves,
+among the lions of ever-recurring anarchy and strife.
+
+Nothing in all this turbulent and terrible history has ever been so
+tragic as Flodden. The nation which had lost the very flower and
+strength of its fighting men, its defenders and champions, the families
+which had lost their chiefs, their breadwinners--often father and son
+together, the master and his heir--were struck dumb with dismay and
+anguish. It was only a long time after, when despair had sunk into a
+softened recollection, that it was possible even to breathe forth that
+wail over the Flowers of the Forest which all Scotland knows. In the
+first shock of such an appalling event there is no place for elegy.
+There was a broken cry of anguish throughout the country, echoed from
+castle and cottage, where the poor women clung together, mistress and
+maid equal in the flood of common loss: and there was at the same time a
+strained and terrible rallying of all the poor defenders left, the old
+men and rusty arms, those of every house upon the Border and every town
+upon the road who had been left behind, to meet as well as they could
+the no doubt inevitable march of the conquering English army, which
+everybody felt sure must follow. When the news reached Edinburgh the
+magistrates of the town put forth a proclamation calling upon the
+inhabitants to prepare for the defence of the capital, and forbidding
+the women--a most significant and heartrending order, perhaps unique in
+public documents--to spread dismay through the streets by their crying
+and lamentations. The condition into which the community must have
+fallen when this became a public danger it is unnecessary to remark
+upon. The wail that sounded through all the country must have risen to a
+passionate pitch in those crowded streets, where the gates were closed
+and all the defences set, and nothing looked for but the approach of the
+victorious English with swords still dripping with Scottish blood. While
+Edinburgh waited breathless for this possible attack an extension of the
+existing wall was begun to defend the southern suburb, then semi-rural,
+containing the country-houses of the wealthy burghers and lawyers, the
+great convent of the Greyfriars, that of St. Mary in the Field, and many
+other monastic houses. This additional wall greatly increased the
+breadth of the _enceinte_, which now included a considerable space of
+embowered and luxuriant fields on the south side. It was called the
+Flodden Wall, and kept the memory of that great catastrophe and disaster
+before the minds of the citizens for many a day.
+
+But for some reason or other the English army which had cut Scotland to
+pieces at Flodden went no farther. The victory was no doubt a very
+costly one, and perhaps Henry VIII did not wish to drive the kingdom of
+which his sister would now be Regent to extremity, or do anything more
+to increase the desperate hostility of a country which was capable of
+giving him so much trouble. At all events Surrey's army was disbanded,
+and Scotland was left to resume her struggle within herself: which
+proved the wildest and most miserable turmoil and anarchy which her
+troubled records had yet known.
+
+It would be at once hopeless and unnecessary to enter into any sketch of
+the endless tumults of this time of distress. There was a momentary lull
+in which, though all the old personal feuds arose again, the poor little
+King and his mother were left undisturbed--she in possession of a
+regency more or less nominal, and in a state of health which must have
+subdued her activities, for her second son was not born till several
+months after her husband's death. But this child was only a few months
+old when Margaret, young, beautiful, impassioned, and impetuous,
+compromised her position by a sudden marriage with the young Earl of
+Angus--still almost a boy, and with nothing but his good looks to
+recommend him--an event which at once aroused all sleeping enmities and
+precipitated the usual struggle for the possession of the infant king. I
+will attempt nothing but an indication of one or two scenes in Edinburgh
+which took place during this struggle. Undeterred by the evil
+associations which surrounded that name, the Scottish lords bethought
+themselves of the French Duke of Albany, the nearest member of the royal
+family, the son of that duke who had been the terror of James III, who
+had conspired with England, and who finally had established himself in
+France and died there. His son was a French subject, the son of a French
+mother, inheriting through her great estates in France and a position
+which was little inferior in dignity, and much superior in comfort, to
+that of the harassed monarch of a most turbulent kingdom. But he was
+James Stewart, the nearest in blood to the crown, and his name seems,
+temporarily at least, to have united all parties, even the Queen, though
+his presence was fatal to her claims of regency, receiving him with
+courtesy and an apparent welcome. He had not been many months, however,
+in Scotland before, with the sanction of his council, he claimed from
+Margaret the possession of the King and his brother--sending four peers,
+appointed guardians, to the castle, to receive the children. It was in
+July 1515, two years after Flodden, when no doubt Edinburgh had regained
+that common cheerfulness and bustle of a great town which is so little
+interrupted even by the gravest public events. The deputation with their
+attendants proceeded from the Canongate, where they had been sitting in
+assembly, through the Netherbow Port and the bustling crowded High
+Street, to the castle, no doubt gathering with them on their way all the
+eager crowd which could free itself from shop or booth, all the
+passers-by in the streets, a continually-increasing throng. Who the four
+lords were we are not told. The whole incident is recorded in a letter
+of Lord Dacre to the English Council. No doubt he had his information
+either from the Queen herself or from members of her household. Of the
+four men chosen by Albany the Queen was at liberty to reject one, and no
+doubt they were men of weight and gravity, probably not unworthy of the
+trust.
+
+It is not difficult to realise the flying rumour which would go like the
+wind before them announcing their errand, and how windows and doorways
+and stairheads would fill with eager spectators, and all the moving
+population would press up the hill after them to see what was to be
+seen. The high houses full on every story of eager heads thrust forth,
+relieving with unintentional yet lively decoration the many-windowed
+fronts, the shopkeepers crowding at their doors or seizing cap and
+halberd to follow, the hum and excitement of the roused town, surround
+the envoys like the background of a picture. Most probably they went on
+foot, the distance being so short, preceded by a glittering herald and
+pursuivant--perhaps David Lindsay, who can tell? still too young to wear
+the Lion of Scotland on his tabard, but keen and curious to see this
+scene--he who had seen the envoy of heaven in Linlithgow Church and so
+many other wonderful things. The crowd surged upwards, keeping a
+respectful space in the midst for the lords with their train, and filled
+with colour and movement and the murmuring of numbers that great square
+before the castle gates which had held the same excited throng so often.
+And before the heralds could summon the wardens or demand entrance in
+the name of the Regent, the great gates rolled back, and all who were
+near enough to see gazed in amazement at such a group in the gateway as
+must have filled many eyes with tears, and which gave at once the most
+astonishing climax to that wonderful picture. There Margaret stood, a
+young woman of twenty-five, not a noble type of beauty, perhaps, but
+with the fresh and florid Tudor good looks, and no doubt the imperious
+Tudor port imposing to the crowd, with her child in his little cloak and
+plumed bonnet, four years old, holding her hand. Among her little troop
+of attendants, the ladies of her subdued Court, and the cluster of
+cavaliers who surrounded her young husband, there might well be another
+name of gentler fame--the then Provost of St. Giles, Gawin Douglas, poet
+and statesman, who was her counsellor and the negotiator of her many
+troubled affairs. But in this emergency it was the Queen herself who
+bade the startled lords stand and deliver their message. They stepped
+forward in some confusion, one would guess, not having calculated upon
+this sudden encounter with such an unexpected champion, difficult to
+silence--not only a queen with all the prestige both real and
+sentimental which surrounds such a position, but also a mother whose
+children were threatened. When they had finished their explanation, the
+crowd looking on, no doubt impatient of the pause and of the voices that
+could not reach their ears, Margaret stepped back and bade her
+attendants quickly to let down the portcullis. They must have been
+stationed ready with the intention, and no doubt the lords had no
+attendants with them who could have hindered any such step or forced an
+entrance. While the people looked on wondering, the iron bars came
+crashing down, and in a moment the Queen and her child were safe though
+visible within. Then Margaret addressed through that iron trellis the
+astonished deputation. She told them that she was the guardian of the
+castle, enfeoffed in it by her royal husband, and not minded to yield it
+to any man, but that she respected the Parliament and country, and would
+take six days to consider the demand made to her. The lords left outside
+had no alternative but to turn and go back, not we may be sure without a
+chorus of commentaries from the lively crowd, ever quick to note the
+discomfiture of its masters, and delighted with such a novel sensation:
+though the grave burghers would shake their heads at the boldness of the
+Englishwoman who had so confronted the Scots lords in their own city.
+
+The Queen transferred herself and her children to Stirling before the
+six days had expired, but, as might be supposed, her little triumph was
+short-lived. Her boyish husband had already shown signs of deserting
+her, and probably enough her fancy for him was as short-lived as those
+other ephemeral and still more tragical passions which her brother had
+scarcely yet begun to indulge. The excuse which the Regent and his
+council put forth for taking the infant King from his mother was partly
+her second marriage, and partly a supposed plan for carrying off the two
+children to England, which did actually exist, King Henry being, as a
+matter of fact, their nearest of kin and most powerful possible
+guardian, though one who would have been vehemently rejected by all
+Scotland: while on the other hand the little James was as yet the most
+likely heir to the English crown. But this scheme had been opposed both
+by the Queen herself--whose statement that had she been a woman of
+humble condition she might have taken her children in her arms and gone
+unknown to her brother, but that, being a queen, she could not move
+anywhere without observation, is full of homely and natural dignity--and
+by Gawin Douglas, who repeats the same objection. Margaret, however, did
+not long continue to identify herself with the Douglases. The conduct of
+Angus gave her full reason for offence, if, perhaps, she was not
+altogether guiltless on her side; and they were in a state of absolute
+estrangement when the calling of a Parliament early in the year 1520
+brought Angus to Edinburgh, where with his party he had been sometimes
+master and sometimes proscribed man in the innumerable variations of
+politics or rather of personal quarrels and intrigues. Albany had by
+this time returned to France without however resigning his regency, and
+authority was more or less represented by the Earl of Arran, who was at
+the head of the opposite faction. The party of Arran were in possession
+of Edinburgh and of the little King, now eight years old, who was in the
+castle under charge of the peers who had been appointed his guardians,
+when Angus reappeared. Queen Margaret amid all these tumults, finding
+little encouragement from her brother, who was much more intent on
+securing a party in Scotland than on consulting her wishes, had also
+chosen to reside near her boy in the comparative safety of that
+stronghold. Accordingly when Earl Angus came to attend the Parliament he
+was confronted by his adversaries in possession of the town and of the
+castle, with his wife, the most violent adversary of all, in the
+fortress shut up from his access or approach. He was accompanied,
+Pitscottie tells us, "with all his kin and friends to the number of five
+hundred spears, weill accompanied and arrayed." But the city was
+hostile, and perhaps something in the sombre air of all about awakened
+the suspicions of the Douglases, especially as the gates were hastily
+shut behind them and more than usual precautions taken. Awakened thus to
+a sense of alarm, the threatened party sent scouts out into the streets
+during the night, to find out what mischief was brewing. While the
+humbler spies pursued their inquiries by wynd and changehouse, Maister
+Gawin Douglas, the bishop, went out to see what he could discover of the
+real state of affairs--if it was true that the westland lords had held a
+secret meeting and resolved that Angus should not leave Edinburgh now
+that he had put himself in their power--and "if he could find any gude
+way betwixt the two parties." In pursuance of this anxious quest he went
+in search of Archbishop James Beatoun, his brother of St. Andrews, whom
+he found in the church of the Black Friars, assisting, it is to be
+presumed, at some evening service.
+
+    "The said Mr. Gawin desired him to take some pains to labour betwixt
+    this two parties which was at ane sharp point, and meaning little
+    less than that the bishop had most part the wyte (blame) thereof.
+    But the bishop assured him again with ane oath, chopping on his
+    breast, saying, 'By my conscience, my lord, I know not the matter.'
+    But when Mr. Gawin heard the bishop's purgation, and chopping on his
+    breast, and perceived the plates of his jack clattering, he thought
+    the bishop deceaved him, so Mr. Gawin said to him, 'My lord, your
+    conscience is not good, for I hear it clattering.'"
+
+[Illustration: REID'S CLOSE, CANONGATE]
+
+After all these advertisements--the bishop's secret coat of mail, the
+angry discussion between two Hamiltons in the very presence of Arran the
+head of the house, when he was himself willing to grant licence to Angus
+"to speak with the Queen's Grace and thereafter depart out of the
+town"--and all the lesser evidences of danger and conspiracy, the Earl
+and his band prepared themselves for the worst. "This young lord haisted
+him to his armour, and caused his friends and servants to do the same,
+and went right peartlie to the gate, and stood above the Nether Bow in
+arrayed battle." The other party, when they were made aware that the
+Douglases were standing on their defence, came rushing together from
+kirk and market, hastily assembling without discipline or order, to find
+the little mail-clad line arranged in the strongest way against the
+background of the houses, where, no doubt, every shopkeeper had rushed
+to his bolts and bars, and every door clanged to in view of the sudden
+tumult. Sir Walter has given us in _The Abbot_ a glimpse more
+picturesque and graphic than any we can attempt, of the sudden scuffle
+in the street between two passing groups, the armed attendants more
+dangerous and less prudent than their masters, whose strife as to which
+was to hold the centre of the street was enough to produce at once an
+encounter of arms ending in blood, and death for some of the band. The
+struggle known by the name of "Clear the Causeway" was more important,
+yet of a similar kind. Angus and his five hundred spears--in reality a
+much greater number since each spear was accompanied by certain
+men-at-arms--had much the advantage of the other party, hurriedly roused
+from their occupations, who had expected to make an easy end of the
+Douglases, thus betrayed into a sort of ambush in a hostile city, where
+no man would lift a hand to help them. But the tables were completely
+turned upon the Hamiltons and their supporters, when rushing "out of
+their lodging rudlie to the gait in ane furious rage," the peaceable
+driven forward by the taunts of the others, they found Angus and his
+spears in full array of battle. "When the Earl of Angus saw them coming,
+and perceaved Sir Patrick Hamilton foremost, and with him the Maister of
+Montgomerie, and saw them in sic ane furie, he knew well there was
+nothing but fighting, and cryed to his men to save Sir Patrick Hamilton
+if they might; but he came so far before the rest that he was slain
+hastilie, and with him the Maister of Montgomerie, with sundry other
+gentlemen, to the number of twelve score and twelve persons." The end of
+the fray, which was "foughten very hardilie on both sides ane long
+space," was that Arran's men were driven down the side of the hill
+through the narrow wynds that led from the High Street towards the wall,
+and thence made their way out through some postern, or perhaps at the
+gate near the Well-house Tower, where the little well of St. Margaret
+now bubbles up unconsidered, and so across the Nor' Loch, by boat or
+ford. Bishop Beatoun, he whose conscience clattered beneath his robes,
+fled again to the Blackfriars Church, where Mr. Gawin had found him on
+the previous evening prepared for mischief, and took refuge there behind
+the altar, where he was pursued and "his rockit rivin aff him, and had
+been slain," but that Gawin Douglas, following the pursuers, perhaps
+with a sarcastic satisfaction in setting forth the virtues of a peaceful
+robe over the warlike covering that invited as well as preserved from
+danger, interposed, saying, "It was shame to put hand on ane consecreat
+bishop." The encounter of these two priests by evening and morning, the
+supercilious refusal of the mail-clad bishop to interfere, and pretence
+of ignorance--and, as one may imagine, the watch over him from afar of
+his brother of Dunkeld with the full intention of peaceful yet effective
+reprisals, throw a light of grim humour upon the warlike scene. Maister
+Gawin had no mail-coat, and would not fight; but he must have kept an
+eye upon his natural foe through the fray, and it would be strange if he
+had not some pleasure in perceiving the rochet, which Beatoun must have
+donned hastily to save himself, pulled over his head by rude hands in
+scorn of the priestly pretence--and some satisfaction in interposing to
+preserve the "consecreat bishop," whose behaviour was so little saintly.
+
+"Thereafter the Earl of Angus passed to the castle and spoke with the
+Queen at his pleasure," says Pitscottie. It could not be a very gracious
+or affectionate interview. For Margaret and her husband had long before
+come to a complete breach, and the greatest desire in her mind was to
+divorce the young man whom she had married so hastily, who had treated
+her, indeed, with little consideration, and whom she had come to hate
+with a bitterness only possible to husbands and wives ill paired.
+
+After this the young King passed from hand to hand, from one guardian or
+captor to another, according to the custom of his predecessors, with
+many troubled vicissitudes in his life: but it is pleasant to believe
+that though the story leaves a painful impression as of a distracted
+childhood, continually dragged about and harassed between contending
+forces, yet that persistent placidity of nature which plants flowers
+upon the very edge of the fiercest precipices interposed to secure for
+little James as for other children the nursery calm, the infant
+happiness which is the right of childhood. No more delightful picture of
+tender infancy, the babbling of the first baby words, the sweet exigence
+and endless requirements of a child, was ever made than that which Sir
+David Lindsay, the future Lyon King, whom Sir Walter Scott in _gaieté de
+coeur_ (that he should ever be wrong!) introduces in full panoply of
+heraldic splendour before Flodden, but who was but a youth in the new
+James's baby days, gives in his "Epistle to the King's Grace,"
+dedicatory to one of his poems. We will venture, though with
+compunction, once more as we have already done, to modernise the
+spelling as far as possible, so as to present no difficulty to the
+reader in the understanding of these delightful verses.
+
+    "When thou was young I bore thee in mine arme
+        Full tenderlie till thou began to gang,
+    And in thy bed oft happit thee full warme;
+        With lute in hand then sweetly to thee sang.
+        Sometime in dancing wondrously I flang,
+    And sometime playing farces on the floor,
+    And sometime on mine office taking cure.
+
+    "And sometime like a fiend transfigurate,
+        And sometime like the grisly ghost of Gye,
+    In divers forms oft times disfigurate,
+        And sometime dissagyist full pleasantly.
+        So since thy birth I have continually
+    Been occupied and aye to thy pleasoure,
+    And sometime Server, Coppon, and Carvoure."
+
+In another poem he adds, upon the same subject, returning to the
+pleasant memory, the following happy description:--
+
+    "How, as a chapman bears his pack,
+    I bore thy Grace upon my back,
+    And sometime stridling on my neck,
+    Dancing with many a bend and beck.
+    The first syllables that thou didst moote
+    Was '_Pa, Da Lyn_' upon the lute.
+    And aye when thou camest from the school
+      Then I behoved to play the fool."
+
+"Play, Davy Lindsay:" the touch of nature brings the water to one's
+eyes. Davy Lindsay had yet to play many a spring before King James, and
+some that were not gay. But the gentle stripling with the infant on his
+shoulder, the pertinacity of the little babbling cry, the "homely
+springs" played offhand that it was pity to hear, but which the lad
+enjoyed almost as much in laughing at their dashing incorrectness as the
+baby who knew only that it was a pleasant sound--how bright and vivid is
+the picture! Thus while the lords and his mother stormed over him, the
+little King, perhaps in those small state-rooms in well-defended
+Edinburgh, perhaps in the sunshine at Holyrood with his poet, had
+pleasant days.
+
+James was already a growing boy when the last and worst of the tyrannies
+which oppressed his youth began. When the disastrous episode of Albany
+was well over the Douglases again made one last desperate struggle for
+the supreme power. Angus it would seem was not discouraged by the change
+in the Queen from love to hate, nor even by the efforts which she had
+begun to make to divorce and shake him off, and it is evident that he
+must have secured the liking of the little King, to whom in the close
+intimacy of the family as his mother's husband he must have been known
+from earliest childhood. The Earl was handsome and young, one of the
+finest cavaliers of the Court, and probably was kind to the infant who
+could not contradict or cross him, and whose favour it was so expedient
+to secure. It costs a young man little to make himself adored by a boy
+to whom he seems the incarnation of manly strength and splendour. And
+there is every appearance that James accepted Angus's rule at first with
+pleasure, no doubt looking up to him as a guide in the manly exercises
+which could be pursued in his following with more spirit and zeal than
+in the Queen's surroundings. The great power of the Douglases, which it
+took so much bloodshed to break down, and which James II had spent all
+his life in contending with, extinguished in one branch of the family,
+seemed now to have developed in another with increased and extended
+force. Angus was as great, as potent, as universally feared as the Earls
+of Douglas had ever been; and almost as lawless, filling the country
+with his exactions and those of his dependants. He had attained this
+triumph after many drawbacks and downfalls and against the strongest
+opponents, and Scotland was overawed by the terror of that well-known
+name. It was scarcely to be supposed, however, that the young King,
+precociously aware of all the dangers of his position, could remain
+subject willingly as he grew up to the sway of a vassal of the Crown
+however great. There must have been private counsellors ever ready to
+whisper that Douglas was nothing save by the King's authority, and that
+James's favour alone could keep him in his usurped place. A few months
+after he had attained the age of sixteen, the boy over whom everybody
+had intrigued and plotted all his life long, who had been torn from one
+side to another since ever he could remember, and whom a Douglas had but
+recently threatened, at a moment of alarm, that rather than render him
+up they would tear him in two, took at last the matter into his own
+hands. Whether the suggestion was his own, or had in some way been
+breathed into his mind, there is no evidence; but it is clear that he
+had good reason to be very tired of his subjection. He had already
+attempted, we are told, several means of getting free of bondage, but
+had only succeeded in causing the destruction of various lords to whom
+he had appealed. All his friends had been alienated from him. His mother
+was powerless to help, and indeed on her own account in such evil case
+that she is said to have wandered over the country in disguise,
+friendless and out of favour with all. She had hastened into a third
+foolish marriage as soon as she had obtained her divorce from Angus, and
+thus lost all her supporters and champions. His uncle, Henry VIII, was
+more closely bound to Angus, who was strongly in the interest of England
+as against France, than to any other Scot, and the young King was thus
+surrounded by influences hostile to his freedom.
+
+[Illustration: DOORWAY, SIR A. AITCHESON'S HOUSE]
+
+There are moments, however, when the most vigilant watch relaxes, and it
+so happened that Angus left his young prisoner on one occasion at the
+Castle of Falkland, the hunting seat of the Scots kings, to all
+appearance fully occupied with hunting and hawking and thinking of
+nothing more important, in the charge of Archibald Douglas, the Earl's
+uncle, George his brother, and a certain James Douglas of Parkhead, who
+was the captain of the guard. When Angus had been gone a day or two, the
+elder of these guardians asked leave of the King, according to the
+formula, to go to Dundee upon personal business of his own; and George
+Douglas rode off to St. Andrews to see the Bishop on a question of
+taxes, leaving only the captain and his hundred guardsmen to be
+accounted for. Who can doubt that young James was well used to all
+devices for deceiving his gaolers, he who had been held by so many?
+There was nothing in his present expedient which could have offended the
+most tender conscience. He desired that preparations might be made for a
+great hunting, calling upon "the laird of Ferme, forester of the park of
+Falkland, and chamberlain of Fife," to warn everybody about and call all
+the surrounding gentlemen "that had speedie dogs" to hunt with him,
+appointing the meeting next morning at seven o'clock, "for he was
+determined to slay ane deare or two for his pleasure." Pitscottie is
+very particular in his description, and places the economy of the little
+castle before us, among its woods--with its simplicity, its precautions,
+the homeliness of the household. The King desired to have "his
+disjeuner" at four in the morning, and bade James Douglas "gang the
+sooner to his bed that night that he might rise the sooner in the
+morning," and after he had supped, called for a drink and drank to
+Douglas, saying that they should see good hunting on the morn, and
+warning him not to be late; from which it may be guessed that Captain
+James was not fond of early hours. The captain saw as he thought the
+King go to bed, and having set the watch, and arranged everything for
+the night, went to bed himself, as the boy had laughingly bidden him to
+do. As soon as all was quiet, eluding the watch without apparent
+difficulty, the King, attended only by "Jockie Hart, a yeoman of the
+stable," and another "secret servant," escaped in the stillness of the
+night into the freedom of the sleeping country. It is said by one
+authority to have been in June that this evasion was made, but in June
+there is scarcely any night at all in Scotland, and the brief darkness
+could scarcely have served as a screen for the fugitives; probably it
+was earlier in the year, when the night was more to be calculated upon.
+One can imagine the breathless excitement and delight of the long ride,
+with the fresh breeze in his face, and one of the richest valleys in
+Scotland coming softly into sight in the midst of the morning, as the
+young King full of spirit, ambition, and all the rising impulses of
+manhood, left behind him the gentle shadow of the Lomond hills, and
+swept round the base of the Ochils towards the castle, high-standing on
+its rock, where freedom and his crown and all the privileges of royal
+life and independence were awaiting him. He reached Stirling in the
+breaking of the day, and galloping across the bridge, caused its gates
+to be closed after him, that no pursuer might cross the river; and was
+received with great rejoicing in the castle, where everything had been
+prepared for his coming, and where the captain, having let down the
+portcullis and made all secure, "laid the King in his bed, because he
+had ridden all that night." Probably there was no moment in the life of
+the young monarch, who had fallen upon such troubled times, more sweet
+than this when, after the wild excitement of the long night's riding, he
+closed his young eyes, at an hour so unaccustomed, in the clear radiance
+of the morning, feeling his life now free before him, as light and fair
+and unfettered as the rising day. But Pitscottie must continue the tale
+in his own admirable way. He says:--
+
+    "We will lat him sleep in his bed, and return to George Douglas, who
+    came home to Falkland at eleven hours at night, and required at the
+    porters what the King was doing, who answered that he was in his own
+    chamber sleeping, who was to rise tymous to the hunting, and right
+    so said the watchmen. George hearing this went to his bed, till on
+    the morn that the sun rose. Then came Patrick Carmichael, baillie of
+    Abernethie, and knocked at George Douglas's chamber door, and
+    inquired of him what the King was doing. George answered that he was
+    not waked as yet in his own chamber. The baillie answered, 'Ye are
+    deceaved; he is along the bridge of Stirling this night.' Then
+    George Douglas gat up hastilie and went to the porters and watchmen
+    and inquired for the King, who still answered that he was sleeping
+    in his own chamber. Then George Douglas came to the King's chamber
+    door and found it locked, and dang it up, but found no man in it.
+    Then he cryed, 'Fye, treason, the King is gone!'"
+
+The confusion and dismay of the household were great. Some said that the
+King had gone to Bambriefe "to visit a gentlewoman," which explanation
+was received with relief, the question of morality being of small
+consequence in comparison. George Douglas immediately leaped on his
+horse to ascertain if this were true, but had not ridden more than two
+miles when he met the Earl of Rothes, who told him the King was not
+there. By this time the other Douglas who had gone to Dundee had
+returned also, and a hurried council was held what to do. Angus himself
+was immediately summoned from Tantallon by an express, "ane haistie
+post," and instantly answering, set out with his uncle and brother, and
+rode to Stirling with some forlorn hope it would appear of recovering
+their empire over the King. But James had already gathered counsellors
+round him, and was himself too strongly determined to maintain his
+liberty to allow any approach. The road to Stirling would no doubt be
+full of scouts, to give warning of what the discomfited but powerful
+family meant to do, and as soon as their approach was known a herald was
+sent to the town cross to proclaim by sound of trumpet a royal decree
+that neither Angus nor his companions should approach within six miles
+of where the King was under pain of death. It is curious to mark how in
+a moment the great power of the Douglases and their high courage
+collapsed in face of this proclamation. They paused on their hasty ride,
+and held another hasty council, and though some among them were for
+pressing forward and seizing once more the malapert boy who defied them,
+the Earl himself and his brother decided to obey the proclamation and
+withdraw. They fell back upon Linlithgow, where they paused a day or two
+hoping perhaps for better news. But by this time the other nobles were
+crowding round the King. Huntly, Argyle, Athole, Glencairn, Monteith,
+and Rothes, with a still larger company of barons, hastened to Stirling
+to protect and aid with their counsel the liberated prince. Archbishop
+Beatoun, the wily Churchman, who had done all he could to overthrow
+Angus,--who had been for a moment so worsted in the conflict that he
+skulked about his own Fife moors in the disguise of a shepherd, but who
+had lately made friends with the dominant family and entertained the
+King and his guardians together, calling them "to his pasche (Easter) at
+St. Andrews,"--and who had no doubt known of the momentous night
+journey, and probably detained George Douglas late that evening to make
+it more sure, had also joined the King.
+
+With this powerful escort James proceeded to Edinburgh, where for some
+time the lords around him kept watch night and day, keeping their little
+army of attendants under arms in case of any attack on the part of
+Angus. One night, we are told, James himself in full armour took the
+command of the guard, more probably, however, from a boyish desire to
+feel himself at the head of his defenders than for any other reason; and
+even his bedchamber was shared, after an unpleasant fashion of the time,
+by the bastard of Arran, "James Hamilton, that bloody butcherer," as
+Pitscottie calls him, who had precipitated the fray of "Clear the
+Causeway" and was Angus's most inveterate enemy. These extraordinary
+precautions, however, seem to have been unnecessary. The Douglases would
+appear to have accepted their defeat as complete, and to have been
+entirely cowed by it. Another proclamation was put forth on the arrival
+of the King in Edinburgh commanding all true subjects to refrain from
+intercourse of any kind with Angus, his brother, and uncle, not to
+receive them or succour them or hold any communication with them on
+peril of being considered sharers in their crime--in short, a sort of
+interdict after the papal fashion. The impromptu council sat for two
+days in the upper chamber of the Tolbooth, which was the recognised
+Parliament House, chiefly, it would seem, to hear the King's indictment
+against the family of Douglas. James set forth all his grievances, his
+subjection to the will of Angus, his separation from his own friends,
+the appearance he had been made to assume of enmity to his real
+champions, and vowed at the end, says Pitscottie, in the fervour of his
+indignation and resentment, that Scotland should not hold them both. He
+would receive nothing but support in that assembly where all had
+suffered from the supremacy of Angus, and where the too powerful race
+had no friends. The council appointed anew all the high officers of
+State, whose posts had been appropriated by the Douglases, and sent an
+envoy to England to announce that the government of Scotland was
+henceforward in the King's own hands. It was also ordained that a
+Parliament should be called in the month of September, to confirm in a
+more decorous and regular way the decisions of the present hasty
+assembly.
+
+When Parliament met these questions were accordingly discussed over
+again, with confirmation of what had been already done. It was decided
+that Angus should be summoned before them to answer for his misdeeds,
+under the penalty if he did not appear of being "put to the horn and
+banished during the King's will." Angus was not so rash as to trust
+himself within the power of his enemies, as his kinsmen of the house of
+Douglas had already done on two fatal occasions: and as neither he nor
+his retainers put in an appearance, they were accordingly attainted,
+their lands forfeited to the Crown, their name put under the public ban,
+their great castle of Tantallon seized, and themselves proclaimed
+through all the country as traitors whom no man should receive or
+succour.
+
+The complete downfall which overtook this great house after the young
+King's abandonment of it is very remarkable, and shows how important was
+the royal position, notwithstanding the manner in which it had been
+_exploité_, and the mere nominal power of its actual possessor. The
+house of Angus crumbled into the dust as soon as their young prisoner
+escaped their hands. They took refuge in England, where they vainly
+attempted on various occasions to negotiate for their return, but with
+no success. The name continued obnoxious to James during his whole life.
+Sir Walter has done his best to rehabilitate that name in the noble
+Douglas of _The Lady of the Lake_, who has been identified with
+Archibald of Kilspindie, "the uncle of the banished Earl," the story of
+whose appearance at the games at Stirling is said to have some
+foundation of reality. But the historians of the house, who alone
+mention this, state the facts in a very different way.
+
+Thus the Angus branch of the Douglas family fell, as the Earls of
+Douglas had fallen, and for a generation there was little heard of it
+save in mutterings of treason in moments of difficulty, which never came
+to much--until in the following reign the indomitable race rose again in
+another branch and under another name, and furnished in the Regent
+Morton one of the strongest as well as the most questionable figures of
+a deeply disturbed time. Never was a race more difficult to subdue.
+
+The escape of James from Falkland took place between Easter and June in
+the year 1527. In 1528, the Douglases being clean swept out of the
+country, the young King went on a professed hunting expedition to the
+Borders, where, besides innumerable deer, its ostensible reason, his
+ride through the southern district carried punishment and death to many
+a Border reiver and especially to the famous John or Johnnie Armstrong,
+the Laird of Kilnokie, and chief or at least best-known representative
+of his name. Whether it was wise policy to hang the reiver who was the
+terror of the Borders, yet "never molested no Scottis man," it is not
+necessary to decide. He was a scourge to the English, of whom it was
+said that there was none from the Scottish Border to Newcastle who did
+not "pay ane tribute to be free of his cumber." Johnnie Armstrong had
+the folly to come into the King's presence with such a train, his men so
+completely armed and so many in number, as to compete with royal
+magnificence, not very great in Scotland in those days. "What wants yon
+knave that a king should have?" said the young James, who had certainly
+had enough of such powerful subjects: and he would not listen to either
+excuse or explanation from the Borderer, whose defiance as he was led to
+his execution, and the wail of his wild followers after him, sounds
+still in the stirring strains of song and ballad. No doubt it was
+justice that James did--but justice somewhat stern and out of time.
+
+The young Court now blazing out into full splendour, with a legitimate
+head and every prospect of prosperity, became again the resort of
+foreign chivalry and magnificent envoys, among them a legate from the
+Pope to assure the allegiance of James to the Holy See, which his uncle
+of England had deserted. Henry at the same time did not neglect by
+constant messengers and vague promises, now of the hand of the Princess
+Mary, now of an English dukedom, to secure his nephew to his side. After
+that princess, whom her father tried his utmost to put out of the
+succession by divorcing her mother, James was the next heir, and Henry
+did not forget that possibility. The hand of the young princess had
+already been several times offered to the Scots King without any
+certainty either in the proposal or its acceptance. One cannot help
+wondering what might have been the issue had that unhappy Mary, to whom
+history has given so grim a nickname, been thus wedded in early youth to
+a gracious and gallant Stewart. In all history there occurs by times a
+gleam like this of possible deliverance from fate, an opening by which
+the subjects of tragedy might have secured an escape had they but known.
+One wonders had she thus escaped the wrongs and bitterness of her early
+career whether Mary would have got free from those traces of blood and
+madness which have left so dark a shadow upon her name; or whether, in
+the conflict that was to follow, her fierce Tudor passion would have
+embittered every strife. It is wonderful to think that she might have
+been the mother of that other Mary so different yet still more sadly
+fated, who in that case never could have been the Mary Stewart she was.
+We are led to something like a _reductio ad absurdum_ by such
+speculations, very vain yet always attractive as they are. James was
+eager to marry at the earliest possible moment, and all would have
+welcomed the marriage with his kinswoman.
+
+In this respect, however, as in almost every other, Scotland was now at
+a turning-point of the utmost importance in her career. For the first
+time her politics had begun to be troubled by the possibility of an
+alliance with England more strong and lasting than the brief periods of
+truce which had hitherto existed between two nations whose principle and
+tradition were those of enmity. A perpetual peace had indeed been sworn
+and signed at the time of the marriage of Margaret Tudor with James IV,
+but how little lasting that had been is amply demonstrated by the fact
+that no such crushing defeat had ever been inflicted upon Scotland as
+that of Flodden, in which the King and the great part of his nobles
+perished. Perhaps it was the germ of the design to attract the lesser
+country into the arms of the greater by friendship rather than to set
+her desperately at bay against all peaceful influences, which had
+prevented the successful army from taking advantage of the victory; but
+certainly through all the distracted period of James's minority efforts
+had been made by constant envoys to acquire a share in the councils of
+the country, such as had hitherto been considered the right of France,
+who was the old and faithful ally as England was "the auld enemy" of the
+Scots. The alliance with France had been taken for granted on all sides.
+That Scotland should harass England in every war between that country
+and her continental neighbour was a foregone conclusion, and it was
+something still more sure, a proverb on the English side, that when
+France was to be assailed the right thing was to begin with Scotland.
+The position of Henry as brother of the Scottish Queen, and the nearest
+relative of James, who, under circumstances not at all unlikely to
+occur, might be his heir, gave the English king now a natural right to
+interfere; and it is conceivable that had this right been exercised more
+wisely it might have led to fortunate issues. But unhappily King Henry
+had associated his influence with that of Angus, taking the part of his
+sister's discarded husband with great determination, and apparently
+without any sympathy in those changes in Margaret's affections which so
+much resembled his own. Angus was to Scotland the representative of the
+English alliance, and as everything connected with Angus had now become
+hateful to James, it followed that his uncle's desire to obtain an
+influence over him, which was not accompanied by any substantial marks
+of kindness towards himself, did not meet with much success: though it
+might have been otherwise had the vaguely-proposed marriage been carried
+out. But one can scarcely be sorry that the noble and graceful James
+should have escaped such an alliance.
+
+[Illustration: LINLITHGOW PALACE]
+
+Other and still more serious matters were now, however, surging upwards
+in both England and Scotland, which doubled the silent struggle between
+the old ally and the new. On the side of France was the old religion,
+the Church which at this period was the strongest of the Estates of
+Scotland, richer than any of the others, and possessing almost all the
+political ability of the time: on the side of England a new, scarcely
+recognised, but powerful influence, which was soon to attain almost
+complete mastery in Scotland and shatter that Church to pieces. In the
+beginning of James's reign this new power was but beginning to swell in
+the silent bosom of the country, showing here and there in a trial for
+heresy and in the startling fires of execution which cut off the first
+martyrs for the reformed faith. But there is no evidence to show that
+James, a young man full of affairs much more absorbing than religious
+controversy, with more confidence, politically at least, in the Church
+than in any other power of his realm, had ever been awakened to the
+importance of the struggle. The smoke of those fires which blew over all
+Scotland in potent fumes from St. Andrews, on the further side of the
+Firth; and from Edinburgh, where on the Castle Hill in the intervals of
+the tiltings and tourneys, the Vicar of Dollar for example, of whose
+examination we have a most vivid and admirable report, full of
+picturesque simplicity, not without humour even in the midst of the
+tragedy, was burnt--along with several gentlemen of his county: does not
+seem to have reached the young King, absorbed in some project of State,
+or busy with new laws and regulations, or inspecting the portraits of
+the great ladies among whom he had to choose his bride. There is a
+curious story communicated in a letter of one of the English envoys of
+the period of his conversation with a Scotch gentleman, in which we find
+a description of James listening to a play represented before the Court
+at the feast of the Epiphany, 1540, in the Castle of Linlithgow. This
+play is believed to have been Sir David Lindsay's _Satire on the Three
+Estates_, one of the most effective attacks upon the corruptions of the
+Church which had ever been made, and setting forth the exactions of the
+priests from the peasantry and the poor at every event of their lives,
+as well as the wealth and wickedness of the monastic communities, of
+which Scotland was full, and which had long been the recognised object
+of popular satire and objurgation. The performance would seem to have
+had as great an effect upon the young King as had the play in _Hamlet_
+upon the majesty of Denmark. James turned to Beatoun (the Cardinal,
+nephew and successor of Archbishop James) the Chancellor in indignant
+remonstrance. Were these things so? and if they were, would not the
+bishops and other powerful ecclesiastics join to repress them? Let them
+do so at once, cried the sovereign: or if not he should send half a
+dozen of the proudest of them to King Henry to be dealt with after his
+methods. Even Churchmen had occasionally to brook such threats from an
+excited prince. Beatoun answered with courtier-like submission that a
+word from the King was enough, upon which James, not wont to confine
+himself to words, and strong in the success with which he had overcome
+one of his Estates, the lords, now so quiet under his hand, replied that
+he would not spare many words for such an issue. This characteristic
+scene is very interesting. But probably when the memory of what he had
+heard faded from the busy King, and the tumult of public events gained
+possession again of his ear and mind, he forgot the sudden impression,
+or contented himself with the thought that Beatoun and the bishops must
+put order in their own affairs. Pitscottie tells us in respect to a
+projected visit to England, vaguely thought of and planned several years
+before this time, that "the wicked bishops of Scotland would not thole"
+a meeting between James and Henry. "For the bishops feared that if the
+King had met with King Henry that he would have moved him to casten down
+the abbeys, and to have altered the religion as the King of England had
+done before. Therefore the bishops bade him to bide at home, and gave
+him three thousand pounds of yearly rent out of their benefices." It is
+to be feared that history has no evidence of this voluntary munificence,
+but James found the ecclesiastical possessions in Scotland very useful
+for the purposes of taxation, and in this respect did not permit Beatoun
+to have his own way.
+
+When the young King was in his twenty-fourth year he found himself
+able--many previous negotiations on the subject having come to
+nothing--to pay a visit to the Continent in his own person in order to
+secure a wife. It is a greater testimony to the personal power and
+vigour of James than any mere details could give that, within eight
+years of the time when, a boy of sixteen, he had escaped from the power
+of the Douglas, it should be possible for him to leave, after all the
+wild anarchy of his minority, a pacificated and orderly kingdom behind
+him, in the care of a Council of Regency, while he went forth upon a
+mission so important to himself. He had altogether extinguished and
+expelled the house of Douglas; he had subdued and repressed other
+turbulent lords, and convinced them that his authority was neither to be
+neutralised nor made light of; he had settled and calmed the Border by
+the most decisive means; and he was now free to show himself in the
+society of kings, and win his princess, and see the world. He had been
+already the object of many overtures from contemporary Powers. The
+Emperor and the Pope had both sent him envoys and conciliated his
+friendship; and in the imperial house itself as well as in many others
+of the highest rank there had been ladies proposed to share his crown.
+The one more immediately in view when he set out on his journey was a
+daughter of the Duke of Vendôme. The defeat of Charles V before
+Marseilles took place almost simultaneously with James's arrival, and
+the Scotch chroniclers do not lose the opportunity of asserting that it
+was the coming of the King of the Scots with a supposed army of twenty
+thousand men to the succour of France which was the reason of the
+Emperor's precipitate withdrawal. Pitscottie narrates, with more evident
+truthfulness, how the Frenchmen on the Norman coast were alarmed by the
+ships, fearing it to be an enemy which hove in sight, "for there were
+many strangers in his companie, so that he appeared ane great army." But
+the sight of the red lion of Scotland changed their alarms into joy, and
+they welcomed the Scots King and party, "at the New Haven beside Diep,"
+with much rejoicing. He would seem to have pushed across France to the
+Court of Vendôme without pausing to pay his respects to the King at
+Paris; and we find his movements recorded in a romantic tale, which is
+neither contradicted nor supported by other authorities, but likely
+enough to a romantic young prince upon a love-quest. According to this
+description James did not assume his proper character but appeared only
+as one among the many knights, who probably represented themselves, to
+make his feint successful, as merely a party of cavaliers seeking
+adventure and the exercises of chivalry. He intended thus to see, while
+himself unknown, "the gentlewoman who sould have been his spouse,
+thinking to spy her pulchritud and behaviour unkenned by her."
+
+    "Notwithstanding this fair ladie took suspition that the King of
+    Scotland should be in the companie, wherefore she passed to her
+    coffer and took out his picture, which she had gotten out of
+    Scotland by ane secret moyane, and as soon as she looked to the
+    picture it made her know the King of Scotland incontinent where he
+    stood among the rest of his companie, and past peartlie to him, and
+    took him by the hand, and said, 'Sir, ye stand over far aside;
+    therefore, if it please your Grace, you may show yourself to my
+    father or me, and confer and pass the time ane while.'"
+
+Perhaps it was injudicious of the fair ladie to be so "peart." At all
+events, after much feasting, "nothing but merriness and banquetting and
+great cheer and lovelie communing betwixt the King's grace and the fair
+ladies, with great musick and playing on instruments, and all other
+kinds of pastime for the fields," as well as "jousting and running of
+great horses," the ungrateful James "thought it expedient to speak
+nothing of marriage at that time, till he had spoken with the King of
+France, considering," adds the chronicler, who perhaps sees an excuse to
+be necessary, "he was within his realm he would show him his mind and
+have his counsel thereto before he concluded the matter." Pitscottie
+thus saves the feelings of the lady of whom other historians say curtly
+that she did not please the King. But when the Scottish band reached the
+Court, though it was then in mourning for the Dauphin, recently dead,
+King James was received with open arms. The King of France, sick and sad
+for the loss of his son, was in the country at a hunting seat, and when
+James was suddenly introduced at the door of his chamber as "the King of
+Scotland, sire, come to comfort you," the arrival evidently made the
+best possible impression. The sorrowful father declared, as he embraced
+the young stranger, that it was as if another son had been given him
+from heaven; and after a little interval the royal party, increased by
+James's Scottish train, moved on to another palace. We may be allowed to
+imagine that the Queen and her ladies came out to meet them, as the
+first sight which James appears to have had of his future bride was
+while she was "ryding in ane chariot, because she was sickly, and might
+not ryd upon hors." Magdalen, too, saw him as he rode to meet the fair
+cavalcade in her father's company, who looked so much happier and
+brighter from the encounter with this gallant young prince. The poor
+girl was already stricken for death, and had but a few months to live;
+but it is very likely that her malady was that fatal but deceitful one
+which leaves a more delicate beauty to its victims, and gives feverish
+brightness to the eyes and colour to the cheek. A tender creature, full
+of poetry and imagination, and most likely all unconscious of the fate
+that hung over her, she loved the gallant cavalier from the first moment
+of seeing him, and touched the heart of James by that fragile beauty and
+by the affection that shone in her soft eyes. It was a marriage that no
+one approved, for her days were known to be numbered. But perhaps some
+faint hope that happiness, that potent physician, might arrest disease,
+as it has been known to do, prevailed both with the anxious father and
+the young man beloved, in whom tender pity and gratitude replaced a
+warmer sentiment. At all events the marriage took place in Paris, in the
+noble church of Notre Dame, in the beginning of the year 1537. The King,
+we are told, sent to Scotland to invite a number of other noblemen and
+gentlemen to attend his wedding, which was performed with the greatest
+pomp and splendour. Not until May did the young couple set out for their
+home, and then they were laden with gifts, two ships being presented to
+them, a number of splendid horses fully caparisoned, and quantities of
+valuable tapestries, cloth of silver and gold, and jewels of every
+description. Perhaps the long delay was intended to make the journey
+more safe for the poor young Queen. The voyage from Dieppe to Leith
+lasted five days, and the bridal party was accompanied by an escort of
+"fiftie ships of Scottismen, Frenchmen, and strangers." "When the Queen
+was come upon Scottis eard, she bowed her down to the same, and kissed
+the mould thereof, and thanked God that her husband and she were come
+safe through the seas." There could not be a more tender or attractive
+picture. How full of poetry and soft passion must the gentle creature
+have been who thus took possession of the land beloved for her young
+husband's sake! The Scottish eard indeed was all that she was to have of
+that inheritance, for in little more than a month the gentle Magdalen
+was dead. She was laid in the chapel of the palace which was to have
+been her home, with "ane dolorous lamentation; for triumph and merriness
+were all turned into dirges and soul-masses, which were very lamentable
+to behold."
+
+This sad story is crowned by Pitscottie with a brief note of the death
+of the Duc de Vendôme's daughter, "who took sick displeasure at the King
+of Scotland's marriage that she deceased immediately thereafter; whereat
+the King of Scotland was highly displeased, thinking that he was the
+occasion of that gentlewoman's death." Other historians say that this
+tragical conclusion did not occur, but that the Princess of Vendôme was
+married on the same day as James. Pitscottie's is the more romantic
+ending, and rounds the pathetic tale.
+
+After such a mournful and ineffectual attempt at married life all the
+negotiations had to be begun over again, and James was at last married,
+to the general satisfaction, to Mary of Guise, a woman, as it turned
+out, of many fine and noble qualities, to which but indifferent justice
+was ever done. It was before this event, however, and immediately after
+the death of the Queen, that a curious and tragical incident happened,
+which furnished another strange scene to the many associations of
+Edinburgh. This was the execution of Lady Glamis upon the Castle Hill
+for witchcraft and secret attempts upon the life of the King by means of
+magic or of poison. No one seems to know what these attempts were.
+Pitscottie gives this extraordinary event a short paragraph. The grave
+Pinkerton fills a page or two with an apology or defence of James for
+permitting such an act. But we are not told what was the evidence, or
+how the sovereign's life was threatened. The supposed culprit was
+however--and the fact is significant--the only member of the family of
+Angus left in Scotland, the sister of the Earl. Once more the Castle
+Hill was covered with an awed or excited crowd, not unaccustomed to that
+sight, for the heretics had burnt there not long before, but at once
+more and less moved than usual, for the victim was a woman fair and
+dignified, such a sufferer as always calls forth the pity of the
+spectators, but her crime witchcraft, a thing held in universal horror,
+and with which there would be no sympathisers. Few, if any, in that
+crowd would be so advanced in sentiment as to regard the cruel
+exhibition with the horrified contempt of modern times. The throng that
+lined that great platform would have no doubt that it was right to burn
+a witch wherever she was found; and the beauty of the woman and the
+grandeur of her race would give a pang the more of painful satisfaction
+in her destruction. But it is strange that thus a last blow should have
+been aimed at that family, once so great and strong, which James's
+resentment had pursued to the end. A little while before, Archibald
+Douglas of Kilspindie had thrown himself upon James's mercy--the only
+member of the Douglas family who can be in any way identified with the
+noble Douglas of _The Lady of the Lake_.
+
+    "'Tis James of Douglas, by St. Serle,
+    The uncle of the banished Earl."
+
+But Archibald of Kilspindie did not meet the same forgiveness with which
+his prototype in the poem was received. He was sent back into banishment
+unforgiven, the King's word having been passed to forgive no one
+condemned by the law. Perhaps the same stern fidelity to a stern promise
+was the reason why Lady Glamis was allowed to go to the stake unrescued.
+But we speculate in vain on subjects so veiled in ignorance and
+uncertainty. Perhaps his counsellors acted on their own authority in
+respect to a crime the reprobation and horror of which were universal,
+and did not disturb the King in the first shock of his mourning. In the
+same week the fair and fragile Magdalen of France was carried to her
+burial, and Lady Glamis was burned at the other extremity of Edinburgh.
+Perhaps it was supposed that something in the incantations of the one
+had a fatal influence upon the young existence of the other. At all
+events these two sensations fell to the populace of Edinburgh and all
+the strangers who were constantly passing through her gates, at the same
+time. Life in those days was full of pictorial circumstances which do
+not belong to ours. One is inclined to wonder sometimes whether the many
+additional comforts we possess make up for that perpetual movement in
+the air, the excitement, the communication of new ideas, the strange
+sights both pleasant and terrible. The burning of a witch or a heretic
+is perhaps too tremendous a sensation to be desired by the most heroic
+spectator; but the perpetual drama going on thus before the eyes of all
+the world, and giving to the poorest an absolute share in every new and
+strange thing, must have added a reality to national life which no
+newspapers can give. That the people remain always eager for this share
+in historical events, the crowds that never weary of gazing at passing
+princes, the innumerable audience of the picture papers, the endless
+reproduction of every insignificant public event, from a procession of
+aldermen to the simplest day's journey of a royal personage, abundantly
+testify. In the days of the Jameses few of the crowd could read, and
+still fewer had the chance of reading. A ballad flying from voice to
+voice across the country, sung at the ingle-neuk, repeated from one to
+another in the little crowd at a "stairhead," in which the grossest
+humorous view was the best adapted for the people, represented popular
+literature. But most things that went on were visible to the crowding
+population. They saw the foreign visitors, the ambassadors, the knights,
+each with his distinguishable crest, who came to meet in encounter of
+arms the knights of the Scottish Court. All that went on they had their
+share in, and a kind of acquaintance with every notability. The public
+events were a species of large emblazoned history which he who ran could
+read.
+
+These ballads above referred to came to singular note, however, in one
+of the many discussions between England and Scotland which were carried
+on by means of the frequent envoys sent to James from his uncle. The
+Borders, it appears, were full of this flying literature sent forth by
+unknown writers, and spread probably by, here and there, a wandering
+friar, more glad of a merry rhyme than disconcerted by a satire against
+his own cloth, or with still more relish dispersing over the countryside
+reports of King Henry's amours and divorces, and of the plundering of
+abbeys and profane assumption of sacred rights by a monarch who was so
+far from sanctified. Popular prophecies of how a new believing king
+should be raised up to disconcert the heretics, and on the northern side
+of the Border of the speedy elevation of James to the throne of England,
+and final victorious triumph of the Scottish side, flew from village to
+village, exciting at last the alarm of Henry and his council, who made
+formal complaint of them at the Scottish Court, drawing from James a
+promise that if any of his subjects should be found to be the authors of
+such productions they should suffer death for it--a heavy penalty for
+literary transgression. In Scotland farther north it was another kind of
+ballad which was said and sung, or whispered under the breath with many
+a peal of rude laughter, the Satires of "Davy Lindsay" and many a lesser
+poet--ludicrous stories of erring priests and friars, indecent but
+humorous, with lamentable tales of dues exacted and widows robbed, and
+all the sins of the Church, the proud bishop and his lemans, the
+avaricious priest and his exactions, the confessors who bullied a dying
+penitent into gifts which injured his family, and all the well-worn
+scandals by which in every time of reformation the coarser imagination
+of the populace is stirred. If James himself was startled into an angry
+demand how such things could be after he had witnessed the performance
+of David Lindsay's play, which was trimmed into comparative decency for
+courtly ears, it may be supposed what was the effect of that and still
+broader assaults, upon the unchastened imagination of the people. The
+Reformation progressed by great strides by such rude yet able help as
+well as by the purer methods of religion. The priests, however, do not
+seem to have made war on the balladmakers, as the great King of England
+would have had his nephew do. Buchanan, indeed, whose classic weapons
+had been brought into this literary crusade, and who also had his fling
+at the Franciscans as well as his coarser and more popular brethren, was
+imprisoned for a time, and had to withdraw from his country, but the
+poets of the people, far more effective, would seem to have escaped.
+
+All this, however, probably seemed of but little importance to James in
+comparison with the greater affairs of the kingdom of which his hands
+were full. When the episode of his marriages was over, and still more
+important an heir secured, he returned to that imperial track in which
+he had acquitted himself so well. All would seem to have been in order
+in the centre of the kingdom; the Borders were as quiet as it was
+possible for the Borders to be; and only the remote Highlands and
+islands remained still insubordinate, in merely nominal subjection to
+the laws of the kingdom. James, we are told, had long intended to make
+one of the royal raids so familiar to Scottish history among his
+doubtful subjects of these parts, and accordingly an expedition was very
+carefully prepared, twelve ships equipped both for comfort and for war,
+with every device known to the time for provisioning them and keeping
+them in full efficiency. We are told that the English authorities
+looking on, were exceedingly suspicious of this voyage, not knowing
+whither such preparations might tend, while all Scotland watched the
+setting out of the expedition almost as much in the dark as to its
+motive, and full of wonder as to where the King could be going. Bonfires
+were blazing on all the hilltops in rejoicing for the birth of a prince
+when James took his way with his fleet down the Firth. Pinkerton, who
+ought to have known better, talks of "the acclamations of numerous
+spectators on the adjacent hills and shores" as if the great estuary had
+been a little river. It might well be that both in Fife and Lothian
+there were eager lookers-on, as soon as it was seen that the fleet was
+in motion, to see the ships pass: but their acclaims must have been loud
+indeed to carry from Leith to Kinghorn. The King sailed early in June
+1540 towards the north. Many a yacht and pleasure ship still follows the
+same route round the Scottish coast towards the wild attractions of the
+islands.
+
+    "Merrily, merrily, bounds the bark,
+      She bounds before the gale,
+    The mountain breeze from Ben-na-darch
+      Is joyous in her sail.
+    With fluttering sound like laughter hoarse
+      The cords and canvas strain,
+    The waves divided by her force
+    In rippling eddies chased her course
+      As if they laughed again."
+
+But it was on no pleasure voyage that James had set out. He had in his
+twelve ships two thousand armed men, led by the most trusted lords of
+Scotland, and his mission was to reduce to order the clans who knew so
+little what a king's dignity was, or the restraints of law, or the
+pursuits of industry. No stand would seem to have been anywhere made
+against him. Many of the chiefs of the more turbulent tribes were
+brought off to the ships, not so much as prisoners in consequence of
+their own misdoings, but as hostages for their clans: and the startled
+isles, overawed by the sight of the King and his great ships, and by the
+more generous motive of anxiety for their own chieftains in pledge for
+them, calmed down out of their wild ways, and ceased from troubling in a
+manner unprecedented in their turbulent history.
+
+An incidental consequence of this voyage sounds oddly modern, as if it
+might have been a transcript from the most recent records. James
+perceived, or more probably had his attention directed to the fact, that
+the fishermen of the north were much molested by fishing vessels from
+Holland, Flanders, and the Scandinavian coasts, who interfered with
+their fishing, sometimes even thrusting them by violence of arms out of
+their own waters. The King accordingly detached one or two of his
+vessels under the command of Maxwell, his admiral, to inquire into these
+high-handed proceedings, with the result that one of the foreign fisher
+pirate-ships was seized and brought to Leith to answer for their
+misdoings. There they were reprimanded and bound over to better
+behaviour, then dismissed without further penalty. How little effectual,
+however, this treatment was, is exemplified by the fact that the
+selfsame offence continues to be repeated until this very day.
+
+There would seem to have been a little pause of calm and comfort in
+James's life after this victorious expedition. Clouds already bigger
+than a man's hand were forming on his horizon; the country had begun to
+be agitated throughout its depths with the rising forces of the reform,
+and the priests who had always surrounded James were hurrying on in the
+truculence of terror to sterner and sterner enactments against heretics:
+while he, probably even yet but moderately interested, thinking of other
+things, and though adding to the new laws which he was persuaded to
+originate in this sense, conditions to the effect that corresponding
+reforms were to be wrought in the behaviour of the priesthood,--had not
+entered at all into the fierce current of theological strife. He
+followed the faith in which he had been bred, revolted rather than
+attracted by the proceedings and pretensions of his uncle of England,
+willing that the bishops, who probably knew best, and who were, as he
+complained to the English ambassador, the only men of sense and ability
+near him, should have their own way in their own concerns; but for
+himself much more intent on the temporal welfare of his kingdom than on
+its belief, or the waves of opinion which might blow over it. He had
+just been very successful in what no doubt seemed to him an enterprise
+much more kingly and important--the subjugation of the islands. He was
+happy and prosperous in his private life, his Queen having performed the
+high duty expected of her in providing the kingdom with an heir, indeed
+with two sons, to make, as appeared, assurance doubly sure; and though
+the burning of a heretic was not a pleasant circumstance, Beatoun and
+the rest of the brotherhood were too clever and helpful as men of the
+world to be easily dispensed with. James had, there can be no doubt,
+much reason to be discontented and dissatisfied, as almost all his
+predecessors had been, with the nobility of his kingdom. Apart from some
+of those young companions-in-arms who were delightful in the camp and
+field but useless in the council chamber, his state of mind would seem
+to have resembled more the modern mood which is represented by the word
+"bored" than any other more dignified expression. The priests might be
+fierce (as indeed were the lords, still more) but they were able, and
+knew something of the necessities of government. The barons disgusted
+him with their petty jealousies, their want of instruction, their
+incapacity for any broad or statesmanlike view, and there would seem
+little doubt that he dispensed with their services as much as possible,
+and turned to those persons who comprehended him with a natural movement
+which unfortunately, however, is never fortunate in a king. Something of
+the severance between himself and those who were nearest to him in rank,
+which had ruined his grandfather, showed itself as he advanced towards
+the gravity of manhood: and the fatal name of favourite began to be
+attached to one man at least in the Court, who would seem to have
+understood better than the others the ways and intentions of James. But
+in the meantime the clouds were only gathering; the darkness had not
+begun. A year or two before, the King had given to the legal faculty of
+Scotland a form and constitution which it has retained to this day. He
+had instituted the Court of Session, the "Feifteen," the law lords in
+their grave if short-lived dignity. He had begun to build and repair and
+decorate at Holyrood and Linlithgow. "He sent to Denmark," says
+Pitscottie, "and brought home great horss and meares and put them in
+parks that their offspring might be gotten to sustein the warres when
+need was. Also he sent and furnished the country with all kinds of
+craftsmen such as Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Dutchmen, which ever was the
+first of their profession that could be had." He went even so far in his
+desire to develop the natural wealth of his kingdom that he brought over
+certain German wise men to see if gold could be found in the mines, of
+which there has always been a tradition, as probably in most countries.
+All these pacific enterprises occupied James's time and helped on the
+prosperity of the country. But evil times were close at hand.
+
+One of the first indications that the dreadful round of misfortune was
+about to begin was the sudden denunciation of James Hamilton, the
+bastard of Arran, as a conspirator against the King, an event which
+Pitscottie narrates as happening in the year 1541. He had been a
+favourite of the King in his youth, and a great champion against the
+Douglas faction, and it was indeed his intemperate and imprudent rage
+which determined the fight called Clear the Causeway, and wrought much
+harm to his own party. He had been high in favour for a time, probably
+on the ground of his enmity to the house of Angus, then had fallen into
+discredit, but had lately been employed in certain public offices, and
+if we may trust Pitscottie, had been put into some such position by the
+priests as that which Saul of Tarsus held in the service of the
+persecuting ecclesiastics of Jerusalem. At all events his sudden
+accusation as plotting against the King's life, and especially as doing
+so in the interests of the Douglases, was evidently as startling and
+extraordinary to the great officials to whom the communication was made
+as it would be to the reader who has heard of this personage only as the
+infuriated opponent of Angus and his party. No credence seems to have
+been given to the story at first, though it was told by another
+Hamilton, a cousin of the culprit. As this happened, however, in the
+King's absence from Edinburgh, the lords thought it a wise precaution to
+secure Sir James, and, according to Pitscottie, proceeded in their own
+dignified persons--the Lord Treasurer, Secretary, and "Mr. Household,"
+preceded by Lyon King-of-Arms--to his lodging in Edinburgh, whence they
+conveyed him to the castle. Such arrestations would probably cause but
+little excitement, only a momentary rush and gazing of the crowd as the
+group with its little band of attendants and defenders passed upward
+along the High Street, the herald's tabard alone betraying its
+character. Sir James Hamilton, however, was very well known and little
+loved, and small would be the sympathy in the looks of the citizens, and
+many the stern nods and whispers of satisfaction that vengeance had
+seized him at length. The King, like his representatives, was astonished
+by the accusation, but when he heard of the terrible "dittay" which had
+been brought against Hamilton "he came suddenly out of Falkland, where
+His Grace was for the time, and brought the said Sir James out of the
+castle to the Tolbooth, and gave him fair assize of the lords and
+barons, who convicted him of sundry points of treason; and thereafter he
+was headed and quartered, and his lands annexed to the Crown."
+
+It is a curious question, which however none of the historians think of
+asking, whether there could be any connection between the scheme, if
+any, for which the Lady Glamis suffered, and this wholly unexpected
+outbreak of murderous intention on the part of Hamilton. The Hamiltons
+and Douglases were sworn enemies, yet greater wonders have been seen
+than the union of two feudal foes to compass the destruction of the
+enemy of both. Angus and his brothers banished, but little forgetful of
+all that had happened, and trusting in the favour of King Henry, were
+soon to show themselves at the head of expeditions hostile to Scotland
+across the Border. Were these two sudden disclosures of unexpected
+treachery the manifestations of a deep-laid plot which might have
+further developments--if with the bastard of Arran also perhaps in still
+more unlikely quarters? It is but a conjecture, yet it is one that might
+seem justified by two isolated events so extraordinary, and by the state
+of discouragement and misery into which James seems soon to have fallen.
+Pitscottie relates that the King "took ane great suspition of his
+nobles, thinking that either one or other of them would deceive him;"
+and then there began to appear to him "visions in his bed." He thought
+he saw Sir James Hamilton, fierce and vengeful, appearing to him in the
+darkness with a drawn sword, with which he cut off the King's right arm.
+Next time the cruel spectre appeared it upbraided him with an unjust
+sentence and struck off the other arm: "Now therefore thou sall want
+both thy armes, and sall remain in sorrow ane while, and then I will
+come and stryk thy head from thee," said the angry ghost. Whatever may
+be the reader's opinion about the reality of these visions, there can be
+little doubt that they show deep depression in the mind of James to whom
+they came. He woke out of his sleep in great excitement and terror, and
+told his attendants what he had dreamed, who were very "discontent of
+his visioun, thinking that they would hear hastily tidings of the same."
+
+    "On the morning word came to the King that the prince was very sick
+    and like to die. When the King heard thereof he hasted to Sanct
+    Andros, but, or he could come there the prince was depairted,
+    whereat the King was verrie sad and dolorous. Notwithstanding
+    immediately thereafter the post came out of Stirling to the King
+    showing him that his second son, the Duke of Albany, could not live;
+    and or the King could be in Stirling he was depairted. Whose
+    departures were both within fortie-eight hours, which caused great
+    lamentations to be in Scotland and in especial by the Queen, their
+    mother. But the Queen comforted the King, saying they were young
+    enough, and God would send them more succession."
+
+There is no suggestion, such as might have been natural enough at that
+age, of poison or foul play in the death of the two infants--nothing but
+misfortune and fatality and the dark shadows closing over a life
+hitherto so bright. James was the last of his name: the childless Albany
+in France, whom Scotland did not love, was the only man surviving of his
+kindred, and it is not wonderful if the King's heart failed him in such
+a catastrophe, or if he thought himself doomed of heaven. When this
+great domestic affliction came to him he was on the eve of a breach with
+England, brought about not only by the usual mutual aggravations upon
+the Border, but by other matters of graver importance. King Henry had
+made many efforts to draw the Scottish King to his side. He had
+discoursed to him himself by letter, he had sent him not only
+ambassadors but preachers, he had done everything that could be done to
+detach the young monarch from the band of sovereigns who were against
+England, and the allegiance of the Pope. Latterly the correspondence had
+become very eager and passionate on Henry's side. He had repeatedly
+invited his nephew to visit him, and many negotiations had passed
+between them on the subject. The project was so far advanced that Henry
+came to York to meet James, and waited there for nearly a week for his
+arrival. But there was great reluctance on the Scottish side to risk
+their King so far on the other side of the Border. They had suggested
+Newcastle as a more safe place of meeting, but this had been rejected on
+the part of the English king. Finally, Henry left York in great
+resentment, which was aggravated by a defeat upon the Border. Pitscottie
+tells us that he sent a herald to James declaring that he considered the
+truce between them broken; that "he should take such order with him as
+he took with his father before him; for he had yet that same wand to
+ding him with that dang his father; that is to say, the Duke of Norfolk
+living that strak the field of Flodden, who slew his father with many of
+the nobles of Scotland." The King of Scotland thought, the chronicler
+adds, that these were "uncouth and sharp words"--an opinion in which the
+reader will agree. But whether Pitscottie is verbally correct or not it
+is very evident that Henry did not hesitate to rate his nephew in
+exceedingly sharp and discourteous terms, as for instance bidding him
+not to make a brute of himself by listening to the priests who would
+lead any man by the nose who gave them credence. The negotiations
+altogether were carried on from the English side in a very arrogant
+manner as comported with Henry's character, made all the more
+overbearing towards James by their relationship, which gave him a
+certain natural title to bully his sister's son.
+
+And everything in Scotland was now tending to the miseries of a divided
+council and a nation rent asunder by internal differences. The new
+opinions were making further progress day by day, the priests becoming
+more fierce in their attempts to crush by violence the force of the
+Reformation--attempts which in their very cruelty and ferocity betrayed
+a certain growing despair. When Norfolk came to Scotland from Henry--an
+ill-omened messenger if what is said above of Henry's threat was
+true--the Scottish gentlemen sought him secretly with confessions of
+their altered faith; and the ambassador made the startling report to
+Henry that James's own mind was in so wavering and uncertain a state
+that if the priests did not drive him into war during the current summer
+he would confiscate the possessions of the Church before the year was
+out. But Norfolk's mission, which was in itself a threat, and the
+presence of the Douglases over the Border, who had never ceased to be
+upheld by Henry, and whose secret machinations, of which Lady Glamis and
+James Hamilton had been victims, were now about to culminate in open
+mischief, all contributed to exasperate the mind of James. That he was
+not supported as his father had been by the nobility, who alone had the
+power of giving effect to his call for a general armament, is evident
+from the first. His priestly counsellors could support him by the
+imposts which he made freely upon the revenues of the Church, not always
+without complaint on their part; but they were of comparatively little
+influence in bringing together the hosts who had to do the fighting; and
+from the first the nobility,--half of which or more was leavened with
+Reformation doctrines and felt that their best support was in
+England--while the whole, almost without exception, resented the
+prominence of the Church in the national councils, hating and scorning
+her interference in secular and especially in warlike matters, as is the
+case in every age,--showed itself hostile. After various incursions on
+the part of England, made with much bravado and considerable damage, one
+of which was headed by Angus and his brother George Douglas (this
+latter, however, being promptly punished and defeated on the spot by the
+brave Borderers), James made the usual call for a general assembly of
+forces on the Boroughmuir: but he had advanced only a little way on his
+march to the Borders when he was stopped by the declaration of the lords
+that they would only act on the defensive, and would on no account go
+out of Scotland. The fathers of these same lords had followed James IV,
+though with the strongest disapproval, to the fatal field of Flodden,
+their loyalty triumphing over their judgment: but the sons on either
+side had no such bond between them. James disbanded in disgust the
+reluctant host, which considered less the honour of Scotland than their
+own safety; but got together afterwards a smaller army under the
+leadership of Lord Maxwell, with which to try over again the old issue.
+Pitscottie's account of the discussions and dissensions, and of all the
+scorns which subdued James's spirit, is very graphic. Norfolk had led a
+great body of men into Scotland, who though not advancing very far had
+done great harm burning and ravaging; but, checked by a smaller force,
+which held him back without giving battle, had finally retired across
+the Border, where James was very anxious to have followed him.
+
+    "The King's mind was very ardent on battel on English ground, which
+    when the lords perceived they passed again to the council, and
+    concluded that they would not follow the Duke of Norfolk at that
+    time for the King's pleasure, because they said that it was not
+    grounded upon no good cause or reasone, and that he was ane better
+    priests' king nor he was theirs, and used more of priests' counsel
+    nor theirs. Therefore they had the less will to fight with him, and
+    said it was more meritoriously done to hang all such as gave counsel
+    to the King to break his promises to the King of England, whereof
+    they perceived great inconvenients to befall. When they had thus
+    concluded, and the King being advertised thereof, the King departed
+    with his familiar servants to Edinburgh; but the army and council
+    remained still at Lauder."
+
+It was a fatal spot for such a controversy, the spot where, two
+generations before, the favourite friends and counsellors of James III,
+whether guilty or not guilty--who can say?--were hanged over the bridge
+as an example to all common men who should pretend to serve a king whose
+peers and the nobles of his realm were shut out from the first of his
+favour. James V had in his train some familiar servants, confidants of
+his many public undertakings, who were not of noble blood or, at least,
+of distinguished rank, and his angry withdrawal might well be explained
+by his determination to save them, if indeed any explanations beyond his
+vexed and miserable sense of humiliation and desertion were necessary to
+account for it. He left the lords, whom he would seem to have had no
+longer either the means or the heart to confront, saying in his rage and
+shame that he would "either make them fight or flee, or else Scotland
+should not keep him and them both," and returned to Edinburgh sick at
+heart to his Queen, who was not in very good health to cheer
+him--passing, no doubt, with a deepened sense of humiliation through the
+crowds which would throng about for news, and to whom the spectacle of
+their King thus returning discomfited was no pleasant sight; if it were
+not, perhaps, that many among them had now begun to think all failures
+and disappointments were so many proofs of the displeasure of heaven
+against one who would not take upon him the office of reformer.
+
+When James heard soon after that his rebellious lords had disbanded
+their host, he collected a smaller army to revenge the ravages of
+Norfolk, issuing, according to Pitscottie, a proclamation bidding all
+who loved him be ready within twenty-four hours "to follow the King
+wherever he pleased to pass"; but even this new levy was little
+subordinate. After it had penetrated a little way into England a fatal
+mistake arose--an idea that Oliver Sinclair, the King's "minion," whom
+he had sent to read a manifesto to the army, had been appointed its
+general--upon which the new bands, disgusted in their turn, fell into a
+forced retreat, and getting involved in the broken ground of Solway Moss
+were there pursued and surrounded by the English, miserably defeated and
+put to flight. "There was but ane small number slain in the field," says
+Pitscottie, "to wit, there was slain on both sides but twenty-four,
+whereof was nine Scottishmen and fifteen Englishmen"; a very great
+number, however, were taken prisoners, many of the gentlemen, it is
+suggested, preferring captivity to the encounter of the King after such
+an inexcusable catastrophe. We are not told why it was that James had
+not himself taken the command of his army. He does not even seem to have
+accompanied it, perhaps fearing that personal opposition which was an
+insult to a king in those days.
+
+    "When these news came to the King of Scotland where he was for the
+    time, how his lords were taken and had in England, and his army
+    defaitt, he grew wondrous dollorous and pensive, seeing no good
+    success to chance him over his enemies. Then he began to remord his
+    conscience, and thought his misgovernance towards God had the wyte
+    therof and was the principal cause of his misfortune; calling to
+    mind how he had broken his promise to his uncle the King of England,
+    and had lost the hearts of his nobles throw evil counsel and false
+    flattery of his bishops, and those private counsellors and his
+    courtiers, not regarding his wyse lords' counsels."
+
+"He passed to Edinburgh," adds the chronicler, "and there remained eight
+days with great dollour and lamentation for the tinsell (loss) of his
+lieges and shame to himself." Discouragement beyond the reach of mortal
+help or hope seemed to have taken hold of the unfortunate King. He saw
+himself alone, no one standing by him, his nobles hostile, his people
+indifferent; he had vowed that Scotland should not be broad enough to
+hold both them and him, but he had no power to carry out this angry
+threat. His life had been threatened in mysterious ways; he had lost his
+children, his confidence in himself and his fortunes; last and worst of
+all, he was dishonoured in the eyes of the world. His army had refused
+to advance, his soldiers to fight. He was the King, but able to give
+effect to none of a king's wishes--neither to punish his enemies nor to
+carry out his promises. He who had done so much for his realm could do
+no more. He who had ridden the Border further and swifter than any
+man-at-arms to carry the terror of justice and the sway of law--who had
+daunted the dauntless Highlands and held the fiercest chiefs in
+check--who had been courted by pope and emperor, and admired and feasted
+at the splendid Courts of France--he who had been the King of the
+Commons, the idol of the people--was now cast down and miserable, the
+most shamed and helpless of kings.
+
+There seems no reason why James should have so entirely lost heart.
+There had already been moments in his life when he had suffered sore
+discouragement and overthrow, yet never had been overcome. But now it is
+clear he felt himself at the end of his resources. How could he ever
+hold up his head again? a man who could not keep his own kingdom from
+invasion, or avenge himself upon his enemies! After he had lingered a
+little in Edinburgh, where the Queen was now near the moment which
+should give another heir to Scotland, he left the capital--perhaps to
+save her at such a time from the sight and the contagion of his
+despair--and crossed the Firth to Falkland, a place so associated with
+stirring passages in his career. But there his sickness of heart turned
+to illness of body; he became so "vehement sick" that his life was
+despaired of; he was "very near strangled to death by extreme
+melancholie." One hope remained, that the Queen might restore some
+confidence to his failing strength and mind by an heir to the crown,
+another James, for whom it might be worth while to live. James sent for
+some of his friends, "certain of his lords, both spiritual and
+temporal," to help him to bear this time of suspense, and advise him
+what might yet be done to set matters right, who surrounded him, as may
+be imagined, very anxiously, fearing the issue.
+
+    "By this the post came out of Linlithgow showing the King good
+    tidings that the Queen was delivered. The King inquired whether it
+    was man or woman. The messenger said it was ane fair dochter. The
+    King answered and said, 'Farewell! it came with ane lass, and it
+    will pass with ane lass,' and so commended himself to Almighty God,
+    and spoke little from thereforth, but turned his back to his lords
+    and his face to the wall."
+
+Even at this bitter moment, however, the dying Prince was not left alone
+with his last disappointment. Cardinal Beatoun, whose influence had been
+so inauspicious in his life, pressed forward, "seeing him begin to fail
+of his strength and natural speech," and thrust upon him a paper for his
+signature, "wherein the Cardinal had writ what he pleased for his own
+particular weill," evidently with some directions about the regency,
+that ordeal which Scotland, unhappily, had now again to go through. When
+James had put his dying hand to this authority, wrested from him in his
+last weakness, a faint light of peace seems to have fallen across his
+death-bed.
+
+[Illustration: FALKLAND PALACE]
+
+    "As I have shown you, he turned him upon his back, and looked and
+    beheld his lords around about, and gave ane little lauchter, syne
+    kissed his hand and gave it to all his lords about him, and
+    thereafter held up his hands to God and yielded the spirit."
+
+There are many pathetic death scenes in history, but few more touching.
+His father, after a splendid and prosperous life, had fallen "in the
+lost battle, borne down by the flying;" he, after a career almost as
+chivalrous and splendid and full of noble work for his country, in a
+still more forlorn overthrow; his hopes all gone from him, his strength
+broken in his youth. Nothing, it would seem, could save these princes,
+so noble and so unfortunate. It was enough to bear the name of James
+Stewart to be weighed down by cruel Fate. But before his spirit shook
+off the mortal coil a ray of peace had shot through the clouds; he
+looked upon the anxious faces of his friends, some of whom at least must
+surely have been true friends, bound to him by comradeship and
+brotherhood, with that low laugh which is one of the most touching
+expressions of weakened and failing humanity--love and kindness in it,
+and a certain pleasure to see them round him; and yet to be free of it
+all--the heavy kingship, the hopes that ever failed, the friends that so
+rarely were true. The lips that touched that cold hand which he kissed
+before he gave to them must have trembled, perhaps with compunction, let
+us hope with some vow of fidelity to his memory and trust.
+
+Thus died the last of the five Jameses--the last in one sense of that
+unfortunate but gallant line. A life more swept by storms, more rent
+asunder by conflicting passions and influences, more tragic still and
+passionate than theirs, was to part them from the singularly changed,
+modified, and modernised successors who, with a difference, were to wear
+yet drop this ancient crown. The Stewarts after Mary are no longer like
+those that went before. James's dying words came in some curious fashion
+true, though not as he thought. It came with a lass and it went with a
+lass that ancient crown. When another James reached the throne Scotland
+was no more as it had been.
+
+It may seem a fantastic chronology to end here the records of the
+Stewards of Scotland: but it is I think justified by this change, which
+altered altogether the character of the history and the circumstances of
+the monarchs. Henceforward new agencies, new powers, were at work in the
+little proud and self-contained kingdom, which had maintained its
+independence and individuality so long. Torn asunder by rival
+influences, by intrigues incessant and profound, by that struggle
+between the old and the new which was never more desperate than in her
+bosom, and which, being a religious change chiefly, was one of life and
+death: and with a monarch no longer native, but of foreign training and
+thoughts, even if she had not been a woman and half a Tudor, the little
+ship of State, the gallant little nation, plunged amid waves and
+billows, not unfamiliar, indeed, but fiercer and wilder than ever
+before, with winds so much increased in force as they raged over wider
+seas.
+
+The Stewards of Scotland here ended their special trust and gave in
+their account. No race was ever more unfortunate, but I think we may say
+that none more nobly endeavoured to discharge that high commission. With
+one exception, and that doubtful--for a man may be weak and may not be
+brave without being a bad man or even king--every bearer of this fated
+name laboured with courage and constancy at the great work of elevating
+his country. "Another for Hector!" cried the Highland warrior when his
+young chief was in danger, and all the world has read the story with
+moistened eyes. Another for Scotland! had been the cry of the house of
+Stewart throughout more than a century. As one man fell he handed the
+sword to another; to an infant hand trained amid feuds and anarchy, but
+always clasping, as soon as it had force enough, the royal weapon with
+royal courage and meaning. None of the Jameses lived beyond the earliest
+chapter of middle age; all of them succeeded in early youth, most of
+them in childhood; and, with but that uncertain exception of James III,
+every one of them was actuated by a noble patriotism, and did his
+_devoir_ manfully for the improvement and development of his country.
+They were noble gentlemen one and all: the bigotry, the egotism, the
+obstinacy of the later Stewarts were not in them. Knights and paladins
+of an age of romance, they were also stern executors of justice, bold
+innovators, with eyes ever open to every expedient of progress and
+prosperity. Their faults were those faults of a light heart and genial
+temperament, which are the most easily understood and pardoned. Under
+their sway their country and their little capital came to be known over
+Christendom as not unworthy to hold place among the reigning kingdoms
+and cities through which the stream of chivalry flowed. They invented
+the trade, the shipping, the laws and civic order of Scotland. Among her
+heroes there are none more worthy of everlasting remembrance. They
+fulfilled their stewardry with a unity of purpose and a steadfastness of
+aim which, when we take into account the continually recurring lapses of
+long minorities, is one of the wonders of the time. Edinburgh grew under
+their sway from an angry village, lying between a fierce castle and a
+rich monastery, little distinguished above its peers, less favoured than
+Stirling, less wealthy than the town of St. John, to one of the most
+noted of cities, picturesque and splendid, full of noble houses, the
+centre of national life and government. And it is curious to record that
+no one of the monarchs who brought it such nobility and fame left any
+sadness of death to the associations of Edinburgh. They lived and were
+wedded and filled with the brightness of their happier moments the town
+which afforded so beautiful a scene for all rejoicings: they died on the
+field of battle or in other places in conflict or violence or despair.
+But Edinburgh only retains the brighter memories, the triumphal
+processions, the bridal finery, the jousts and the feasts, the
+Parliaments and proclamations of laws and high alliances. The reigns of
+the Jameses contain the history of her rise, her splendour, her climax
+of beauty and stateliness, without any association of downfall or decay.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+THE TIME OF THE PROPHETS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+UNDER THE QUEEN REGENT
+
+
+There is perhaps among the many historical personages attached by close
+association to Edinburgh no one so living, so vigorous, so present, as
+the great figure of the Reformer and Prophet, who once filled the air
+with echoes of his vehement and impassioned oratory, who led both Lords
+and Commons, and mated with princes on more than equal terms, the
+headstrong, powerful, passionate Preacher, who was at once the leading
+spirit of his time and its most vigorous chronicler. To fill the circle
+of association, he alone, of all the animated groups who withstood or
+who followed him, has left us not only a number of books which disclose
+his mind with all its powers and imperfections, but the very dwelling in
+which he passed at least the latter part of his life, intact and
+authentic, a memorial more striking and attractive than any "storied urn
+or animated bust." Nor are even the associations of burial wanting; for
+though it is no longer within the solemn enclosure of a churchyard, and
+there is no certainty that the stone which is supposed to mark the
+position of the Reformer's grave is historically exact, it is yet sure
+enough that near by, within reach of the doors of his ancient church,
+beneath the pavement trodden by so many feet, his remains repose in the
+centre of the life of the Scottish capital, a position more appropriate
+than any other that could be imagined. Thus by life and by death this
+singular and most evident and unmistakable man, still alive in every
+lineament, is connected with the city in which his life was passed, and
+in the history of which he can never be forgotten. There may be doubts
+about other localities, and it may be difficult to identify the houses
+which have been inhabited and the floors that have been trod by other
+distinguished personages. Crowding footsteps of the poor have
+obliterated the record in many a noble house abandoned by history; even
+the fated steps of the Queen save in one bloodstained closet have left
+but little authentic trace. But Knox is still present with all the force
+of an indestructible individuality--in the existing life of the country
+which took so strong an impression from him, and in the absolutely
+personal facts of the church in which he preached, the house in which he
+lived, the stone under which he lies.
+
+To estimate the share he had in the foundations of that modern Scotland
+which has so increased and thriven since his day, is perhaps more hard
+now than it was even eighty years ago, when his biography was written by
+Dr. M'Crie to the great interest and enthusiasm of the country. The laws
+of historical judgment are subject to perpetual change, and the general
+estimate of the great personages of the past has undergone various
+modifications since that time. Perhaps even the Church is less sure of
+her share in the record, less certain of the doom once so unhesitatingly
+denounced against "the Paip that Pagan fu' of pride"; less confident of
+her own superiority to all other developments of Christianity. The least
+enlightened are no longer able to feel with a good conscience, as our
+best instructed fathers did, that an important part of religious liberty
+was freedom to curse and pull down every tenet other than their own. No
+belief has been more obstinate or is more time-honoured: but in theory
+at least it has been much subdued in recent times, so that few of us are
+able to hold by our own side with the perfect confidence which once we
+felt. And in these changing views, and in the impulse towards a greater
+catholicity of feeling which has sprung up in Scotland, the influence of
+that uncompromising teacher to whom reform was everything, who had no
+prepossession in favour of what was old and venerable, but desired with
+all the fervour of his fiery soul to make everything new, has doubtless
+waned, save to that sacred simplicity of ignorance which forms no
+judgment. But nothing can obliterate the person and strenuous being of
+John Knox, or make him a less interesting figure on the crowded and
+tragic stage of that epoch which he dominated and chronicled. And
+nothing can unlink the associations which make him ever present and
+living in Edinburgh, which was the capital and centre of his kingdom as
+much as of any king who ever breathed.
+
+John Knox was in every sense of the words a son of the soil, yet came of
+a not unknown family, "kent folk" of East Lothian: if not lairds of any
+great heritage, yet possessing lands and living sufficient to entitle
+them to consideration. They were able to give him the best education of
+the time, which he completed at the University of Glasgow under the
+teaching of Major or Mair, the same whom George Buchanan accompanied to
+France; so that both these great men, as well as various nobles and
+ecclesiastics of the time, were his fellow-students, trained under the
+same influence. Whether Knox followed Major to St. Andrews as Buchanan
+followed him to Paris is not known; but he would seem to have lectured
+on philosophy in St. Andrews at the beginning of his career. It might be
+that he was himself present, and heard some of the bold and familiar
+addresses of the wandering friars, the first rude champions of Reform,
+whose protest against the wickedness of the bishops and the extortions
+of the clergy he quotes with so much enjoyment of their rough humour, in
+the beginning of his history; or even might have witnessed the lighted
+pile and felt across his face the breath of that "reek" which carried
+spiritual contagion with it, as it flew upon the keen breeze from the
+sea over that little centre of life, full of scholars and wits, and keen
+cynical spectators little likely to be convinced by any such means. It
+is curious to hear of Major for instance, one of the Sorbonne, a doctor
+of Paris and man of the world, as present at all those proceedings,
+listening to Friar William's denunciation of the priests, to which he
+gave his assent as "a doctrine that might weill be defended, for it
+contayned no heresye"--and in very different circumstances to the
+sermons of Rough, addressed to the slayers of the Cardinal, and to the
+calling of Knox himself, a crisis of popular emotion and vehement
+feeling. Such a man as Major, a son of the Renaissance, no Reformer nor
+careful of any of these things, must have looked on with strange
+feelings at all the revolutions accomplished before him, the rude jests
+and songs, the half-jocular broadly humorous assaults, the cry of
+heresy, the horror of the burnings, the deadly earnest of both preacher
+and people after Beatoun's well-deserved but terrible end which cut all
+compromises short. One wonders what thoughts were going on in the mind
+of the old scholar who kept his place in his stall as well when mass was
+sung as when every trace of that "idolatrous sacrifice" had been trodden
+under foot. Would it be more or less the same to him whatever they
+preached, those wild religionists, who tore each other in pieces? did he
+look on with a secret smile at the turmoil they made, as if it mattered
+which was uppermost, with a natural horror at the fierce flames of the
+human sacrifice, yet consent in his mind that if they could so stamp the
+heresy out which would otherwise destroy them, the bishops were only
+logical to do it? while on the other side there was not much in point of
+natural justice to be said against Norman Leslie and his men who slew
+the Cardinal. Such spectators there must have been in no small number,
+affording a curious rim and edge of observers to all that the more
+active and violent might do or say. But these lookers-on have said
+nothing on the subject, or their mild voices have been lost in the
+clangour of actors vehement and earnest. It has been reserved for our
+age to bring these dispassionate or, as we are apt to think, cynical
+observers into the front rank.
+
+The first scene in which John Knox comes prominently into sight of the
+world occurs in the midst of that small but urgent and much-agitated
+society on the fierce little headland by the sea, in the great and noble
+cathedral which for most of the intervening time has been nothing but
+ruins. We must in imagination rebuild these lofty walls, throw up again
+the noble piers and clustered pillars, and see the townsfolk streaming
+in--a crowd more picturesque in garb than any Scots assembly nowadays,
+with its provost and councillors in their municipal finery: and the
+grave representatives of the colleges filing in to their stalls--very
+grave now, we may well believe, with many a look at the group of gentry,
+among whom were half a dozen men whose hands were stained with the blood
+of the Cardinal. No doubt to these spectators, beyond even the great
+volume of sound which pealed upward from that vast company, in some
+popular hymn or ancient war-cry of a psalm, the stir of the languid
+besieging army outside, and the guns of the French Fleet, already on its
+way to avenge Beatoun and crush this nest of heretics out, sounded
+ominous in the background. Among the congregation was a dark, vehement
+man, full of repressed fervour and energy, with two or three lads by his
+side, of whom he had charge--strange tutor! flames of zeal and
+earnestness burning in his deep-set eyes; the mark of the tonsure (if it
+was ever there, which is a doubtful question) obliterated by long
+disuse; a man known by the congregation as a zealous instructor of
+youth, catechising his boys publicly of afternoons in the cathedral,
+vacant then of the many services, the vespers and benedictions, of the
+superseded faith.
+
+Knox's gifts and qualities were already well known; he had been a
+devoted friend and follower of Wishart, the martyr whose memory was
+still fresh in the minds of all men; and these public examinations of
+the three boys, and the expositions he addressed to them, but which many
+of mature age also gathered to hear, had given the many competent judges
+then assembled in the beleaguered city a practical knowledge of his
+gifts and endowments. And Rough, who filled the post of preacher in St.
+Andrews, was not a man of learning, and in consequence would seem to
+have been troubled by disputatious members of the priesthood, eager, not
+unnaturally, to defend their own tenets, and with all the authorities at
+their fingers' ends. In this strait John Knox was entreated to accept
+the charge of the congregation, but in vain. Perhaps the memory of
+Wishart's charge to him, "Return to your bairns," was still in his ears;
+perhaps the reluctance and hesitation of a man who felt himself
+incompetent for so great a responsibility--though it is strange to
+associate any idea of shrinking from responsibility with such a
+dauntless spirit, and he was by this time a man of forty-two, with a
+matured mind and some experience of life. At all events he "utterlie
+refused": he "would not run where God had not called him." This being
+so, there was no alternative but to take him by surprise and force him
+into the position which all desired him to assume. And this was the step
+which was accordingly taken by the assembly of the Reformers in St.
+Andrews, an assembly in which were many well-known and distinguished
+men, so illustrious a councillor as Sir David Lindsay, the poet and
+Lyon-King of Scotland, being one of the gentlemen and commoners who
+decided upon this dramatic and picturesque call.
+
+They were all met to the preaching upon a certain day, the date of which
+is not given, but which was presumably in the summer of 1547, Knox
+having arrived with his pupils in St. Andrews in the Easter of that
+year. The principal persons present were aware of what was coming, and
+probably the mass of the congregation knew that some event more than
+ordinary was preparing, which would quicken the eagerness of their
+attention. The sermon was upon the right of the congregation to the
+services of "any man in whom they espied the gifts of God," and the risk
+on his part of refusing their call. Mair, sitting by in his doctor's
+gown, though he had committed himself to no religious heresy, had
+discoursed much to his students upon the rights of the people as the
+source of power--a doctrine, indeed, which Knox did not hold in that
+naked form, though most probably he had been influenced by these
+teachings towards the still more tremendous form of doctrine which sets
+forth the voice of the Christian people as representing the voice of
+God. And no doubt up to this point he gave his adhesion to the words of
+the preacher. But when Rough had reached the crown of his argument he
+suddenly turned to where Knox sat and addressed him individually, while
+the people held their breath.
+
+"Brother," he said, "ye shall not be offended albeit that I speak unto
+you that which I have in charge even from all those that are here
+present: which is this. In the name of God and of His Son Jesus Christ,
+and in the name of those that presently call you by my mouth, I charge
+you that ye refuse not this holy vocation, but that as you tender the
+glory of God, the increase of Christ His kingdom, the edification of
+your brethren, and the comfort of me, whom ye understand well enough to
+be oppressed by the multitude of labours, that you take upon you the
+public office and charge of preaching even as ye look to avoid God's
+heavy displeasure and desire that He shall multiply His grace with you."
+And in the end he said to those present, "Was not this your charge to
+me? and do ye not approve this vocation?" They answered, "It was, and we
+approve it." "Whereat the said John, abashed, burst forth in most
+abundant tears and withdrew himself to his chamber."
+
+It would be difficult to find a more striking scene. Any sudden incident
+of an individual character thus occurring in a public assembly calls
+forth a thrill of interest, and gives at once to the most disconnected
+crowd a pictorial unity. The interest and excitement in those roused and
+eager eyes, the crowd all turned towards the astonished subject of this
+appeal, the soft young faces making a little circle round him, half
+terrified, half flattered by the sudden consciousness that all eyes were
+turned towards them, would make a fine theme for a historical painter.
+And "the said John, abashed," finding no refuge in the great excitement
+and surprise of the moment, he so stern and so strong, but in tears! It
+was thus that the ministry of the great Reformer began.
+
+It is unnecessary to follow in detail a career so well known. Every
+particular of it, and even the sermons with all their heads, may be
+found in the _Historie of the Reformation in Scotland_, which yields in
+interest, in picturesqueness and the most living and graphic power of
+narrative, to none of the primitive chronicles. No professional
+word-painter has ever put a dramatic scene, a contention, a battle, such
+as those which were everyday occurrences in Scotland at that time, upon
+paper with more pictorial force, or with half the fervour of life and
+reality. The writer goes through all the gamut of popular passion. He
+exults sometimes fiercely, laughs sometimes coarsely, throws in "a merry
+jest," which is often grim with savage humour; but throughout all is
+always real, always genuine, writing not impartially, but with the
+strong conviction and sentiment of a man elucidating matters in which he
+has been himself a prominent actor. The arguments of his adversaries
+when he enters upon a public controversy are unaccountably feeble, which
+perhaps may be explained by the fact that the friars were not much
+accustomed to controversy, perhaps by the natural bias of a
+controversialist to lessen the force of his antagonists' arguments; and
+he does not pretend to contemplate his adversaries, either spiritual or
+political, with any tolerance, or permit any possibility that they too
+might perhaps mean well and have a righteous intention, even though it
+was entirely opposed to that of John Knox: such ideas had no currency in
+his day. That Mary of Guise might really mean and wish to avoid
+bloodshed, to strike no blow that was not inevitable, to keep the breach
+from being widened by actual civil war; and that the policy of
+temporising as long as that was possible was anything but wicked wiles
+and intentions of betrayal, was an idea which he would seem to have been
+incapable of conceiving. This is a drawback perhaps common to every
+struggle so important and fundamental as was the strife which began to
+rage in Scotland. Had we a history compiled by the spectators to whom we
+have referred it would probably, unless nature gave them an exceptional
+keenness of vision, be wanting in those qualities of animation and force
+which he who is confident of having every good influence on his side,
+and nothing but the powers of evil against him, is likely to possess.
+Major indeed was a historian, but he did not meddle with the history of
+his own time; and Buchanan, while separated from the reader by the bonds
+and cerements of his Latin, and therefore shut out from a popular
+audience, is as great a partisan as Knox.
+
+The little garrison of St. Andrews was taken, as everybody knows, by the
+French, and carried away to prison and the galleys; but no blood was
+shed to avenge the blood of Beatoun, a point which ought to be put to
+their credit. John Knox suffered all these misfortunes with a steadfast
+soul, still declaring to all who surrounded him, in the extremity of
+suffering, hardship, and sickness, that he should again preach in that
+Church of St. Andrews from which he had been taken. This is the first of
+the many prophecies completely verified afterwards with which he is
+credited. He escaped after about three years of captivity and misery in
+France, during which he would seem to have been actually employed in the
+galleys, and came to England, where it is to be supposed the story of
+his influence and power with the Scotch Reformers had preceded him,
+otherwise the advancement to which he reached, and which might have been
+greater but for his dissatisfaction with the imperfectly Reformed Church
+there, and the bondage of ceremonials and traditions still left in it,
+would have been still more extraordinary. He was one of the chaplains to
+the boy-king Edward, for whom he had the amiable prejudice common to
+those who secure the favour of very young princes, expecting from him
+everything that was great and good. At the death of the young King,
+however, Knox removed hurriedly to the Continent with many others,
+knowing that under the reign of Mary there would be little acceptance
+for men of his views. During his stay in England he had met with a pair
+of ladies who were henceforward to be very closely connected with his
+life--Marjory Bowes, his future wife, and to all appearance still more
+important her mother, Mrs. Bowes, to whom, contrary to the ordinary idea
+of that relationship, he seems to have given much regard and affection,
+notwithstanding that she was a melancholy woman, depressed and
+despondent, sometimes overwhelmed with religious terrors, and requiring
+continued support and encouragement in the faith. One cannot help
+feeling a sort of compassion for the silent Marjory, of whom nothing is
+ever heard, between her solemn lover of fifty and her sad mother. But
+she is voiceless, and though there are letters of religious counsel
+addressed to her under the title of "weill belovit sister," there is not
+among them all, so strange is the abstract effect of religious
+exhortation thus applied, one gleam of anything like individual
+character, or which can throw any light upon what she was; which,
+considering the marked individuality of the writer, is curious
+exceedingly. We must hope that on other occasions, notwithstanding his
+mature years, there were letters calculated to give more satisfaction to
+a young woman than these expositions and addresses.
+
+For the next two years Knox, now it is evident universally known
+wherever the Reformation had penetrated, filled the place of minister to
+a congregation of exiles assembled at Geneva, most of them refugees from
+England, who had fled, as he himself had done, at the accession of Mary.
+But his heart was in his own land, where in the meantime the progress of
+the new Reformed faith was arrested, and silence and discouragement had
+fallen over the country. The leaders were dispersed or destroyed, the
+preachers silenced, and there was no one to gather together the many
+groups of believers all over the country in whose hearts the seed had
+sprung up strongly, but who as yet had made no public profession. In
+1555 Knox suddenly reappeared in Scotland, brought thither at once by
+urgent letters and by the eagerness of his own heart. When he arrived in
+Edinburgh he found that many who "had a zeal to godliness" still
+attended mass, probably finding it more difficult to break the continual
+habit of their lives than the bonds of doctrine--and that the outer
+structure of the Church remained much as it had been, without any such
+shattering and falling asunder as had taken place in regions more
+advanced. That this arose from no want of zeal was proved as soon as the
+preacher appeared: for his arrival was no sooner known than the house in
+which he had alighted from his journey was filled by a stream of
+inquirers, whom he "began to exhort secretly." One night he was called
+to supper with the Laird of Dun, the well-known John Erskine, who was
+one of the most earnest of the Reforming party, and in the grave company
+he found there--among whom were one or two ministers and the young but
+already promising and eminent William Maitland of Lethington--the
+question was fully discussed, Was it lawful to conform while holding a
+faith not only different but hostile? was it permissible to bow down in
+the house of Rimmon? To this Knox answered No, with all the
+uncompromising and stern sincerity of his soul. "Nowise was it lawful."
+The question was very fully defended from the other point of view.
+"Nothing was omitted that might make for the temporiser"; even the
+example of Paul, who went up into the Temple to pay his vow by the
+advice of the Apostle James, which step, however, Knox pronounced at
+once, notwithstanding his absolute reverence for Holy Writ, to have been
+wrong, and not of God--a mistake of both the Apostles, and manifestly
+bringing no blessing with it. His bold and assured argument cut the
+ground from under the feet of the hesitating Reformers, to whom no doubt
+it was very difficult thus to break away from all the traditions of
+their lives.
+
+This scene throws a strange and in some respects new light upon the more
+human side of the great movement. It is easier perhaps to us who are
+acquainted with all that followed to understand the fiery zeal which
+flamed against every accessory of what they conceived to be
+idolatry--the saintly image, which was nothing but a painted board, and
+the "round clipped god" upon the altar which was blasphemously asserted
+to be the very Lord Himself--than to remember that these men had also
+many links of use and wont, of attachment and habit, to the churches in
+which they had been christened, and the position, with all its needs and
+simple duties, to which they had been born. To see them standing there
+for a moment reluctant, with the tremendous breach that must be made in
+life gaping before them, and the sense of universal disruption and
+tearing asunder which must follow, is to me more touching than the stern
+conviction which never pauses nor fears. They were so thoroughly
+convinced, however, of the necessity which he reasoned out with such
+remorseless logic, that Erskine first, and after him many gentlemen
+through Scotland, craved the help of the preacher to put the crown upon
+their convictions, and spread in their halls and private chambers, no
+church being attainable, what was now for the first time called the
+Table of the Lord. Knox went to Dun in Forfarshire across the great
+firths of Forth and Tay, and to Calder, the house of Sir James
+Sandilands, afterwards Lord Torphichen, in Lothian, where many gathered
+to hear him. But it would seem to have been in the West, always the most
+strenuous in doctrine, that he first celebrated the new rite, the holy
+feast as yet unknown in Scotland. During the eventful winter of 1555-56
+he pervaded the country thus, setting forth the special bond of
+evangelical religion, uniting those different groups by the sacred seal
+of the bread and wine--who can doubt received with a profound and
+tremulous awe by lips to which the wafer had been hitherto the only
+symbol of that act of closest communion?
+
+This would seem to have been the chief work of Knox during the visit
+which, in the midst of his Geneva ministry, he paid to his native land:
+and it is easy to perceive that it was of supreme importance as
+identifying and separating the converts into a definite community, bound
+together by that sacrament of fealty, an oath more binding than any
+expressed only in words. Hitherto the preaching and teaching of the
+Word, which was itself a discovery, and came with all the freshness of a
+new revelation, had been the only sacred office carried on by the
+Reformers. The Sacraments were all in the hands of ecclesiastics, who
+had been for generations past losing the confidence and respect of the
+nation--though one cannot but believe there must still have been here
+and there a humble curate, a parish priest like Chaucer's Parsoune, to
+strengthen the hold of the accustomed ordinances upon men's minds, who,
+however strongly they might turn against the miracle of
+transubstantiation, could not cast aside the only means of partaking in
+the great mystery of the body and blood of Christ. To all such here was
+now the answer set forth, and the hope--the holy Table, the communion of
+saints, the bread and wine of the great and ceaseless commemoration. It
+would be doing the greatest wrong to these small devout assemblies, and
+to the fervent preacher, devoured with eagerness to make them all, not
+almost but altogether such men as himself, to call this an act of
+policy. Yet that it was so, and that a bond was thus established to
+consolidate the party, more sacred, more binding than any other, there
+can be no reasonable doubt.
+
+While travelling on this solemn mission from place to place and house to
+house of the religious gentry of Scotland, Knox would seem to have made
+Edinburgh his headquarters, and preached there from time to time, not
+always secretly. He had here "a greater audience than ever before" in
+"the Bishop of Dunkeld's great lodging," that ancient habitation from
+which Gawin Douglas, the poet-bishop, had watched and waited while the
+fight went on within the gates of the Nether Bow, and from which he
+rushed out to rescue the other prelate whose corslet rang under his
+rochet. Strange association, yet not inappropriate; for the mild Bishop
+of Dunkeld had also found many potent words to say against the abuses of
+the Church, though the new presbyter who now took his place was rather
+of Beatoun's warlike mettle than of Douglas's. The nobles who came
+thither to hear the preacher were so "weill contented" with his
+doctrine--which is his own moderate version of what was no doubt an
+enthusiasm of grave approbation--that they seem to have imagined, in
+that solemn simplicity which belongs to fresh conviction, that he might
+perchance, could she but hear him, move the Regent Queen herself, Mary
+of Guise, an unlikely convert no doubt. He was accordingly exhorted by
+three gentlemen, specified as the Earl of Glencairn, the Earl Marischal,
+and Harye Drummond, to write a letter to the Queen, which Knox, always
+eager for the pen, and full of matter boiling to have utterance,
+immediately did. It is difficult not to think of the _sancta
+simpilicitas_, which rarely belongs to such a group of men, when we
+think of the grave trio of advisers, and the still graver but fiery
+prophet-preacher, making this wonderful appeal. It was less wonderful in
+him who loved nothing so much as to write when he could not be
+preaching, to set forth those high-handed arraignments before the
+visionary tribunal of the one true and only faith, of whomsoever he
+could address, queen or peasant; but it is strange that men of the
+world, and of the society of their time, should have thus thought it
+possible to convert a lady so full of policy and cares of government, so
+entirely occupied with the most important matters of statesmanship, not
+to say so determined a Catholic, as the daughter of the Guises, the
+sister of the Cardinal.
+
+The attempt, as was natural, failed completely. "Which letter," resumes
+Knox, "when she had read within a day or two she delivered it to the
+proud prelate, Beatoun, Bishop of Glasgow, and said in mockage, 'Please
+you, my lord, to read a pasquill?'" It is against the perfection of the
+prophet, but not the character of the man, that this scorn stung him as
+no persecution could have done. He made certain additions to the letter,
+and published it in Geneva on his return there. We are not told which
+part of the letter these additions are, but what he tells us seems to
+indicate that the threatening prophesies, of which he says in his
+_Historie_, "lett those very flatterers see what hath failed," had been
+added to the original text. We forgive him his ready wrath, and even the
+"threatenings" which he always considered himself at liberty to launch
+at those who, in his own language, "withstood the truth": but we could
+have wished that Knox had been more magnanimous, and could have
+forgotten the offence after the passage of years. Mary's careless speech
+would have been but "ane merry boord" had it been directed against one
+of his enemies.
+
+When Knox went back to Geneva after this winter's work to resume his
+pastorate there, he left the growing cause of Reform in Scotland with a
+constitution and organisation sanctified by the most sacred rites of
+religion, an advantage quite inestimable in the circumstances, and
+placing the cause as in an ark of safety. And when he returned to
+Edinburgh two years later, the scattered groups to whom in country
+houses and castles he had administered the Lord's Supper had become the
+Congregation, an army existing in all quarters of Scotland, ready to
+rally to the aid of any portion of the body, or eminent individual, who
+might be attacked: and headed by a phalanx of Scots nobility, Lords of
+the Congregation, the heads of a new party in the State, as well as of a
+new Church, an altogether novel development of national life. It would
+have been difficult to have spoken more boldly than Knox had done in his
+letter to the Queen Regent three years before, but the Congregation in
+its established position as a national party took stronger ground, and
+pressed their claims to a hearing with a force of petitioners too strong
+to be gainsaid. Knox had called upon Mary herself in her own person to
+hear the Word and abjure her errors, but the body of Reformers asked for
+measures more comprehensive and still more subversive of the established
+order of things. In their first address to Mary they upbraided
+themselves, with a manly penitence which must have been bewildering to
+royal ears, that they had permitted their brethren in the faith to be
+destroyed by "faggot fyre and sword" without resistance. "We acknowledge
+it," said these strange petitioners, "to have been our bounden duty
+before God either to have defended our brethren from those cruel
+murtherers (seeing we are a part of that power which God hath
+established in this realm) or else to have given open testification of
+our faith with them." This, however, being no longer in their power,
+they besought the Queen to make such horrible accidents impossible in
+the future, and to grant to them permission to establish their worship;
+to meet publicly or privately to make their common prayer, and read the
+Scriptures in the vulgar tongue; to have the assistance of "qualified
+persons in knowledge" to expound to them "any hard places of Scripture,"
+and to have the Sacraments administered "in the vulgar tongue," and the
+Lord's Supper in both kinds. Last of all they desired of the Queen that
+"the wicked, scandalous, and detestable life of prelates and of the
+State Ecclesiastical" should be reformed, stating at the same time their
+wish to have the case between themselves and the priests tried not only
+by the rules of the New Testament, but by the writings of the ancient
+Fathers. In all this there was no intolerance, but a wholly just and
+reasonable prayer, suggesting harm to no one, not even the persecutors
+from whom they had suffered; altogether a claim of justice and native
+right magnanimously as well as forcibly made, with dignified
+recollection of their own position as "a part of that power which God
+hath established in this realm," to which it would have been difficult
+for any reasonable sovereign to return a discourteous or imperious
+answer.
+
+Mary of Guise did no such thing. She did not receive the address of the
+Congregation as she had done the letter of Knox. But she did what was
+worse, she gave no answer at all save fair words and delay. It would
+have been perhaps too much to expect that even those moderate and manly
+petitioners should have taken into consideration the complicated
+circumstances by which she was surrounded, or the difficulties of her
+position, with the "State Ecclesiastical" so strong and wealthy,
+arbiters for the moment of her faith, and France and her kindred
+expectant of impossible things from her, and Rome itself regarding with
+a watchful eye what a Princess of so Catholic a family--defender of the
+faith in a distant but at this moment exceedingly important
+field--should do. Mary temporised, which was perhaps the best thing
+possible for the Reformers if not for herself, and promised to take
+order, to regulate matters for their advantage so soon as it was
+possible, when she should have concluded various matters of more
+importance that were in hand, such, for instance, as that of awarding
+the crown matrimonial to her daughter's husband the young King of
+France, to whom all earthly distinctions were soon to matter so little.
+During this period of delay the Reformers were left unmolested to
+multiply and mature, so that when her other business was despatched, and
+the Queen could no longer avoid some action in the matter, the
+Congregation had attained both numbers and power. When the preachers
+were summoned to appear before her to plead their own cause "it was
+concluded by the whole brethren that the gentlemen of every county
+should accompany their preachers to the day and place appointed." This
+was a proceeding entirely sanctioned by Scotch custom, of which there
+were many historical examples, but it was not perhaps calculated to
+promote the ends of peaceful discussion; for the gentlemen thus
+described were accompanied by their households at least, if not by a
+stout following of retainers, and the result was the assemblage of "such
+a multitude" that even the leaders considered it likely to have "given
+fear" to the Queen, although this multitude was, as the record says,
+with a gleam of grim humour, "without armour as peciable men, minding
+only to give confession with their preachers." Mary wisely interposed
+another period of delay when she was warned what the "peaceable" escort
+was with which the preachers were obeying her call.
+
+It was, however, as little safe to let loose such an army of confessors
+through the country which had to be traversed before they could reach
+their homes, as to receive them in Stirling where the appointment had
+been. For, mild as was their purpose and godly their intentions, it
+proved too much for the sense and moderation even of that religious
+crowd when they found themselves on their way northward masters of St.
+Johnstone (or Perth, as moderns call it) with the fumes of a sermon of
+Knox's still in their brain, and a report about that the Queen meant to
+put the preachers "to the horn," for all so softly spoken as she was.
+Knox's sermon had been "vehement against idolatrie," though preached in
+a church still wealthy and bright with all the adornments of the ancient
+faith, and in which, as the crowd dispersed, a priest appeared in his
+vestments to say his mass. It gives us a curious impression of the chaos
+that reigned, to hear that in the town, which was full to overflowing of
+this Protestant crowd, and in the very church which still rang with the
+echoes of Knox's vehement oratory, he who had no words strong enough to
+denounce that idolatrous rite--there should come forth in the calm of
+use and wont a nameless humble priest with his acolyte to say the mass,
+which was his bounden duty whatever obstacles might be in his way. The
+manner in which it is recorded, with the violent antagonism of the time,
+is this--"That a priest in contempt would go to the masse; and to
+declare his malignant presumption he would open up ane glorious
+tabernacle which stood upon the Hie altar." On the other side no doubt
+the tale would be, that with the faith and courage of a holy martyr this
+venerable confessor ascended the steps of the altar to give his life, if
+needful, for the holy mysteries, and fulfil his sacred office whoever
+might oppose. And which was the more true version who can tell? On
+neither side would it be believed, what was probably the fact, that it
+was a simple brother taking little thought of the commotions round him,
+who, as soon as the clamour of the preaching was over, concerned with
+nothing but his mass which had to be said during canonical hours, had
+come in without other intention to perform his daily duty.
+
+But in any case, the sight of the glorious tabernacle filled with a fury
+of excitement the dregs of the crowd who still lingered there. A child's
+outcry, more "malapert" than the priest, called the attention of the
+lingerers, and before any one knew, the passion of destruction had
+seized like a frenzy upon the people. They flung themselves upon the
+"glorious tabernacle," and all the statues and adornments, and laid them
+in swift and sudden ruin. The rumour flew through the town, along with
+the shouts and crash of metal and stone; and the remainder of the
+lately-dispersed multitude came rushing back to the church which was the
+scene of the outbreak, a mob "not of the gentlemen, neither of them that
+were earnest professors, but of the rasckall multitude," which finding
+nothing to do in the stripped walls and chapels, hurried on, led, no
+doubt, by the first of the iconoclasts, who had become intoxicated with
+the frenzy of destruction, to the convents of the Grey and the Black
+Friars. Their violence grew as they passed on, from one scene of
+destruction to another, many of them finding substantial inducements in
+the shape of booty, in the well-filled meal-girnels and puncheons of
+salt beef in the larders of the monks. By the time they came to these it
+may be presumed that the special rage against idolatry had been
+assuaged; but the demon of destruction had taken its place. And when the
+excited multitude reached the noble Charterhouse with all its
+picturesque buildings, "the fairest abbaye and best biggit of any within
+the realm of Scotland," surrounded by pleasant gardens and noble trees,
+every restraint was thrown aside. It had been founded by James I., and
+there lay the remains of his murdered body along with those of many
+other royal victims of the stormy and tumultuous past. So much
+conscience was left that the terrified monks, or at least the Prior who
+is specially mentioned, was allowed to take away with him as much silver
+and gold as he was able to carry. The rest was beaten down into
+indiscriminating ruin, and "within two days these three great places,
+monuments of idolatrie, to wit the Grey and Black thieves and
+Charterhouse monks (a building of a wondrous cost and greatness), were
+so destroyed that the walls only did remain of all these great
+edifications."
+
+That this was in no way the doing of Knox and his colleagues is evident;
+but it is equally evident that they treated it as a mere accident and
+outrage of the mob, without consequence so far as the greater question
+was concerned. When the Queen, exasperated, threatened in her anger on
+the receipt of the news to destroy St. Johnstone, and began to collect
+an army to march upon the offenders, the Congregation assembled in Perth
+professed astonishment and incredulity, treating her threats as the mere
+utterances of passion, and thinking "such cruelty" impossible. There is
+not a word in the letters to the Queen's Majestie, to the Nobilitie of
+Scotland, and the fierce address to the priests in which they afterwards
+stated their case, of any wrong on their own side or provocation given.
+The Congregation takes at once the highest tone. They declare that,
+faithful servants of the realm as they have always been, if this unjust
+tyranny is carried out they will be constrained to take up the sword of
+just defence, notifying at the same time their innocence not only to
+"the King of France, to our Mistress and to her husband, but also to the
+Princes and Council of everie Christian realm, declaring unto them that
+this cruel, unjust, and most tyrannical murther intended against towns
+and multitudes, was and is the only cause of our revolt from our
+accustomed obedience." Thus they treat the threatened attack throughout
+as wholly directed against their religion and religious freedom, without
+the least reference to the just cause of offence given by riots so
+alarming and destructive, and by the ruin of a national monument so
+important as the Charterhouse. All these are as completely ignored as if
+the population of St. Johnstone had been the most tranquil and
+law-abiding in the world. And they do this with such evident good faith
+that it is impossible not to believe that what had happened was to
+themselves an unimportant incident: though it was something like what
+the destruction of Westminster Abbey would have been in England. In
+these respects, however, the state of feeling produced by the
+Reformation followed no ordinary laws; the fervour of hatred and
+contempt which the priesthood called forth in Scotland being beyond all
+example or comparison, except, indeed, in some parts of France, where
+Farel and his followers had set the example of destruction.
+
+The Queen, however, did little more than threaten. Before she could move
+at all, the Westland lords, who had gone home, had heard the news and
+turned back in hot haste to succour their brethren. Even without that
+reinforcement the French general had hesitated to approach too near the
+town occupied by so many resolute men, no longer "peaceable," but
+determined to defend themselves. It is very apparent that Mary wished
+above all things to avoid bloodshed and any step which would precipitate
+the beginning of a civil war: and she sent embassy after embassy,
+selected sometimes from her own side, sometimes from that of the
+Reformers, to exhort them to submission. If her part in the matter was
+that of an anxious and in many ways considerate ruler, bent, so far as
+in her lay, upon keeping the peace, the attitude of the Congregation
+was, at the same time, a perfectly manly and moderate one, granting
+their dulness of conscience in respect to the real outrage. "If the
+Queen's grace would suffer the religion then begun to proceed, and not
+trouble their brethren and sisters that had professed Christ Jesus with
+them," they declared themselves ready to submit in any way to the
+Queen's commandment; but without this promise they would not stir. Knox
+himself, however, who was the soul of the party, was, according to his
+wont, less self-controlled. He considered it his duty to make a special
+statement to Argyle and the Lord James, the future Earl of Murray, who
+were the Queen's first envoys, and to send a message to the Regent in
+his own name, with a curious assumption of the prophet's office, which
+is exceedingly remarkable so near the beginning of his career, and is at
+once an evidence of the enormous influence which he had acquired, and of
+the astonishing confidence in his own mission and powers which must have
+helped him to acquire it. "Say to the Queen's Grace Regent," he required
+them, "in my name, that we whom she in her blind rage doth persecute are
+God's servants, faithful and obedient subjects to the authority of this
+realm: that that religion which she pretendeth to maintain by fire and
+sword is not the religion of Christ Jesus, but is express contrarie to
+the same, ane superstition devised by the brain of man: which I offer
+myself to prove against all that within Scotland will maintain the
+contrarie--liberty of tongue being granted to me, and God's written word
+being admitted for judge."
+
+Thus the preacher flung down his glove like a knight of the old
+chivalry, with a fiery and eager hardihood which we could the better
+admire had he done more justice to his adversaries, especially the
+Queen, whose good intentions it seems so difficult to misconstrue. He
+warns her also, in the same high tone, that her enterprise will not
+succeed, and that the end shall be her confusion, "onless betimes she
+repent and desist," with all the stern certainty of an inspired prophet.
+Whether the serious emissaries, who, though they were Protestants, "had
+begun to muse," and perhaps could not keep their eyes from remarking the
+smoke and dust of the ruins behind the energetic figure of the Reformer,
+conveyed this message in full we may be permitted to doubt. They were
+both young men, and it is unlikely they would prejudice their own career
+by repeating to the Queen's Grace anything about her blind rage or the
+confusion which would follow. Lord Sempill, who accompanied them, and
+who was of the Queen's party--"a man sold under sin," says Knox--perhaps
+did more justice to the message; but Knox's sole desire was that it
+should be repeated word by word.
+
+We need not, however, follow the advances and retreats, the always
+imminent encounter for which the Congregation was fully ready, but from
+which the Queen and her general constantly retired at the last moment,
+before the gates of Perth, on Cupar Muir, and other places, making
+agreement after agreement of which nothing came. In the course of this
+curious dance of the two powers confronting each other much ink was
+shed, however, if no blood, and the representations, letters, bonds, and
+assurances must have kept the scribes on either side in constant
+occupation. The Congregation was certainly the more argumentative and
+long-winded of the correspondents, and never seems to have lost an
+opportunity of a letter. They pervaded the country, an ever-increasing
+band, which, whenever an emergency occurred, was multiplied from every
+quarter at the raising of a finger on the part of the reforming lords.
+That the violent beginning made in Perth had given to the populace a
+taste for the pleasures of destruction, however, is very fully evident,
+and it soon became clear that when the preachers and their protectors
+moved "to make reformation," the mob who followed them would leave
+nothing but ruins behind. This and the method of it is very well set
+forth in the case of Scone, a place of great historical interest, where
+the ancient kings of Scotland had been crowned. It would seem to have
+been a raid of private vengeance which directed the operations, "four
+zealous men," irrestrainable, it would seem, by the leaders, having set
+out from Perth, "to take order with that place," considering how
+obstinately proud and despiteful the Bishop of Murray had been. The
+lords had already sent a letter of warning to the Bishop, who was housed
+in some abbey near, advertising him that unless he would come and join
+them they could neither spare nor save his place. But while the answer
+lingered the town of Dundee took up the quarrel and set forth to carry
+out the work.
+
+    "To stay them was first sent the Provost of Dundee and his brother
+    Alexander Halliburton Capitain, who little prevailing was sent unto
+    them John Knox; but before his coming they were entered to the
+    pulling down of the idols and dortour (dormitory). And albeit the
+    said Maister James Halliburton, Alexander his brother, and the said
+    John, did what in them lay to have stayed the fury of the multitude,
+    yet were they not able to put order universalie; and therefore they
+    sent for the lords, Earl of Argyle and Lord James, who coming with
+    all diligence laboured to have saved the palace and the kirk. But
+    because the multitude had found buried in the kirk a great number of
+    idols, hid of purpose to have reserved them for a better day (as the
+    Papists speak) the towns of Dundee and St. Johnstone could not be
+    satisfied till that the whole reparation and ornaments of the church
+    (as they term it) were destroyed. And yet did the lords so travel
+    that they saved the Bishop's palace with the church and place for
+    that night; for the two lords did not depart till they brought with
+    them the whole number of those who most sought the Bishop's
+    displeasure. The Bishop, greatly offended that anything should have
+    been enterprised in reformation of his place, asked of the lords his
+    bond and handwriting, which not two hours before he had sent to them
+    (this was a promise to come immediately to arrange for the safety of
+    his see, and also to support them in Parliament in gratitude for the
+    warning they had given him); Which delivered to his messenger, Sir
+    Adam Brown, advertisement was given that if any further displeasure
+    chanced unto him that he should not blame them. The Bishop's
+    servants that same night began to fortify the place again, and began
+    to do violence to some that were carrying away such baggage as they
+    could come by. The Bishop's girnel was kept the first night by the
+    labours of John Knox, who by exhortation removed such as would
+    violentlie have made irruption. The morrow following, some of the
+    poor in hope of spoil, and some of Dundee to consider what was done,
+    passed up to the said Abbey of Scone; whereat the Bishop's servants
+    offended began to threaten and speak proudly, and as it was
+    constantly affirmed one of the Bishop's sons stogged through with a
+    rapier one of Dundee because he was looking in at the girnel door.
+    This bruit noised abroad, the town of Dundee was more enraged than
+    before, who putting themselves in armour sent word to the
+    inhabitants of St. Johnstone, 'That unless they should support them
+    to avenge that injury, that they should never from that day concur
+    with them in any action.' They, easilie inflambed, gave the alarm,
+    and so was that abbey and palace appointed to the saccage; in doing
+    whereof they took no long deliberation, but committed the whole to
+    the merriment of fire; whereat no small number of us was so
+    offended, that patientlie we could not speak to any that were of
+    Dundee or Saint Johnstone."
+
+The reader will see in this frank narrative how many elements were
+conjoined to bring about the outrage. Local jealousy and despite, the
+rage against the Bishop and his priests, the eagerness of the needy in
+hope of spoil, the excitement of a fray in which the first blow had been
+struck by the adversary with just the crown of a supposed religious
+motive to give the courage of a great cause to the rioters: while on the
+other hand the Bishop's rashness in taking the defence upon himself and
+slighting the assistance offered him is equally apparent. It is evident
+enough, however, that the lords themselves had no urgent interest in the
+preservation of the ancient buildings, and that Knox cared little for
+any of these things. The watch of the preacher at the door of the
+Bishop's girnel or storehouse, keeping back the rioters by his
+exhortations, is a curious illustration of this point. He would not have
+the people soil their souls with thieving, with the Bishop's meal and
+malt; as for the historical walls, the altar where the old kings had
+been anointed or the sanctuary where their ashes lay, what were they?
+Knox was too much intent on setting Scotland loose from all previous
+traditions--from the past which was idolatrous and corrupt, and in which
+till it reached to the age of the Apostles he recognised no good
+thing--to be concerned about the temples of Baal. What he wanted was to
+cut all these dark ages away, and affiliate himself and his country
+direct to Judæa and Jerusalem, to the Jewish church, not the Gothic or
+the papal, or any perverted image of what he believed primitive
+Christianity to have been. He served himself heir to Peter and Paul, to
+Elijah and Ezekiel, and perhaps in the strong prepossession of his soul
+against contemporary monks and ecclesiastics did not even know that the
+Church which was so corrupt, and the religious orders which had fallen
+so low, had ever brought or preserved light and blessing to the world.
+Scottish history, Scottish art, were corrupted too, and woven about with
+associations of these hated priests and their system which was not true
+religion, but "devised by the brain of man"; and though he was himself
+the most complete incarnation of Scotch vehemence, dogmatism, national
+pride, and fiery feeling, he was indifferent to their national records.
+His pride was involved in making his country stand, alone if need was,
+or if not alone, then first, in passionate perfection in the new order
+of things in the kingdom of Christ: not to keep her a place in the unity
+of nations by preserving the traces of an old civilisation and
+institutions as venerable and noteworthy as any in Christendom, but to
+make of her a chosen nation like that people, long ago dispersed by a
+sufficiently miserable catastrophe, to whom was given of old the mission
+of showing forth the will of God before the world. Whether what he
+gained for his country was not much more important than what he thus
+deliberately sacrificed is a question that will never be answered with
+any unanimity. He gained for his race a great freedom, which cannot be
+justly called religious freedom, because it was, in his intention at
+least, freedom to follow their own way, with none at all for those who
+differed from them. He set up a high standard of piety and probity, and
+for once made the business of the soul, the worship of God and study of
+His laws, the most absorbing of public interests. He thrilled the whole
+country through and through with the inspiration of a fervent spirit,
+uncompromising in its devotion to the truth, asking no indulgence if
+also, perhaps, giving none, serving God in his own way with a fidelity
+above every bribe, scornful of every compromise. But he cut Scotland
+adrift so far as in him lay from the brotherhood of habit and tradition,
+from the communion, if not of saints, yet of many saintly uses, and much
+that is beautiful in Christian life. He made his country eminent, and
+secured for her one great chapter in the history of the world; but he
+imprinted upon her a certain narrowness uncongenial to her character and
+to her past, which has undervalued her to many superficial observers,
+and done perhaps a little, but a permanent, harm to her national ideal
+ever since. A small evil for so much good, but yet not to be left
+unacknowledged.
+
+More interesting in its human aspect is Knox's appearance in St.
+Andrews, whither the Congregation now crowded to "make reformation,"
+though doubtful if even the populace were on their side. The Bishop
+"hearing of reformation to be made in his cathedral church, thought time
+to stir, or else never"--which was very natural. He was accompanied by a
+hundred spears, which must have meant a company at least of four or five
+hundred armed men, while the Lords of the Congregation had "their quiet
+households," no doubt a very adequate escort. The Bishop threatened that
+if John Knox showed his face in the cathedral he should be saluted with
+a dozen of culverins, and the gentlemen with him hesitated much to
+expose him to such a risk: but their doubts were not shared by the
+preacher. He had himself given forth, when in the galley labouring at
+the oar in sight of the beloved town and sanctuary, a prophecy that he
+should yet preach there, unlikely as it looked; and to recoil from any
+danger, when such an opportunity arose, was not in him. "To delay to
+preach the morrow (unless the bodie be violentlie witholden) I cannot,"
+he said. He preached upon the casting out of the money-changers from the
+Temple--a very dangerous subject for such an occasion, and "applied the
+corruption that was there to the corruption that is in the Papestrie" so
+well that the magistrates of the town, and also the commonalty "for the
+most part, did agree to remove all monuments of idolatrie, which also
+they did with expedition." But it was not on that day that the great
+church shining from afar on its rocky headland, a splendid landmark over
+the dangerous bay, was reduced to the condition in which it now remains,
+with a few forlorn but graceful pinnacles rising against the misty blue
+of sea and sky. No harm would seem to have been done except to the
+altars and the decorations; and according to all evidence it is more to
+the careless brutality of the eighteenth century, which found an
+excellent storehouse of materials for building in the abandoned shrine,
+than to any absolute outrage that its present state of utter ruin is
+due.
+
+[Illustration: ST. ANDREWS]
+
+The Congregation set forth on its march to Stirling, and thence to
+Edinburgh in June, and so great was the commotion which had been raised
+by the rumour of the "reformation" wrought in the north in Scone and St.
+Johnstone that the mere news of their approach roused "the rasckall
+multitude" to the mood of destruction. They had cleared out and
+destroyed the convents in Stirling, and those of the Black and Grey
+Friars in Edinburgh, before the Reformers came--a result which Knox at
+least in no way pauses to deplore: they had left nothing, he says, "but
+bare walls, yea, not so much as door or windok: wherthrou we were the
+less troubled in putting order in such places." Thus the flood of
+Revolution, of Reformation, of fundamental, universal change flowed on.
+The victory was not assured, however, as perhaps they had hoped when
+they entered Edinburgh, for though for a time everything went well, and
+the preaching seems to have been followed by the greater part of the
+city, the Queen, ever active, though never striking any decisive blow,
+had received reinforcements from France, and to the great alarm of the
+Congregation had begun to fortify Leith, forming a strong garrison there
+of French soldiers, and making a new stronghold near enough to be a
+perpetual menace to Edinburgh almost at her door. The position of
+affairs at this moment was curious in the extreme. The Queen in Leith,
+surrounded by the newly arrived forces of France, with Frenchmen placed
+in all the great offices, fulminated forth decrees, commands,
+explanations, orders, from within the walls that were being quickly
+raised to make the fort a strong place, and from amidst the garrison of
+her own countrymen, in whose fidelity she could fully trust. In
+Edinburgh the Congregation were virtually supreme, but very uneasy;
+their substantial adversaries quieted, but ever on the watch; the
+populace ready to pull down and destroy at their indication, but not to
+change their life or character--an unstable support should trouble come;
+while in the castle Lord Erskine sat impartial, a sort of silent umpire,
+taking neither side, though ready to intervene with a great gun on
+either as occasion moved him. The fire of words which was kept up
+between the two parties is one of the most amazing features of the
+conflict. For every page the Queen's secretaries wrote, John Knox was
+ready with ten to demonstrate her errors, her falsehood, the
+impossibility that any good could come from an idolater such as she.
+Other persons take part in the great wrangle, but he is clearly the
+scribe and moving spirit. He writes to her in his own person, in that of
+the Lord James, in that of the Congregation. She accuses them of
+rebellion and treasonable intentions against herself--and they her of
+her Frenchmen and her fortifications. She summons them to leave
+Edinburgh on peril of all the penalties that attend high treason; they
+demand from her that the Frenchmen should be sent away and the
+proceedings stopped. She accuses the Duke Chatelherault--the head of the
+Hamiltons, the next heir to the throne--of treasonable proceedings, and
+he vindicates himself by sound of trumpet at the Cross of Edinburgh. The
+correspondence grows to such a pitch that when she loses patience and
+bids them be gone before a certain day, they meet in solemn conclave, to
+which the preachers are called to give their advice, to discuss whether
+it is lawful to depose her from her regency: and all consent with one
+voice to her deprivation. The excitement of this continual exchange of
+correspondence, the messages coming and going, from the Queen's side the
+Lyon King himself, all glorious among his pursuivants, advancing from
+Leith with his brief letter and his "credit" as spokesman, the others
+replying and re-replying, scarcely ever without a response or a
+denunciation to read over and talk over, must have kept the nerves and
+intelligence of all at a perpetual strain. At St. Giles's and the
+Tolbooth close by, which were the double centre of life in the city,
+there was a perpetual alternation of preachings, to which Lords and
+Commons would crowd together to listen to Knox's trumpet peals of fiery
+eloquence, always upon some appropriate text, always instinct with the
+most vehement energy, and consultations upon public affairs and how to
+promote the triumph of religion; the lords pondering and sometimes
+doubtful, the preacher ever uncompromising and absolute. A question of
+public honesty had arisen in the midst of the struggle for the faith,
+and the Reformers had seized the Mint to prevent the coining of base
+money, which the Regent was carrying on for her necessities, and which
+the Congregation, no doubt justly, considered ruinous to the trade of
+the country; and the determined struggle with the Queen in respect to
+her scheme for fortifying Leith and establishing a French garrison
+there,--a continual check upon and menace to the freedom of the
+capital,--was at least as much a question of politics as religion.
+
+The Congregation, however, was not yet strong enough to be able to meet
+the French forces, and when they attempted to besiege Leith and put a
+forcible stop to the building they were defeated with shame and loss. A
+curious sign of the inevitable "rift within the lute," which up to this
+time had been avoided by the concentration of all men's thoughts upon
+the first necessity of securing the freedom of the preachings, becomes
+visible before this futile attempt at a siege. When the leaders of the
+Congregation, among whom on this occasion the contingent from the towns,
+and especially from Dundee, seems foremost, began to prepare for their
+expedition, they chose St. Giles's Church as the most convenient for the
+preparation of the scaling ladders, a practical evidence that sacredness
+had departed from the church as a building, not at all to the mind of
+the preachers, who probably saw no logical succession between the
+hammers of the destroyers pulling down the "glorious tabernacles" and
+those of the craftsmen occupied with secular work. They did not, indeed,
+put their objections on this ground, but on that of the neglect of the
+"preaching," a name now characteristically applied to the public worship
+of God. "The Preachers spared not openly to say that they feared the
+success of that enterpryse should not be prosperous because the
+beginning appeyred to bring with it some contempt of God and of His
+word. Other places, said they, had been more apt for such preparations
+than where the people convened to common prayer and unto preaching, and
+they did not hesitate to affirm that God would not suffer such contempt
+of His word." Whether these objections stole the heart out of the
+fighting men, who had hitherto felt themselves emphatically the soldiers
+of God, it is impossible to say. They had hitherto overawed the Queen's
+party by their numbers, and had never outwardly made proof of their
+powers or sustained the attack of regular soldiers. And the assault of
+Leith ended in a disastrous defeat. The expedition set out rashly
+without leaders, while the lords and gentlemen "were gone to the
+preaching," and had consequently no accompanying cavalry, and few, if
+any, experienced soldiers. They were driven back with loss, and pursued
+into the very Canongate, to the foot of Leith Wynd--that is, into the
+cross-roads and narrow wynds which were immediately outside the city
+walls. Argyle and the rest, as soon as they were aware of what had
+happened, got hastily to horse, and did all they could to stop the
+flight, but even this turned to harm, since the horsemen coming out to
+the aid of their friends proved an additional danger to the fugitives,
+and "over-rode their poor brethren at the entrance of the Nether Bow."
+
+After this all was confusion and trouble in Edinburgh. The castle fired
+one solitary gun, which stopped with a note of sudden protest the French
+pursuit, coming with extraordinary dramatic effect into the always
+graphic and picturesque narrative, over the heads of the flying,
+discomfited crowd which was struggling among the horses' hoofs at the
+narrow gate, and the Frenchmen straggling behind, up all the narrow
+passages into the Canongate, snatching a piece of plunder where they
+could find it, "one a kietill, ane other ane pettycoat, the third a pote
+or a pan." "Je pense que vous l'avez acheté sans argent," the Queen is
+reported to have said with a laugh as the pursuers came back to Leith
+with their not very important booty. "This was the great and motherlie
+care she took for the truth of the poor subjects of this realm," says
+Knox bitterly; and yet it was very natural that she should have been
+overjoyed, after all these controversies, to feel herself the stronger,
+if not in argument at least in actual fight.
+
+This defeat told greatly upon the spirits of the Congregation which had
+hitherto been kept together by success, and which was in fact a mere
+horde of men hastily collected, untrained in actual warfare, and in no
+position for taking the offensive though strong in defence of their
+rights. And money had failed. It was determined that each gentleman
+should give his plate to be made into coin to supply the needs of the
+Congregation, as they had the Mint in their hands: but the officials
+stole away with the "irons" and this was made impracticable. They then
+sent for a supply to the English envoys who were anxiously watching the
+progress of events at Berwick: but the sum sent to them in answer to
+their application was intercepted by the Earl of Bothwell--his first
+appearance in history, on which he was to leave thereafter such traces
+of disaster. And other encounters with the Frenchmen took the heart
+entirely out of the Congregation; the party began to dissolve, stealing
+away on every side. "Our soldiers" (mercenaries it is to be supposed in
+distinction from the retainers of the lords and gentlemen) "could
+skarslie be dang out of the town" to meet a sally from Leith. In
+Edinburgh itself the rasckall multitude, which had been so ready to
+destroy and ravage, began to throw stones at the Reformers and call them
+traitors and heretics. Finally with hearts penetrated by disappointment
+and the misery of defeat the Congregation abandoned Edinburgh altogether
+and marched to Stirling with drooping arms and hearts.
+
+"The said day at nine in the night," says a contemporary authority, "the
+Congregation departed forth of Edinburgh to Linlithgow and left their
+artillerie void upon the causeway lying, and the town desolate." It was
+November, and the darkness of the night could not have been more dark
+than the prospects and thoughts of that dejected band, a little while
+before so triumphant. As the tramp of the half-seen procession went
+heavily down the tortuous streets at the back of the castle, probably by
+the West Bow and West Port, diving down into the darkness under that
+black shadow where the garrison sat grimly impartial taking no part, the
+populace, perhaps frightened by the too great success of their own
+fickle and cruel desertion of the cause, and hoping little from the
+return of the priests, would seem to have beheld with silent dismay the
+departure of the Congregation. The guns which had done them so little
+service which they left on the road, as the preachers would have had
+them leave all the devices and aid of men, were gathered in by the
+soldiers from the castle with little demonstration, and the town was
+left desolate. The anonymous writer of the _Diurnal of Occurrents_ is
+curiously impartial and puts down his brief records without any
+expression of feeling: but a certain thrill is in these words as of
+something too impressive and significant to be passed by.
+
+It is at this miserable moment that John Knox shows himself at his best.
+Hitherto his vehemence, his fierce oratory, his interminable letters and
+addresses, though instinct with all the reality of a most vigorous, even
+restless nature, represent to us rather a man who would if he could have
+done everything,--the fighting and the protocolling as well as the
+preaching, a man to whom repose was impossible, ever ready to draw forth
+his pen, to mount his pulpit, to add his eager word to every
+consultation, and enjoying nothing so much as to press the most
+unpleasant truths upon his correspondents and hearers,--than one of
+sustaining power and wisdom. The uncompromising fidelity with which he
+pointed out the shortcomings of those about him, and the terrible
+penalties laid up for them; and the stern denunciations in his letters,
+even those which he intended to be conciliatory, make his appearance in
+general more alarming than reassuring. An instance which almost tempts a
+smile, grave as are all the circumstances and surroundings, is his
+letter (written some time before the point at which we have now arrived)
+to Cecil whom he had known in England, and whose favour he desired to
+secure and indeed was confident of securing. For once he had something
+to ask for himself, permission to land in England on his way back to his
+native country; and greatly desired that a favourable representation of
+his case might be made to Queen Elizabeth, who was naturally prejudiced
+against him by his famous Blast against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.
+The following letter was written from Dieppe in April 1559 with the hope
+of procuring these favours from the great statesman.
+
+    "As I have no plaisure with long writing to trouble you, Rycht
+    Honourable, whose mind I know to be occupied with most grave
+    matters, so mind I not greatly to labour by long preface to
+    conciliate your favour, which I suppose I have already (howsomever
+    rumours bruit the contrarie) as it becometh one member of Christ's
+    body to have of another. The contents, therefore, of these my
+    presents shall be absolved in two points. In the former I purpose to
+    discharge in brief words my conscience towards you, and in the other
+    somewhat I must speik in my own defence and in defence of that poor
+    flock of lait assembled in the most godly Reformed church and city
+    of the world Geneva. To you Sir, I say, that as from God ye have
+    received life, wisdom, honours and this present estate in which ye
+    stand, so ought you wholly to employ the same to the advancement of
+    His glory, who only is the Author of life, the fountain of wisdom,
+    and who, most assuredly, doth and will honour those that with simple
+    hearts do glorify Him; which, alas, in times past ye have not done;
+    but being overcome with common iniquity ye have followed the world
+    in the way of perdition. For to the suppressing of Christ's true
+    Evangell, to the erecting of idolatrie, and to the shedding of the
+    blood of God's dear children, have you by silence consented and
+    subscribed. This, your most horrible defection from the truth known
+    and once professed, hath God to this day mercifully spared; yea, to
+    man's judgement He hath utterly forgotten and pardoned the same. He
+    hath not entreated you as He hath done others (of like knowledge),
+    whom in His anger (but yet most justly according to their deserts)
+    He did shortly strike after their defection. But you, guilty in the
+    same offences, He hath fostered and preserved as it were in His own
+    bosom. As the benefit which ye have received is great, so must God's
+    justice require of you a thankful heart; for seeing that His mercy
+    hath spared you being traitor to His Majesty; seeing, further, that
+    among your enemies He hath preserved you; and last, seeing that
+    although worthy of Hell He hath promoted you to honour and dignity,
+    of you must He require (because He is just) earnest repentance for
+    your former defection, a heart mindful of His merciful providence,
+    and a will so ready to advance His glory that evidently it may
+    appear that in vain ye have not received these graces of God--to
+    performance whereof of necessity it is that carnal wisdom and
+    worldly policy (to the which both ye are bruited too much inclined)
+    give place to God's simple and naked truth--very love compelleth me
+    to say that except the Spirit of God purge your heart from that
+    venom which your eyes have seen to be destruction to others, that ye
+    shall not long escape the reward of dissemblers. Call to mind what
+    you ever heard proclaimed in the chapel of Saint James, when this
+    verse of the first Psalm was entreated, 'Not so, oh wicked, not so;
+    but as the dust which the wind hath tossed, etc.' ... And this is
+    the conclusion of that which to yourself I say. Except that in the
+    cause of Christ's Evangel ye be found simple, sincere, fervent and
+    unfeigned, ye shall taste of the same cup which politic heads have
+    drunken before you."
+
+This manner of approaching a powerful statesman whose good offices might
+be of the uttermost consequence both to the writer and his party, is
+highly characteristic. There is something almost comic, if we dared to
+interpose such a view between two such personages, in the warning
+against "carnal wisdom and worldly policy to the which both ye are
+bruited too much inclined," addressed to the great Burleigh. It is
+difficult to imagine the outburst of a laugh between such a pair, yet
+grave Cecil surely must have smiled.
+
+The man who wrote this epistle and many another, leagues of letters in
+no one of which does he ever mince matters, or refrain to deliver his
+conscience before conveying the message of State with which he is
+charged--is often wordy, sometimes tedious, now and then narrow as a
+village gossip, always supremely and absolutely dogmatic, seeing no way
+but his own and acknowledging no possibility of error; and the extreme
+and perpetual movement of his ever-active mind, his high-blooded
+intolerance, the restless force about him which never pauses to take
+breath, is the chief impression produced upon the reader by his own
+unfolding of himself in his wonderful history. Though he is too great
+and important to be called a busybody, we still feel sympathetically
+something of the suppressed irritation and sense of hindrance and
+interruption with which the lords must have regarded this companion with
+his "devout imaginations," whom they dared not neglect, and who was sure
+to get the better in every argument, generally by reason, but at all
+events by the innate force of his persistence and daring. But when they
+came to Stirling, after "that dusk and dolorous night wherein all ye my
+lords with shame and fear left the town", the eager nervous form, the
+dark keen face of the preacher, rose before the melancholy bands like
+those of the hero-leader, the standard-bearer of God. It was Wednesday
+the 7th of November 1559 when the dispirited Congregation met for the
+preaching and to consider afterwards "what was the next remedy in so
+desperate a case." Knox took for his text certain verses of the
+eightieth Psalm. "How long wilt thou be angry against the prayers of thy
+people? Thou hast fed us with the bread of tears; and hast given us
+tears to drink in great measure. O God of hosts, turn us again, make thy
+face to shine; and we shall be saved." He began by asking, Why were the
+people of God thus oppressed?
+
+    "Our faces are this day confounded, our enemies triumph, our hearts
+    have quaked for fear, and yet they remain oppressed with sorrow and
+    shame. But what shall we think to be the very cause that God hath
+    thus dejected us? If I shall say our sins and former unthankfulness
+    to God, I speak the truth. But yet I spake more generallie than
+    necessity required: for when the sins of men are rebuked in general,
+    seldom it is that man descendeth within himself, accusing and
+    damning in himself that which most displeaseth God."
+
+To this particular self-examination he then leads his hearers in order
+that they may not take refuge in generalities, but that each man may
+examine himself. "I will divide our whole company," he says, "into two
+sorts of men. The one, those who have been attached to the cause from
+the beginning; the other, recent converts."
+
+    "Let us begin at ourselves who longest has continued in this battle.
+    When we were a few in number, in comparison with our enemies, when
+    we had neither Erle nor Lord (a few excepted) to comfort us, we
+    called upon God, we took Him for our protector, defence, and onlie
+    refuge. Among us was heard no bragging of multitude or of our
+    strength or policy, we did only sob to God, to have respect to the
+    equity of our cause and to the cruel pursuit of the tyraneful enemy.
+    But since that our number has been multiplied, and chiefly since my
+    Lord Duke his Grace with his friends have been joined with us, there
+    was nothing heard but 'This Lord will bring these many hundred
+    spears: if this Earl be ours no man in such and such a bounds will
+    trouble us.' And thus the best of us all, that before felt God's
+    potent hand to be our defence, hath of late days put flesh to be our
+    arm."
+
+This proved, which was an evil he had struggled against with might and
+main, forbidding all compromises, all concessions that might have served
+to attract the help of the powerful, and conciliate lukewarm supporters,
+he turns to the other side.
+
+    "But wherein hath my Lord Duik his Grace and his friends offended?
+    It may be that as we have trusted in them so have they put too much
+    confidence in their own strength. But granting so be or not, I see a
+    cause most just why the duke and his friends should thus be
+    confounded among the rest of their brethren. I have not yet
+    forgotten what was the dolour and anguish of my own heart when at
+    St. Johnstone, Cupar Muir, and Edinburgh Crags, those cruel
+    murderers, that now hath put us to this dishonour, threatened our
+    present destruction. My Lord Duke his Grace, and his friends at all
+    the three jornayes, was to them a great comfort and unto us a great
+    discourage; for his name and authority did more affray and astonish
+    us, than did the force of the other: yea, without his assistance
+    they would not have compelled us to appoint with the Queen upon
+    unequal conditions. I am uncertain if my Lord's Grace hath
+    unfeignedly repented of his assistance to those murderers unjustly
+    pursuing us. Yea, I am uncertain if he hath repented of that
+    innocent blood of Christ's blessed martyrs which was shed in his
+    default. But let it be that so he hath done, as I hear that he hath
+    confessed his offence before the Lords and brethren of the
+    Congregation, yet I am assured that neither he, nor yet his friends,
+    did feel before this time the anguish and grieving of heart which we
+    felt when they in their blind fury pursued us. And therefore hath
+    God justly permitted both them and us to fall in this confusion at
+    once; us for that we put our trust and confidence in man, and them
+    because that they should feel in their own hearts how bitter was the
+    cup which they had made others to drink before them. Rests that both
+    they and we turn to the Eternal, our God (who beats down to death to
+    the intent that He may raise up again, to leave the remembrance of
+    His wondrous deliverance to the praise of His own name), which if we
+    do unfeignedly, I no more doubt that this our dolour, confusion, and
+    fear, shall be turned into joy, honour, and boldness, than that I
+    doubt that God gave the victory to the Israelites over the
+    Benjaminites after that twice with ignominy they were repulsed and
+    dang back. Yea, whatsoever shall come of us and our mortal
+    carcasses, I doubt not but this cause in despite of Satan shall
+    prevail in the realm of Scotland. For as it is the eternal truth of
+    the eternal God, so shall it once prevail, however for a time it may
+    be hindered. It may be that God shall plague some, for that they
+    delight not in the truth, albeit for worldly respects they seem to
+    favour it. Yea, God may take some of His devout children away before
+    their eyes see greater troubles. But neither shall the one or the
+    other so hinder this action but in the end it shall triumph."
+
+When the sermon was ended, Knox adds, "The minds of men began
+wonderfully to be erected." "The voice of one man," as Randolph
+afterwards said, was "able in an hour to put more life in us than six
+hundred trumpets continually blustering in our ears." The boldness with
+which Knox thus exposed that elation in their own temporary success, and
+in the adhesion of the Duke of Hamilton, which had led the leaders of
+the Congregation into self-confidence and slackened their watchfulness,
+was made solemn and authoritative by the force with which he pressed his
+personal responsibility into every man's bosom. No turn of fortune, no
+evil fate, but God's check upon an army enlisted in His name yet not
+serving Him with a true heart, was this momentary downfall; the cause of
+which was one that every man could remove in his degree; not inherent
+weakness or hopeless fate, but a matter remediable, nay, which must be
+remedied and cast from among them--a matter which might quench their
+personal hopes and destroy them, but could not affect the divine cause,
+which should surely, triumph whatever man or Satan might do. More than
+six hundred trumpets, more than the tramp of a succouring army, it rang
+into the men's hearts. Their spirit and their courage rose; the dolorous
+night, the fear and shame, dissolved and disappeared; and the question
+what to do was met not with dejection and despair but with a rising of
+new hope.
+
+The decision of the Congregation in the Senate which was held after this
+stirring address was, in the first place, to address an appeal for help
+to England, the sister-nation which had already made reformation, though
+not in their way, and to fight the matter out with full confidence in a
+happy issue. About this appeal to England, however, there were
+difficulties; for Knox who suggested it, and whose name could not but
+appear in the matter, had given forth, as all the world and especially
+the persons chiefly attacked were aware, a tremendous "blast" against
+the right of women to reign, particularly well or ill timed in a
+generation subject to so many queens; and it was necessary for him to
+excuse or defend himself to the greatest of the female sovereigns whom
+he had attacked. Of course it was easy for him to say that he had no
+great Protestant Elizabeth in his eye when he wrote, but only a bigoted
+and sanguinary Mary, of whom no one knew at the time that her reign was
+to be short, and her power of doing evil so small. It is almost
+impossible to discuss gravely nowadays a treatise which, even in its
+name (which is all that most people know of it), has the air of a
+whimsical ebullition of passion, leaning towards the ridiculous, rather
+than a serious protest calculated to move the minds of men. But this was
+not the aspect under which it appeared to the Queens who were assailed,
+not as individuals, but as a class intolerable and not to be suffered;
+and it was considered necessary that Knox should write to excuse
+himself, and apologise as much as was in him to the Queen, who was now
+the only person on earth to whom the Congregation could look for help.
+Knox's letter to Queen Elizabeth, whom he addressed indeed more as a
+lesser prince, respectful but more or less equal, might do, than as a
+private individual, is very characteristic. He has to apologise, but he
+will not withdraw from the position he had taken. "I cannot deny the
+writing," he says, "neither yet am I minded to retreat or call back any
+principal point or proposition of the same." But he is surprised that
+subject of offence should be found in it by her for whose accession he
+renders thanks to God, declaring himself willing to be judged by
+moderate and indifferent men which of the parties do most harm to the
+liberty of England, he who affirms that no woman may be exalted above
+any realm to make the liberty of the same thrall to any stranger nation,
+"or they that approve whatsoever pleaseth Princes for the time." Leaving
+thus the ticklish argument which he cannot withdraw, but finds it
+impolitic to bring forward, he turns to the Queen's individual behaviour
+in her position as being the thing most important at the present moment,
+now that she has effectively attained her unlawful elevation.
+
+    "Therefore, Madam, the only way to retain and keep those benefits of
+    God abundantly poured now of late days upon you and upon your realm,
+    is unfeignedly to render unto God, to His mercy and undeserved
+    grace, the glory of your exaltation. Forget your birth, and all
+    title which thereupon doth hing: and consider deeply how for fear of
+    your life ye did decline from God and bow till idolatrie. Let it not
+    appear ane small offence in your eyes that ye have declined from
+    Christ in the day of His battle. Neither would I that you should
+    esteem that mercy to be vulgar and common which ye have received: to
+    wit that God hath covered your former offence, hath preserved you
+    when you were most unthankful, and in the end hath exalted and
+    raised you up, not only from the dust, but also from the ports of
+    death, to rule above His people for the comfort of His kirk. It
+    appertaineth to you, therefore, to ground the justice of your
+    authority, not upon that law which from year to year doth change,
+    but upon the eternal providence of Him who contraire to nature and
+    without your deserving hath thus exalted your head. If then, in
+    God's presence ye humble yourself, as in my heart I glorify God for
+    that rest granted to His afflicted flock within England under you a
+    weik instrument: so will I with tongue and pen justify your
+    authority and regiment as the Holy Ghost hath justified the same in
+    Debora that blessed mother in Israel. But if the premisses (as God
+    forbid) neglected, ye shall begin to brag of your birth and to build
+    your authority and regiment upon your own law, flatter you who so
+    list your felicity shall be short. Interpret my rude words in the
+    best part as written by him who is no enemy to your Grace."
+
+It must have been new to Queen Elizabeth to hear herself called "a weik
+instrument," and it is doubtful whether the first offence would be much
+softened by such an address. Neither was Elizabeth a person to be amused
+by the incongruity or impressed by the uncompromising boldness of the
+Reformer to whom the language of apology was so hard. Policy, however,
+has little to do with personal offences, although to some readers, as we
+confess to ourselves, it may be more interesting to see the prophet thus
+arrested, hampered by his own trumpet-blast, and making amends as much
+as he can permit himself to make, though so awkwardly and with so bold a
+return upon the original offence, to the offended Queen. It was far more
+easy for him to warn her of what would happen did she fail in her duty
+than to soothe the affront with gentle words; and his attempt at the
+latter is but halting and feeble. But when he promises with tongue and
+pen to justify her if she does well, Knox is once more on his own
+ground--that of a man whose office is superior to all the paltry
+distinctions of kingship or lordship, a servant of God commissioned to
+declare His divine will, endowed with an insight beyond that of ordinary
+men, and declaring with boundless certainty and confidence the things
+which are to be.
+
+We may, however, pass very shortly over the coming struggle. The English
+army marched into Scotland in April 1560, and addressed itself at once
+to the siege of Leith, the headquarters of the French whom the Queen
+Regent had brought into Scotland, and whom it was the chief aim of the
+Congregation and of their allies to drive out of the country. The siege
+went on for about six weeks, during which little effect seems to have
+been made, though Knox bears testimony that "the patience and stout
+courage of the Englishmen, but principally of the horsemen, was worthy
+of all praise." These proceedings, however, were brought to a pause by
+an event which changed the position of affairs. The Queen Regent, who,
+for some time, had been in declining health, harassed and beaten down by
+many cares, had left Leith and taken up her abode in Edinburgh Castle
+while the Reformers were absent from the capital. In that fortress, held
+neutral by its captain, in the small rooms where, some seven years
+after, her daughter's child was to be born, Mary lingered out the early
+days of summer: and in June, while still the English guns were
+thundering against Leith, her new fortifications resisting with
+diminished strength, and her garrison in danger--died, escaping from her
+uneasy burden of royalty when everything looked dark for her policy and
+cause. Many anecdotes of her sayings and doings were current during her
+lingering illness, such as might easily be reported between the two
+camps with more or less truth. When she heard of the "Band" made by the
+leaders of the army before Leith for the expulsion of the strangers she
+is said to have called the maledictions of God upon them who counselled
+her to persecute the preachers and to refuse the petitions of the best
+part of the subjects of the realm. Shut out from the countrymen and
+advisers in whom she had trusted, with the hitherto impartial Lord
+Erskine alone at her ear, adding his word concerning the "unjust
+possessors" who were to be driven "forth of this land," and overcome by
+sickness, sadness, and loneliness, this lady, who had done her best to
+hold the balance even and to refrain from bloodshed, though she had
+little credit for it, seems to have lost courage. She saw from her
+altitude on the castle rock the great fire in Leith, which probably
+looked at first like the beginning of its destruction, and all the
+martial bands of England, and the Scots lords and their followers, lying
+between her and her friends. After some ineffectual efforts to
+communicate with them otherwise, she sent for the Lords Argyle,
+Glencairn, and the Earl Marischal, with the Lord James, who visited her
+separately, "not all together, lest that some part of the Guysian
+practice had lurked under the colour of friendship." Knox's heart was
+not softened by the illness and isolation, nor even by the regrets and
+repentance, of the dying Queen. She consented to see John Willock, his
+colleague, and after hearing him "openly confessed that there was no
+salvation but in and by the death of Jesus Christ." "But of the Mass we
+had not her confession," says the implacable preacher. She died on the
+9th of June, worsted, overthrown, all that she had aimed at ending in
+failure, all her efforts foiled, leaving those who had been her enemies
+triumphant, and the future fate of her daughter's kingdom in the hands
+of "the auld enemy," the ever-dangerous neighbour of Scotland. "God, for
+His good mercy's sake, rid us from the rest of the Guysian blood," was
+the prayer Knox made over her grave.
+
+And yet, so far as can be judged, Mary of Guise was no persecutor and no
+tyrant. To all appearance she had honestly intended to keep peace in the
+kingdom, to permit as much as she could without committing herself to
+views which she did not share. And nothing could be more touching than
+such an end to a life never too brilliant or happy. She had gone through
+many alternations of gladness and of despair, had stood bravely by her
+sensitive husband when the infant sons who were his hope had been taken
+one after another, had discharged, as faithfully as circumstances and
+the accidents of a tremendous crisis would let her, her duties as
+Regent. Her death, lonely, desolate, and defeated, with no one near whom
+she loved, to smooth her passage to the grave, might have gained her a
+more gentle word of dismissal.
+
+Within little more than a month after her death peace was signed; the
+French forces departed, and the English army, not much more loved in its
+help than the others in their hostility, was escorted back to the Border
+and safely got rid of. On the 19th of July, all being thus happily
+settled, St. Giles's was once more filled with a crowd of eager
+worshippers, "the haill nobilitie and the greatest part of the
+Congregation,"--a number which must have tried the capacity of the great
+church, large as it is. Knox does not give his sermon on the occasion,
+but we have a very noble and devout prayer, or rather thanksgiving,
+which was used at this service, and in which, though there is one
+reference to "proud tyrants overthrown," the spirit of devout
+thankfulness is predominant. He tells us, however, that the subject of
+his discourses, delivered daily, were the prophecies of Haggai, which he
+found to be "proper for the time." Some of his hearers, he informs us,
+spoke jestingly of having now to "bear the barrow to build the house of
+God." "God be merciful to the speaker," cries the stern prophet, "for we
+fear he shall have experience that the building of his ain house, the
+house of God being despised, shall not be so prosperous or of such
+firmity as we desire it were"--so dangerous was it to jest in the
+presence of one so tremendously in earnest. The speaker referred to, of
+this, as of most of the other caustic sayings of the time, is said to
+have been Lethington.
+
+The first thing done by the Parliament was the distribution of the
+handful of ministers then existing among the districts which most needed
+them; the second, the verification and establishment of the Confession
+of Faith. No more curious scene could have been than this momentous
+ceremony. The Parliament consisted of all the nobility of Scotland,
+including among them the bishops and peers of the Church, and the
+delegates from the boroughs. The Confession was read article by article,
+and a vote taken upon each. Three only of the lords voted against it.
+The bishops said nothing. What their feelings must have been, as they
+sat in their places looking on, while the long array of the Congregation
+voted, it is vain to attempt to imagine. There was nothing the Reformers
+would have liked better than that discussion to which Knox had vainly
+bidden his opponents, throwing down his glove as to mortal combat. "Some
+of our ministers were present," he says, "standing upon their feet ready
+to have answered in case any would have defended the Papistrie and
+impugned our affirmations." But no one of all the ecclesiastics present
+said a word. The Earl Marischal, when he rose in his turn to vote,
+commented upon this remarkable abstinence with the straightforwardness
+of a practical man. "It is long since I have had some favour to the
+truth," he said, "and since I have had a suspicion of the Papistical
+religion; but I praise my God this day has fully resolved me in the one
+and the other. For, seeing that my Lord Bishops here present, who for
+their learning can, and for the zeal they should bear to the veritie
+would, I suppose, gainsay anything that directly repugns to the veritie
+of God, speaks nothing in the contraire of the doctrine proposed, I
+cannot but hold it to be the very truth of God." Even this speech moved
+the bishops to no reply. They sat silent, perhaps too much astonished at
+such an extraordinary revolution to say anything; perhaps alarmed at the
+strength of the party against them. It might be that there was little
+learning among them, though they had the credit of it; certainly the
+arguments which Knox reports on several occasions are inconceivably
+feeble on the side of the old faith. But whatever was the meaning there
+they sat dumb, and looked on bewildered, confounded, while the new
+Confession was voted paragraph by paragraph, and the whole scope of the
+Scottish constitution changed.
+
+[Illustration: KNOX'S HOUSE, HIGH STREET]
+
+The next step was the abolition of the mass, an act by which it was
+forbidden that any should either hear or say that office "or be present
+thereat, under the pain of confiscation of all their goods movable and
+immovable, and punishing of their bodies at the discretion of the
+Magistrates." Another edict followed abolishing the jurisdiction of the
+Pope under pain of "proscription, banishment, and never to brook honour,
+office, or dignity within this realm." "These and other things," says
+the Reformer, "were orderly done in lawful and free Parliament," with
+the bishops and all spiritual lords in their places sitting dumb and
+making no sign. The Queen was at liberty to say afterwards, as was done,
+that a Parliament where she was not represented in any way, either by
+viceroy or regent, where there was no exhibition of sceptre, sword, or
+crown, and in short where the monarch was left out altogether, was not a
+lawful Parliament. But the most remarkable feature of this strange
+assembly amid all the voting and "bruit" is the dramatic silence of the
+State ecclesiastical. It is curious that no fervent brother should have
+been found to maintain the cause of his faith. But probably it was
+better policy to refrain. The extraordinary absence of logic as well as
+toleration which made the Reformers unable to see what a lame conclusion
+this was after their own struggle for freedom, and that they were
+exactly following the example of their adversaries, need not be
+remarked. John Knox thought it a quite sufficient answer to say that the
+mass was idolatry and his own ways of thinking absolutely and certainly
+true; but so of course has the Roman Catholic Church done when the
+impulse of persecution was strongest in her. There is one only thing to
+be said in favour of the Reformers, and that is, that while a number of
+good men had been sacrificed at the stake for the Reformed doctrines, no
+one was burned for saying mass; the worst that happened, notwithstanding
+their fierce enactments, being the exposure in the pillory of a priest.
+Rotten eggs and stones are bad arguments either in religion or
+metaphysics, but not so violently bad as fire and flame.
+
+Thus the Reformed religion was established in Scotland, and Knox settled
+in St. Giles's for the remainder of his life. Whether he was at once
+placed in the picturesque house with its panelled rooms and
+old-fashioned comfort and gracefulness which still bears his name,
+standing out in a far-seeing angle from which he could contemplate the
+abounding life of the High Street, the great parish in which half his
+life was spent, is not certain; but it was a most fit and natural
+lodging for the minister of St. Giles's. And for the rest of his life,
+with very few intervals, all the stream of public life in Scotland
+flowed about this dwelling. His importance in every national question,
+the continual references made to him, the appeals addressed to him by
+monarch and noble, as well as by burghers and retainers, show better
+than any statement the unique position he held. He was at this time a
+man of fifty-five. His Marjory Bowes, never I think mentioned but by
+this name, the "weill belovit sister" who is associated with so much of
+his life without one trace of human identity ever stealing through the
+mist that envelops her, was dead; disappearing noiseless into the grave,
+where it would seem her mother, Mrs. Bowes, the religious hypochondriac
+who had required so many solemn treatises in the shape of letters to
+comfort her, had preceded her daughter. Two boys, the sons of Marjory,
+were with their father in these panelled rooms. They both grew up, but
+not to any distinction; he did not spare the rod as appears in an after
+statement, but loved not to see them in tears, and probably was a fond
+father enough. All these things, however, are too petty to find any
+record in what he says of himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+UNDER QUEEN MARY
+
+
+When the Parliament which did these great things was over, the
+newly-established Kirk began to labour at its own development, supplying
+as far as was possible ministers to the more important centres. There
+were but thirteen available in all according to the lists of those
+appointed to independent charges: and though they no doubt were
+supplemented by various of the laymen who had already been authorised to
+read prayers and preach in the absence of other qualified persons--one
+of whom, Erskine of Dun, became one of the superintendents of the new
+organisation--the clerical element must have been very small in
+comparison with the number of the faithful and the power and influence
+accorded to the preachers. When these indispensable arrangements had
+been made the chiefs of the Reformers began to draw up the Book of
+Discipline,--a compendium of the Constitution of the Church establishing
+her internal order, the provisions to be made for her, her powers in
+dealing with the people in general, and special sinners in
+particular,--as the Confession of Faith was of her doctrines and belief.
+But this was a much harder morsel for the lords to swallow. Many a stout
+spirit of the Congregation had held manfully for the Reformed faith and
+escaped with delight from the exactions and corruptions of the Romish
+clergy who yet had not schooled his mind to give up the half of his
+living, the fat commendatorship or priory which had been obtained for
+him by the highest influence, and upon which he had calculated as a
+lawful provision for himself and his family. One would have supposed
+that the meddling and keen supervision of every act of life, which was
+involved in the Church's stern claim of discipline, would also have
+alarmed and revolted a body of men not all conformed to the purest
+models of morality. But this seems to have troubled them little in
+comparison with the necessity of giving up their share of Church lands
+and ecclesiastical wealth generally, in order to provide for the
+preachers, and the needs of education and charity. "Everything that
+repugned to their corrupt affections was termed in their mockage 'devout
+imaginations,'" says Knox: and it was no doubt Lethington from whose
+quiver this winged word came, with so many more.
+
+[Illustration: HOLYROOD PALACE AND ARTHUR'S SEAT]
+
+A number of the lords, however, subscribed to the Book of Discipline
+though with reluctance, but some, and among them several of the most
+staunch supporters of the Reformation, held back. Knox had himself been
+placed in an independent position by his congregation, the citizens of
+Edinburgh, and he was therefore more free to press stipulations which in
+no way could be supposed to be for his own interest: but he evidently
+had not taken into account the strong human disposition to keep what has
+been acquired and the extreme practical difficulty of persuading men to
+a sacrifice of property. In other matters too there were drawbacks not
+sufficiently realised. There can be no grander ideal than that of a
+theocracy, a commonwealth entirely ruled and guided by sacred law: but
+when it is brought to practice even by the most enlightened, and men's
+lives are subjected to the keen inspection of an ecclesiastical board
+new to its functions, and eager for perfection, which does not disdain
+the most minute detail, nor to listen to the wildest rumours, the high
+ideal is apt to fall into the most intolerable petty tyranny. And
+notwithstanding the high exaltation of many minds, and the wonderful
+intellectual and emotional force which was expended every day in that
+pulpit of St. Giles's, swaying as with great blasts and currents of
+religious feeling the minds of the great congregation that filled the
+aisles of the cathedral, it is to be doubted whether Edinburgh was a
+very agreeable habitation in those days of early fervour, when the
+Congregation occupied the chief place everywhere, and men's thoughts
+were not as yet distracted by the coming of the Queen. During this
+period there occurs a curious and most significant story of an Edinburgh
+mob and riot, which might be placed by the side of the famous Porteous
+mob of later days, and which throws a somewhat lurid light upon the
+record of this most triumphant moment of the early Reformation. The
+Papists and bishops, Knox says, had stirred up the rasckall multitude to
+"make a Robin Hood." We may remark that he never changes his name for
+the mob, of which he is always sternly contemptuous. When it destroys
+convents and altars he flatters it (though he acknowledges sometimes a
+certain ease in finding the matter thus settled for him) with no better
+a title. He was no democrat though the most independent of citizens. The
+vulgar crowd had at no time any attraction for him.
+
+It seems no very great offence to "make a Robin Hood": but it is evident
+this popular festival had been always an occasion of rioting and
+disorderly behaviour since it was condemned by various acts of previous
+Parliaments. It will strike the reader, however, with dismay and horror
+to find that one of the ringleaders having been taken, he was condemned
+to be hanged, and a gibbet erected near the Cross to carry this sentence
+into execution. The _Diurnal of Occurrents_ gives by far the fullest and
+most graphic account of what followed. The trades rose in anxious
+tumult, at once angry and terrified.
+
+    "The craftsmen made great solicitations at the hands of the provost,
+    John Knox minister, and the baillie, to have gotten him relieved,
+    promising that he would do anything possible to be done saving his
+    life--who would do nothing but have him hanged. And when the time of
+    the poor man's hanging approached, and that the poor man was come to
+    the gibbet with the ladder upon which the said cordwainer should
+    have been hanged, the craftsman's children (apprentices?) and
+    servants past to armour; and first they housed Alexander Guthrie and
+    the provost and baillies in the said Alexander's writing booth, and
+    syne come down again to the Cross, and dang down the gibbet and
+    brake it in pieces, and thereafter past to the tolbooth which was
+    then steekit: and when they could not apprehend the keys thereof
+    they brought hammers and dang up the said tolbooth door perforce,
+    the provost, baillies, and others looking thereupon; and when the
+    said door was broken up ane part of them passed in the same, and not
+    only brought the said condemned cordwainer forth of the said
+    tolbooth, but also all the remaining persons being thereintill: and
+    this done they passed up the Hie gate, to have past forth at the
+    Nether Bow."
+
+The shutting up of the provost and bailie in the "writing booth"--one of
+the wooden structures, no doubt, which hung about St. Giles's, as round
+so many other cathedrals, where a crowd of little industries were
+collected about the skirts of the great church, the universal centre of
+life--has something grimly comic in it, worthy of an Edinburgh mob.
+Guthrie's booth must have been at the west end, facing the Tolbooth, and
+the impotence of the authorities, thus compelled to look on while the
+apprentices and young men in their leather aprons, armed with the long
+spears which were kept ready in all the shops for immediate use, broke
+down the prison doors with their hammers and let the prisoners go
+free--must have added a delightful zest to the triumph of the rebels,
+who had so lately pleaded humbly before them for the victim's life, but
+in vain. The provost was Archibald Douglas of Kilspindie, a name little
+suitable for such a dilemma. When the rude mob, with their shouts and
+cries, had turned their backs, the imprisoned authorities were able to
+break out and take shelter in the empty Tolbooth; but when the crowd
+surged up again, finding the gates closed at the Nether Bow, into the
+High Street, a scuffle arose, a new "Clear the Causeway," though the
+defenders of order kept within the walls of the Tolbooth, and thence
+shot at the rioters, who returned their fire with hagbuts and
+stones--from three in the afternoon till eight o'clock in the evening,
+"and never ane man of the town stirred to defend their provost and
+baillies." Finally the Constable of the Castle was sent for, who made
+peace, the craftsmen only laying down their arms on condition not only
+of absolute immunity from punishment for the day's doings, but with an
+undertaking that all previous actions against them should be stopped,
+and their masters made to receive them again without grudge or
+punishment--clearly a complete victory for the rioters. This extorted
+guarantee was proclaimed at the Cross at nine o'clock on the lingering
+July night, in the soft twilight which departs so unwillingly from
+northern skies; and a curious scene it must have been, with the
+magistrates still cooped up behind the barred windows of the Tolbooth,
+the triumph of the mob filling the streets with uproar, and spectators
+no doubt at all the windows, story upon story, looking on, glad, can we
+doubt? of something to see which was riot without being bloodshed. John
+Knox adds an explanation of his conduct in his narrative of the
+occurrence, which somewhat softens our feeling towards him. He refused
+to ask for the life of the unlucky reveller not without a reason, such
+as it was.
+
+    "Who did answer that he had so oft solicited in their favour that
+    his own conscience accused him that they used his labours for no
+    other end but to be a patron to their impiety. For he had before
+    made intercession for William Harlow, James Fussell, and others that
+    were convict of the former tumult. They proudly said 'that if it was
+    not stayed both he and the Baillies should repent it.' Whereto he
+    answered 'He would not hurt his conscience for any fear of man.'"
+
+It was not perhaps the fault of Knox or his influence that a man should
+be sentenced to be hanged for the rough horseplay of a Robin Hood
+performance, or because he was "Lord of Inobedience" or "Abbot of
+Unreason," like Adam Woodcock; but the extraordinary exaggeration of a
+society which could think such a punishment reasonable is very curious.
+
+Equally curious is the incidental description of how "the Papists"
+crowded into Edinburgh after this, apparently swaggering about the
+streets, "and began to brag as that they would have defaced the
+Protestants." When the Reformers perceived the audacity of their
+opponents, they replied by a similar demonstration: "the brethren
+assembled together and went in such companies, and that in peaceable
+manner, that the Bishops and their bands forsook the causeway." Many a
+strange sight must the spectators at the high windows, the old women at
+their "stairheads," from which they inspected everything, have seen--the
+bishops one day, the ministers another, and John Knox, were it shade or
+shine, crossing the High Street with his staff every day to St. Giles's,
+and seeing everything, whatever occurred on either side of him, with
+those keen eyes.
+
+This tumult, however, was almost the end of the undisturbed reign of the
+Congregation. In August, Mary Stewart, with all the pomp that her poor
+country could muster for her, arrived in a fog, as so many lesser people
+have done, on her native shores; and henceforward the balance of power
+was strangely disturbed. The gravest of the lords owned a certain
+divergence from the hitherto unbroken claims of religious duty, and a
+hundred softnesses and forbearances stole in, which were far from being
+according to the Reformer's views. The new reign began with a startling
+test of loyalty to conviction, which apparently had not been
+anticipated, and which came with a shock upon the feelings even of those
+who loved the Queen most. The first Sunday which Mary spent in Holyrood,
+preparations were made for mass in the chapel, probably with no
+foresight of the effect likely to be produced. Upon this a sudden tumult
+arose in the very ante-chambers. "Shall that idol be suffered again to
+take its place in this realm? It shall not," even the courtiers said to
+each other. The Master of Lindsay, that grim Lindsay of the Byres, so
+well known among Mary's adversaries, standing with some gentlemen of
+Fife in the courtyard, declared that "the idolatrous priests should die
+the death." In this situation of danger the Lord James, afterwards so
+well known as Murray, the Queen's brother, put himself in the breach. He
+"took upon him to keep the door of the chapel." There was no man in
+Scotland more true to the faith, and none more esteemed in the
+Congregation. He excused himself after for this act of true charity by
+saying that his object was to prevent any Scot from entering while the
+mass was proceeding: but Knox divined that it was to protect the priest,
+and preserve silence and sanctity for the service, though he disapproved
+it, that Murray thus intervened. The Reformers did not appreciate the
+good brother's devotion. Knox declared that he was more afraid of one
+mass than of ten thousand armed men, and the arches of St. Giles's rang
+with his alarm, his denunciation, his solemn warning. He recounts,
+however, how by degrees this feeling softened among those who frequented
+the Court. "There were Protestants found," he says, "that were not
+ashamed at tables and other open places to ask 'Why may not the Queen
+have her mass, and the form of her religion? What can that hurt us, or
+our religion?' until by degrees this indulgence rose to a warmer and
+stronger sentiment. 'The Queen's mass and her priests will we maintain:
+this hand and this rapier shall fight in their defence.'" One can well
+imagine the chivalrous youth or even the grave baron, with generous
+blood in his veins, who, with hand upon the hilt of the too ready sword,
+would dare even Knox's frown with this outcry; and in these days it is
+the champion of the Queen and of her conscience who secures our
+sympathy. But the Reformer had at least the cruel force of logic on his
+side, the severe logic which decreed the St. Bartholomew. To stamp out
+the previous faith was the only policy on either side.
+
+Then, as now, we think, there are few even of those who are forced to
+believe that the after-accusations against Queen Mary were but too
+clearly proved, who will not look back with a compunctious tenderness
+upon that early and bright beginning of her career. So strong a sense of
+remorseful pity, and the intolerableness of such a fate, overcomes the
+spectator, that he who stands by and looks on, knowing all that is
+coming, can scarcely help feeling that even he, unborn, might send a
+shout from out the dim futurity to warn her. She came with so much hope,
+so eagerly, to her new kingdom, so full of pleasure and interest and
+readiness to hear and see, and to be pleased with everything--even John
+Knox, that pestilent preacher, of whom she must have heard so much; he
+who had written the book against women which naturally made every woman
+indignant yet curious, keenly desirous to see him, to question him, to
+put him on his defence. I think great injustice has been done to both in
+the repeated interviews in which the sentimentalist perceives nothing
+but a harsh priest upbraiding a lovely woman and making her weep; and
+the sage of sterner mettle sees an almost sublime sight, a prophet
+unmoved by the meretricious charms of a queen of hearts. Neither of
+these exaggerated views will survive, we believe, a simple reading of
+the interviews themselves, especially in Knox's account of them. He is
+not merciless nor Mary silly. One would almost fancy that she liked the
+encounter which matched her own quick wit against the tremendous old man
+with his "blast against women," his deep-set fiery eyes, his sovereign
+power to move and influence the people. He was absolutely a novel
+personage to Mary: their conversations are like a quick glancing of
+polished weapons--his, too heavy for her young brilliancy of speech and
+nature, crushing with ponderous force the light-flashing darts of
+question; but she, no way daunted, comprehending him, meeting full in
+the face the prodigious thrust. A brave young creature of twenty
+confronting the great Reformer, in single combat so to speak, and
+retiring from the field, not triumphant indeed, but with all the honours
+of war, and a blessing half extorted from him at the end, she secures a
+sympathy which the weaker in such a fight does not always obtain, but
+which we cannot deny to her in her bright intelligence and brave defence
+of her faith. When his friends asked him, after this first interview,
+what he thought of the Queen, he gave her credit for "a proud mind, a
+crafty wit, and an indurate heart." But curiously enough, though the
+effect is not unprecedented, the faithfulness of genius baulks the
+prejudices of the writer, and there is nowhere a brighter or more genial
+representation of Mary than that which is to be found in a history full
+of abuse of her and vehement vituperation. She is "mischievous Marie," a
+vile woman, a shameless deceiver; every bad name that can be coined by a
+mediæval fancy, not unlearned in such violences; but when he is face to
+face with this woman of sin it is not in Knox to give other than a true
+picture, and that--apart from the grudging acknowledgment of her
+qualities and indication of evil intentions divined--is almost always an
+attractive one.
+
+He, too, shows far from badly in the encounter. In this case, as in so
+many others, the simple record denuded of all gloss gives at once a much
+better and we do not doubt much more true representation of the two
+remarkable persons involved, than when loaded with explanations, either
+from other people or from themselves. It cannot be said that Knox is
+just to Mary in the opinions he expresses of her, as he is in the
+involuntary picture which his inalienable truthfulness to fact forces
+from him. It must be remembered, however, that his history was written
+after the disastrous story had advanced nearly to its end, and when the
+stamp of crime (as Knox and so many more believed) had thrown a sinister
+shade upon all her previous life. Looking back upon the preliminaries
+which led to such wild confusion and misery, it was not unnatural that a
+man so absolute in judgment should perceive in the most innocent bygone
+details indications of depravity. It is one (whether good or bad we will
+not say) consequence of the use and practice of what may, to use a
+modern word, be called society, that men are less disposed to believe in
+the existence of monstrous and hideous evil, that they do not attach an
+undue importance to trifles nor take levity for vice. Knox had all the
+limitations of mind natural to his humble origin, and his profession,
+and the special disadvantage which must attach to the habit of
+investigating by means of popular accusation and gossip, problematical
+cases of immorality. He was able to believe that the Queen, when retired
+into her private apartments with her ladies, indulged in "skipping not
+very comelie for honest women," and that all kinds of brutal orgies went
+on at court--incidents certainly unnecessary to prove her after-guilt,
+and entirely out of keeping with all the surrounding associations, as if
+Holyrood had been a changehouse in "Christ Kirk on the green." It did
+not offend his sense of the probable or likely that such insinuations
+should be made, and he recorded them accordingly not as insinuations but
+as facts, in a manner only possible to that conjoint force of ignorance
+and scorn which continually makes people of one class misconceive and
+condemn those of another. Dancing was in those days the most decorous of
+performances: but if Mary had been proved to have danced a stately _pas
+seul_ in a minuet, it was to Knox, who knew no better, as if she had
+indulged in the wildest bobbing of a country fair--nay, he would
+probably have thought the high-skipping rural performer by far the more
+innocent of the two.
+
+This is but an instance of many similar misconceptions with which the
+colour of the picture is heightened. An impassioned spectator looking on
+with a foregone conclusion in his mind, never apparently able to
+convince himself that vice does not always wear her trappings, but is
+probably much more dangerous when she observes the ordinary modesties of
+outward life, is always apt to be misled in this way. The state of
+affairs in which a great body of public men, not only ministers, but
+noble men and worthy persons of every degree, could personally address
+the Queen, and that almost in the form of an accusation couched in the
+most vehement terms, because of a libertine raid made by a few young
+gallants in the night, on a house supposed to be inhabited by a woman of
+damaged character, is inconceivable to us--a certain parochial
+character, a pettiness as of a village, thus comes into the great
+national struggle. The Queen's uncle, who had accompanied her to
+Scotland, was one of the young men concerned, along with Earl Bothwell
+and another. "The horror of this fact and the raretie of it commoved all
+godlie hearts," said Knox--and yet there was no lack of scandals in that
+age notwithstanding the zeal of purification. When the courtiers,
+alarmed by this commination (in which every kind of spiritual vengeance
+upon the realm and its rulers was denounced), asked, "Who durst avow
+it?" the grim Lindsay replied, "A thousand gentlemen within Edinburgh."
+Yet if Edinburgh was free from disorders of this kind, it was certainly
+far from free of other contentions. The proclamations from the Cross
+during Mary's brief reign give us the impression of being almost
+ceaseless. The Queen's Majestie proclaimed by the heralds now one
+decree, now another, with a crowd hastily forming to every blast of the
+trumpet: and the little procession in their tabards, carrying a moving
+patch of bright colour and shining ornament up all the long picturesque
+line of street, both without and within the city gates, was of almost
+daily occurrence. It was some compensation at least for the evils of an
+uncertain rule to have that delightful pageant going on for ever.
+Sometimes there would arise a protest, and one of the lords, all
+splendid in his jewelled bonnet, would step forward to the Lord Lyon and
+"take instruments and crave extracts," according to the time-honoured
+jargon of law; while from his corner window perhaps John Knox looked
+out, his eager pen already drawn to answer, the tumultuous impassioned
+sentences rushing to his lips.
+
+When it was found that no punishment was to follow that "enormitie and
+fearful attemptal," but that "nightly masking" and riotous behaviour
+continued, some of the lords took the matter in their own hands, and a
+great band known as "my Lord Duke his friends" took the causeway to keep
+order in the town. When the news was brought to Earl Bothwell that the
+Hamiltons were "upon the gait," there were vows made on his side that
+"the Hamiltons should be driven not only out of the town but out of the
+country." The result, however, of this sudden surging up of personal
+feud to strengthen the bitterness of the quarrel between licence and
+repression, was that the final authorities were roused to make the fray
+an affair of State; and Murray and Huntly were sent from the abbey with
+their companies to stop the impending struggle. These sudden night
+tumults, the din of the struggle and clashing of the swords, the
+gleaming torches of the force who came to keep order, were sights very
+familiar to Edinburgh. But this fray brings upon us, prominent in the
+midst of the nightly brawls, the dark and ominous figure whose trace in
+history is so black, so brief, and so disastrous--once only had he
+appeared clearly before, when he intercepted in the interest of the
+Queen Regent the money sent from England to the Congregation. Now it is
+in a very different guise. Bothwell, as probably the ringleader in the
+disorders of the young nobles, was apparently the only person punished.
+He was confined to his own lodging, and it was apparently at this time
+that he sought the intervention of Knox, who seems to have been the
+universal referee. Knox gladly granted his prayer for an interview,
+which was brought him by a citizen of Edinburgh, with whom the riotous
+Earl had dealings. No doubt the Reformer expected a new convert; and
+indeed Bothwell had his preliminary shrift to make, and confessed his
+repentance of his previous action against the Congregation, which he
+said was done "by the entysements of the Queen Regent." But the Earl's
+object was not entirely of this pious kind. He informed Knox that he had
+offended the Earl of Arran, and that he was most anxious to recover that
+gentleman's favour, on the ground, apparently, that a feud with so great
+a personage compelled him to maintain a great retinue, "a number of
+wicked and unprofitable men, to the utter destruction of my living."
+
+Knox received with unusual favour this petition for his intervention,
+and for (to the reader) an unexpected reason: "Albeit to this hour," he
+said, "it hath not chanced me to speak to your lordship face to face,
+yet have I borne a good mind to your honour, and have been sorry in my
+heart of the troubles that I have heard you to be involved in. For, my
+lord, my grandfather, goodsire and father, have served your lordship's
+predecessors, and some of them have died under their standards; and this
+is part of the obligation of our Scottish kindness." He goes on
+naturally to exhort his visitor to complete repentance and "perfyte
+reconciliation with God;" but ends by promising his good offices for the
+wished-for reconciliation with man. In this mediation Knox was
+successful: and as the extraordinary chance would have it, it was at the
+Kirk of Field, doomed to such dismal association for ever with
+Bothwell's name, that the meeting with Arran, under the auspices of
+Knox--strange conjunction!--took place, and friendship was made between
+the two enemies. Knox made them a little oration as they embraced each
+other, exhorting them to "study that amitie may ensure all former
+offences being forgotten."
+
+This is strange enough when one remembers the terrible tragedy which was
+soon to burst these walls asunder; but stranger still was to follow. The
+two adversaries thus reconciled came to the sermon together next day,
+and there was much rejoicing over the new penitent. But four days after,
+Arran, with a distracted countenance, followed Knox home after the
+preaching, and calling out "I am treacherously betrayed," burst into
+tears. He then narrated with many expressions of horror the cause of his
+distress. Bothwell had made a proposal to him to carry off the Queen and
+place her in Dunkeld Castle in Arran's hands (who was known to be half
+distraught with love of Mary), and to kill Murray, Lethington, and the
+others that now misguided her, so that he and Arran should rule alone.
+The agitation of the unfortunate young man, his wild looks, his
+conviction that he was himself ruined and shamed for ever, seem to have
+enlightened Knox at once as to the state of his mind. Arran sent letters
+all over the country--to his father, to the Queen, to Murray--repeating
+this strange tale, but soon betrayed by the endless delusions which took
+possession of him that his mind was entirely disordered. The story
+remains one of those historical puzzles which it is impossible to solve.
+Was there truth in it--a premature betrayal of the scheme which
+afterwards made Bothwell infamous? did this wild suggestion drive
+Arran's mind, never too strong, off the balance? or was it some strange
+insight of madness into the other's dark spirit? These are questions
+which no one will ever be able to answer. It seems to have caused much
+perturbation in the Court and its surroundings for the moment, but is
+not, strangely enough, ever referred to when events quicken and Bothwell
+shows himself as he was in the madman's dream.
+
+The chief practical question on which Knox's mind and his vigorous pen
+were engaged during this early period of Mary's reign was the
+all-important question to the country and Church of the provision for
+the maintenance of ministers, for education, and for the poor--the
+revenues, in short, of the newly-established Church, these three objects
+being conjoined together as belonging to the spiritual dominion. The
+proposal made in the Book of Discipline, ratified and confirmed by the
+subscription of the lords, was that the tithes and other revenues of the
+old Church, apart from all the tyrannical additions which had ground the
+poor (the Uppermost Cloth, Corpse present, Pasch offerings, etc.),
+should be given over to the Congregation for the combined uses above
+described. This in principle had been conceded, though in practice it
+was extremely hard to extract those revenues from the strong secular
+hands into which in many cases they had fallen, and which had not even
+ceased to exact the Corpse present, etc. The Reformers had strongly
+urged the necessity of having the Book of Discipline ratified by the
+Queen on her arrival; but this suggestion had been set aside even by the
+severest of the lords as out of place for the moment. To such
+enlightened critics as Lethington the whole book was a devout
+imagination, a dream of theorists never to be realised. The Church,
+however, with Knox at her head, was bent upon securing this
+indispensable provision, though it may well be supposed that now, with
+not only the commendators and pensioners but the bishops themselves and
+other ecclesiastical functionaries, inspirited and encouraged by the
+Queen's favour, and hoping that the good old times might yet come back,
+it was more difficult than ever to get a hearing for their claim. And
+great as was the importance of a matter involving the very existence of
+the new ecclesiastical economy, it was, even in the opinion of the
+wisest, scarcely so exciting as the mass in the Queen's chapel, against
+which the ministers preached, and every careful burgher shook his head;
+although the lords who came within the circle of the Court were greatly
+troubled, knowing not how to take her religious observances from the
+Queen, they who had just at the cost of years of conflict gained freedom
+for their own. On one occasion when a party of those who had so toiled
+and struggled together during all the troubled past were met in the
+house of one of the clerk registers, the question was discussed between
+them whether subjects might interfere to put down the idolatry of their
+prince--when all the nobles took one side, and John Knox, his
+colleagues, and a humble official or two were all that stood on the
+other. As a manner of reconciling the conflicting opinions Knox was
+commissioned to put the question to the Church of Geneva, and to ask
+what in the circumstances described the Church there would recommend to
+be done. But the question was never put, being transferred to
+Lethington's hands, then back again to those of Knox, perhaps a mere
+expedient to still an unprofitable discussion rather than a serious
+proposal.
+
+While these questions were being hotly and angrily discussed on all
+sides, the preachers and their party growing more and more pertinacious,
+the lords impatient, angry, chafed and fretted beyond bearing by the
+ever-recurring question in which they were no doubt conscious, with an
+additional prick of irritation, that they were abandoning their own
+side, Mary, still fearing no evil, very conciliatory to all about her,
+and entirely convinced no doubt of winning the day, went lightly upon
+her way, hunting, hawking, riding, making long journeys about the
+kingdom, enjoying a life which, if more sombre and poor outwardly, was
+far more original, unusual, and diverting than the luxurious life of the
+French Court under the shadow of a malign and powerful mother-in-law. It
+did not seem perhaps of great importance to her that the preachers
+should breathe anathemas against every one who tolerated the mass in her
+private chapel, or that the lords and their most brilliant spokesman,
+her secretary Lethington, should threaten to stop the Assemblies of the
+Church in retaliation. The war of letters, addresses, proclamations,
+which arose once more between the contending parties is wonderful in an
+age which might have been thought more given to the sword than the pen.
+But it at last became evident that something must be done in one way or
+the other to stop the mouth of the indomitable Knox, with whom were all
+the central mass of the people, not high enough to be moved by the
+influences of the Court, not low enough to fluctuate with every fickle
+popular fancy. Finally it was decided that the Queen should issue a
+decree for a valuation of all ecclesiastical possessions in Scotland--a
+necessary preliminary measure, but turned into foolishness by the
+stipulation that these possessions should be divided into three parts,
+two to remain with the present possessors, while the remaining portion
+should be divided between the ministers and herself. This proposed
+arrangement, with which naturally every one was discontented, called
+forth a flight of furious jests. "Good-morrow, my lords of the
+Twa-pairts," said Huntly to the array, spiritual and secular, who were
+to retain the lion's share; while, on the other hand, Knox in the pulpit
+denounced the division. "I see twa parts partly given to the Devil, and
+the third maun be divided between God and the Devil," he cried. "Bear
+witness to me that this day I say it: ere it be long the Devil shall
+have three parts of the third; and judge you then what God's portion
+shall be."--"The Queen will not have enough for a pair of shoes at the
+year's end after the ministers are sustained," said Lethington; and Knox
+records the "dicton or proverb" which arose, as such sayings do, out of
+the crowd, in respect to the official, the Comptroller, who had charge
+of this hated partition--"The Laird of Pitarrow," cried the popular
+voice, "was ane earnest professor of Christ; but the meikle Deil receive
+the Controller."
+
+About this time Knox had the opportunity he had long coveted of a public
+disputation upon the mass; but it was held far from the centre of
+affairs, at the little town of Maybole in Ayrshire, where Quentin
+Kennedy of the house of Cassilis, Abbot of Crossraguel (upon whose death
+George Buchanan secured his appointment as pensioner), announced himself
+as ready to meet all comers on this subject. Knox would seem to have
+attached little importance to it, as he does no more than mention it in
+his History; but a full report exists of the controversy, which has much
+more the air of a personal wrangle than of a grave and solemn
+discussion. "Ye said," cries the abbot, "ye did abhor all chiding and
+railing, but nature passes nurture with you."--"I will neither change
+nature nor nurture with you for all the profits of Crossraguel," says
+the preacher. These amenities belonged to the period. But the arguments
+seem singularly feeble on both sides. The plea of the abbot rested upon
+the statement in the Old Testament that Melchizedec offered bread and
+wine to God. On the other side a simple denial of this, and reassertion
+that the mass is an idolatrous rite, seems to have sufficed for Knox. It
+is almost impossible to believe that they did not say something better
+worth remembering on both sides. What they seem to have done is to have
+completely wearied out their auditors, who sat for three days to listen
+to the altercation, and then broke up in disgust. It is curious that
+Knox, so unanswerable in personal controversy, should have been so
+little effectual (so far as we can judge) in this. There is a discussion
+in another part of the History upon baptism, in which he denounces the
+Romish ceremonies attached to that rite as unscriptural, precisely as if
+the Apostles had described in full the method to be employed.
+
+It is probable that it was the progress of Knox through the West on this
+occasion which encouraged and stimulated the gentlemen of that district,
+always the most strenuous of Reformers, the descendants of the Lollards,
+the forefathers of the Whigs, to take the law into their own hands in
+respect to those wandering and dispossessed priests who, encouraged by
+the example and support of the Queen, began to appear here and there in
+half-ruined chapels or parish churches to set up a furtive altar and say
+a mass, at peril if not of their lives at least of their liberty. When
+Knox returned to Edinburgh the Queen was at Lochleven, not then a prison
+but a cheerful seclusion, with the air blowing fresh from the pleasant
+loch, and the plains of Kinross and Fife all broad and peaceful before
+her, for the open-air exercises in which she delighted. She sent for
+Knox to this retirement and threw herself upon his aid and charity to
+stop these proceedings. It was not the first time they had met. Two
+previous interviews had taken place, in the first of which Mary gaily
+encountered the Stern author of the "Blast" upon that general subject,
+and won from him a blessing at the end of the brief duel in which there
+was no bitterness. The second had been on the occasion when Knox, in the
+pulpit, objected to the dancing and festivities of Holyrood; but still
+was of no very formidable character. I cannot doubt that Mary found
+something very humorous and original in the obstinate and dauntless
+prophet whom she desired to come to her and tell her privately when he
+objected to her conduct, and not to make it the subject of his
+sermons--a very natural and apparently gracious request: from which Knox
+excused himself, however, as having no time to come to her chamber door
+and whisper in her ear. "I cannot tell even what other men will judge of
+me," he said, "that at this time of day am absent from my buke, and
+waiting upon the Court."--"Ye will not always be at your buke," said the
+Queen. And it was on this second interview that as he left the presence
+with a composed countenance some foolish courtier remarked of Knox that
+he was not afraid, and elicited the answer, noble and dignified if a
+little truculent and exaggerated after an encounter not at all solemn,
+"Why should the pleasing face of a gentlewoman afray me? I have looked
+in the faces of many angry men and yet have not been affrayed above
+measour"--a most characteristic reply.
+
+[Illustration: LOCHLEVEN]
+
+Mary, however, had another purpose when she sent for Knox to Lochleven,
+to help her in a strait. "She travailed with him earnestly two hours
+before her supper that he would be the instrument to persuade the people
+and principally the gentlemen of the West not to put hands to punish
+(the priests) any more for the using of themselves in their religion as
+pleased them." The Reformer perceiving her intention assured her that if
+she would herself punish these malefactors, no one would interfere; but
+he was immovable to any argument founded on the patent fact that he and
+his party had lately called that the persecution of God's saints which
+now they termed the execution of the law. Mary did not enter into this
+controversy; she kept to her point--the vindication of her own
+authority. "Will you," she said, "allow that they should take my sword
+in their hand?" a question to which Knox had his answer plain and very
+full, that the sword was God's, and that Jezebel's priests were not
+spared by Elijah nor Agag by Samuel because the royal authority was in
+their favour. It would be difficult to conceive anything more
+exasperating than such an immovable front of dogmatism; and it was a
+wonder of self-control that Mary should only have shown herself
+"somewhat offended" when she broke off this hopeless argument, and
+withdrew to supper. The Reformer thought he was dismissed; but before
+sunrise next morning two several messengers came to his chamber to bid
+him speak with the Queen before he took his departure. It was a May
+morning, and no doubt there was soon much cheerful commotion in the air,
+boats pushed forward to the landing steps with all that tinkle of water
+and din and jar of the oars which is so pleasant to those who love the
+lochs and streams--for Mary was bound upon a hawking expedition, and the
+preacher's second audience was to be upon the mainland. The Queen must
+have been up betimes while the mists still lay on the soft Lomonds, and
+the pearly grey of the northern skies had scarcely turned to the glory
+of the day: and probably the preacher who was growing old was little
+disposed to join the gay party whose young voices and laughter he could
+hear in his chamber, where he lay "before the sun"--setting out for the
+farther shore with a day's pleasure before them. It would be interesting
+to penetrate what were his thoughts as he was rowed across the loch at a
+more reasonable hour, when the sunshine shone on every ripple of the
+water, and the green hills lay basking in the light. Did he look with
+jealous eyes, and wonder whether the grey walls among the trees on St.
+Serf's isle were giving shelter to some idolatrous priest? or was his
+heart invaded by the beauty of the morning, the heavenly quiet, the
+murmur of soft sound? His mind was heavy we know with cares for the
+Church, fears for the stability of the Reformation itself, forebodings
+of punishment and cursings more habitual to his thoughts, and perhaps
+more congenial to the time, than prosperity and blessing. It might be
+even that a faint apprehension (not fear, for in his own person Knox had
+little occasion for fear even had he been of a timorous nature) of
+further trouble with the Queen overclouded his aspect: and if he caught
+a glimpse of the ladies and their cavaliers on the mainland, the joyous
+cavalcade would rouse no sympathetic pleasure, so sure was he that their
+frolics and youthful pleasure were leading to misery and doom--in which,
+alas! he was too sooth a prophet.
+
+But when Knox met the Queen's Majestie "be-west Kinross," Mary all
+bright with exercise and pleasure had forgotten, or else had no mind to
+remember, the offence of the previous night. She began to talk to him of
+ordinary matters, of Ruthven who had (save the mark!)--dark Ruthven not
+many years removed from that dreadful scene in the closet at
+Holyrood--offered her a ring, and other such lively trifles. She then
+turned to more serious discourse, warning Knox against Alexander Gordon,
+titular Bishop of Athens, "who was most familiar with the said John in
+his house and at his table," and whose professions of faith seemed so
+genuine that he was about to be made Superintendent of Dumfries. "If you
+knew him as well as I do, you would never promote him to that office nor
+to any other within your Kirk," she said. "Thereintil was not the Queen
+deceived," says Knox, though without any acknowledgment of the service
+she did the Church: for on her hint he caused further inquiries to be
+made, and foiled the Bishop. Again, as so often, a picture arises before
+our eyes most significant and full of interest. Mary upon her horse,
+perhaps pausing now and then to glance afar into the wide space, where
+her hawk hung suspended a dark speck in the blue, or whirled and circled
+downward to strike its prey, while the preacher on his hackney paused
+reluctant, often essaying to take his leave, retained always by a new
+subject. Suddenly she broached another and more private matter, turning
+aside from the attendants to tell Knox of the new troubles which had
+broken out in the house of Argyle between the Earl and his wife, who was
+Mary's illegitimate sister. The Reformer had already settled a quarrel
+between this pair, and the Queen begged him to interfere again, to write
+to Argyle and smooth the matter over if possible. Then, the time having
+now arrived when she must dismiss him, the field waiting for her and the
+sport suspended, Mary turned again for a parting word.
+
+    "And now," said she, "as touching our reasoning yesternight I
+    promise to do as ye required. I sall cause summon the offenders, and
+    ye shall know that I shall minister justice."
+
+    "I am assured then," said he, "that ye shall please God and enjoy
+    rest and prosperity within your realm; which to your Majesty is more
+    profitable than all the Pope's power can be."
+
+We have heard enough and to spare about Mary's tears and the severity of
+Knox--here is a scene in which for once there is no severity, but
+everything cheerful, radiant, and full of hope. Was there in all
+Christendom a more hopeful princess, more gifted, more understanding,
+more wise? for it was not only that she had the heart to take (or seem
+to take) in a very hard matter the advice of the exasperating Reformer,
+entirely inaccessible to reason on that point at least as he was--but to
+give it, and that in a matter of real use to himself and his party. Was
+it all dissembling as Knox believed? or was there any possibility of
+public service and national advantage, and as happy and prosperous a
+life as was possible to a queen, before her when she turned smiling upon
+the strand and waved her hand to him as he rode away? Who can tell? That
+little tower of Lochleven, that dark water between its pastoral hills,
+had soon so different a tale to tell.
+
+[Illustration: QUEEN MARY'S BATH]
+
+Had Mary deserted her faith as it would have been such admirable policy
+to do; had she said, like the great Henry, that Scotland was well worth
+a mass or the sacrifice of a mass; had she turned round and persecuted
+the priests of her own Church as she now was about, for their safety and
+with a subterfuge excusable if ever subterfuge was, to pretend to
+do--would posterity have thought the better of her? Certainly it would
+not; but Knox would, and her path would have been a thousand times more
+clear. Only it has to be said at the end of all, that religion had
+little part in the woes of Mary. Had there been no Darnley or Bothwell
+in her path, had it been in her nature to take that wise resolution of
+Elizabeth's, wise for every woman who has great duties and position of
+her own, how wonderfully everything might have been changed! Such
+reflections, however, are very futile, though they are strangely
+fascinating.
+
+Knox wrote to Argyle immediately after with that plain speaking in which
+he delighted, and made the Earl very angry. It might well have been part
+of Mary's "craft," knowing that he was sure to do this, to embroil him
+with her brother-in-law. And she prosecuted her bishops to save them
+from the Westland lords, and imprisoned them gently to keep them out of
+harm's way. Neither of these acts was very successful, and it would seem
+that the mollifying impression that had been made upon Knox soon died
+away; for when the Queen opened the next Parliament he speaks of her
+splendour and that of her train in words more like those of a peevish
+scold than of a prophet and statesman. "All things mislyking the
+preachers," he says with candour, "they spoke boldly against the
+tarjatting of their tails, and against the rest of their vanity, which
+they affirmed should provoke God's vengeance not only against those
+foolish women, but against the whole Realm." God's vengeance was freely
+dealt out on all hands against those who disagreed with the speakers;
+but the silken trains that swept the ground, the wonderful clear
+starching of the delicate ruffs, the embroidered work of pearls and gems
+which the fashion of the time demanded, were but slight causes to draw
+forth the flaming sword. And that Parliament was very unsatisfactory to
+Knox and his friends; they tried to bring in a sumptuary law; they
+endeavoured to have immorality recognised as crime, and subjected to
+penalties as such; and above all, they attempted to obtain the
+ratification of various matters of discipline upon which Knox so pressed
+that the quarrel rose high between him and Murray, and there ensued a
+breach and lasting coolness--Murray being as unwilling to press Queen
+Mary into measures she disliked, as Knox was determined that only by
+doing so was God's vengeance to be averted. When the Parliament was over
+the preacher made his usual commentary upon it in the pulpit; warning
+the lords what miseries were sure to follow from their carelessness, and
+discussing the chances of the Queen's marriage with much freedom and
+boldness. Once more, though with more reason, was God's vengeance
+invoked. "This, my lords, will I say (note the day and bear witness
+after), whensoever the Nobilities of Scotland, professing the Lord
+Jesus, consents that ane infidel (and all Papists are infidels) shall be
+head to your Soverane, ye do so far as in ye lieth to banish Christ
+Jesus from this realm." This sermon was reported to Mary with
+aggravations, though it was offensive enough without any aggravations;
+and once more he was summoned to the presence. The Queen was "in a
+vehement furie," deeply offended, and in her nervous exasperation unable
+to refrain from tears, a penalty of weakness which is one of the most
+painful disabilities of women. "What have ye to do with my marriage?"
+she cried again and again, with that outburst which Knox describes
+somewhat brutally as "owling." His own bearing was manly though dogged.
+Naturally he did not withdraw an inch, but repeated to her the scope of
+his sermon with amplifications, while the gentler Erskine of Dun who
+accompanied him endeavoured to soothe the paroxysm of exasperated
+impatience and pain which Mary could not subdue, and for which no doubt
+she scorned herself.
+
+    "The said John stood still without any alteration of countenance,
+    while that the Queen gave place to her inordinate passion; and in
+    the end he said, 'Madam, in God's presence I speak, I never
+    delighted in the weeping of any of God's creatures; yea, I can
+    scarcely well abide the tears of my own boys whom my own hand
+    corrects, much less can I rejoice in your Majestie's weeping. But
+    seeing that I have offered you no just occasion to be offended, but
+    have spoken the truth as my vocation craves of me, I must sustain,
+    albeit unwillingly, your Majesty's tears rather than I dare hurt my
+    conscience or betray my Commonwealth through my silence.'"
+
+He was ordered to withdraw after this, and retired proud and silent to
+the ante-room where he had immediate proof what it was to lose the royal
+favour. Hitherto he had been, it is clear, a not unwelcome visitor: to
+Mary an original, something new in prickly opposition and eloquence,
+holding head against all her seductions, yet haply, at Lochleven at
+least, not altogether unmoved by them, and always interesting to her
+quick wit and intelligence; and Maister John had many friends among the
+courtiers. But now while he waited the Queen's pleasure, not knowing
+perhaps if she might not send him to the Castle or the Tolbooth in her
+wrath, all his fine acquaintances forsook him. He stood, "the said
+John," for an hour in that bustling ante-room, "as one whom men had
+never seen," only Lord Ochiltree who had come to Holyrood with him, and
+whose daughter he was about to marry, giving any sign of acquaintance to
+the disgraced preacher. And Knox was human: he loved the cold shade as
+little as any man, and the impertinences of all those butterfly
+courtiers moved him as such a man ought not to have been moved. He burst
+out suddenly upon the ladies who sat and whispered and tittered among
+themselves (no doubt) at his discomfiture. He would not have us think
+even then that his mind was disturbed; he merely said--
+
+    "Oh fayr Ladies, how pleasant were this life of yours if it should
+    ever abide, and then in the end that we might pass to heaven with
+    all this gay gear! But fie upon that Knave Death that will come
+    whether we will or not. And when he has laid on his arrest the foul
+    worms will be busy with this flesh be it never so fayre and so
+    tender, and the silly soul, I fear, shall be so feeble that it can
+    neither carry with it gold garnissing, tarjetting, pearls, nor
+    precious stones!"
+
+Knox was never called to the royal presence more, nor did Mary ever
+forgive him the exhibition of feminine weakness into which his severity
+had driven her. It was intolerable, no doubt, to her pride to have been
+betrayed into those tears, to have seen through them the same immovable
+countenance which had yielded to none of her arguments and cared nothing
+for her anger, and to have him finally compare her to his own boys whom
+his own hands corrected--the blubbering of schoolboys to the tears of a
+queen! There is perhaps always a mixture of the tragi-comic in every
+such scene, and this humiliating comparison, obtusely intended as a sort
+of blundering apology, but which brought the Queen's exasperation and
+mortification to a climax, and Knox's bitter assault upon the ladies in
+their fine dresses outside, give a humiliating poignancy to the
+exasperated feeling on both sides such as delights a cynic. It was the
+end of all personal encounter between the Queen and the preacher. She
+did not forgive him, and did her best to punish: but in their last and
+only subsequent meeting, Knox once more had the better of his royal
+adversary.
+
+He had never been during all his career in such stormy waters as now
+threatened to overwhelm him. Hitherto his bold proceedings had been
+justified by the support of the first men in the kingdom. The Lords of
+the Congregation, as well as that Congregation itself, the statesmen and
+"natural counsellors," as they call themselves, of Scotland, had been at
+his back: but now one by one they had fallen away. The Lord James, now
+called Murray, the greatest of all both in influence and character, had
+been the last to leave his side. The preachers, the great assembly that
+filled St. Giles's almost daily, the irreconcilables with whom it was a
+crime to temporise, and who would have all things settled their own way,
+formed, it is true, a large though much agitated backing; but the solid
+force of men who knew the world better than those absolute spirits, had
+for the moment abandoned the impracticable prophet, and the party of the
+Queen was eagerly on the watch to find some opportunity of crushing him
+if possible. It was not long before this occurred. While Mary was absent
+on one of those journeys through the kingdom which had been the constant
+habit of Scottish monarchs, the usual mass was celebrated in the Chapel
+of Holyrood, the priests who officiated there evidently feeling
+themselves authorised to continue their usual service even in the
+Queen's absence, for whose sake alone it was tolerated. But they were
+interrupted by "a zealous brother," and some little tumult rose, just of
+importance enough to justify the seizure of two offenders, who were
+bound under sureties to "underlie the law" at a given date, within three
+weeks of the offence. In the excited state of feeling which existed in
+the town this arrest was magnified into something serious, and "the
+brethren," consulting over the matter with perhaps involuntary
+exaggeration, as if the two rioters were in danger of their lives,
+concluded that Knox should write a circular letter to the Congregation
+at a distance, as had been done with such effect in the early days under
+the Queen Regent, bidding them assemble in Edinburgh upon the day fixed
+for the trial. A copy of this letter was carried to the Court then at
+Stirling and afforded the very occasion required. Murray returned in
+haste from the north, and all the nobility were called to Edinburgh to
+inquire into this bold semi-royal summons issued to the Queen's lieges
+without her authority and in resistance to her will. "The Queen was not
+a little rejoiced," says Knox, "for she thought once to be revenged of
+that her great enemy." And it was evident that Mary did look forward to
+the satisfaction of crushing this arrogant priest and achieving a final
+triumph over the man whom she could neither awe nor charm out of his own
+determined way.
+
+[Illustration: WEST DOORWAY, HOLYROOD CHAPEL]
+
+The commotion produced by these proceedings was unexampled. One after
+another of the men who had by Knox's side led the entire movement of the
+Reformation and to whom he had been spokesman, secretary, and
+counsellor, came with grave looks and anxious urgency to do what they
+could to procure his submission. The Master of Maxwell, hitherto his
+great friend, but who now broke off from him entirely, was the first to
+appear; Then Speirs of Condie (whom he convinced), then Murray and
+Lethington with whom he held one of those long arguments which were of
+frequent recurrence, and which are always highly dramatic--the dour
+preacher holding his own like a stone wall before all the assaults,
+light, brilliant, and varied, of the accomplished secretary, whose smile
+of contempt at the unconquerable personage before him and his "devout
+imaginations" is often mingled with that same exasperation which drove
+Mary to the womanish refuge of tears. But no one could move him. And at
+last the day, or rather night, of the trial came.
+
+It was in December, the darkest moment of the year, between six and
+seven in the evening, when the Lords assembled at Holyrood, and the
+formidable culprit was introduced to their presence. The rumour had
+spread in the town that Knox was to be put on his trial, and the whole
+Congregation came with him down the Canongate, filling the court of
+Holyrood with a dark surging mass of men, who crowded the very stairs
+towards the room in which the council was held. The lords were "talking
+ane with another" in the preliminary moment before the council was
+formed, when Knox entered the room. They were then told to take their
+places, headed on one side by "the Duke" Chatelherault, and on the other
+by Argyle. Murray, Glencairn, Ruthven, the Earl Marischal, Knox's tried
+companions in arms, who had stood with him through many a dark day, took
+their seats with averted looks, his judges now, and judges offended,
+repulsed, their old sympathies aggravating the breach. Then came the
+Queen "with no little worldly pomp," and took the chair between those
+two rows of troubled counsellors, Lethington at one side, Maxwell at the
+other. She gave an angry laugh as she took her place. "Wat ye[4] whereat
+I laugh?" she said (or is reported to have said) to one of these
+intimate supporters. "Yon man gart me greit, and grat never tear
+himself: I will see if I can gar him greit."
+
+[4] It would be curious to know what language Mary spoke when she is
+reported to have made these very characteristic utterances. It is one of
+the points in the discussion about the famous Casket letters that she
+could not write Scots. Did she make love and make war, and hold courts
+and councils of this grave description, in French or in a broken version
+of her native tongue? No one ever says so, and it is surely a thing that
+could not be passed without remark.
+
+The proceedings being opened, Knox's letter was read. It was not a
+conciliatory letter, being in reality a call if not to arms yet to that
+intervention of an army of resolute men which had overawed the
+authorities again and again in earlier times. It contained the usual
+vehement statements about that crime of saying mass which, or even to
+permit it, was the most desperate of public offences in Knox's eyes: and
+there is little doubt that it exaggerated the danger of the crisis, and
+contained at least one misleading statement as to matters of which there
+was no proof. When it was read a moment of silence ensued, and then
+Lethington spoke:--
+
+    "Maister Knox, are ye not sorry from your heart, and do ye not
+    repent that sic ane letter has passed your pen, and from you is come
+    to the knowledge of others?"
+
+    John Knox answered, "My Lord Secretaire, before I repent I must be
+    taught my offence."
+
+    "Offence!" said Lethington; "if there were no more but the
+    convocation of the Queen's lieges the offence cannot be denied."
+
+    "Remember yourself, my lord," said the other, "there is a difference
+    between ane lawful convocation and ane unlawful. If I have been
+    guilty in this, I have often offended since I came last in Scotland;
+    for what convocation of the brethren has ever been to this day with
+    which my pen served not? Before this no man laid it to my charge as
+    a crime."
+
+    "Then was then," said Lethington, "and now is now. We have no need
+    of such convocations as sometime we have had."
+
+    John Knox answered, "The time that has been is even now before my
+    eyes; for I see the poor flock in no less danger now than it has
+    been at any time before, except that the Devil has gotten a vissoure
+    upon his face. Before he came in with his own face discovered by
+    open tyranny, seeking the destruction of all that has refused
+    idolatrie; and then I think ye will confess the brethren lawfully
+    assembled themselves for defence of their lives. And now the Devil
+    comes under the cloke of justice to do that which God would not
+    suffer him to do by strength."
+
+    "What is this?" said the Queen. "Methinks ye trifle with him. Who
+    gave him authoritie to make convocation of my lieges? Is not that
+    treason?"
+
+    "Na, Madam," said the Lord Ruthven, "for he makes convocation of the
+    people to hear prayer and sermon almost daily, and whatever your
+    Grace or others will think thereof, we think it no treason."
+
+    "Hold your peace," said the Queen, "and let him answer for himself."
+
+    "I began, Madam," said John Knox, "to reason with the Secretare,
+    whom I take to be ane far better dialectician than your Grace is,
+    that all convocations are not unlawful; and now my Lord Ruthven has
+    given the instance, which, if your Grace will deny, I shall address
+    me for the proof."
+
+    "I will say nothing," said the Queen, "against your religion, nor
+    against your convening to your sermons. But what authority have ye
+    to convocate my subjects when you will, without my commandment?"
+
+    "I have no pleasure," said John Knox, "to decline from the former
+    purpose. And yet, Madam, to satisfy your Grace's two questions I
+    answer, that at my will I never convened four persons in Scotland;
+    but at the order that the brethren has appointed I have given divers
+    advertisements and great multitudes have assembled thereupon. And if
+    your Grace complain that this was done without your Grace's
+    commandment, I answer, so has all that God has blessed within this
+    Realm, from the beginning of this action. And therefore, Madam, I
+    must be convicted by ane just law, that I have done against the
+    duties of God's messenger in writing this letter, before that either
+    I be sorry or yet repent for the doing of it, as my Lord Secretare
+    would persuade me; for what I have done I have done at the
+    commandment of the general Kirk of this realm; and therefore I think
+    I have done no wrong."
+
+This detailed report is in the form of an addendum to Knox's original
+manuscript, written hurriedly as if from dictation, as though in the
+leisure of his later days the Reformer had thought it well to enrich the
+story with so lifelike and well-remembered a scene. Nothing could be
+more animated than the introduction of the different personages of this
+grave tribunal. The long argument with Lethington which might have been
+carried on indefinitely till now, the hasty interruption of the Queen,
+not disposed to be troubled with metaphysics, to bring it back to the
+practical question, the quibble of Ruthven of which Knox makes use, but
+only in passing, are all as real as though we had been present at the
+council. The Queen, with feminine persistence holding to her question,
+is the only one of the assembly who has any heart to the inquiry. The
+heat of a woman and a monarch personally offended is in all she says, as
+well as a keen practical power of keeping to her point. It is she who
+refers to the _corpus delicti_, carrying the question out of mere vague
+discussion distinctly to the act complained of. Knox had said in his
+letter that the prosecution of the men who had interrupted the service
+at Holyrood was the opening of a door "to execute cruelty upon a greater
+multitude." "So," said the Queen, "what say ye to that?" She received in
+full front the tremendous charge which followed:--
+
+    "While many doubit what the said John should answer he said to the
+    Queen, 'Is it lawful for me, Madam, to answer for myself? Or shall I
+    be dampned before I be heard?'
+
+    'Say what ye can,' said she, 'for I think ye have enough ado.'
+
+    'I will first then desire this of your Grace, Madam, and of this
+    maist honourable audience, whether if your Grace knows not, that the
+    obstinate Papists are deadly enemies to all such as profess the
+    evangel of Jesus Christ, and that they most earnestly desire the
+    extermination of them and of the true doctrine that is taught in
+    this realm?'
+
+    The Queen held her peace; but all the lords with common voice said,
+    'God forbid that either the lives of the faithful or yet the staying
+    of the doctrine stood in the power of the Papists; for just
+    experience tells us what cruelty lies in their hearts.'"
+
+This sudden turn of opinion, coming from her council itself, and which
+already constituted a startling verdict against her, Mary seems to have
+sustained with the splendid courage and self-control which she displayed
+on great occasions: no tear now, no outburst of impatience. She did not
+even attempt to deny the tremendous indictment, but allowed Knox to
+resume his pleading. And when she spoke again it was with a complete
+change of subject. Apparently her quick intelligence perceived that
+after that remarkable incident the less said to recall the first object
+of the council the better. She went back to her original grievance,
+accusing Knox though he spoke fair before my lords (which indeed it was
+a strain of forbearance to say) that he had caused her "to weep many
+salt tears" at their previous meeting. His reply has much homely
+dignity.
+
+    "Madam," he said, "because now the second time your Grace has
+    branded me with that crime I must answer, lest for my silence I be
+    holden guilty. If your Grace be ripely remembered, the Laird of Dun,
+    yet living to testify the truth, was present at that time whereof
+    your Grace complains. Your Grace accused me that I had irreverently
+    handled you in the pulpit; that I denied. Ye said, what ado had I
+    with your marriage? What was I that I should mell with such matters?
+    I answered as touching nature I was ane worm of this earth, and ane
+    subject of this Commonwealth, but as touching the office whereintil
+    it has pleased God to place me, I was ane watchman both over the
+    Realm, and over the Kirk of God gathered within the same, by reason
+    whereof I was bound in conscience to blow the trumpet publicly as
+    oft as ever I saw any upfall, any appearing danger either of the one
+    or of the other. But so it was that ane certain bruit appeared that
+    traffic of marriage was betwixt your Grace and the Spanish Ally;
+    whereunto I said that if your nobilitie and your Estates did agree,
+    unless that both you and your husband shall be so directly bound
+    that neither of you might hurt this Commonwealth nor yet the poor
+    Kirk of God within the same, that in that case I would pronounce
+    that the consenters were troublers of this Commonwealth and enemies
+    to God and to His promise planted within the same. At those words I
+    grant your Grace stormed and burst forth into an unreasonable
+    weeping. What mitigation the Laird of Dun would have made I suppose
+    your Grace has not forgot. But while that nothing was able to stay
+    your weeping I was compelled to say, I take God to witness that I
+    never took pleasure to see any creature weep (yea, not my own
+    children when my own hand bett them), meikle less can I rejoice to
+    see your Grace make such regret. But seeing I have offered your
+    Grace no such occasion, I must rather suffer your Grace to take your
+    own pleasure than that I dare to conceal the truth and so betray
+    both the Kirk of God and my Commonwealth. These were the most
+    extreme words I said."
+
+Having thus repeated his offence (even to the tears of the schoolboys)
+the Reformer's shrift was ended and he was told that he might return to
+his house "for that night." No doubt what he himself said is more
+clearly set forth than what others replied, but that he distinctly
+carried the honours of the discussion with him, and that his mien and
+bearing, as here depicted, are manly, grave, and dignified as could be
+desired, will not be denied by any reasonable reader. That they
+impressed the council in the same way is equally evident; that council
+was composed of his ancient companions in arms, the comrades of many an
+anxious day and of many a triumphant moment. That he had offended and
+broken with several of them would not affect the consideration that to
+condemn John Knox was not a light matter; that through all the hours of
+that winter evening half Edinburgh had been filling the Court of
+Holyrood and keeping up a murmur of anxiety at its gates; and that it
+was a dangerous crowd to whom my lords would have to give account if a
+hair of his head was touched. The conclusion apparently came with the
+force of a surprise upon the Queen's Majestie, and perhaps shook her
+certainty of the sway over her nobility, which she had been gradually
+acquiring, which was sufficient to make them defend her personal freedom
+and tolerate her faith, but not to pronounce a sentence which they felt
+to be unjust.
+
+    "John Knox being departed, the Table of the Lords, and others that
+    were present were demanded every man by his vote, if John Knox had
+    not offended the Queen's Majestie. The lords voted uniformly they
+    could find no offence. The Queen had past to her cabinet, the
+    flatterers of the Court, and Lethington principally, raged. The
+    Queen was brought again and placed in her chair, and they commanded
+    to vote over again, which thing highly offended the haill nobilitie
+    so that they began to speak in open audience--'What! shall the Laird
+    of Lethington have power to control us? or shall the presence of ane
+    woman cause us to offend God and to dampen ane innocent, against our
+    conscience for pleasure of any creature?' And so the haill nobilitie
+    absolved John Knox again."
+
+The Queen was naturally enraged at this decision, and taunted bitterly
+the Bishop of Ross, who joined in the acquittal, with following the
+multitude, to which he answered with much dignity, "Your Grace may
+consider that it is neither affection to the man nor yet love to his
+profession that moved me to absolve him, but the simple truth"--a noble
+answer, which shows that the entire body of prelates in Scotland were
+not deserving of the abuse which Knox everywhere and on all occasions
+pours upon them.
+
+This was his last meeting with Mary. The part he played in public
+affairs was as great, and the standing quarrel with the Court, and all
+those who favoured it, more acrimonious than ever, every slanderous tale
+that came on the idle winds of gossip being taken for granted, and the
+most hideous accusations made in the pulpit as well as in private places
+against the Queen and her lighthearted company. The principles, of such
+profound importance to the nation, which were undoubtedly involved, are
+discredited by the fierce denunciations and miserable personal gossip
+with which they were mingled. That judgment should follow the exhibition
+of "tarjetted tails," _i.e._ embroidered or highly decorated trains, and
+loom black over a Court ball; and that Scotland should be punished
+because the Queen and her Maries loved dancing, were threats in no way
+inconsistent with the temper of the time; but they must have filled the
+minds of reasonable men with many revoltings of impatience and disgust.
+It says much for the real soundness of purpose and truth of intention
+among the exclusive Church party that they did not permanently injure
+the great cause which they had at bottom honestly at heart.
+
+[Illustration: DOORWAY, HOLYROOD PALACE]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE TRIUMPH AND END
+
+
+When the Assembly of the Church met in December shortly after these
+stirring incidents it was remarked that Knox took no part at first in
+the deliberations, an unexampled event. After the first burst of
+discussion, however, on the subject of the provision for the Church, he
+disclosed the reason of his unusual silence, which was that he had of
+late been accused of being a seditious man, and usurping power to
+himself--and that some had said of him, "What can the Pope do more than
+send forth his letters, and require them to be obeyed?" When one of the
+great officials present, no less a person than the Lord Justice-Clerk,
+took upon him to reply, Knox silenced him with a few emphatic words--"Of
+you I ask nothing," he said, "but if the Kirk that is here present do
+not either absolve me or else condemn me, never shall I, in public or in
+private, as ane public minister, open my mouth in doctrine or in
+reasoning." It is needless to say that the Kirk decided that it was his
+duty to advertise the brethren of danger whenever it might appear--but
+not without "long contention," probably moved by the party of the Court.
+At this period all the members of the nobility had been so universally
+acknowledged as having a right to be present at the Assembly sittings,
+that messengers were sent to advertise them of their guilt in absenting
+themselves when in the extremely strained character of the relations
+between Church and State they stayed away. There ensued, some time
+after, a singular conference between the leading ministers and the lords
+upon various matters, chiefly touching the conduct of John Knox, whose
+constant attacks upon the mass, his manner of praying for the Queen, and
+the views he had advanced upon obedience to princes, had given great
+offence not only at Court but among the moderate men who found Mary's
+sway, so far, a gentle and just one. This conference took the form of a
+sort of duel between Knox and Lethington, the only antagonist who was at
+all qualified to confront the Reformer. The comparison we have already
+employed returns involuntarily to our lips; the assault of Lethington is
+like that of a brilliant and chivalrous knight against some immovable
+tower, from the strong walls of which he is perpetually thrown back,
+while they stand invulnerable, untouched by the flashing sword which
+only turns and loses its edge against those stones. His satire, his wit,
+his keen perception of a weak point, are all lost upon the immovable
+preacher, whose determined conviction that he himself is right in every
+act and word is as a triple defence around him. This conviction keeps
+Knox from perceiving what he is by no means incapable by nature of
+seeing, the grotesque conceit, for instance, which is in his prayer for
+the Queen. During the course of the controversy he repeats the form of
+prayer which he is in the habit of using--being far too courageous a
+soul to veil any supposed fault. And this is the _salvam fac_ employed
+by Knox:--
+
+    "Oh Lord! if Thy pleasure be, purge the heart of the Queen's Majesty
+    from the venom of idolatry, and deliver her from the bondage and
+    thraldom of Satan in the which she has been brought up and yet
+    remains, for the lack of true doctrine; that she may avoid that
+    eternal damnation which abides all obstinate and impenitent unto the
+    end, and that this poor realm may also escape that plague and
+    vengeance which inevitably follow idolatrie maintained against Thy
+    manifest Word and the open light thereof." "This," Knox adds, "is
+    the form of my common prayer as yourselves were witness. Now what is
+    worthy of reprehension in it I would hear?"
+
+    "There are three things," said Lethington, "that never liked me; but
+    the first is, 'To pray for the Queen's Majestie with ane condition
+    saying, "Illumine her heart if Thy good pleasure be," whereby it may
+    appear that ye doubt of her conversion.' Where have ye the example
+    of such prayer?"
+
+    "Wheresoever the examples are," said the other, "I am assured of the
+    rule which is this, 'If we ask anything according to His will He
+    will hear us'; and our Maister Christ Jesus commanded us to pray
+    unto our Father 'Thy will be done.'"
+
+After this discussion has gone on for some time, Lethington, impatient,
+returns to the original question.
+
+    "But yet," said Lethington, "why pray ye not for her without moving
+    any doubt?"
+
+    "Because," said the other, "I have learnt to pray in heaven. Now
+    faith, as ye know, depends upon the words of God, and so it is that
+    the word teaches me that prayers profit the sons and dochters of
+    God's election, of which number whether she be ane or not I have
+    just cause to doubt; and therefore I pray God illuminate her heart
+    if His good pleasure be."
+
+    "But yet," said Lethington, "ye can produce the example of none that
+    has so prayed before you."
+
+    "Thereto I have already answered," said John Knox, "but yet for
+    further declaration I will demand ane question, which is
+    this--Whether ye think that the Apostles prayed themselves as they
+    commanded others to pray?"
+
+    "Who doubts of that?" said the haill company that were present.
+
+    "Weil then," said John Knox, "I am assured that Peter said these
+    words to Simon Magus, 'Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and
+    pray to God that if it be possible the thought of your heart may be
+    forgiven thee.' Here we may clearly see that Peter joins ane
+    condition with his commandment."
+
+With such extraordinary arguments, unconscious it would seem of the
+absolute incongruity of his illustrations, obtusely perverse in the
+dogmatism which destroys both Christian charity and sound perception,
+though he was as far from obtuse as ever man was by nature--the preacher
+stood immovable, nay, unassailable. The perception which defines and
+sets apart things that differ was as much beyond his great intellectual
+abilities, at least in those personal questions, as was the charity
+which thinketh no evil. The tongues of angels could not have convinced
+him that what was said to Simon Magus had no fitness to be applied to
+Mary Stewart. Such distinctions might be for the profane, they were not
+for him, to whom one example of Scripture was like another, always
+applicable, of equal authority in every case. It is not difficult to
+understand the exasperation of so modern a mind as that of Lethington,
+while he attempted in vain to bring this astounding debate to a
+conclusion. For Knox always, so to speak, proves his case. Granting the
+twist in all his logic, the confusion of things between which there was
+no just comparison--and this twist and confusion belonged to his period
+as well as to himself--his grotesque argument has an appearance of
+reality which carried away those who agreed with him, and confounded in
+their inability to come to any ground of comprehension those who did
+not.
+
+The debate was long and minute, and Knox was no more shaken from his
+determination that the mass was idolatry and that every idolater should
+die the death, than from his conviction that he did his utmost for the
+Queen in praying that God might convert her, if it were possible. The
+argument as to resisting princes is still longer and more elaborate, but
+as it involves only large and general questions is argued out with much
+more justice and perception. It was one of the subjects most continually
+under discussion among all who held the Reformed faith, and Lethington
+himself and all his audience had both in profession and practice held
+the popular view in the time of Mary of Guise. It is like enough,
+indeed, that somewhere among the crowd of faces turned towards the
+disputants there was that long head and saturnine countenance, still one
+of the best-known effigies of his time, of the scholar who was at that
+period proud to be Queen Mary's tutor, reading Livy with her in the
+afternoons, and who upon this question had views as clear as a crystal,
+waiting for the moment when they could be set forth. But George
+Buchanan, though he held office in the Assembly, had no warrant to claim
+a hearing between such men as the learned and lively Lord Secretary and
+the great prophet and preacher John Knox.
+
+The discussion ended in nothing, as may be supposed, except a deepened
+offence on the part of the Court with the impracticable Reformer, and an
+additional bitterness of criticism on the part of the Congregation
+touching all that went on at the abbey--the gaieties, and the beautiful
+dresses, as well as the mass, and now and then a whisper of scandal,
+unproved but taken for granted with that miserable eagerness which such
+opposition brings. Edinburgh, between these two conflicting powers, was
+no doubt able, with the wonderful impartiality of common life, to carry
+on its usual existence much less affected than we could imagine possible
+by any of the disorders, which almost reached the height of civil war
+when Murray and the other lords were banished, and the tide of Mary's
+fate began to rise darkly between the unhappy fool she had chosen for
+her husband, and all the wild conflicting elements which had been enough
+to tax her strength without that aggravation. Even Knox acknowledges
+that "the threatenings of the preachers were fearful," though he himself
+had been the first to warn the people of national judgments to be looked
+for because of the offences in costume and other matters of their Queen.
+We lose, however, here the picturesque and dramatic scenes which added
+so much interest to the history during the brief period when she and he
+were friends. The debate with Lethington, indeed, is the conclusion of
+the brilliant and vivid piece of history in which we have been made to
+see all that was going on in the centre of Scottish life--the continual
+tumults, the great gatherings in the Church, the sermons, daily orations
+full of burning eloquence and earnestness in which every occurrence of
+the moment was discussed, as well as the sacred subjects which were
+familiar in the mouths of all. That vigorous and trenchant pen falls
+from the hand of the preacher. The fifth book of his History is prepared
+it is said from his notes and under his eyes, but it is no longer the
+same as when the very diction was his own, and his vivid memory, to
+which all these incidents were present as when he acted in them, was the
+storehouse upon which he drew. He himself appears but on one occasion
+after the marriage of Mary. Darnley, with perhaps an effort to hold the
+balance even and propitiate the Church, attended the service at St.
+Giles's, or, as the writer now calls it, the High Kirk of Edinburgh,
+where Knox was preaching in his ordinary course unprepared for such an
+honour. In the course of his sermon it chanced that he characterised as
+one of the punishments with which God follows national sins, that boys
+and women should rule over the nations. The young King (as he was
+called) was passionately offended, and Knox was called next day to the
+council to answer for himself, and at the same time forbidden to preach
+for a stipulated time. He replied that he had spoken only according to
+his text, and that if the Church commanded him to abstain from preaching
+he would obey. This is all the formal record; but the following marginal
+note is added which gives a faint but not altogether ineffective glimpse
+of the Knox we know:--
+
+    "In answering he said more than he preached, for he added, that as
+    the King had, to pleasure the Queen, gone to mass and dishonoured
+    the Lord God, so should God in His justice make her an instrument of
+    his ruin; and so it fell out in a very short time; but the Queen
+    being incensed with these words fell out in tears, and to please her
+    John Knox must abstain from preaching for a time."
+
+As a matter of fact this penalty meant nothing. Knox was enjoined to
+silence as long only as the Queen and Darnley were in Edinburgh; and as
+they took their departure that week, his work was scarcely interrupted
+at all.
+
+During several eventful years after this Knox remained in the shade,
+separated from his friends, the enemy of the Court, and much denuded of
+his national importance. It was at this period that he married for the
+second time. He was nearly sixty, in shattered health and worn with many
+fatigues, and it was scarcely wonderful that his enemies should have
+said that nothing but witchcraft could have induced a noble young lady,
+Lord Ochiltree's daughter, a Stewart not far from the blood royal, to
+bestow her youth upon the old preacher. So it was, however, whether
+seemly or not. The lady must at least have known him well, for her
+father had long been his faithful friend; and no doubt domestic comfort
+and care were doubly necessary to a man whose labours were unending, and
+who had never spared himself during his whole public life.
+
+It is doubly unfortunate that we should have no record from himself of
+the first chapter of that tragedy which was soon to make Scotland the
+centre of curiosity and horror to Christendom, and which came into the
+already troubled national life like a thunderbolt. Nothing, perhaps,
+will ever fully clear up the dark death-scene of Rizzio, the darker
+conspiracies and plots that led to it. The fact that the return of the
+banished lords was simultaneous with his murder, and that Murray and the
+rest had bound themselves in a covenant of duty and service to Darnley
+for his good offices in procuring their recall, of the same date with
+the other and darker bond which bound that wretched boy to the
+executioners of the favourite, will always make it possible for the
+partisans of the Queen to make out a certain case against the lords. And
+that Knox should have left Edinburgh suddenly and without a word when
+that dark deed was accomplished is once more a painful presumption
+against him. But there seems no absolute evidence that either one or the
+other were involved. It is extremely possible, since the English envoy
+knew beforehand of some such dark purpose, that they too may have known.
+But it is also evident that so summary a conclusion to the matter was
+not in the mind even of Ruthven when he first presented himself like a
+ghost in the Queen's closet. Persistent tradition will have it still, in
+spite of demonstration to the contrary, that Signor Davie was killed in
+Mary's presence at her feet; but the evidence would seem to prove that
+immediate execution had not even been determined on, and that but for
+the fury of the party among whom the struggling Italian was flung, and
+who could not wait for their vengeance, there might have been some
+pretence at legality, some sort of impeachment and condemnation, to
+justify the deed, in which proceedings had they been taken both Knox and
+Murray would have concurred. It is satisfactory, however, to see that
+Sir James Melville, Mary's trusted and faithful friend, who was in
+Holyrood during the night of the murder, and who had previously urged
+upon the Queen, with all the zeal and earnestness of a man who felt his
+mistress's dearest interests to be at stake, to recall and pardon Murray
+(which had been done also in the strongest terms by Sir N. Throgmorton,
+the English envoy), had evidently not the slightest suspicion of any
+complicity on his part, and even recorded the disappointment of Ruthven
+and the rest to find that the returned exiles looked coldly on them.
+Melville does not even mention Knox, nor is there any further proof of
+guilt on his part than is involved in the fact that he left Edinburgh on
+the afternoon of the day which saw the flight, early in the morning, of
+Ruthven and his band. This hurried departure must always be to the
+prejudice of the Reformer; for he had been in circumstances more
+apparently dangerous before and had never flinched. He had the town of
+Edinburgh at his back and all the Congregation. Murray, with whom his
+friendship had been renewed, was again in Edinburgh, and for the moment
+at least in favour with the Queen, who had need of all the supporters
+she could find. Why should Knox have fled? He promises in his History to
+write one day a full account of the death of Davie, but never did so.
+Evidence, indeed, either of one kind or other, is entirely wanting; but
+why did he fly?
+
+Whatever was the reason, Knox at this period disappeared entirely from
+the scene where so long he had occupied the very foreground of affairs;
+and until that cruel and terrible chapter of history was completed, he
+was not again visible in Scotland. We cannot help feeling that though
+inexplicable on other grounds, this was well for his fame. His violent
+tongue and pen, no doubt, would have been in the heat of the endless
+controversy. As it is, he was not only absent from the scene, but, what
+is still more singular, took no part whatever in it. The veil of age was
+falling over the prophet, and the penalties of a weak constitution
+overstrained. Perhaps the comparative calm of England, where, strangely
+enough, he chose this time to visit his boys (brought up in a manner
+extraordinary for the sons of such a father, in the obscure and
+comfortable quiet of English life, and evidently quite
+insignificant--one of them dying unknown, a fellow of his college, the
+other a country clergyman), had something to do in taming his fiery
+spirit. To see the two lads with such blood in their veins in the tame
+security and insignificance of an existence so different from his own,
+looking at their famous father with wonder, perhaps not unmixed with
+youthful disapproval, as a Presbyterian and a firebrand, must have given
+that absolute soul a curious lesson. And how strange is his appearance
+altogether, first and last, in the midst of that substantial,
+respectable county family of Bowes--carrying off the two ladies in his
+wild train: the mother to whom he was spiritual physician, director, and
+guide; the gentle and silent daughter who was his wife; flaming over the
+Continent and through all the troubles in Scotland with these
+incongruous followers behind him, then coming back to drop the two tame
+sparrows in the quiet nest which their mother had left for love of him!
+All we know of them is that in their early childhood he did not spare
+the rod; yet was grieved to see them weep. It would be strange if it
+were not a disappointment to him, if perhaps a relief as well, to find
+no sympathy in his sons for his own career. The daughters whom the young
+wife of his old age brought him lived to be like him; which it is said
+is the only good fortune in paternity likely to so great a man.
+
+[Illustration: MORAY HOUSE, CANONGATE]
+
+When Knox emerged out of the silence which here falls so strangely upon
+his life (broken but by one energetic protest and appeal to the
+community against the re-erection of the bishopric of St. Andrews, which
+is full of all his old force) he was a weakened and ailing man, not less
+ready in spirit to perform all his ancient offices as standard-bearer
+and champion, but sadly unable in body to bear the fatigues and
+excitement of such an agitated life. He reappeared in public for the
+first time when the infant James was crowned in Stirling, preaching the
+sermon which preceded that melancholy ceremony. He then returned to
+Edinburgh, where for a brief period he saw the accomplishment of all his
+desires under the Regent Murray's government: the mass banished; the
+Kirk re-established; a provision, though still limited to a third of the
+old ecclesiastical property, securely settled for the maintenance of
+religion, and every precaution taken for the stability of the
+settlement. He was no longer able to take the part he had done in the
+affairs of the time and the guidance of the Assemblies, but he was still
+able to conduct, at least, the Sunday services at St. Giles's, and to
+give his strenuous advice and help in all the difficulties of
+government. It must have seemed to him that the light which comes at
+eventide had been fully granted to his prayers. But the death of Murray
+changed all this like the end of a happy dream. His sermon in St.
+Giles's, after that terrible event, is a wail of impassioned
+lamentation. "He is at rest, O Lord! but we are left in extreme misery,"
+he cries, his grief redoubled by the thought that it was he who had
+procured from Murray the pardon of the assassin. St. Giles's was full of
+the sound of weeping when the old man, worn with labour and trouble,
+pronounced those beautiful words which have breathed like the tone of
+the silver trumpets over so many a grave: "Blessed are the dead that die
+in the Lord." It was one of the last of his appearances in that great
+cathedral which he had made his own, and to which he had given the only
+compensation and adornment which could make up for its old sanctities
+and decoration sacrificed--the prodigious crowd of eager and sympathetic
+listeners, the great voice not without discords and broken notes, but
+full of natural eloquence and high religious feeling, of an orator and
+prophet.
+
+A few months after Knox was prostrated by a fit of apoplexy, it is said;
+but it would rather seem of paralysis, since his speech was affected. He
+recovered and partially resumed preaching, but never was the same again;
+and the renewed troubles into which Scotland and Edinburgh were plunged
+found the old leader of the Church unequal to the task of making head
+against them. The curious complication of affairs which had already
+existed on several occasions in the capital when the castle and its
+garrison were hostile to the city at their feet, ready to discharge a
+gun into the midst of the crowded streets or threaten a sally from the
+gates which opened directly upon the very centre of the town, was now
+accentuated to the highest degree by the adoption of the Queen's cause
+by its Captain, Kirkaldy of Grange. We cannot pause now to give any
+sketch of that misplaced hero and knight of romance, the Quixote of
+Scotland, who took up Mary's quarrel when others deserted her, and for
+much the same reasons, because, if not guilty, she was at least supposed
+to be so, and at all events was tragically unfortunate and in
+circumstances wellnigh hopeless. These views brought him into desperate
+opposition to Knox, once his friend and leader; and though it is
+impossible to believe that a man so chivalrous and honourable would have
+injured the old Reformer, yet there were many partisans of less repute
+who would no doubt have willingly struck a blow at Knox under shelter of
+the Captain's name. As was natural to him, however, the preacher in
+these circumstances redoubled his boldness, and the more dangerous it
+was to denounce Mary under the guns of the fortress held in her name,
+was the more anxious with his enfeebled voice to proclaim, over and over
+again, his opinion of her, and of the punishment which, had there been
+justice in the world or faith in Zion, she must have undergone. Knox's
+failing life was assailed at this agitated period by a kind of
+persecution much more trying to him than anything he had undergone in
+the past. He was assailed by anonymous libels, placards affixed to the
+church doors, and thrown into the Assembly, charging him over again with
+railing against the Queen, refusing to pray for her, seeking the support
+of England against his native country, and so forth. These accusations
+had no doubt a foundation of truth. But whatever one may think of the
+matter as a question of fact, there can be no doubt that the very air
+must have rung with the old man's words when he got up under those lofty
+vaults of St. Giles's, and, with his grey hair streaming and his deep
+eyes, deeper sunk with age and care than nature, blazing from under
+their shaggy eyebrows, gave "the lie in his throat to him that either
+dare or will say that ever I sought support against my native country."
+"What I have been to my country," he went on, with a courage and dignity
+that calls forth all our sympathies, "albeit this unthankful age will
+not know, yet the ages to come will be compelled to bear witness to the
+truth. And thus I cease, requiring of all men that have to oppose
+anything against me that he will do it so plainly as I make myself and
+all my doings manifest to the world; for to me it seems a thing most
+unreasonable that in my decrepit age I should be compelled to fight
+against shadows and howlets that dare not abide the light."
+
+These flying accusations against him, to which, however, he was well
+accustomed, were followed, it is said, by more startling warnings, such
+as that of a musket ball which came through his window one evening, and
+had he been seated in his usual place would have killed him; a thing
+which might have been accidental, though no one believed so. He was
+persuaded at last to leave Edinburgh only by the representations of the
+citizens that were he attacked they were resolved to defend him, and
+their blood would consequently be on his head. On this argument he moved
+to St. Andrews, the scene of his first ministry, and always a place
+beloved; leaving Edinburgh at the darkest moment of her history, the
+Church silenced with him, and all the order and peace of ordinary life
+suspended. At this crisis of the struggle, when Kirkaldy's garrison was
+reinforced by all the party of the Hamiltons, and the city lay, overawed
+and helpless, at the mercy of the fortress, the life of the Edinburgh
+citizens underwent an extraordinary change. The churches were closed,
+and all the pious habits of the time suspended: "neither was there any
+sound of bell heard in the town, except the ringing of the cannon." How
+strange this was among a population which had crowded daily to the
+sermon and found the chief excitement of its life in the orations of the
+preacher, it is scarcely necessary to point out.
+
+The picture of Knox in St. Andrews, where he went in May 1571, after all
+these agitations, is wonderfully soothing and subdued. He was far from
+being without agitation even there. The new institution of "Tulchan"
+bishops--called so by the popular wit, men who bore the title alone of
+their supposed bishopric, transferring the revenue to the lay patron,
+and who officiated, it would appear, much as pleased them, according to
+the old rule, or to the form of the Reformed service--had just been
+invented; and Knox was called upon to instal the nominal bishop of St.
+Andrews, a thing which he refused to do. He was in consequence accused
+by some foolish person of himself desiring to have the bishopric (such
+as it was), an accusation of which it is extraordinary that he
+condescended to take any notice. But apart from these rags and remnants
+of familiar conflict, his life in the little city by the sea has a
+pleasant repose and calm. "He ever spoke but sparingly against the mock
+bishop, because he loved the man." This softer note is carried out in
+the two glimpses of him which appear to us chiefly through the
+recollections of the gentle James Melville, then a youth studying at St.
+Andrews. The old man seems to have taken pleasure in the sight of the
+boys about, who were carrying on their education in the place where he
+himself had taught those "bairns," whom Wishart had sent him back to in
+his fervid manhood. "He would sometimes come in and repose him in our
+college yard, and call us scholars to him, and bless us and exhort us to
+know God and His work in our country, and stand by the good cause--to
+use our time well and learn the guid instructions and follow the guid
+examples of our maisters. Our haill college (St. Leonard's) maister and
+scholars were sound and zealous for the good cause, the other two
+colleges not so." Nor did he disdain the amusements of the young men,
+for when one of the professors made a play at the marriage of Mr. John
+Colvin, it was performed in Mr. Knox's presence. Alas! truth compels us
+to add that the subject of the play was grim and not so peaceful as the
+occasion, for it represented the imaginary siege and taking of the
+Castle of Edinburgh--then in full activity, and carrying fire and flame
+to the houses of the Edinburgh burghers--and "the Captain with ane or
+twa with him hanged in effigies." It would seem, however, that Knox
+loved the young scholars better than their instructors, for in one of
+his few letters written from St. Andrews, to the Assembly meeting at
+Perth, he charges the brethren above all things "to preserve the Kirke
+from the bondage of Universities," neither to subject the pulpit to
+them, nor to exempt them from its jurisdiction.
+
+[Illustration: THE PENDS, ST. ANDREWS]
+
+Knox was lodged in the abbey of which there now remains nothing but a
+portion of the enclosing wall, and it was but an old man's saunter in
+the sunny morning, with his staff and his servant's arm, through the
+noble gateway of the Pends to where St. Leonard's stood, looking away to
+the East Neuk over the ripening fields. St. Leonard's, however, has
+shared the fate of the abbey and exists no more.
+
+Still more characteristic is the description given by the same pen of
+Knox's public appearances. It was young Melville's greatest privilege,
+the best of all the benefits he received during that year, to hear "that
+maist notable prophet and apostle of our nation preach."
+
+    "I had my pen and my little book and took away such things as I
+    could comprehend. In the opening of his text he was moderate for the
+    space of half an hour, but when he entered to application he made me
+    so to grew and tremble that I could not hold a pen to write. In St.
+    Andrews he was very weak. I saw him every day of his doctrine go
+    hulie and fear (hooley and fairly, gently and with caution), with a
+    furring of martins about his neck, a staff in the ane hand, and gude
+    godlie Richart Ballenden holding up the other oxter, from the Abbey
+    to the Parish Kirk; and by the same Richart and another servant
+    lifted up to the pulpit, where he behoved to lean at his first
+    entry; but ere he had dome his sermon, he was sae active and
+    vigorous that he was like to ding the pulpit in blads and flie out
+    of it."
+
+Melville says much, as indeed most of the narratives of the time do, of
+Knox's prophecies, especially in respect to the Castle of Edinburgh,
+which he said would run like a sand-glass--a prediction supposed to be
+fulfilled by a shower of sand pouring from some portion of the rock; and
+its Captain, Kirkaldy, who was to escape over the walls, but to be taken
+and to hang against the sun. All of which things, and many more,
+occurred precisely as the seer said, after his death, striking great awe
+to the hearts of those to whom the predictions were made. The special
+prophecy in respect to Grange was softened by the announcement that "God
+assures me there is mercy for his soul." And it is at once pathetic and
+impressive to read of the consolation which this assurance gave to the
+chivalrous Kirkaldy on the verge of the scaffold; and the awe-inspiring
+spectacle presented to the believers, who after his execution saw his
+body slowly turn and hang against the western sun, as it poured over the
+Churchyard of St. Giles's, "west, about off the northward neuk of the
+steeple." But this was after the prophet himself had passed into the
+unseen.
+
+Knox returned to Edinburgh in 1572, in August, the horrors of the
+struggle between the Queen's party and the King's, as it was called, or
+Regent's, being for the moment quieted, and the banished citizens
+returning, although no permanent pacification had yet taken place. He
+had but a few months remaining of life, and was very weary of the long
+struggle and longing for rest. "Weary of the world, and daily looking
+for the resolution of this my earthly tabernacle," he says. And in his
+last publication dated from St. Andrews, whither the printer Lekprevik
+had followed him, he heartily salutes and takes good-night of all the
+faithful, earnestly desiring the assistance of their prayers, "that
+without any notable scandal to the evangel of Jesus Christ I may end my
+battle: for," he adds, "as the world is weary of me, so am I of it." He
+lived long enough to welcome his successor in St. Giles's, to whom, to
+hasten his arrival, he wrote the following touching letter, one of the
+last compositions of his life:--
+
+    "All worldlie strength, yea even in things spiritual, decayes, and
+    yet shall never the work of God decay. Belovit brother, seeing that
+    God of His mercy, far above my expectation, has callit me over again
+    to Edinburgh, and yet that I feel nature so decayed, and daylie to
+    decay, that I look not for a long continuance of my battle, I would
+    gladly ance discharge my conscience into your bosom, and into the
+    bosom of others in whom I think the fear of God remains. Gif I had
+    the abilitie of bodie, I suld not have put you to the pain to the
+    whilk I now requyre you, that is, ance to visit me that we may
+    confer together on heavenly things; for into earth there is no
+    stability except the Kirk of Jesus Christ, ever fighting under the
+    cross; to whose myghtie protection I heartilie commit you. Of
+    Edinburgh the VII. of September 1572.
+
+            JHONE KNOX.
+
+    "Haist lest ye come too lait."
+
+He lived to induct this successor, and to hear the terrible news of that
+massacre in France, which horrified all Christendom, but was of signal
+good to Scotland by procuring the almost instantaneous collapse of the
+party which fought for the Queen, and held the restoration of Roman
+Catholic worship to be still possible. That hope died out with the first
+sound of the terrible news which proved so abundantly Knox's old
+assertion that in the hands of the Papists there was no safety for his
+life, or the life of any who believed with him. Almost, however, before
+this grain of good in the midst of so much evil became apparent the
+prophet had taken his departure from this world. After the simple
+ceremonial at which he had officiated, of his successor's installation,
+John Knox returned home in the light of the brief November day, as
+Melville had seen him, supported by the arm of his faithful servant. The
+crowd which had filled St. Giles's hurrying out before him lined the
+street, and watched the old man as he crept along down the hill to his
+house, with many a shaken head and many a murmured blessing. In this
+last scene all were unanimous; there was no one to cast a gibe or an
+unkindly look upon that slow aged progress from the scene of his
+greatest labours to the death-bed which awaited him. When the spectators
+saw him disappear within his own door, they all knew that it was for the
+last time. He lay for about a fortnight dying, seeing everybody, leaving
+a charge with one, a prophecy with another, with a certain dignified
+consciousness that his death should not be merely as other men's, and
+that to show the reverential company of friends who went and came how to
+die was the one part of his mission which had yet to be accomplished. He
+ended his career on the 24th November 1572, having thus held a sort of
+court of death in his chamber and said everything he had to say--dying a
+teacher and prophet to men, as he had lived.
+
+[Illustration: INTERIOR OF ST. GILES'S]
+
+No man has been more splendidly applauded, and none more bitterly
+dispraised. It is in one sense the misfortune of our age that it is
+little able to do either. If steadfast adherence to what he thought the
+perfect way, if the most earnest purpose, the most unwearying labour,
+the profoundest devotion to his God and his country are enough to
+constitute greatness, John Knox is great. He was at the same time a man
+all faults, bristling with prejudices, violent in speech, often
+merciless in judgment, narrow, dogmatic, fiercely intolerant. He was
+incapable of that crowning grace of the imagination and heart which
+enables a man to put himself in another's place and do as he would be
+done by. But even this we must take with a qualification; for Knox would
+no doubt have replied to such an objection that had he been a miserable
+idolater, as he considered the upholders of the mass to be, he could not
+but have been grateful to any man who had dragged him by whatever means
+from that superstition. He was so strong in the certainty of being right
+that he was incapable even of considering the possibility that he might
+be wrong. And there was in him none of those reluctances to give pain,
+none of those softening expedients of charity which veil such a harsh
+conviction and make men hesitate to condemn. He knew not what hesitation
+was, and scorned a compromise as if it had been a lie, nor would he
+suffer that others should do what was impossible to himself. His
+determination to have his own way was indeed justified by the conviction
+that it was the way of God, but his incapability of waiting or having
+patience, or considering the wishes and convictions of others, or
+contenting himself with a gradual advance and progression, have no such
+excuse.
+
+These were, however, of the very essence of his character. A perfectly
+dauntless nature fearing nothing, the self-confidence of an inspired
+prophet, the high tyrannical impulse of a swift and fiery genius
+impatient of lesser spirits, were all in him, making of him the
+imperative, absolute, arrogant autocrat he was; but yet no higher
+ambition, no more noble purpose, ever inspired a man. He desired for his
+countrymen that they should be a chosen people like those of old whom
+God had selected to receive His revelation; his ambition was to make
+Scotland the most pure, the most godlike, of all countries of the earth.
+In many things he was intolerable, in some he was wrong and
+self-deceived. He was too eager, too restless, too intent upon doing
+everything, forcing the wheels of the great universe and clutching at
+his aim whatever conditions of nature might oppose--to be wholly heroic.
+Yet there are none of the smoother or even more lovable figures of
+history whom it would be less possible to strike from off the list of
+heroes. The impression which he left upon the religion and character of
+Scotland remains to this day; and if we think, as many have done during
+all these ages, that that development of national life is the highest
+that could be aimed at, John Knox was one of the greatest of men. But if
+he transmitted many great qualities to his country, he also transmitted
+the defects of these qualities. He cut Scotland adrift in many respects
+from the community of Christendom. He cut her off from her ancestors and
+from those hallowing traditions of many ages which are the inheritance
+of the universal Church. He taught her to exult in that disruption, not
+to regret it; and he left an almost ineradicable conviction of
+self-superiority to a world lying in wickedness, in the innermost heart
+of the nation. It is a wonderful testimony to a man that he should have
+thus been able to imprint his own characteristics upon his race: and no
+doubt it is because he was himself of the very quintessence of its
+national character to start with, that he has maintained this prodigious
+power through these three hundred years.
+
+[Illustration: KNOX'S PULPIT. In the Antiquarian Society's Museum,
+Edinburgh.]
+
+He lies, it is thought, if not within the walls of St. Giles's under the
+flags between the Cathedral and the Parliament House, with all the busy
+life of modern Edinburgh, the feet of generations of men treading out
+the hours and years over his head; a more appropriate bed for him than
+green mound or marble monument. That stony square is consecrated ground
+blessed near a thousand years ago by ancient priests who cared little
+more for Rome than do their modern successors now. But little heeded
+Knox for priestly blessing or consecrated soil. "The earth is the Lord's
+and the fulness thereof" was the only consecration of which he thought.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE SCHOLAR OF THE REFORMATION
+
+
+The age of Mary Stewart is in many ways the climax of Scottish national
+history, as well as one of the most interesting and exciting chapters in
+the history of the world. The Stewarts of Scotland had been up to this
+point a native race entirely Scots in training as in birth, and bent
+above all things upon the progress and consolidation of their own
+ancient kingdom, the poor but proud; a speck all but lost in the
+distance of the seas, yet known all over Christendom wherever errant
+squires or chivalrous pretensions were known. But the new sovereign of
+Scotland was one whose heart and pride were elsewhere, whose favourite
+ambitions were directed beyond the limits of that ancient kingdom with
+which she had none of the associations of youth, and to which she came a
+stranger from another Court far more dazzling and splendid, with hopes
+and prospects incapable of being concentrated within the boundary of the
+Tweed. There is no indication that the much-contested history of Mary
+Stewart has lost any of its interest during the progress of the
+intermediate centuries; on the contrary, some of its questions are
+almost more hotly contested now than they were at the moment when they
+arose. Her chivalrous defenders are more bold than once they were, and
+though the tone of her assailants is subdued, it is from a natural
+softening of sentiment towards the past, and still more from the fashion
+of our time, which finds an absorbing interest in the manifestations of
+individual character and the discussion of individual motives, rather
+than from any change of opinion. I do not venture to enter into that
+long-continued conflict, or to attempt to decide for the hundredth time
+whether a woman so gifted and unfortunate was more or less guilty. Both
+parties have gone, and still go, too far in that discussion; and Mary
+would not have thanked (I imagine) those partisans who would prove her
+innocence at the cost of all those vigorous and splendid qualities which
+made her remarkable. She could scarcely be at once an unoffending victim
+and one of the ablest women of her time.
+
+As this is the most interesting of all the epochs of Scottish
+history--and that not for Mary's sake alone, but for the wonderful
+conflict going on apart from her, and in which her tragic career is but
+an episode--so it is the most exciting and picturesque period in the
+records of Edinburgh, which was then in its fullest splendour of
+architectural beauty and social life; its noble streets more crowded,
+more gay, more tumultuous and tragical; its inhabitants more
+characteristic and individual; the scenes taking place within it more
+dramatic and exciting than at any other part of its history. Fine
+foreign ambassadors, grave English diplomates trained in the school of
+the great Cecil, and bound to the subtle and tortuous policy of the
+powerful Elizabeth; besides a new unusual crowd of lighter import but
+not less difficult governance, the foreign artists, musicians, courtiers
+of all kinds, who hung about the palace, had come in to add a hundred
+complicating interests and pursuits to the simpler if fiercer
+contentions of feudal lords and protesting citizens: not to speak of the
+greatest change of all, the substitution for the ambitious Churchman of
+old, with a coat of mail under his rochet, of the absolute and
+impracticable preacher who gave no dispensations or indulgences, and
+permitted no compromise. All these new elements, complicated by the
+tremendous question of the English succession, and the introduction of
+many problems of foreign politics into a crisis bristling with
+difficulties of its own, made the epoch extraordinary; while the very
+streets were continually filled by exciting spectacles, by processions,
+by sudden fights and deadly struggles, by pageants and splendours, one
+succeeding another, in which the whole population had their share. The
+decree of the town council that "lang weapons," spears, lances, and
+Jedburgh axes, should be provided in every shop--so that when the town
+bell rang every man might be ready to throw down his tools or his
+merchandise and grip the ready weapon--affords the most striking
+suggestion of those sudden tumults which might rise in a moment, and
+which were too common to demand any special record, but kept the town in
+perpetual agitation and excitement--an agitation, it is true, by no
+means peculiar to Edinburgh. No painter has ever done justice to the
+scene which must have been common as the day, when the beautiful young
+Queen, so little accustomed to the restraints and comparative poverty of
+her northern kingdom, and able to surround herself with the splendour
+she loved out of her French dowry, rode out in all her bravery up the
+Canongate, where every outside stair and high window would be crowded
+with spectators, and through the turreted and battlemented gate to the
+grim fortress on the crown of the hill, making everything splendid with
+the glitter of her cortege and her own smiles and unrivalled charm.
+Sadder spectacles that same beautiful Queen provided too--miserable
+journeys up and down from the unhappy palace, sometimes through a stern
+suppressed tumult of hostile faces, sometimes stealthily under cover of
+night which alone could protect her. Everything in Edinburgh is
+associated more or less with Mary's name. There is scarcely an old house
+existing, with any authentic traces of antiquity, in which she is not
+reported to have taken refuge in her trouble or visited in her pleasure.
+The more vulgar enthusiasts of the causeways are content to abolish all
+the other associations of old Edinburgh for Mary's name.
+
+But I will not attempt to revive those pageants either of joy or sorrow.
+There are other recollections which may be evoked with less historical
+responsibility and at least a little more freshness and novelty. No
+figure can be introduced out of that age who has not some connection one
+way or other with the Queen; and the great scholar, whose reputation has
+remained unique in Scotland, had some share in her earlier and happier
+life, as well as a link, supposed of treachery, with her later career.
+George Buchanan was the Queen's reader and master in her studies when
+all was well with her. He is considered by some of her defenders to be
+the forger of the wonderful letters which, if true, are the most
+undeniable proof of her guilt. But these things were but incidents in
+his career, and he is in himself one of the most illustrious and
+memorable figures among the throngs that surrounded her in that brief
+period of sovereignty which has taken more hold of the imagination of
+Scotland, and indeed of the world, than many a longer and, in point of
+fact, more important reign.
+
+It is difficult to understand how it is that in later days, and when
+established peace and tranquillity of living might have been supposed to
+give greater encouragement to study, accurate and fine scholarship
+should have ceased to be prized or cultivated in Scotland. Perhaps,
+however, the very advantages upon which we have plumed ourselves so
+long, the general diffusion of education and higher standard of
+knowledge, is one of the causes of this failure--not only the poverty of
+Scotch universities and want of endowments, but the broader and simpler
+scale on which our educational systems were founded, and which have made
+it more important to train men for the practical uses of teaching than
+permit to them the waywardness and independence of a scholar. These
+results show the "_défauts de nos qualités_," though we are not very
+willing to admit the fact. But in the earlier centuries no such reproach
+rested upon us. Although perhaps, then as now, the Scotch intelligence
+had a special leaning towards philosophy, there was still many a learned
+Scot whose reputation was in all the universities, whose Latinity was
+unexceptionable, and his erudition immense, and to whom verses were
+addressed and books dedicated in every centre of letters. One of the
+most distinguished of these scholars was George Buchanan, and there
+could be no better type of the man of letters of his time, in whom the
+liberality of the cosmopolitan was united with the exclusiveness of the
+member of a very strait and limited caste. He had his correspondents in
+all the cities of the Continent, and at home his closest associates were
+among the highest in his own land. Yet he was the son of a very poor
+man, born almost a peasant and dying nearly as poor as he was born. From
+wandering scholar and pedagogue he became the preceptor of a King and
+the associate of princes; but he was not less independent, and he was
+scarcely more rich in the one position than the other. His pride was not
+in the high consultations he shared or the national movements in which
+he had his part, but in his fine Latinity and the elegant turn of those
+classical lines which all his learned compeers admired and applauded.
+The part that he played in history has been made to look odious by
+skilled critics; and the great book in which he recorded the deeds of
+his contemporaries and predecessors has been assailed violently and
+bitterly as prejudiced, partial, and untrue. But nobody has been able to
+attack his Latin or impair the renown of his scholarship; and perhaps
+had he himself chosen the foundation on which to build his fame, this is
+what he would have preferred above all. History may come and politics
+go, and the principles of both may change with the generations, but
+Latin verse goes on for ever: no false ingenuity of criticism can pick
+holes in the deathless structure of an art with which living principles
+have had nothing to do for a thousand years and more.
+
+Buchanan was born in a farmhouse, "a lowly cottage thatched with straw,"
+in the year 1506, in Killearn in the county of Stirling; but not without
+gentle blood in his veins, the gentility so much prized in Scotland,
+which makes a traceable descent even from the roughest of country lairds
+a matter of distinction. His mother was a Heriot, and one wonders
+whether there might not be some connection between the great scholar and
+the worthy goldsmith of the next generation, who did so much for the
+boys of Edinburgh. Buchanan's best and most trustworthy biographer, Dr.
+Irving,[5] pictures to his readers the sturdy young rustic trudging two
+miles in all weathers to the parish school, with his "piece" in his
+pocket, and already the sonorous harmonies of the great classic tongues
+beginning to sound in his ears--a familiar picture which so many country
+lads born to a more modest fame have emulated. In the parish school of
+Killearn, in that ancient far-away Scotland before the Reformation,
+which it is hard to realise, so different must it have been from the
+characteristic Scotch school of all our traditions, the foundations of
+Buchanan's great scholarship and power were laid. His father died while
+he was still a mere child, and the future man of letters had plenty of
+rough rustic work, helping his mother about the farm on the holidays,
+which must have been more frequent while all the saints of the calendar
+were still honoured. Trees of his planting, his biographer says, writing
+in the beginning of this century, still grow upon the banks of the
+little stream which runs by the beautiful ruins of Dunblane, and which
+watered his mother's fields. When he had reached the age of fourteen an
+uncle Heriot seeing his aptitude for study sent him off, it would seem
+alone, in all his rusticity and homeliness, to Paris--a curious sign of
+the close connection between Scotland and France--where he carried on
+his studies or, a phrase more appropriate to his age, learned his
+lessons amid the throngs of the French schools. Before he was sixteen,
+however, his uncle died, leaving him desolate and unprovided for amongst
+strangers; and the boy had to make his way home as best he could, half
+begging, half working his passage, stopping perhaps here and there to
+help a schoolboy or to write a letter for the unlearned, and earning a
+bed and a meal as poor scholars were used to do. He remained a year in
+his mother's house, but probably was no longer wanted for the uses of
+the farm, since his next move was to the wars. He himself informs us in
+the sketch of his life which he wrote in his old age that he was "moved
+with a desire to study military matters," a desire by no means unusual
+at seventeen. These were the days when the fantastic French Albany was
+at the head of affairs in Scotland, during the childhood of James V, and
+the country was in great disorder, torn with private quarrels and
+dissensions. It is evident that, the kind uncle being dead and affairs
+in general so little propitious, there would be little chance in the
+resources of the farm of securing further university training for the
+boy who had his own way to make somehow in the world; and perhaps his
+experience of Paris and possession of the French language (no
+inconsiderable advantage when there were so many French adventurers and
+hangers on about the Court) might be expected to give him chances of
+promotion; while his service perhaps exempted an elder brother, of more
+use than he upon the farm, from needful service, when his feudal lord
+called out his men on the summons of the Regent.
+
+[5] I must explain that this chapter was written before the publication
+of the recent, and I believe excellent, biography of Buchanan by Mr. P.
+Hume.
+
+[Illustration: NORTH DOORWAY, HERIOT'S HOSPITAL]
+
+George Buchanan accordingly followed the Laird's flag upon one of the
+wildest and most fruitless of Albany's expeditions to the Border, for
+the siege of Wark. The great Border stronghold, the size and wonderful
+proportions of which astonished the Scots army, stands forth again,
+clear as when it first struck his boyish imagination, in the description
+which Buchanan gives of it nearly half a century later in his history of
+that time--where the reader can still see the discomfited army with its
+distracted captains and councils, and futile leader, straggling back
+through the deep snow, each gloomy band finding its way as best it could
+to its own district. Buchanan would seem to have had enough of fighting;
+and perhaps he had succeeded in proving to his relatives that neither
+arms nor agriculture were his vocation; for we next find him on his way
+to St. Andrews, "to hear John Major who was then teaching dialectics or
+rather sophistry." Here he would seem to have studied for two years;
+taking his degree in 1525 at the age of nineteen. After this he followed
+Major to France, whether for love of his master, or with the idea that
+Major's interest as a doctor of the Sorbonne might help him to find
+employment in Paris, we are not told. One of the many stories to his
+prejudice which were current in his after-career describes Buchanan as
+dependent on Major and ungrateful to him, repaying with a cruel epigram
+the kindness shown him. But there seems absolutely no foundation for
+this accusation which was probably suggested to after-detractors anxious
+for evidence that ingratitude, as one of them says, "was the great and
+unpardonable blemish of his life"--by the epigram in question, in which
+he distinguishes his professor as "solo cognomine Major." It might very
+well be, however, that Buchanan expected a kind recommendation from his
+St. Andrews master, such as the habit of the kindly Scots was apt to
+give, and some help perhaps in procuring employment, and that the
+failure of any aid of this description betrayed the youth into the
+national tendency to harshness of speech and the bitter jeer at one who
+was great only in his name.
+
+A stranger with nothing but his learning and his Latin epigrams (though
+these last were a more marketable commodity then than now) would no
+doubt be forlorn enough, struggling to find himself standing-ground and
+a living, subsisting hardly on what chance employment might fall in his
+way, and reflecting, as most adventurers are apt to do, how easy it
+would be for his prosperous countryman to befriend him. Paris, always
+full of stir and commotion, had at this moment a new source of agitation
+in the rising force of the Reformation principles or, as Buchanan calls
+it, "the Lutheran controversy, which was already spreading far and
+wide," and into the midst of which he fell on his return. Whether his
+interest in the new creed did him harm in his search for an
+establishment we are not told: and probably the "struggle with adverse
+fortune for about two years" which he records was merely the difficulty
+in making himself known which affects every young man. At the end of
+that time he got an appointment in the College of St. Barbe as Professor
+of Grammar, and was henceforward exempted at least from the
+heart-sickening conflict with absolute poverty.
+
+Buchanan would seem to have had already high ambitions and a certainty
+that he was fit for something better than the post of schoolmaster in a
+French college--for notwithstanding his eagerness to get this post we
+soon find him lamenting, in the abstract indeed, but in a manner too
+particular to be without special meaning, the small profit of
+intellectual labour and the weariness of a continual toil which was so
+little rewarded. His plaint of the long night's work, the burning of the
+midnight oil, the hunt through dusty and rotting manuscripts, seems
+touched with a tone of bitterness unusual in the student's murmurs over
+a lot which after all brings him as much pleasure as weariness. The
+ambitious lad was already, it is evident, longing for more brilliant
+scenes.
+
+    "Pervigil in lucem lecta atque relecta revolves
+      Et putri excuties scripta sepulta situ:
+    Sæpe caput scalpes, et vivos roseris ungues,
+      Irata feries pulpita sæpe manu."
+
+At St. Barbe, however, he secured a noble young pupil of his own
+country, the future Earl of Cassilis, who opened to him a brighter way,
+and finally led him back to his own country and for a time to higher
+fortune. When young King James came to Paris to meet Magdalen of
+France--with the sudden pathetic result of a hasty romantic marriage
+soon followed by the poor young lady's death--young Cassilis was still
+there with his tutor, who was himself but little advanced in life beyond
+his patron. And it was presumably in the train of the royal pair that
+the young men returned home. In that case Buchanan must have witnessed
+the touching scene that took place at the poor young Queen's
+disembarkation when she kissed the soil of her new country, the land
+which was to afford her only a grave. Whether dreams of Court favour and
+advancement were beginning to germinate in the young scholar's brain as
+he was thus suddenly swept into the train of royalty there is nothing to
+say; but at all events he observed everything with keen attentive eyes,
+unconsciously collecting the best materials for the history he was yet
+to write. And it is clear that this accidental connection with the King
+bore after-fruit. Buchanan went to Ayrshire with his young patron who
+had come of age, and whose studies were over it is to be supposed: and
+in the leisure of that relaxation from former duties amused himself with
+compositions of various sorts, and in particular with the _Somnium_, a
+lively poetical satire upon the Franciscans. The monks, who had been the
+favourite butt of all the ages, were more than ever open to the assaults
+of the wits now that the general sentiment had turned so strongly
+against them, and Buchanan said no more than Dunbar with full
+permission, before any controversy arose, had said, nor half so much as
+David Lindsay was privileged to say. And Lord Cassilis' tutor had all
+the freedom of a private individual responsible to no one while he
+lingered at his young patron's castle, pleased to make as many as
+comprehended his Latin laugh, though probably there were few capable of
+appreciating its classical beauty. This, however, was but a pastime, and
+his mind again began to turn towards Paris, where alone perhaps there
+was to be found the kind of work for which he was most fit and the
+literary applause and emulation which were dear to his soul.
+
+He was about to set out when the King, who doubtless had owed some
+entertainment to Buchanan on the lingering homeward journey, and who
+must have been well aware of his character and gifts, made him pause by
+offering him the tutorship of his illegitimate son, one among several
+for whom James, so young as he was, not more than twenty-five, was
+already responsible, another James Stewart, though not the notable James
+who was afterwards the Regent Murray. This appointment brought Buchanan
+at once within the charmed circle of the Court, and probably prepared
+the way for all his after-honours. But his career in Edinburgh at this
+moment was not especially glorious. Delighted by the _Somnium_, which
+had been read to him and applauded by all the obsequious audience round,
+James, who though a good Catholic liked a clever assault upon the
+priests as much as any one, recommended the new member of his household
+to resume the subject. It is supposed that the Grey Friars from their
+great lodgment so near the Court had found fault with the appointment of
+Buchanan and assailed himself as a profane and scoffing heretic. It was
+certainly strange that a man who had adopted the heresies of Luther
+should be appointed to the care of the son of a Catholic King, but
+Buchanan it is probable kept his religious opinions to himself, and it
+was not necessary to be a Protestant to give vent to the broadest
+satires against the monks and friars who had been for so long the least
+defensible portion of the Catholic establishment. Buchanan, however, was
+not bold enough to fall upon his enemies as Sir David Lindsay did. A
+poor man and a dependant, had he the highest spirit in the world, must
+still bear traces of the yoke to which circumstances have accustomed
+him, and a scholar is not necessarily brave. He shrank from encountering
+the great and powerful community of the Grey Friars in the eye of day,
+and instead of the lively assault expected from him, temporised and
+wrote something which was neither satisfactory to the King who wanted a
+laugh at the expense of the monks, nor to the monks who were more
+enraged by the covert character of a satire which could be read both
+ways, than they would have been by straightforward abuse. The
+dissatisfaction of James moved Buchanan to bolder measures, and after
+his halfhearted attempt to compromise himself as little as possible, he
+was goaded into the most virulent use of his pen, and cut down his
+adversaries with the sharp shafts of his _Franciscanus_ with a vigour
+and malice which left nothing to be desired. The Court had its laugh
+which was resounding and long, but neither King nor courtiers had any
+penalty to pay for the pranks which the classical Samson wrought for
+their pleasure.
+
+Though they were thus mocked in high places, the Churchmen, however, had
+lost none of their power, and even the protection of the royal household
+did not avail the audacious poet. In the raid upon heretics which was
+made in the beginning of the year 1539 Buchanan's name was included
+among the guilty. He himself tells us that "Cardinal Beatoun bought his
+life from the King with money": making it probably the price of some
+concession that this audacious assailant should be delivered into the
+hands of the Church. At all events the terrified scholar had no
+confidence in the power or will of his Sovereign to protect him, and,
+scared by the flames of various burnings which had taken place
+throughout the kingdom, directed his best wits to finding a way of
+safety. He escaped through a window while his keepers were asleep, some
+say from the Castle of St. Andrews, some from that of Edinburgh. His own
+account is more simple and goes into no detail. "He made his way into
+England, eluding the guards set for him." But England was not more
+secure than Scotland. The quick-witted fugitive found Henry VIII
+impartially burning victims from both sides, on the same day at the same
+stake, and considered this sublime indifference as still more dangerous
+than the strife of Scotch affairs. "His old familiarity with the French,
+and the singular hospitality of that nation," led him back to the city
+which was then the favourite resort of all the Muses. When, however,
+Buchanan arrived in Paris he found that his special enemy, Cardinal
+Beatoun, had preceded him there as ambassador from King James, and,
+alarmed by so dangerous a vicinity, he accepted at once an offer made to
+him by Andrew Govra, one of his colleagues of former times, who had been
+appointed to the charge of a college in Bordeaux, and removed thither
+with the greatest expedition before his foe could be made aware of his
+presence in Paris.
+
+This was in the end of the year 1539, when Buchanan had attained the age
+of thirty-three. His residence in the capital of the famous province of
+Gascony seems to have been active and happy. He was Professor of Latin
+in the college; perhaps the terms would be more just if we said he was
+Latin master in one of the most flourishing and successful of French
+schools; but our neighbours still prefer the more high-sounding
+nomenclature. The great Garonne was not full of ships and trade at that
+period as it is now; but Bordeaux was one of the old capital cities of
+France, possessing a rank which now belongs to no French provincial
+town, and had its own characteristic society, its scholars and
+provincial statesmen. But the most important and notable human being of
+all whom Buchanan found in his new sphere was a certain small seigneur
+of Gascony, six years old, and already an accomplished Latinist, having
+learned no other language from his cradle, bearing the name of Michel de
+Montaigne and already a little philosopher as well as scholar. The great
+essayist speaks afterwards of "George Buchanan, the celebrated Scotch
+poet," as one of his masters, but he does not say whether Buchanan was
+the enlightened pedagogue who connived at his endless reading and let
+him off as much as was possible from other less congenial studies.
+
+Buchanan, however, must have found the cheerful southern city, with its
+Parliament and its colleges, and all the teeming life and restless
+energies of the Gascon race, not unlike a kind of warmer and more
+brilliant Scotland, full of national brag and gallantry, a congenial
+sphere. He had been for a long time shedding complimentary verses,
+sonnets, dedications, about him after the manner of the time, serving
+out to everybody who was kind to him a little immortality in the shape
+of classic thanks or compliment: but in Bordeaux he began to produce
+works of more apparent importance, "four tragedies" intended primarily
+for the use of his college, where it was the custom to represent yearly
+a play, generally of an allegorical character--one of the fantastical
+miracle plays which delighted the time, and which were often as profane
+in reality as they were religious in pretence. The great classicist
+considered his boys to be wasting their faculties in representing such
+inferior performances, but humoured the prevailing taste so much as to
+choose two Scriptural subjects, Jephthah and John the Baptist,
+alternately with the Medea and Alcestis. He "was successful beyond his
+hopes," he says, in these efforts. In all of the plays the little
+Montaigne was one of the chief performers. "Before a fit age, _Alter ab
+undecimo tum me vix ceperat annus_," says that great writer, "I
+sustained the first parts in the Latin tragedies of Buchanan, which were
+played in our College de Guienne, with dignity." The little scene is
+pleasant to think of, not too long out of date to recall the scholastic
+pastimes of to-day, though there is no Buchanan to produce plays for
+Eton or Harrow, and probably no young Montaigne to play the hero. The
+learned Scot, with his peasant breeding no doubt making him still more
+conscious of the strain of gentle blood in his veins, a little rough,
+irascible, and impatient in nature, notwithstanding the elegance of his
+Latin speech, and the little noble, gentilhomme to his fingers' end,
+half respectful, half contemptuous of the pedagogue, make a picturesque
+contrast.
+
+Buchanan, however, did not feel himself safe even in Bordeaux, where he
+remained only three years. It is said that Cardinal Beatoun wrote to the
+Archbishop recommending his arrest, and the Franciscan community in the
+Gascon city, which had heard from their brethren of his offences against
+the Order, kept an unfriendly eye upon him, ready to take advantage of
+any hostile opportunity. He therefore returned to Paris, where in a
+similar but apparently more obscure position he spent some years. In
+1547 he was very glad to accompany Govra, who had brought him to
+Bordeaux, and whom Montaigne describes as "beyond comparison the
+greatest Principal in France," to his native country Portugal, whither
+his King had summoned him in order that his talents might be of use to
+his own nation as the head of the new University of Coimbra. It would
+seem that Govra carried his whole staff along with him to Portugal.
+"Most of them," Buchanan says, "were men bound to him (Buchanan) for
+many years in the ties of closest friendship, men who were renowned for
+their works all over the world," and in whose society the Scottish
+scholar felt that he would be not among strangers but among kinsmen and
+friends. A still stronger inducement was, that while all Europe was
+ablaze with wars and religious controversies, that one little kingdom
+was at peace. The band of scholars thus removed together to their new
+sphere, like a hive of bees, and at first all went well with them; but
+they had not been long in Portugal when Govra died, leaving them without
+any powerful patronage or protection, a band of strangers, no doubt
+appearing in the aspect of supplanters of native talent to many hostile
+lookers-on. Men of their pursuits and modes of thought, aliens in an
+unknown country, perhaps sufficiently free of speech to alarm the
+narrow-minded, no great observers of ritual or ceremony, were too likely
+under any circumstances to attract the notice of the Inquisition in a
+place so wholly given over to its sway.
+
+Buchanan was probably the most distinguished among this band of
+scholars; and a vague report that he had written something against the
+Franciscans attached to him a special prejudice. As nobody knew what
+this work was, it could not be brought formally against him, but lesser
+crimes were found, such as that of eating meat in Lent and speaking
+disrespectfully of monks, sins which even in Portugal most people were
+more or less guilty of. Buchanan, however, had no very dreadful penalty
+to bear. He was imprisoned for some months in a monastery, that he might
+be brought by the monks' instruction to a better way of thinking. The
+prisoner was fair enough to admit that he found his jailors by no means
+bad men or unkindly in their treatment of him--an acknowledgment which
+is greatly to his credit, since prejudice was equally strong on both
+sides and a persecuted scholar was as little apt to see the good
+qualities of his persecutors as they were to accept his satires. It
+would be interesting to know what the homely fathers thought of him,
+this dreadful freethinker and satirist committed to their care for
+instruction. He found them "entirely ignorant of religious questions,"
+though evidently so much less hostile than he had expected, and occupied
+his enforced leisure in making his translation of the Psalms, a monument
+of elegant verse and fine Latinity, for which the quiet of the convent
+and the absence of interruptions must have been most favourable. He
+would seem to have corrected the bad impression he had at first made, by
+these devout studies and his behaviour generally; for when he was
+released the King would not let him go, but gave him a daily allowance
+for his expenses until some fit position could be found for him. But
+there was evidently nothing in Lisbon which tempted Buchanan to stay. He
+languished in the little capital separated from all congenial society,
+and sighed for his beloved Paris which he addressed as his mistress,
+writing a poem, _Desiderium Lutetiæ_, in praise of and longing for the
+presence of that nymph whom so many have wooed.
+
+At last he contrived to escape in a ship bound for England, which,
+however, he found as little congenial as Portugal, and with as short a
+delay as possible he returned to that Lutetia which he loved. Arrived
+there, he would seem to have resumed his old work as schoolmaster in one
+of the colleges, no way advanced, despite his fame and adventures, from
+the first post he had held when little more than a boy, though he was
+now between forty and fifty, and one of the best-known scholars of his
+time. A few years later he became a member of the household of the
+Maréchal de Brissac as tutor to his son, and with him spent five years,
+partly in Italy in the province of Liguria where the Maréchal was
+governor. For the first time he would seem to have been treated with
+honour, and his advice taken in affairs of state and public business
+generally, and here he tells us he devoted much of his time to the study
+of sacred literature, so that he might be able to form a matured
+judgment as to the controversies which were tearing the world asunder.
+In the year 1560, his services being no longer required by his pupil,
+Buchanan at last decided upon returning to his native country. "The
+despotism of the Guises," he says, "was over, and the religious
+excitement had begun to calm down." It would appear that though his
+convictions had so long been on the side of the Reform, he had not yet
+publicly made himself known as a member of that party. And his return to
+Scotland was made with the full intention so to do.
+
+Such was the wandering and uncertain career of the scholar and man of
+letters of the sixteenth century. Perhaps Buchanan's temper was less
+compliant, his character less easily adaptable to the society in which
+he found himself, than most; but it may be doubted whether this was the
+cause of the very small advancement in life to which he had come, since
+he was complaisant enough to indite many fine verses in praise of people
+who gave him a banquet or a shelter, and he seems to have gone nowhere
+without making friends. He had got abundant reputation, however, if not
+much else, and was known wherever he went as the celebrated poet, which
+doubtless was agreeable to him if not very profitable. But it gives us a
+certain insight into the life of the literary class in his time to see
+so notable a man wandering from one place to another, professor or
+regent or private tutor as it happened, never well off, never secure,
+often in the position of a dependant. When Milton speaks of the
+"others," poets whom he thus adopts into a kind of equality, who "use"
+
+    "To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
+    Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair,"
+
+it is supposed to be Buchanan whom he refers to, which is perhaps honour
+enough for a modern classicist; though Amaryllis, the critics say, was
+no more individual a love than the Lutetia before mentioned, for whom he
+pined. Yet though all the scholars of his time admired and followed him,
+he had to return again and again to his Latin grammar, and to small boys
+not so wonderful as Michel of Montaigne; and when he returned to
+Edinburgh at the age of fifty-five his worldly position was scarcely
+better than when he got his first appointment at twenty-one to the
+College of St. Barbe. His life was now, however, to take another form.
+
+Buchanan's return to Scotland "after the despotism of the Guises was
+over" corresponded very nearly with the return of Queen Mary. It is
+surmised that he may have travelled in the suite of "the Lord James,"
+the future Earl of Murray, who paid his sister a visit very soon after
+the death of her husband, King Francis: certainly nothing could be more
+probable than that the Scotch scholar, seeking an opportunity to return
+to his native country, should have joined himself to the train of the
+prince, who probably had been acquainted in his childhood with his
+brother's tutor, and who was himself a man of education and a patron of
+literature. If this guess should be correct it would account for
+Buchanan's rapid promotion to Court favour. Edinburgh was in a state of
+happy expectation when the poet came back. What was virtually a new
+reign, though Mary had been the nominal possessor of the throne from her
+birth, was about to begin; the fame of the young Queen had no doubt been
+blown far and wide about the country on every breeze--that fame of
+beauty, sweetness, and grace which is the most universally attractive of
+all reputations, and which made the proud Scots prouder still in the
+possession of such a prodigy. That there were graver thoughts among the
+very serious and important party, who felt the safety of their
+newly-established and severely-reformed Church to be in doubt if not in
+danger, and who hated and feared "the mass" and the priests who
+performed it as they did the devil (with whom indeed they were more
+amiably familiar), does not alter the fact that the anticipation of
+Mary's return was a happy one, and her welcome cordial and without
+drawback. Nobody knew that there had been a project of a landing at
+Aberdeen, where Huntly and the other northern lords had proposed to meet
+her with twenty thousand men, thus enabling her to march upon her
+capital as a conquering heroine of the old faith, putting Satan, in the
+shape of John Knox, under her feet. Had she accepted this proposal how
+strangely might the face of history have been changed! But there is no
+reason to suppose that Mary desired to come to Scotland with fire and
+flame, any more than there is that her destruction was a foregone
+conclusion. She came with many prognostics of success, though also with
+a continual possibility that "terrible tragedies" might come of it; and
+for some time it would appear that her Court was as seemly and pleasant
+as any Court could be, full of youthful pleasure and delight as became
+her years and the gay youthful company that surrounded her, but also of
+graver matters and thoughts and purposes becoming a noble Queen.
+
+The first notice we have of Buchanan after his return to Scotland is
+conveyed in a letter from Randolph, the English envoy in Edinburgh, in
+which the question, "Who is fittest to be sent from this Queen to
+attende upon the Queen's Majesty (Elizabeth) for the better continuance
+of intelligence with her Highness?" is discussed. "Of any that I know,"
+says the representative of England, "David Forrest is likeliest, and
+most desireth it. There is with the Queen one called Mr. George
+Buchanan, a Scottishe man very well learned that was schollemaster unto
+Monsieur de Brissac's son, very godly and honest, whom I have always
+judged fitter than any other I know." This was written in January 1562,
+and shows that Buchanan was at that time about the Court and in the way
+of employment, though he was not then chosen as confidential messenger
+between the two queens. A little later he is visible in the exercise of
+his old vocation as the tutor of Mary herself. "The Queen readeth daily
+after her dinner," says the same careful narrator, "instructed by a
+learned man, Mr. George Buchanan, somewhat of Lyvie." These few words
+set before us a curious scene. Mary at the height of her good
+resolutions and good beginning, keeping up her literature as well as all
+her pleasures, her hunting, her riding, her music, her embroideries, all
+the accomplishments of her royal training--makes a delightful picture.
+She had the habit of working with her needle like any innocent lady in
+her bower, while the lords of her Council, grim lords whom it is strange
+to associate with this pretty pose of royal simplicity, discussed around
+her the troublous affairs of the most turbulent kingdom in Christendom:
+and after her dinner, in the languor of the afternoon, one wonders if
+the lovely lady was diligent over her Livy or rather seduced her
+preceptor to talk about Paris, that much-desired Lutetia which he had so
+longed for, as no doubt in the bottom of her heart she too was sometimes
+doing. The two so unlike each other--the beautiful young princess not
+quite twenty, the old scholar and schoolmaster though a poet withal,
+drawing near the extreme boundaries of middle age, and worn with much
+struggling against the world and poverty--would yet find a subject and
+mutual interest far apart from the book, which made endless conversation
+possible, and many a pleasant comparison of experiences so different.
+Buchanan had dedicated a book to one of those fair and famous Margarets
+who adorned Paris at that epoch, and presumably knew her or something of
+her state, and could understand her Majesty of Scotland's allusions, and
+knew something of the gossip of the Court, or at least could pretend to
+do so, as a man who was aware what was expected of a courtier. It is
+possible indeed that Mary was truly studious, and liked her Livy as her
+contemporary did, the gentle Lady Jane who had so sad a fate; but it is
+much more likely, we think, that the big volume lay open, while the
+scholar's eyes glowed and shone with cherished reminiscences of that
+enchanting city in which his best days had flown, and Mary Stewart
+responded to his recollections with all her gay wit and charm of
+pleasant speech. Many are the tragic associations of Holyrood: it is
+well to note that other companions more sober than Signor Davie, more
+calm than Chastelar, shared now and then the Queen's leisure. Grave
+commentators conclude that it spoke well for her Majesty's Latinity that
+Buchanan put her on Livy; for my part I have no doubt that these two
+unlikely gossips, after perhaps a sentence or two, forgot about Livy,
+and talked of their Paris all the time.
+
+Buchanan took the opportunity of this quiet and prosperous period, when
+all was hopeful in the nation as well as in his own prospects, to
+publish the poetical version of the Psalms which had occupied his
+enforced leisure in the Portuguese monastery years before. They had not
+yet seen the light in a complete form, although several of them had been
+included by the well-known printer Etienne, or Stephanus as he is more
+generally called, in a collection of similar translations by several
+learned hands, among which he gives in a flattering preface by far the
+highest place to Buchanan. The terms of laudation in which he speaks,
+and which it was the fashion of the time to employ, may be judged from
+the following extracts quoted by Irving. After commenting upon the
+general excellence of his friend's work, superior to all others, he
+adds,--
+
+    "There is nothing more honourable, nothing more splendid, than after
+    excelling all others, at length to excel one's self; so in my
+    judgment you have most happily attained to this praise in your
+    version of these psalms. For in translating the other odes of this
+    sacred poet, you have been Buchanan, that is, you have been as
+    conspicuous among the other paraphrasists as the moon among the
+    smaller luminaries; but when you come to the hundred and fourth
+    psalm you surpass Buchanan; so that you do not now shine like the
+    moon among the lesser luminaries but like the sun you seem to
+    obscure all the stars by your brilliant rays."
+
+The community of letters in these days was in the habit of expressing
+the intensest mutual admiration, except when a contrary feeling not less
+strong animated their minds and pens. Buchanan dedicated his psalms to
+his beautiful pupil and patron in terms as highflown but more elegant,
+and with a justifiable wealth of hyperbolical adulation. It would be an
+undue demand upon humanity to require nothing more than plain fact in a
+poetical address to a young Sovereign so gracious, so accomplished, and
+so fair. And yet in the extraordinary circumstances, so soon to be
+swallowed up in the abyss of a catastrophe still more extraordinary,
+there is little extravagance in Buchanan's address, of which we shall
+attempt a translation though most unworthy.
+
+    "Lady, who bears the sceptre of this land
+        By endless forefathers transmitted down,
+    Whose worth exceeds thy fortune far, as stand
+        Thy virtues o'er thy years, and the renown
+    Of noble gifts over thy noble line,
+        And spirit o'er thy sex:--without a frown
+    Accept in this poor Latin garb of mine
+          The noble songs of Israel's prophet king.
+        Far from Parnassus and the classic shore,
+          From under northern stars my gift I bring;
+          Nor had I ventured such an ill-born thing
+        To lay before thee, but for fearing more
+    To miss the little chance of pleasing thee,
+    Whose understanding gives a merit not in me."
+
+Buchanan followed this publication by various others, and strangely
+enough, while still enjoying the royal favour brought out his
+_Franciscanus_, his _Fratres Fraterrimi_, and other satires specially
+directed against the monks: which, however, seem to have done him no
+harm, for he talks in 1567 of "the occupations of a court," which kept
+him from bestowing the time and trouble he wished on the preparation of
+his various books for the press. Whether the readings from Livy went on
+all this time we have no record; but when Queen Mary married Darnley,
+and when her son was born, Buchanan would still seem to have occupied
+the position of Court poet, and celebrated both events by copies of
+verses as flattering, as well as elegant, as the dedication. From the
+first of these we may quote the lines in which Buchanan proves,
+notwithstanding his long absence and cosmopolitan training, that the
+native brag of the Scot was as strong in him as if he had never left his
+native shores. It could scarcely be to flatter either of the bridal pair
+that he burst forth into this celebration of "the ancient Kingdom."
+
+    "For herein lies the glory of the Scot,
+    To fill the woods with clamour of the chase;
+    To swim the stream, and cold and heat defy,
+    And hunger and fatigue. To guard their land
+    Not with deep trench or wall, but with the force
+    Of arms, contemning life for honour's sake;
+    To keep their troth, to reverence the bonds
+    Of friendship, to love virtue and not gifts.
+    Such acts as these secured throughout the land
+    Freedom and peace, when war raged o'er the world,
+    And every other nation was constrained
+    To change its native laws for foreign yoke,
+    The fury of the Goth stopped here; the onslaught fierce
+    Of the strong Saxon, and the tribes more strong,
+    The Dane and Norman, who had conquered him,
+    Nay, in our ancient annals live the tales
+    Of Roman victory stayed--the Latin tide
+    Which neither south wind checked, nor Parthia bleak,
+    Nor waves of Meroi, nor the rushing Rhine,
+    Was here arrested by this only race
+    Before whose face the Roman paused and held
+    The frontier of his empire, not by lines
+    Of hill and river, but by walls and towns,
+    By Caledonian axes oft assailed,
+    Laying all hope of further gain aside."
+
+In the meantime, while these poetical performances went on, and the
+scholar occupied his leisure in preparing for publication his scattered
+works--an occupation which of itself proved the quiet and good hope in
+which he was living--more serious labours also occupied his mind.
+Notwithstanding his tutorship at Court, Buchanan took advantage of the
+moment to declare himself an adherent of the newly formed and very
+belligerent Church, now settled and accepted on the basis of the
+Reformation, but with little favour at Court as has been seen. He not
+only put himself and his erudition at once on that side in the most open
+and public way, but sat in the General Assembly, or at least in one of
+the Assemblies which preceded the formal creation of that great
+ecclesiastical parliament, in 1563, less than two years after his
+arrival in Scotland. Nor was his position that of a simple member taking
+part in the debates; he seems to have sat upon various special
+committees, and to have been entrusted, along with several others, to
+revise the Book of Discipline, the standard of order and governance: and
+this while he was still a courtier, Mary's tutor and gossip, holding his
+place in her presence, and celebrating the events of the time in courtly
+and scholarly verse--a curious instance of toleration in a time which
+scarcely knew its name.
+
+To recompense Buchanan's services Queen Mary granted him, in the year
+1564, an allowance from the forfeited Church property, making him
+pensioner of the Abbey of Crossraguel, with an income of five hundred
+pounds Scots--a sum very different, it need not be said, from the same
+sum in English money. The abbey had been held by a Kennedy, the brother
+of Buchanan's first pupil, the Earl of Cassilis, and very probably he
+had thus some knowledge of and connection with the locality, where he
+had gone with Cassilis many years before. The grant would seem for some
+years to have profited him little, the then Earl of Cassilis, son of his
+gentler Gilbert, having little inclination to let go his hold of the
+rents which his uncle had drawn, either in favour of a new abbot or of
+the pensioner; and the cruelties with which this fierce Ayrshire lord
+treated the functionary who succeeded his uncle seem incredible to hear
+of. George Buchanan kept out of his clutches; but it was not till some
+years afterwards that we find the local tyrant bound over in sureties to
+leave the two lawful proprietors of these funds alone. So far as can be
+made out, Mary's grant to Buchanan was almost identical in date with the
+publication of the Psalms and the sonnet which he placed at their head:
+a graceful and royal return for the compliment, quite in harmony with
+the customs of the time. Both events occurred, as would appear, in the
+year 1564, when all was still well with the unfortunate Queen.
+
+Buchanan has been accused of great ingratitude to Mary, because at one
+time he served and flattered her, and received as a recompense for the
+incense he offered, a substantial benefit: but afterwards turned from
+her party to that of her brother, and condemned her with unsparing blame
+in his History, as well as acted against her after her downfall. But the
+ingratitude is quite incapable of proof. To be devoted to a royal
+personage in his or her youth, and to maintain unbroken, however he or
+she may change, this early devotion through evil and through good
+report, is a romantic grace which is given to few. It was given to very
+few of those who received with enthusiasm the young Queen of Scotland,
+when she came unsullied, with all her natural fascination and charm,
+into the country which hoped everything from her, yet knew nothing of
+her. After the half-dozen years of disaster and tragedy, of which a much
+greater number of her people believed her the guilty cause than the
+innocent victim, there were few indeed who maintained their faith. And
+Buchanan was neither romantic nor young; he had none of the elements of
+an enthusiast in him. A caustic man of the world, a self-absorbed
+scholar without domestic ties or usage in the art of loving, it would
+have been wonderful indeed had he constituted himself the champion of
+his beautiful pupil in her terrible adversity because she had shown him
+a little favour and he had laid poetical homages at her feet in a
+brighter time. It would be hard indeed if such a passage of mutual good
+offices were to bind a man's judgment for ever, and prevent him from
+exercising the right of choosing whom he will serve to all time. Mary's
+bounty would suffice to give to her tutor the independence which he had
+struggled for all his life, if it had been paid; but it was not paid for
+several years; and it was a bounty which cost the giver nothing, so that
+the claim for eternal gratitude is overweening in any case.
+
+At the same time, both then and ever, Buchanan's patron and backer was
+the Lord James, a man with whom he was very much more likely to find
+himself in sympathy than with the young Queen. A grave temper and some
+learning, and also the charm of early association, would naturally
+attract the elderly scholar more than Mary's feminine gifts, however
+great their charm. It was Murray, no doubt, who presented him to the
+Queen, and procured him his position at Court; and just as the tragic
+moment approached, when Mary's brilliant life was about to plunge into
+darkness, Murray bestowed on Buchanan the place of all others best
+suited for him, and to which his whole previous existence tended--that
+of Principal of the College of St. Leonard's in the University of St.
+Andrews. A more fit position, as the best field for his great gifts and
+dignified retirement for his old age, could not be imagined. Buchanan
+was sixty; he was of all the scholars of his time _facile princeps_,
+according to the opinion of the great French printer and scholar, whose
+expressions were adopted in the register of the University as describing
+the qualifications of the new Principal. It might well have been
+supposed that in the reconstitution and improvement of that old
+University, in the supervision of his students, in the periodical visit
+to Edinburgh for Church matters or educational duties, which has
+afforded the necessary relaxation to many a succeeding principal, the
+peaceful days of the greatest scholar in Europe would now have passed
+tranquilly, until he found his resting-place, like so many others, under
+the soft green mantle of the turf which, broken only by solemn
+mounds--the last traces of individuality--encircled the great Cathedral
+of St. Andrews as it now encircles the ruins of that once splendid
+shrine.
+
+The events of the time, however, permitted no such dignified and calm
+conclusion. One can imagine the horror and dismay with which the little
+community at St. Andrews heard the dreadful news, carried far and wide
+on every breeze, with every kind of whispered comment and
+suggestion--soon to be no longer whispered with pale face and bated
+breath, but proclaimed from the housetops--of Darnley's murder. Buchanan
+had poured forth his celebrations of Mary's marriage and of the birth of
+the heir while still a member of her household. And no doubt he had
+become aware of the dissensions in that royal house, of Darnley's
+ingratitude and folly and the Queen's impatience, before he escaped from
+all the talk and endless gossip to the quiet of his college. But it
+would seem equally clear that when the action of the sombre tragedy
+quickened he was absent from the scene and knew of it only by the
+rumours and reports that came across the Firth. First Rizzio's murder,
+which the distant spectators would discuss, no doubt, with a thrill not
+entirely of horror, a stern sense that justice had been done, a
+satisfied prejudice--and no doubt some patriotic, if still prejudiced,
+hope that now the Italian was removed there would be less of foreign
+policy, and a more entire regard for the welfare of affairs at home.
+Then would come the rumours of the Queen's vengeance, lightly held at
+first, of Bothwell always in the foreground, her chief supporter and
+partisan--Bothwell who, though loved by nobody, was yet a Protestant,
+and therefore not altogether beyond hope. And then with ever-quickening
+haste event after event--the murder of the King, for whom no one would
+have mourned much had it been attended by circumstances less terrible;
+the mad proceedings of the Queen, whether constrained or free, her
+captivity, outrage, or conspiracy, whichever it was, her insane and
+incomprehensible marriage, which no force or persuasion could account
+for. As the posts arrived at uncertain intervals, delayed by weather,
+strong winds and heavy seas, by breaking down of conveyances, by the
+very agitations and tumults in the capital which made them so terribly
+interesting, the eager spectators in Fife must have congregated to await
+their arrival with an intensity of excitement, of which, with our
+endless sources of information and constant communication, we can form
+little idea now.
+
+And there would seem to be no doubt of the strong immediate feeling
+which arose against the Queen, the instant conclusion of the bystanders
+as to her guilt. There have been no greater fluctuations in historical
+opinion than those that have arisen around the facts of Mary's life.
+Historians of the eighteenth century considered it as a test of a man's
+moral sanity whether he persisted in believing in Mary's innocence or
+not. Among her contemporaries the progress of time which softened
+impression, and the many pathetic situations of her later history, the
+terrible misfortunes under which she fell, her endless miseries and
+troubles, and the brave spirit with which she met them, turned some
+hearts again towards her, an ever-troubled but ever-devoted body of
+partisans. But at the moment when these terrible events occurred there
+can be little doubt that the horror and condemnation were almost
+unanimous. No reasoning could explain away those wild and mad acts, no
+discussion of probability come in. The mob in Edinburgh which raged
+against her was checked in its fierceness and subdued to pity at sight
+of the wretched lady in her despair, at that awful moment when she
+appeared at the window of the Provost's lodging in the High Street, and
+made her wild appeal, in all the force of impassioned and terrible
+emotion, to the overawed and excited crowd. They saw her in the
+carelessness of misery half-dressed, unadorned, disenchanted, and
+delivered from the maddening delusion which had carried her away,
+recognising in its full extent the horrors of the result--and their
+hearts were rent with pity. But notwithstanding that pity and all the
+innate chivalry which her sufferings called forth, Edinburgh and
+Scotland, the whole alarmed and terrified nation, believed at first the
+evidence of their senses. There seems nothing more distinct than this
+fact throughout all the trouble and tumult of the moment. It is not to
+be taken as an absolute proof of Mary's guilt. Such impressions have
+existed in other though less conspicuous cases and have been proved
+untrue. But that it did exist universally there can be little doubt.
+
+The scene at the window of the Provost's lodging where the unfortunate
+Queen was lodged, near the Nether Bow of Edinburgh, when brought back
+from Dunbar after the flight of Bothwell by the angry lords, with the
+mob clamouring underneath, and her enemies holding her fate in their
+hands, seems to me one of the most significant in her history. No woman
+was ever in circumstances more terrible. The situation is stronger if we
+suppose her guilt, and that what we see before us is a great spirit
+carried away by passion--that something beyond reason, beyond all human
+power to restrain, which sometimes binds an angelic woman to a villain,
+and sometimes a man of the highest power and wisdom to a lovely trifler
+or a fool. It seems to me as at once more consistent with the facts and
+with human nature to realise the position of the unhappy Queen as
+transported by that overwhelming sentiment, and wrought on the other
+side to an impatience almost maddening, by the injuries, follies,
+treacheries, and universal provocation of her unworthy husband, until
+the force of the bewildering current carried her in a disastrous moment
+over a precipice worse than any Niagara, in a headlong course of mingled
+misery, exasperation, love, and despair. Before she had even
+accomplished the terrible circle of events, and become Bothwell's wife,
+it requires no strong effort of the imagination to perceive that the
+despair might well have come uppermost, and that Mary fully recognised,
+not only the horror, but the futility and wretched failure into which
+she had plunged. We do not pretend to believe that there was much to
+cause remorse in the mind of such a woman in such an age in the death,
+however brought about, of the miserable Darnley. Mary could have brushed
+him from her memory like a fly, had that been all. But the rage of
+despair and failure was in her soul when she raved like a caged lion
+from door to window, imprisoned, trapped, and betrayed, expressing her
+incoherent transport of pain to the mob which would have had her blood,
+but which, overcome by the spectacle of that supreme and awful passion,
+became silent with awe or hushed by a spasm of pity and tears.
+
+So it has remained, a spectacle to all the earth, which the fiercest
+assailant and the most rigid judge cannot long contemplate without
+yielding to a painful compassion which rends the heart. Why should all
+that faculty and force, all that wonderful being, with every capacity
+for happiness and making happy, for wise action and beneficent dealing,
+for boundless influence and power--why such youth, such strength, such
+spirit, equal to every enterprise, should they have been swept away by
+that remorseless fate? We can still see the trapped and ruined
+Queen--exasperated still further by the consciousness that many of the
+men now holding her in bonds were at least as guilty as she, guilty of
+Darnley's blood, guilty if not of favouring yet of fearing Bothwell and
+yielding their countenance to his plans--pacing that chamber, appearing
+at that window, her loveliness, her adornments, and all the wiles of
+triumphant beauty forgotten, throwing forth to the earth that was as
+brass and the skies that were as iron, like a wild animal in its
+torment, her hoarse inarticulate cry. And, whatever we may think of her
+merits, that terrible spectacle is more than flesh and blood can bear.
+Pity takes the place of wrath and indignation that she alone should
+suffer: why not Lethington, Huntly, Athole, and the rest, all those
+stern peers who counselled with her upon the most effectual way of
+having Darnley removed, the thankless fool who disturbed every man's
+peace--why were not they tried along with her, they who took such high
+ground as her judges? Why should she bear the brunt of all? Even
+Bothwell had escaped, and Mary stood at the bar of the world alone.
+
+But such thoughts would not seem to have moved the first spectators, to
+whom all that damning sequence of events, one precipitated on the heels
+of another, came fresh as they occurred day by day. As for Buchanan, he
+would be less prone to doubt than any. He knew something of the Court of
+France and of the atmosphere in which Mary had received her training. He
+was acquainted with many a royal scandal, and had much experience of a
+world in which vice was the rule and good behaviour a mere exception,
+due to a cold temperament, or a wariness uncongenial to generous youth.
+Such an old man of the world is slow to believe in innocence at all, and
+it is very likely that to him who knew her so well it was impossible to
+conceive of Mary as an example of weak but spotless virtue. The
+Principal of St. Leonard's went over to Edinburgh a few days after the
+completion of that tragic chapter, when Mary had been consigned to
+Lochleven, and Murray had assumed the Regency. The city was still
+agitated by much discussion of the dreadful questions which occupied all
+minds yet was slowly calming down like an angry sea, with long seethings
+and swellings of excitement. The object of Buchanan's visit was not
+curiosity or desire to be in the centre of that excitement, but a
+simpler matter, which has drawn many a Principal of St. Andrews since to
+the capital of Scotland, an Assembly of the Church, which opened "in the
+Nether Tolbooth" on the 25th of June. Of this Assembly he, though a
+layman, was appointed Moderator "for eschewing of confusion in
+reasoning"--a curious motive, which proves at least that his
+contemporaries had great confidence in his judgment, and also that the
+passion of this excited and tumultuous time ran so high in the Church
+that a stronger authority than usual was wanted to keep it within
+bounds. The sentiment of the Church, or at least of the dominant party
+in it, would seem to have been rather satisfaction that the Sovereign,
+foreign alike in training and religion, had been set aside than any
+distress at the cause. The Assembly congratulates itself that "this
+present has offered some better occasion than in times bygane, and has
+begun to tread down Satan under foot," which is not a very amiable
+deliverance: but kindness and charity were not the Christian virtues
+most approved in those days.
+
+From this time Buchanan took up with vehemence, and indeed with
+violence, the prosecution of Mary, acting often as her accuser, and
+always as an active agent, secretary, or commissioner, in the conduct of
+the indictment against her. He has been subject on this account to very
+hard treatment especially from the recent defenders of the Queen. Mr.
+Hosack, in his able book _Mary Queen of Scots and her Accusers_,
+denounces him as having offered verses and adulations to the Queen at a
+time when, according to his own after-statement, everybody knew her to
+be living in shameless vice and corruption. This, however, is not at all
+a necessary inference. It might, on the contrary, very well have lent
+bitterness to Buchanan's historical record, written after the dreadful
+catastrophe which so many accepted as a revelation of Mary's real
+character, that he had himself been one of the deceived, who for years
+had entertained no suspicion, but accepted the fair seeming as truth.
+Such a sentiment is one of the most common in human nature. The friend
+deceived becomes the bitterest enemy; and he who has been seduced into
+undeserved approval is apt to go farther than the fiercest adversary
+when he learns that his own utterances have helped to veil the crime
+which he had never suspected the existence of. This motive is enough, we
+think, to account for the special virulence with which Buchanan
+certainly does assail the Queen, and the passion which thrills through
+the _Detectio_, a sort of fury and abhorrence which makes every
+paragraph tingle. She had done nothing to Buchanan to rouse any desire
+for individual vengeance; and it is more rational, certainly, to believe
+that the horror of the discovery inspired with a sort of rage the bosom
+of the scholar--rage which was perfectly genuine in its beginning,
+though it might, no doubt, be raised to whiter heat by the continually
+increasing fervour of partisanship. The curious description of him given
+by Sir James Melville (the courtier, not the divine) that "he was easily
+abused, and so facile that he was led with any company that he haunted
+for the time, which made him factious in his old days; for he spoke and
+writ as they that were about him for the time informed him," would, if
+accepted, give a still easier solution to this question. But it is a
+little difficult to accept such a character of Buchanan, who does not
+seem to have been a man easily put off from his own way, especially when
+taken in conjunction with the Assembly's minute, recording his election
+as president "for eschewing of confusion in reasoning." It is more easy
+to believe the statement that he was "extreme vengeable against any man
+that offended him, which was his greatest fault."
+
+The much darker accusation against Buchanan, that he was a party to, or
+indeed the most active agent in, the forging of certain letters reported
+to have been sent by Mary to Bothwell before Darnley's murder, and known
+far and wide as the Casket Letters, seems to rest upon nothing but
+conjecture. He was one of the few members of the party who possessed the
+literary gift, the only one, perhaps, except Lethington, whom Mr.
+Skelton has presented to us as not only a very enlightened statesman,
+but at all times the faithful servant of Mary, but who is accused by
+earlier writers of much tergiversation and falsehood. He it was,
+according to Chalmers, who was the forger, reaching the summit of
+wickedness "in forging his mistress's handwriting for the odious purpose
+of convicting her of the crime of aggravated murder." Chalmers was as
+sturdy a champion of Mary's innocence in the eighteenth as Mr. Skelton
+is in the nineteenth century, but the conduct of historical research has
+very much altered in the meantime. The changes have been rung between
+Lethington and Buchanan by various critics, but the last light upon the
+subject seems to be that there is none, and that if the letters were
+forged the forger at least cannot be identified by any art known to
+history.
+
+It is unnecessary to pursue the question, or to bring further arguments
+to prove that nothing else in Buchanan's writings indicates the
+possession of such dramatic and constructive power as would be necessary
+for the production of such a letter as that professedly written from
+Glasgow, which is by far the most important of the contents of the
+Casket. A woman's distracted soul, divided between passion and shame,
+the very exaltation of guilty self-abandonment and the horror of
+conscious depravity and despair, is not a thing which can be imagined or
+embodied by the first ready pen, or even able intellect. No one of all
+the tumultuous band that directed affairs in Scotland has given us any
+reason to suppose that he was capable of it. Its very contradictions,
+those changes of mood and feeling which the most ignorant reader can
+perceive, are quite beyond the mark of ordinary invention. Mr. Froude
+has said that only Shakespeare or Mary Stewart could have written it--at
+all events the writer, supposing it to be forged, must have been of
+unquestionable imaginative genius. It is one of the most wonderful
+compositions ever given to the world. We look on with awe while those
+dark secrets of the heart are unfolded. The revelation is too
+tremendous, too overwhelming, and far too true to nature, to call forth
+mere horror and condemnation. It is a proof of the often-repeated
+statement that could we but see into the heart of the greatest criminal
+pity would mingle with our judgment. Nothing could be more criminal and
+horrible than the acts therein anticipated, yet we think it would be
+impossible for any unbiassed mind to read this letter for the first time
+without an increase at least of interest in the writer, so transported
+by her love, ready almost to brag of the falsehood and treachery into
+which it leads her, till sick shame and horror of herself breathes over
+her changing mood, and she feels that even he for whose love all is
+undertaken must loathe her as she loathes herself. To imagine Buchanan,
+an old man of the world, somewhat coarse, fond of a rough jest, little
+used to women, and past the age of passion, as producing that tragical
+and terrible revelation, is almost more than impossible, it is an insult
+to the reader's intelligence. And accordingly the latest writers on this
+subject have relinquished that accusation; they no longer charge the old
+pedagogue with such an effort of genius; they confine themselves to
+accusing him of ingratitude towards his benefactress, which is as much
+as to say that a little personal favour, even when well earned, is to
+compel a man to shut his eyes henceforward to the character and conduct
+of the person who has conferred it, and that both patriotic feeling and
+political policy are to be quenched by a pension, which is a strange
+view.
+
+There can be no doubt, however, that Buchanan made out the case against
+the Queen with all the rhetorical force of which he was capable; that
+the accusation was bitter, as of a man who had been personally deceived
+and injured, as indeed it is quite possible that he may have felt
+himself to be; and that there was no pity, no mercy, nor compunction
+towards her, such as arose in many men's bosoms after a little time, and
+have been rife ever since both in writers and readers. The _Detection_
+is without ruth, and assumes the most criminal and degrading motives
+throughout. Its intention clearly is to convince Scotland, England, and
+the world of Mary's utter depravity, and the impossibility of any excuse
+for her or argument in her favour. The strong and fiery indignation in
+it is indeed lessened in effect, at least to us in these latter days, by
+the over strength of the indictment; and the reader who turns from the
+perusal of the Glasgow letter--which damns indeed yet rouses a world of
+conflicting feelings, awe and terror and pity for the lost soul thus
+tragically self-condemned--to the historical document in which the
+charges against the Queen are authoritatively set forth, cannot fail to
+be struck by the difference. It is far from being simple abhorrence with
+which we regard the revelation of the one, but in the other there is no
+light; the picture is inhuman and impossible in its utter blackness, the
+guilt imputed to the Queen is systematic, unimpassioned, the mere
+commonplace of an utterly depraved nature. The wild emotion and terrible
+impulse in her becomes mere vulgar vice in her accuser's hands. In this
+there is nothing wonderful, nothing out of the common course of nature,
+which is prone to make every indictment more bitter than the facts that
+prove it.
+
+But it may well be believed that it was something of a fierce
+consolation to the high-tempered and strong-speaking Scots, in the rush
+of universal popular condemnation, to believe and assert that the Queen,
+who had so disappointed and disenchanted all her well-wishers, had been
+bad through and through, indecent and shameless. The inclination, almost
+the wish, to think the worst of every fallen idol has not died out with
+the generation which condemned Mary Stewart; and Buchanan was the
+spokesman, the advocate of the other party, whose conduct could only be
+justified by the establishment of her guilt. If she were not guilty,
+they were traitors. If all the proof against her was but a mass of
+distorted facts and false swearing, nothing in the way of punishment was
+too bad for her unfaithful subjects. A mistake was impossible, the
+struggle was one of life and death. The spokesman in such a tremendous
+issue, the narrator and setter forth of the terrible question,
+especially if he is a person whose trade it is to write, and who can be
+accused of doing his work for hire, is always at a disadvantage. It can
+never be proved to the vulgar mind that he has not formed his opinions
+to order, that he does not give them out to the world according as they
+may best benefit and satisfy his employers. His masters may be hated,
+but he is both hated and despised. If it could be proved that Murray was
+solely actuated by ambition and the hope of getting the throne for
+himself, he would still be a belligerent with the honours of war due to
+him; but the scribe, the hireling who is employed to state the whole
+matter, has no position but that of a venal dependant ready to set forth
+whatever is for his master's interests. Thus the historian of a party,
+who makes money by his work, the literary advocate whose office it is to
+make the strongest statement possible of his employer's case, is
+subject--or at least was subject in more primitive times--to the worst
+reproaches. His testimony was seldom taken as conscientious or true.
+
+Buchanan's _Detection_ was peculiarly subject to this reproach. It was
+written for the purpose of proving the case of the lords by demolishing
+entirely that of the Queen--before England and the commissioners of
+England first, seated in session to investigate the subject, and after
+them before the world in general. The inquiry which was opened at York
+in October 1568, six months after Mary's escape to England, was the most
+like a trial of anything in which her history was discussed. She was
+represented by commissioners, while Murray and several of his colleagues
+were present in person, along with Buchanan and other secretaries or
+minor commissioners. It was at this inquiry that the Casket Letters were
+first produced under, we are bound to say, if we judge by the rules of a
+period of settled law and order like our own, very suspicious
+circumstances. Even the question of the language in which they were
+written is a very difficult one. All through, indeed, this question is
+difficult, though it is never formally discussed until that tragical
+occasion. In what language did Mary and Knox hold their discussions?
+Could it be always in French that this accomplished Queen wrote and
+spoke? When she is reported to have said, as recorded in a previous
+chapter, "That man gart me greet sore, and grat never tear," is this
+expression, so distinctively and strongly Scots, a translation from some
+more elegant murmur in another language? She who had so many tongues,
+had she left out that in which she had been born, the language of her
+childhood and of her country? This problem is only considered by the
+historians when it is required to prove that a letter must be forged
+because it is apparently first written in Scots. There is also a very
+great point made of the difference between Scots and English, which
+seems to have been very slight indeed, a difference of spelling more
+than anything else, nothing that could confuse any but the most ignorant
+reader. The following sentences from Buchanan's "_Admonition direct to
+the Trew Lordis, maintaineris of justice_" will throw some light on the
+latter question, the difference between the written speech of the two
+different kingdoms, which one writer tells us would have made it easier
+for Queen Elizabeth to read letters in French than Scots:--
+
+    "It may seme to zour lordshippis," says Buchanan, "yat I, melling
+    with heich materis of governing of comoun welthis do pass myne
+    estait, being of sa meane qualitie, or forgetting my dewtie geveing
+    counsal to ye wysest of yis realme. Not the les seeing the miserie
+    sa greit appeiring, and the calamitie sa neir approching, I thocht
+    it les fault to incur the cryme of surmounting my private estait
+    than the blame of neglecting the publict danger."
+
+From this the reader will be able to judge what extraordinary difficulty
+there was in the Scotch to an English reader of those days. The use of z
+instead of y, of y instead of th, are matters very easily mastered; and
+it is surely the utmost folly to suppose that Queen Elizabeth could have
+found the slightest difficulty in deciphering this northern version of
+the common tongue.
+
+The document quoted above is a very powerful and no doubt also violent
+assault upon the Hamiltons, especially called forth by the murder of the
+Regent Murray, the slackness of the succeeding Government in the
+punishment of his assassin, and the powerful reasons there were for
+destroying--a measure which Buchanan thought imperative both for the
+safety of the realm and the child-king--that powerful family, the head
+of which was next in succession to the Scotch Crown, and had been
+popularly believed to be ready for any crime to obtain it. Now that
+there was nothing but the life of a child between the Hamiltons and this
+elevation, Buchanan lifted up his testimony against the supineness which
+left the race undisturbed to carry out its evil designs. Murray had been
+murdered in the beginning of 1570, and the _Admonition_ was printed at
+Stirling a few months later. In the same year Buchanan wrote that
+curious tract called the _Chameleon_, a satirical attack upon
+Lethington, which is not very brilliant either in language or
+conception, and fails altogether in the incisive bitterness which
+characterises most of Buchanan's other political papers. "It is at least
+equal in vigour and elegance to that of most compositions in the ancient
+Scottish language," says Buchanan's biographer, but few modern readers
+will agree in this verdict. Buchanan's hand had not the lightness
+necessary for such a performance. The guilt of Mary and the death of
+Murray furnished him with more emphatic motives than the iniquities of
+Maitland, and he was evidently stronger in assault and invective than in
+the lighter methods of composition.
+
+It might have been supposed that his hopes of preferment would have been
+seriously injured by Murray's death. But it was after this event that he
+was selected for the greatest office which Scotland could bestow upon a
+scholar--the education of the young King. Buchanan's services were no
+doubt well worthy of such a reward: at the same time it may be allowed
+that a scholar so renowned, the first of contemporary poets according to
+the judgment of his class, and the greatest of lettered Scotsmen beyond
+all question, could not be passed over. During the intervening time he
+had retained the appointment of Principal of St. Leonard's College, his
+frequent absences being made possible by the fact that though he had
+much to do with the government and regulation of the University of St.
+Andrews, he was not actively employed in giving instruction. But after
+this we float at once into a halcyon time. It was in the end of 1569 or
+beginning of 1570 that he was appointed the governor of the King, and in
+this capacity and amid peaceful surroundings more appropriate to his
+character than the rage of politics, the old scholar becomes more
+distinctly visible than it was possible he could be in the midst of
+contention and under the shadow of greater men. He was about sixty-four
+at the time he entered upon the active duties of the office. "A man of
+notable endowments for his knowledge of Latin poesie--much honoured in
+other countries, pleasant in conversation, rehearsing on all occasions
+moralities short and instructive, whereof he had abundance, inventing
+when he wanted," says Sir James Melville. _Sandford and Merton_ had not
+been written for the advantage of schoolboys in Melville's days, yet the
+picture is that of an antiquated Mr. Barlow never forgetting the art of
+instruction. The particular anecdotes, however, told of Buchanan, do not
+recall Mr. Barlow or his "moralities" at all.
+
+[Illustration: STIRLING CASTLE]
+
+The little King James, a precocious and clever child like all the
+infantile monarchs of the house of Stewart, had been established at
+Stirling, always a favourite residence of the Scotch Kings, where he
+held his baby Court in peace while his mother pined in England, and the
+Scotch lords struggled for the mastery, and succeeded each other as
+Regents at home. The troubles of the world outside seem to have been
+kept far from the surroundings of the boy, to whom both the kingdoms
+looked as their heir, the child in whom the glories of his race came to
+a climax, and the union of the warring kingdoms was at last secured.
+Personally, he was by far the least distinguished of his name, but no
+one as yet suspected this fact or thought of Buchanan's pupil as less
+hopeful than any of the gallant Jameses who had preceded him. The little
+Court at Stirling was presided over at this early period by the Lady
+Mar, a dignified matron who was "wise and sharp and kept the king in
+great awe," although at the same time very tender of the child and
+respectful of his royal dignity. Almost all James's immediate
+surroundings seem to have belonged to this powerful race. The master of
+the household was a certain Laird of Drumwhasel, to whom no other name
+is given, and who is described as ambitious and greedy, a man whose
+"greatest care was to advance himself and his friends." Alexander
+Erskine, another member of the household, calls forth something like
+enthusiasm in the courtly narrative as "a gallant, well-nurtured
+gentleman, loved and honoured by all men for his good qualities and
+great discretion, no ways factious nor envious, a lover of all honest
+men, desiring to see men of good conversation about the prince rather
+than his own nearest friends if he found them not so meet." In addition
+to this official household were the tutors charged with James's
+education, two of them being members of the Erskine family, abbots of
+Cambuskenneth and Dryburgh, though those titles were no doubt merely
+fictitious, meaning only that the "temporalities," the endowments of the
+extinct monasteries, were in their hands. The other and principal
+masters of James were Sir Peter Young and Mr. George Buchanan. Young was
+"gentle, loth to offend the king at any time, carrying himself warily as
+a man who had a mind to his own weal by keeping of his majesty's
+favour"--"but Mr. George," adds the historian, "was a Stoick philosopher
+who looked not far before him." He "held the king in great awe," so that
+James "even trembled" as he himself says elsewhere, "at his approach,"
+and did not spare either rod or word in the interests of his pupil. Some
+of the anecdotes of this severe impartiality are amusing enough. At one
+time annoyed by the noise which the King and his playfellows were
+making, Buchanan bade them be silent under certain penalties if the
+offence were repeated, and provoked by a childish impertinence from
+James, took up the little culprit and whipped him with exemplary
+impartiality, notwithstanding that his companion, the little Master of
+Mar, stood by, on whom vicarious chastisement might have been applied.
+Lady Mar, rushing to the scene of action at the sound of "the wailing
+which ensued," took the child from his master's hands and consoled him
+in her motherly arms, asking Buchanan indignantly how he dared to touch
+the Lord's anointed. The incident is very natural and amusing in its
+homely simplicity; the child crying, the lady soothing him, the sardonic
+old master in his furred nightgown and velvet cap, looking on unmoved,
+bidding her kiss the place to make it well. The Master of Mar no doubt
+would cry too for sympathy, and the old gentleman take up his big book
+and move off to seek a quieter place for study. On another occasion,
+when the little King tried to get a sparrow from his companion and
+crushed the bird in the struggle, Buchanan rated him as himself a bird
+out of a bloody nest. He was an old man and alone in the world,
+indifferent to future favours from a king whose reign he would probably
+not live to see, and treating him with impartial justice.
+
+There was, however, no indifference to James's education in this austere
+simplicity: indeed it would seem that Buchanan, like other preceptors of
+monarchs, had some hope of forming an ideal prince out of the boy. A few
+years after his appointment to his office, and when James was still too
+young to profit by it, he began to write his famous treatise, in the
+form of a dialogue, upon the laws of the kingdom, the duty respectively
+of kings and subjects. The _De Jure Regni_, published when the King was
+about twelve, was dedicated to him in a grave and dignified letter in
+which Buchanan describes his work as an attempt to expound the
+prerogatives of the Scottish Crown, "in which," he says, "I endeavoured
+to explain from their very cradle, so to speak, the reciprocal rights
+and privileges of kings and their subjects." He goes on to say that the
+book was written in the midst of the public troubles with a view to
+enlightening the disturbers of the commonwealth as to their duties: but
+that peace beginning to be established he had sacrificed his argument
+for the sake of public tranquillity. Now, however, that it may be useful
+to the development of the King he brings it forth again. The direct
+address to James is full of that curious self-deception or defective
+insight which is so common among those who have the training of a pupil
+of great importance in the world. The boy had grown beyond the age of
+personal chastisement; he had reached that in which the precocious
+facility of comprehension, which is so strongly fostered by the
+circumstances of such a position as his, looks to the dazzled pedagogues
+and attendants like genius, and there seems no prognostic too happy or
+too brilliant for the new career in which at last there is about to be
+fulfilled all that men have dreamed of a king.
+
+    "Many circumstances tend to convince me that my present exertions
+    will not prove fruitless, especially your age, yet uncorrupted by
+    perverse opinions; a disposition beyond your years, spontaneously
+    urging you to every noble pursuit; a facility in obeying not only
+    your preceptors, but all prudent monitors; a judgment and dexterity
+    in disquisition which prevent you from paying much regard to
+    authority, unless it be confirmed by solid argument. I likewise
+    perceive that by a kind of natural instinct, you so dislike
+    flattery, the nurse of tyranny, and the most grievous pest of a
+    legitimate monarchy, that you as heartily hate the courtly solecisms
+    and barbarisms as they are relished and affected by those who
+    consider themselves as the arbiters of every elegance, and who, by
+    way of seasoning their conversation, are perpetually sprinkling it
+    with majesties, lordships, excellencies, and, if possible, with
+    other expressions still more nauseous. Although the bounty of nature
+    and the instruction of your governors may at present secure you
+    against this error, yet am I compelled to entertain some slight
+    degree of suspicion lest evil communication, the alluring nurse of
+    the vices, should lend an unhappy impulse to your still tender mind,
+    especially as I am not ignorant with what facility the external
+    senses yield to seduction. I have therefore sent you this treatise,
+    not only as a monitor, but even as an importunate and sometimes
+    impudent dun, who in this turn of life may convoy you beyond the
+    rocks of adulation; and may not merely offer you advice, but confine
+    you to the path which you have entered, and if you should chance to
+    deviate may reprehend you and recall your steps. If you obey this
+    monitor you will ensure tranquillity to yourself and your family,
+    and will transmit your glory to the most distant posterity."
+
+That James VI should be described as disliking flattery and despising
+authority, if not enforced by solid argument, is strange to hear; and
+that he should be so boldly called upon to consider a plea for national
+freedom and a constitutional rule, as the chief guarantee of
+tranquillity and honour, is still more remarkable. Certainly it was not
+from Buchanan that he got those high pretensions of divine right, which
+had never flourished in Scotland; although by a not uncommon paradox the
+most faithful partisans of the family which was brought to ruin by these
+pretensions were found in the northern kingdom. Very different were the
+doctrines upon which Buchanan nourished the royal child. James
+acknowledged afterwards not ungracefully the distinction of his
+instructor in letters. "All the world," he says, "knows that my master
+George Buchanan was a great master in that faculty." But his opinions in
+politics found no favour in his pupil's eyes when James emerged from his
+youthful subjection and began to show his native mettle. At twelve,
+individuality in that respect would scarcely be developed, and a
+reverence for his tutor's sharp tongue and ready hand would keep the
+King from premature opposition.
+
+While this work was going on in the comparative quiet of Stirling,
+Scotland was lost in the turmoil of one of the most wild and terrible
+portions of her history. It is indeed rather from the glimpse we have of
+the little royal household in the foreground of all that strife and
+bloodshed, the Lady Mar in her matronly dignity, Buchanan in his furred
+gown among his books, and the clamour and laughter of the two boys
+interrupting the quiet, that we can believe in any semblance of peace or
+domestic life at all in the distracted country. The Regent Lennox, the
+King's grandfather, was killed under the very rocks of the castle where
+James learned his lessons. His young companion's father, the Earl of
+Mar, was taken from the family at Stirling and raised to a brief and
+agitated Regency, through all of which a civil war was raging. And till
+from beyond the seas there came the still more horrible news of that
+French massacre which convulsed the world, and made an end of Mary's
+party, nothing was secure from one day to another in Scotland. It was in
+the midst of that very tumult and endless miserable conflict, in which
+Mary's followers had at last set up the doctrine of her irresponsibility
+and divine right to retain her position as Queen whatever might be her
+guilt as Mary Stewart--that the scholar set himself to compose his work
+upon the rights of the kingdom and the duties of kings. His high temper,
+his strong partisanship, his stern logic, would find an incitement and
+inspiration in those specious arguments on the other side which were so
+new to Scotland, and had been contradicted over and over again in her
+troublous history, where no one was so certain to be brought to book for
+his offences as the erring or unsuccessful monarch. It must be difficult
+for a great classicist to be at the same time a believer in the divine
+right of kings; and it was a new idea for the mediæval Scot accustomed
+to reverence the name, but to criticise in the sharpest practical way
+the acts of his sovereign. And we may imagine that the old scholar, who
+could not but hear from his window the shouts of the warfare between the
+Queen's party and the King's, would have a grim satisfaction as he sat
+high above them, protected more or less by the royal name, in forging at
+his leisure those links of remorseless argument which, though they had
+no effect upon the pupil to whom they were dedicated, had their share in
+regulating that great rebellion which had so important an effect upon
+the after-history of the two kingdoms.
+
+During this period, however, Buchanan had other occupations besides his
+tutorship and his literary work. He was made "director of the Chancery,"
+whatever that may mean, and in 1570 was elevated to the post of Keeper
+of the Privy Seal, in which capacity he served in various Parliaments:
+and was also a member of the Privy Council. When the conspiracy arose
+against the Regent Morton which ended in his temporary deprivation of
+the regency, Buchanan seems to have taken part against him, though on
+what argument we are not told: for it was Morton's power which had
+brought about the re-establishment of peace and order to which he refers
+in the dedication of his book. And it is a feasible conjecture that it
+was by his crafty suggestion that the Regent's fictitious plaints of
+being weary of his high office and desiring nothing more than that the
+King's Majesty should take the government into his own hand, were
+ingeniously twisted so as to give his dismissal the air of a gracious
+consent to Morton's own wishes. An old man like Buchanan, well
+acquainted with the wiles of logic and the pretexts of state, was more
+likely to use an advantage in which there is a certain grim humour, and
+to take the adversary in his own toils, than such an inexperienced
+politician as young Mar, or any of the undistinguished nobles who
+carried out that stratagem. Whether Buchanan supported his old pupil,
+Mar, in his attempt to seize the governorship of the castle and the
+King's person out of the hands of his uncle, or in what aspect he was
+regarded when Morton returned to the head of affairs, we have no means
+of knowing. Whatever his influence might be at the King's ear or amid
+the secret meetings of the malcontents, neither as Lord Privy Seal nor
+as King James's tutor did he come in public collision with any public
+authority. His action, whenever he appears publicly, is perfectly
+characteristic of his real position and faculties. He took part in a
+commission for the establishment of a system of municipal law: he was
+one of the Church's commissioners on two occasions in determining her
+policy and discipline. When the reform of the Universities of Scotland,
+so often taken up since then, and so slow to be accomplished, was
+brought under the consideration of Parliament, Buchanan was one of the
+chief of the commissioners appointed to consider it. He is reported to
+have been the author of a scheme of reconstruction to be employed in the
+University of St. Andrews; and it is interesting to find in this new
+system that special attention was enjoined to be given to Greek, and
+that the study of Hebrew was also recommended to the students. The
+latter language, we believe, still remains an established part of the
+studies of young men in preparation for the ministry in the Church of
+Scotland. Buchanan desired that the Principal of his own College, St.
+Leonards, should lecture on Plato. And he made a present of a number of
+Greek books, still carefully preserved, to Glasgow University, though
+why he should have chosen to send them there, instead of to his own
+smaller and poorer University, we have nothing to show. It is thus
+apparent that in his active public work Buchanan's chief attention was
+given to his own proper subjects. There is no evidence that he did more
+than was indispensable to his official character in matters more
+exclusively political.
+
+His old age thus passed, in a certain learned leisure which it is very
+difficult to imagine as existing in so tumultuous a period and amid so
+many violent changes and vicissitudes. He had many learned
+correspondents throughout the world, almost all the great scholars of
+the time being numbered among his friends; and the letters which he
+received from all quarters implied a considerable amount of
+letter-writing on his side. He sent copies of his books to his friends
+as if he had been the most modern of novelists, and it is curious to
+think of the big laborious volume of solemn Latin dramas, or that thin
+but weighty tome, instinct with another and more living kind of
+interest, which set forth the rights of nations--sent by some trusty
+messenger, a young scholar finding in the packet entrusted to his charge
+the best introduction to one of the lights of learning on the Continent,
+or some adventurer making his way to a commission in the Scottish
+Archers or other service of arms more profitable for a younger son than
+the frays and feuds of Scotland. The learned doctors of the Sorbonne,
+the scholars of Geneva, and the printers of Holland, replied on their
+side not only with elaborate thanks and eulogies, but with responsive
+presents, treatises or translations of their own, some of them dedicated
+to the royal boy who was the pupil of their friend, and of whom he gave
+so wonderful a description. "I have been guilty of trifling with a
+sacred subject," wrote Berger with his volume of poems, "and I have
+dedicated my trifles to a king." Another learned correspondent sends a
+Plato which he has edited, one volume of which he had also inscribed to
+James, begging that his friend would present it to his Majesty. They
+would seem to have shared Buchanan's satisfaction in his princely pupil,
+and it is chiefly by way of reflection, through these responses, that we
+perceive what his opinion of the young King was, and how much proud
+delight, expressed no doubt in the most classical language, he took in
+the boy's aptitude and promise. The following letter, however, which is
+not classical at all, but written in choice Scots and addressed to Queen
+Elizabeth's envoy, Sir Thomas Randolph, gives a less dignified but very
+graphic description of his own circumstances and occupations. It is
+written from Stirling during Morton's Regency, when peace prevailed and
+even prosperity had returned in some measure to the distracted kingdom.
+
+    "To Maister Randolph, Squiar, Maister of Postes to the Queen's Grace
+    of England.
+
+    "Maister, I haif rescevit diverse letters frome you, and yit I haif
+    answerit to nane of them--of the quhilk albeit I haif mony excuses
+    such as age, forgetfulness, business, and disease, yet I will use
+    nane as now, except my sweirness (reluctance) and your gentleness:
+    and gif ye think nane of them sufficient, content you with ane
+    confession of the falt without fear of punition to follow on my
+    onkindness. As for the present I am occupied in writyng of our
+    historie, being assured to content few, and to displease many
+    therethrow. As to the end of it if ye gett it not or (before) this
+    winter bepassit lippen (trust) not for it, no nane other writyngs
+    from me. The rest of my occupation is with the gout quhilk halds me
+    busy both day and night. And quhair ye say ye have not lang to lyif
+    I trust to God to go before you, albeit I be on foot, and ye ryd
+    _the post_: praying you also not to _dispost_ my hoste at Newark,
+    Jone of Kelsterne. This I pray you partly for his awyn sake quhame I
+    tho't ane gude fellow, and partly at request of such as I dare not
+    refuse. And thus I take my lief shortly at you now, and my lang lief
+    when God pleases, committing you to the protection of the Almighty.
+    At Stirling, xxv. day of August, 1577.--Yours to command with
+    service,
+
+            G. BUCHANAN."
+
+The mild, aged jest about preceding his friend out of life though he
+must go on foot and Randolph had the advantage of commanding the Post,
+and his recommendation of the erring postmaster at Newark, who was a
+good fellow, throw a pleasant light of kindly humour into this letter.
+And we thus hear for the first time of the History, the greatest work of
+his life, which he seems to have begun in the tranquillity of the
+palace-castle, notwithstanding the hostile influence of gout and
+years--hostile above all to so great a piece of work. He was now over
+seventy, and the end of his career seemed near at hand, although he had
+but recently taken in hand so great an enterprise. Buchanan's History is
+not, more than other great histories which have succeeded it, an
+absolutely impartial work; but it is, throughout all his own stirring
+and momentous age, the record of a bystander with abundant means of
+knowledge and a keen apprehension of all the controversies and struggles
+of his time. If he may perhaps glorify too much the character of his
+patron and friend the Regent Murray, and take the darkest view of Mary,
+we can only say that he would have been more angel than man had he kept
+himself absolutely without bias in that hot and still unexhausted
+debate. And there was nothing angelical about the old scholar who had
+taken a part in so many historical events, from the siege of Wark
+Castle, where he was present as a boy, to the Conferences at York and
+Westminster, which were matters of yesterday. The science of history has
+so much developed since his time that it may almost be said to have made
+a new beginning; and much that was considered authoritative and
+convincing then has fallen into the limbo of uncertainty, when not
+rejected altogether. The many differing motives and agencies which can
+only be fully estimated when the period of discussion is past, have come
+to occupy a far greater space in the mind of the historian than had been
+dreamed of in Buchanan's days; and the careful examination of evidence
+with which we are now familiar was unknown either in the study of the
+writer or the courts of law during a time which has left endless
+questions from both to be debated and re-debated by succeeding
+generations. But yet Buchanan's History remains the most important and
+dignified record of the national existence up to his time; and no one
+would now venture to treat the story of ancient Scotland, the chronicles
+of her kings, or even the still undecided questions of Mary Stewart's
+life and reign, without the guidance more or less of this great
+authority. It was a bold step to dedicate to King James a record in
+which his mother's life was denounced and condemned with such unsparing
+freedom; but the astonishing absence of sympathy or human understanding
+shown in this was shared by the greater part of Buchanan's
+contemporaries, who evidently felt the facts of the mother's guilt to be
+too abundantly demonstrated and universally consented to, to demand any
+delicacy of statement as addressed to her son. No one, we think, can
+entertain any doubt of the historian's own strong conviction on this
+subject. Among the many fables current about Buchanan, there was one
+circumstantial and oft-repeated, of his repentance on his deathbed of
+his judgment of the Queen; but this is entirely set at rest by the
+affecting record which we shall quote farther on of a last visit paid to
+him by certain of his friends who had taken fright at the boldness of
+his statements, and feared that the King, now grown up and developing
+his own individual sentiments, might stop the issue of the book when he
+saw these uncompromising records.
+
+We must add one pretty story of Buchanan's kindness to his brethren in
+scholarship and literature which shows the sharp and cautious scholar in
+a very pleasant light. A certain Thomas Jack, a schoolmaster in Glasgow,
+had composed in Latin verse a little book upon the ancient poets, called
+the _Onomasticon Poeticum_, and encouraged by the friendship already, as
+he says, shown to him by Buchanan, carried the book to him for revision.
+
+    "I found him in the royal palace of Stirling, diligently engaged in
+    writing his History of Scotland. He was so far from being displeased
+    by the interruption that he cheerfully took my work from my hands,
+    and after reading two or three pages of it, collected together his
+    own papers which were scattered on the table, and said, 'I will
+    desist from my work till I have done what you wish.' This promise he
+    accurately fulfilled; and within a few days gave me a paper written
+    with his own hand, and containing such corrections as he thought
+    necessary."
+
+One can imagine the old scholar seated with his documents before him in
+the light of a broad window, perhaps arrived at some knotty point which
+wanted consideration, and turning from the crabbed papers, which would
+not fit themselves in, with that delight in a lawful interruption and
+temptation to idleness which only hard-working students know. Much has
+been said about the misery of such interruptions to the absorbed writer,
+but no one has pointed out the occasional relief and comfort which they
+bring. Buchanan must have hailed this occasion of evading for a moment
+his legitimate work with all the pleasure of an old critic and
+connoisseur suddenly appealed to with such a congenial demand. Even in
+our ashes live their wonted fires, and where is the scholar who does not
+turn with delight from his history or his sermon to criticise a copy of
+verses, to _savourer_ a fine latinism or dig his pen through a false
+quantity as if he were cutting down an enemy? Thomas Jack has departed
+into oblivion along with his _Onomasticon_: but this record of the
+friendly reception he and his book met with affords a delightful gleam
+of light upon the historian's waning days.
+
+It is more remarkable when we find another witness describing our
+somewhat irascible and sharp philosopher as growing young again in the
+boys who surrounded him, and adapting his mind to all ages and classes
+of men. Probably by the time he came to be the King's preceptor Buchanan
+had ceased to be so compliant, or very probably conceived it
+appropriate, on principle, to be less indulgent to a pupil whose danger
+it would be to have too many flatteries and caresses.
+
+We have no very clear record when it was that the tutelage of James was
+supposed to be over, or if Buchanan was ever formally freed from his
+office. Informally the King would have seemed to be more or less his own
+master at the end of Morton's Regency, when, though subject to "raids"
+like that of Gowrie and the contending influence of one party after
+another, there was no longer any Regent thought of, and the business of
+the country was conducted formally in the King's name. It would seem,
+however, from the dedication of the History, that Buchanan had ceased
+for some time before its publication to take an active part in James's
+education. He speaks in this of "the incurable illness" which made him
+incapable of "discharging the office entrusted to me of cultivating the
+genius" of the young King; and presents the book as making up in some
+degree for that personal failure. The History ends with the death of the
+Regent Lennox, he who was killed in Stirling almost under the
+historian's eyes, and when Scotland was still distracted between two
+parties, and in a state of civil warfare. It has been made a subject of
+reproach to Buchanan that he stopped his chronicle before the beginning
+of the Regency of Morton, because of his personal hatred to that brave
+and able personage--a singular charge, seeing that Buchanan lived only a
+few months after the last Regent of Scotland; and he has expressly
+mentioned in one of his dedications the increased tranquillity which was
+the result of Morton's government.
+
+It is in Edinburgh we find the old man of letters in the last scene of
+his long and laborious life. In September 1581 he was visited by three
+gentlemen from St. Andrews, one of whom gives us the most lifelike and
+interesting account of this last interview. It would have been still
+more interesting had they afforded some indication where they found him,
+whether he had some pleasant room granted to him in Holyrood, after so
+many years with the King, a suitable retreat for his old age; or if he
+had retired to some private lodging in the Canongate to end his days.
+His visitors make no mention of such unimportant circumstances, but they
+leave us a most touching and faithful picture of the end of his life.
+These visitors were the famous Andrew Melville, Principal of the New
+College at St. Andrews, a scholar almost as distinguished as himself,
+who had at an earlier period been Buchanan's pupil, and who had acquired
+his great knowledge in the same way, in the famous schools of the
+continent; James Melville, his nephew, minister of Kilrenny on the
+shores of Fife; and Thomas Buchanan, the cousin of the dying historian.
+James Melville relates this last visit as follows:--
+
+    "That September in time of vacans, my uncle Mr. Andrew, Mr. Thomas
+    Buchanan and I, hearing that Mr. George Buchanan was weak, and his
+    Historie under the press, past over to Edinbruck annes errand
+    (expressly) to visit him and see the work. When we came to his
+    chalmer we found him sitting in his chair, teaching his young man
+    that servit him in his chalmer, to spell a, b, ab, and e, b, eb,
+    etc. Efter salutation Mr. Andro says, 'I see, sir, ye are not
+    idle.'--'Better this,' quoth he, 'nor stealing sheep--or sitting
+    idle which is as ill.' Thereafter he shew us the Epistle Dedicatorie
+    to the King, the which when Mr. Andro had read he told him that it
+    was obscure in some places, and wanted certain words to perfeyt the
+    sentence. Sayes he, 'I may do na mair for thinking on another
+    matter.'--'What is that?' sayes Mr. Andro. 'To die,' quoth he; 'but
+    I leave that and manie more things for you to help.'
+
+    "We went from him to the printer's workhouse, whom we found at the
+    end of the 17 book of his Cornicle at a place which we thought verie
+    hard for the tyme, which might be an occasion for staying the haill
+    work, anent the burial of Davie. Therefore staying the printer from
+    proceeding, we came to Mr. George again, and fand him bedfast by his
+    custom, and asking him how he did, 'Ever going the way of weilfare,'
+    says he. Mr. Thomas, his cousin, shawes him of the hardness of that
+    part of his Storie, that the King would be offendit with it, and it
+    might stay all the work. 'Tell me, man,' says he, 'gif I have told
+    the truth?'--'Yes,' says Mr. Thomas, 'Sir, I think so.'--'I will
+    bide his feud and all his kin's then;' quoth he. 'Pray, pray to God
+    for me, and let Him direct all.' So by the printing of his Cornicle
+    was endit, that maist learned, wyse, and godly man endit this mortal
+    life."
+
+He was a pedagogue, perhaps something of a pedant, a hot partisan, a
+special pleader; but few lives can show a more dignified and noble end.
+If it was the truth he had written this old man cared for nothing else,
+not even for that fame which is the last infirmity of noble minds. The
+King might keep back the great work of his life, but he could not
+silence the lips in which no fear of man was. Whatever might happen
+afterwards, Buchanan's record was clear; to have told the truth was all
+with which he had anything to do.
+
+There is a touch of what for want of a better word we must call cynicism
+in the humorous indifference with which the old philosopher is said to
+have discussed his own burial. Finding, as the story goes, that there
+was not money enough in the house for the last expenses, he ordered what
+there was to be given to the poor, declaring that he was not concerned
+as to what was to become of his remains. If they did not choose to bury
+him they might let him lie, he said in grim jest. He was, however,
+reverently buried by the authorities of Edinburgh, in the historical
+churchyard of the Greyfriars, attended by "a great company of the
+faithful," though no stone seems ever to have been placed to indicate
+the spot where he was laid. Thus in some unknown corner he rests, like
+so many other illustrious persons--a man who never rested in his life,
+and carried down his labours to the very verge of the grave. It is a
+curious satire upon human justice that his name should have been kept
+green in Scotland by the rough jests of an imaginary Geordie Buchanan,
+commonly supposed to have been the King's fool, as extraordinary a
+travesty as it is possible to conceive. It is almost as strange a twist
+of all the facts and meaning of life that the only money of which he
+could be supposed to be possessed at his death should have been one
+hundred pounds (Scots, no doubt), _arrears_ of the pension due to him
+from the Abbey of Crossraguel, given by Queen Mary to that learned pupil
+of the Sorbonne and lover of Lutetia with whom she read Latin at
+Holyrood in the early days before trouble came.
+
+[Illustration: GREYFRIARS CHURCHYARD]
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+THE MODERN CITY
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A BURGHER POET
+
+
+After the extraordinary climax of dramatic interest which brought the
+history of Edinburgh and of Scotland to the knowledge of the whole
+world, and which has continued ever since to form one of the most
+exciting chapters in general history, it was inevitable that when that
+fated Court dispersed, and the lady who was its charm and head
+disappeared also under the tragic waves which had been rising to engulf
+her, there should fall a sudden blank into the record, a chill of
+dulness and tedium, the charm departed and the story done. In fact, it
+was not at all so, and the metropolis of Scotland continued to seethe
+with contending elements, and to witness a continued struggle,
+emphasised by many a martyrdom and deed of blood, and many a desperate
+battle both hand to hand and head to head in the streets and in the
+council chambers, all with more or less the religious question involved,
+and all helping to work out the final settlement. When that final
+settlement came after all the tumults and blood it had cost, it is
+scarcely possible not to feel the downfall from those historical
+commotions to the dead level of a certain humdrum good attained, which
+was by no means the perfect state hoped for, yet which permitted peace
+and moderate comfort and the growth of national wellbeing. The little
+homely church towers of the Revolution, as they are to be seen, for
+instance, along the coast of Fife, are not more unlike the Gothic spires
+and pinnacles of the older ages, than was the limited rustical provision
+of the Kirk, its restricted standing and lowered pretensions, unlike the
+ideal of Knox, the theocracy of the Congregation and the Covenant.
+Denuded not only of the wealth of the old communion, but of those
+beautiful dwelling-places which the passion of the mob destroyed and
+which the policy of the Reformers did not do too much to
+preserve--deprived of the interest of that long struggle during which
+each contending presbyter had something of the halo of possible
+martyrdom about his head--the Church of the Revolution Settlement lost
+in her established safety, if not as much as she gained, yet something
+which it was not well to lose. And the kingdom in general dropped in
+something like the same way into a sort of prose of existence, with most
+of the picturesque and dramatic elements gone. Romance died out along
+with the actual or possible tragedies of public life, and Humour came
+in, in the development most opposed to romance, a humour full of mockery
+and jest, less tender than keen-sighted, picking out every false
+pretence with a sharp gibe and roar of laughter often rude enough, not
+much considerate of other people's feelings. Perhaps there was something
+in the sudden cessation of the tragic character which had always
+hitherto distinguished her history, which produced in Scotland this
+reign of rough wit and somewhat cynical, satirical, audacious mirth, and
+which in its turn helped the iconoclasts of the previous age, and
+originated that curious hatred of show, ceremony, and demonstration,
+which has become part of the Scottish character. The scathing
+sarcasm--unanswerable, yet false as well as true--which scorned the
+"little Saint Geilie," the sacred image, as a mere "painted bradd," came
+down to every detail of life; the rough jokes of the Parliament House at
+every trope as well as at every pretence of superior virtue; the grim
+disdain of the burgher for every rite; the rude criticism of the fields,
+which checked even family tendernesses and caresses as shows and
+pretences of a feeling which ought to be beyond the need of
+demonstration, were all connected one with another. Nowhere has love
+been more strong or devotion more absolute; but nowhere else, perhaps,
+has sentiment been so restrained, or the keen gleam of a neighbour's eye
+seeing through the possible too-much, held so strictly in check all
+exhibitions of feeling. Jeanie Deans, that impersonation of national
+character, would no more have greeted her delivered sister with a
+transport of kisses and rapture than she would have borne false
+testimony to save her. There is no evidence that this extreme
+self-restraint existed from the beginning of the national history, but
+rather everything to show that to pageants and fine sights, to dress and
+decoration, the Scots were as much addicted as their neighbours. But the
+natural pleasure in all such exhibitions would seem to have received a
+shock, with which the swift and summary overthrow of Mary's empire of
+beauty and gaiety, like the moral of a fable, had as much to do as the
+scornful destruction of religious image and altar. The succeeding
+generations indemnified themselves with a laugh and a gibe for the loss
+of that fair surface both of Church and Court: and the nation has never
+given up the keen criticism of every sham and seeming which exaggerated
+the absolutism of its natural character, and along with the destruction
+of false sentiment imposed a proud restraint and restriction upon much
+also that was true.
+
+[Illustration: EDINBURGH: GENERAL VIEW]
+
+[Illustration: ALLAN RAMSAY'S SHOP]
+
+To come down from the age when Mary still reigned in Holyrood and Knox
+in St. Giles's--and Edinburgh saw every phase of passion and tragedy,
+wild love, hatred, revenge, and despair, with scarcely less impassioned
+devotion, zeal, and fury of Reformation, and all the clang of opposed
+factions, feuds, and frays in her streets--to the age when the
+Parliament House and its law courts were the centre of Edinburgh, when
+Holyrood was the debtors' sanctuary, and St. Giles's a cluster of parish
+churches, even its distinctive name no longer used: and when the
+citizens clustered about the Cross of afternoons no longer to see the
+heralds in their tabards and hear the royal proclamations, but to tell
+and spread the news from London and discuss the wars in the Low
+Countries, and many a witty scandal, gibes from the Bench and repartees
+from the Bar, the humours of the old lords and ladies in their "Lodging"
+in the Canongate, and the witticisms of the favourite changehouse--is as
+great a leap as if a whole world came between. The Court at St. Germains
+retained the devotion of many, but Anne Stewart was on the throne, and
+rebellion was not thought of, while everything was still full of hope
+for the old dynasty, so that Edinburgh was at full leisure to talk and
+jeer and gossip and make encounter of wits, with nothing more exciting
+in hand. In this tranquil period, his apprenticeship being finished, a
+certain young man from the west, by the name of Allan Ramsay, opened a
+shop in the High Street "opposite Niddry's Wynd" as a
+"weegmaker"--perhaps, if truth were known, a barber's shop, in all ages
+known as the centre of gossip wherever it appears. It is odd, by the
+way, that a place so entirely dedicated to the service of the male
+portion of the population, and where women have no place, should have
+this general reputation; but so it has always been. He had spent his
+early years as a shepherd on Crawford Moor in the Upper Ward of
+Clydesdale, and no doubt had there learned every song that floated about
+the country-side. "Honest Allan" was in every respect a model of the
+well-doing and prosperous Edinburgh shopkeeper of his time--a character
+not too entirely engrossed by business, always ready for a frolic, a
+song, a decorous bout of drinking, and known in all the haunts of the
+cheerful townsmen: tolerant in morals yet always respectable, fond of
+gossip, fond of fun, and if not fond of money yet judiciously disposed
+to gain as much as he could make, or as his apprentices and careful wife
+could make for him: and gradually progressing from a smaller to a larger
+shop, from a less to a more "genteel" business, and finally to a
+comfortable retirement.
+
+In such a life there was plenty of room for enjoyment, for relaxation,
+and no want of leisure to tell a good story or compose a string of
+couplets where that gift existed, even when most busy. We may imagine
+that he did not sit much at his block, but rather in the front of the
+shop amusing his customers, while their periwigs were curled or fitted,
+with Edinburgh gossip and wit in the familiarity of common citizenship,
+or with anecdotes which enlightened the country gentlemen, especially
+those from the west, the last _bon mot_ of the Parliament House, or the
+Lord Advocate's latest deliverance. And his clubs were as numerous as
+those of a young man of fashion. The "Easy Club" was composed of "young
+anti-unionists," which indicates the politics which the wigmaker mildly
+held in cheerful subjection to the powers that were. No doubt he would
+have gone to the death (in verse) for the privileges of Edinburgh: but
+the anti-unionism or sentimental Jacobitism of his class was not of a
+kind to trouble any Government. And except the question of the Union,
+which was settled early in his career, politics do not seem to have been
+of an exciting character in Edinburgh. Local matters, always the most
+interesting of any to the inhabitants of a town not great enough to be
+cosmopolitan but full of distinct and striking individuality, furnished
+the poetical wigmaker with his first themes. It would seem that he only
+learned to rhyme from the necessity of taking his part in the high jinks
+of the club; at least all his early productions were intended for its
+diversion. An "Elegy on Maggie Johnstone," mistress of a convenient
+"public" at Morningside, then described as "a mile and a half west from
+Edinburgh," a suburb on "the south side," though now a part of the
+town--which would lie in the way of the members when they took their
+walks abroad, and no doubt formed the end of many a Sabbath day's
+ramble--was almost the first of his known productions; and we may well
+believe that the jovial shopkeepers were delighted with the sensation of
+possessing a poet of their own, and held many a discussion upon the new
+verses--brimful of local allusions and circumstances which everybody
+knew--over their ale as they rested in the village changehouse, or among
+the fumes of their punch in their evening assemblies. Verses warm from
+the poet's brain have a certain intoxicating quality akin to the toddy,
+and no doubt the citizens slapped their thighs and snapped their fingers
+with delight when some well-known name appeared, the incidents of some
+story they knew by heart, or the features of some familiar character.
+The satisfaction of finding in what they would call poetry a host of
+local allusions about which there was no ambiguity, which they
+understood like their ABC, would rouse the first hearers to noisy
+enthusiasm. And thus encouraged, the cheerful bard (as he was called in
+those days) went on till his fame penetrated beyond the club. Another
+elegy of a more serious description was so highly thought of that it was
+printed and given to the world by the club itself. That world meant
+Edinburgh, its many tradesmen, the crowded inhabitants of all the lofty
+"lands" about that centre of busy social life where the Cross still
+stood, and the old Tolbooth gloomed over the street, cut in two by its
+big bulk and the fabric of the Luckenbooths, a sort of island of masonry
+which divided what is now the broad and airy High Street opposite St.
+Giles's into two narrow straits. The writers and the advocates, the
+professors and the clergy, Councillor Pleydell and his kind, were not
+the first to discover that Ramsay the wigmaker had something in him more
+than the other rough wits of the shops and markets. And by and by the
+goodwives in their high lodgings, floor over floor, ever glad of
+something new, learnt to send one of the bairns with a penny to the
+wigmaker's shop in the afternoon to see if Allan Ramsay had printed a
+new poem: and received with rapture the damp broadsheet brought in fresh
+from the press, with a fable or a song in "gude braid Scots," or a witty
+letter to some answering rhymester full of local names and things. There
+was no evening paper in those days, and had there been it was very
+unlikely it would have penetrated into all the common stairs and crowded
+tenements. But Allan's songs, of which Jean or Peggy would "ken the
+tune," and the stories that would delight the bairns, were better worth
+the penny than news from distant London, which was altogether foreign
+and unknown to that humble audience.
+
+This no doubt was the sort of fame and widespread popular appreciation
+which made the statesman of that day--was it Fletcher of Saltoun or
+Duncan Forbes the great Lord President?--bid who would make the laws so
+long as he might make the songs of the people. He had in all likelihood
+learnt Allan's widely flying, largely read verses, which every _gamin_
+of the streets knew by heart, in his childhood. And though they might
+not be in general of a very ennobling quality, there are glimpses of a
+higher poetry to come in some of these productions, and a great deal of
+cheerful self-assertive content and local patriotism, as well as of
+rough fun and jest. If it were not for the very unnecessary introduction
+of Apollo as the god to whom "the bard" addresses his wishes, there
+would be something not unworthy of Burns in the following lines. The
+poet has of course introduced first, as a needful contrast, "the master
+o' a guid estate that can ilk thing afford," and who is much "dawted
+(petted) by the gods"--
+
+    "For me, I can be weel content
+    To eat my bannock on the bent,
+        And kitchen't wi' fresh air;
+    O' lang-kail I can make a feast
+    And cantily haud up my crest,
+        And laugh at dishes rare.
+    Nought frae Apollo I demand,
+        But through a lengthened life,
+    My outer fabric firm may stand,
+        And saul clear without strife.
+          May he then, but gi'e then,
+            Those blessings for my share;
+          I'll fairly, and squarely,
+            Quit a', and seek nae mair."
+
+It was no doubt after he had achieved this reputation of the streets--a
+thing more difficult than greater fame--that his imagination developed
+in more continuous and refined effort. Whether he himself printed his
+penny broadsheet as well as sold it we are not informed, but as he began
+after a while to combine bookselling with wigmaking we may be allowed to
+imagine that the press which produced these flying leaves was either in
+or near his shop. It is difficult to realise the swarming of life and
+inhabitation within the high houses of the old town in an age when
+comfort was little understood: and even the concentration within so
+small a space, of business, work, interest, idleness, and pleasure, is
+hard to comprehend by people who have been used to appropriate a
+separate centre to each of the great occupations or exercises of
+mankind. When London was comparatively a small town it had still its
+professional distinctions--the Court, the Temple, the City, the place
+where law was administered and where money was made, where society had
+its abode and poverty found a shelter. But in old Edinburgh all were
+piled one on the top of another--the Parliament House within sight of
+the shops, the great official and the poor artificer under the same
+roof: and round that historical spot over which St. Giles's crown rose
+like the standard of the city, the whole community crowded, stalls and
+booths of every kind encumbering the street, while special pleaders and
+learned judges picked their steps in their dainty buckled shoes through
+the mud and refuse of the most crowded noisy market-place, and all the
+great personages of Edinburgh paced the "plainstanes" close by at
+certain hours, unheeding either smell or garbage or the resounding cries
+of the street.
+
+[Illustration: CROWN OF ST. GILES'S]
+
+In such a crowded centre the sheets that were being read so eagerly,
+laughed over by the very cadgers at their booths, conned by the women at
+the stairheads, lying on every counter, where Allan's new verses would
+be pulled to pieces by brother wits who had known him to do better, or
+heard a livelier witticism from his lips no farther gone than yestreen,
+must very soon have come to the notice of the westland lads at the
+college, and from them to the learned professors, and still more
+directly to the lively groups that went and came to the Parliament
+House. Already the wigmaker's shop had thriven and prospered; the little
+man, short and fat and jovial, who had begun to lay out books in his
+window under the shadow of the curled and powdered periwigs, found the
+results of his double traffic more satisfactory than poets use. He
+boasts in one of his rhymed addresses that he thatches the outside and
+lines the inside of many a douce citizen, "and baithways gathers in the
+cash." He adds--
+
+    "And fain would prove to ilka Scot,
+    That poortith's no the poet's lot."
+
+It must have been altogether an odd little establishment--the wigs set
+out upon their blocks, perhaps, who knows, the barber's humbler craft
+being plied behind backs; the books multiplying daily on shelves and in
+windows, and the ragged boys with their pennies waiting to see if there
+was a new piece by Allan Ramsay; while perhaps in the corner, where lay
+the lists of the new circulating library--the first in Scotland--Miss
+Lydia Languish with her maid, or my lady's gentlewoman from some fine
+house in the Canongate, had come in to ask for the last new novel from
+London, the Scotch capital having not yet begun to produce that article
+for itself.
+
+One may be sure that Allan, rotund and smiling, was always ready for a
+crack with the ladies, and to recommend the brand new _Pamela_, the
+support of virtue, or some contemporary work of lesser genius. Though
+the general costume was like that worn in the other parts of the island,
+perhaps a little behind London fashions, the fair visitors would still
+be veiled with the plaid, the fine woven screen of varied tartan which
+covered the head like a hood, and could on occasion conceal the face
+more effectually than Spanish lace or Indian muslin--a singular
+peculiarity not ancient and scarcely to be called national, since the
+tartan came from the still-despised Highlands, and these were Lowland
+ladies who wore the plaid. This fashion would seem to have begun to be
+shaken by Ramsay's time, for he pleads its cause with all the fervour of
+a poetical advocate. There is something grotesque in the arguments, and
+still more grotesque in the names by which he distinguishes the wearers
+of the plaid.
+
+    "Light as the pinions of the airy fry
+    Of larks and linnets who traverse the sky,
+    Is the Tartana, spun so very fine
+    Its weight can never make the fair repine;
+    Nor does it move beyond its proper sphere,
+    But lets the gown in all its shape appear;
+    Nor is the straightness of her waist denied
+    To be by every ravished eye surveyed;
+    For this the hoop may stand at largest bend,
+    It comes not nigh, nor can its weight offend.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "If shining red Campbella's cheeks adorn,
+    Our fancies straight conceive the blushing morn,
+    Beneath whose dawn the sun of beauty lies,
+    Nor need we light but from Campbella's eyes.
+    If lined with green Stuarta's plaid we view,
+    Or thine, Ramseia, edged around with blue,
+    One shews the spring when nature is most kind,
+    The other heaven whose spangles lift the mind."
+
+The description of the manner in which this engaging garment is worn has
+all the more reason to be quoted that it was not only a new piece by
+Allan Ramsay, but affords a glimpse of the feminine figures that were to
+be seen in the High Street of Edinburgh going to kirk and market in the
+beginning of the eighteenth century. There is, too, a pleasant touch of
+individuality in the musical street cry that wakes the morn.
+
+    "From when the cock proclaims the rising day,
+    And milkmaids sing around _sweet curds and whey_,
+    Till grey-eyed twilight, harbinger of night,
+    Pursues o'er silver mountains sinking light,
+    I can unwearied from my casements view
+    The Plaid, with something still about it new.
+    How are we pleased when, with a handsome air,
+    We see Hepburna walk with easy care!
+    One arm half circles round her slender waist,
+    The other like an ivory pillar placed,
+    To hold her plaid around her modest face,
+    Which saves her blushes with the gayest grace;
+    If in white kids her slender fingers move,
+    Or, unconfined, jet through the sable glove.
+
+    "With what a pretty action Keitha holds
+    Her plaid, and varies oft its airy folds!
+    How does that naked space the spirits move,
+    Between the ruffled lawn and envious glove!
+    We by the sample, though no more be seen,
+    Imagine all that's fair within the screen.
+
+    "Thus belles in plaids veil and display their charms,
+    The love-sick youth thus bright Humea warms,
+    And with her graceful mien her rivals all alarms."
+
+The fair Hepburna, Humea, Campbella, and the rest may tempt the reader
+to a smile; but the picture has its value, and is a detail of importance
+in the realisation of that animated and crowded scene. By this time
+probably Ramsay had removed his shop to the end of the Luckenbooths,
+which faced "east" to the unencumbered portion of the High Street, where
+the City Cross stood, and where all the notable persons made their daily
+promenade. It was here that he was visited by a kindred spirit, the poet
+Gay, who had been brought to Edinburgh by his patroness the Duchess of
+Queensberry, and soon formed acquaintance with the local poet. The two
+little roundabout bards used to stand together at the door of the shop
+to watch the crowd, in which no doubt Ramsay would be gratified by a
+friendly nod from the Lord President, and swell with civic and with
+personal pride to point out to the English visitor that distinguished
+Scotsman the loyal and the learned Forbes. The Cross, round which this
+genteel and witty crowd assembled daily, stood then, according to the
+plans of the period, in the centre of the High Street, where it had been
+removed for the advantage of greater space in the previous century. And
+the view from Ramsay's shop--from which by this time the wigs had
+entirely disappeared, and which was now a refined and cultured
+bookseller's, adorned outside with medallions of two poets, Scotch and
+English, Ben Jonson and Drummond of Hawthornden--was bounded by the gate
+of the Netherbow with its picturesque tower, and glimpses through the
+open roadway, of the Canongate beyond, and the cross lines of busy
+traffic leading to Leith. It was thus a wide space between the lines of
+high houses, more like a Place than a street, upon which the two gossips
+gazed, no doubt with a complacent thought that their living presence
+underneath carried out the symbol of the two heads above--the poets of
+England and of Scotland--and that in the teeming street below them were
+many who pointed out to each other this new and delightful combination.
+They were not great poets, either of these round, fat, oily men of
+verse. And yet the association was pleasant. Perhaps the duchess's
+coach-and-six, in which the English bard had been conveyed from London,
+might drive through the open port, as the two stood delighted, watching
+the pedestrians hurry out of the way and the great lawyers and officials
+preparing to pay their devoirs to her Grace as she drew up before the
+bookshop. No doubt they thought it a scene to be remembered in the
+history of letters. She was at Penicuik House on a visit to the Clerks,
+who were friends and patrons of Allan, and no doubt had supped or drunk
+a dish of tea at New Hall, where the Lord President (who was only the
+Lord Advocate in those days) often took his case in his cousin's house,
+where Ramsay was a familiar and frequent guest. When Allan made wigs no
+longer, when all his occupations were about books, and everybody in
+Edinburgh, gentle and simple, knew him as the poet, he would be still
+more free to make his jokes and his compliments to all those fine
+people. But at no time was the genial little poet "blate," as he would
+himself have said. There was no shyness in him. He "braw'd it," as he
+says, with no doubt the finest of periwigs, long before he had ceased to
+be a skull-thatcher, and swaggered through the wynds and about the Cross
+with the best. The Edinburgh shopkeeper has never been "blate." He has
+always maintained a freedom of independence which has nothing of the
+obsequiousness of more common traders, and which gave the greater value
+to the sly compliment which he would insinuate between two jests. No
+doubt Campbella and Hamilla would laugh at the little man's compliments,
+his bows and admiring glances, yet would not object to his exposition of
+the tartan screen, the delicate silken plaid under which they shielded
+their radiant complexions and golden locks.
+
+Allan must have seen many curious sights from those windows. The riding
+of the Parliament, when in gallant order two by two--the commissioners
+of the boroughs and the counties leading the way, the peers following,
+through the guards on either side who lined the streets--they rode up
+solemnly from Holyrood to the Parliament House, with crown and sword and
+sceptre borne before them, the old insignia, without which the Acts of
+the ancient Parliaments of Scotland were not considered valid--marching
+for the last time to their place of meeting to give up their
+trust--would be one of the most remarkable. The commoners had each two
+lackeys to attend him, the barons three, the earls four, a blue-coated
+brigade, relic of the old days when no gentleman moved abroad without a
+following; and Lyon King-at-arms in his finery to direct the line. With
+lamentation and humiliation was the session closed; even wise men who
+upheld the Union consenting to the general pang with which the last
+Scots Parliament went its way. And the glare of the fire must have
+lighted up the poet's rooms, and angry sparks fallen, and hoarse roar of
+voices drowned all domestic sounds, when the Porteous Mob turned
+Edinburgh streets into a fierce scene of tragedy for one exciting night.
+It would be vain indeed to describe again what Scott has set before us
+in the most vivid brilliant narrative. Such a scene breaking into the
+burgher quietude--the decent households which had all retired into
+decorous darkness for the night waking up again with lights flitting
+from story to story, the axes crashing against the doors of the
+Tolbooth, the wild procession whirling down the tortuous gloom of the
+West Bow--was such an interruption of monotonous life as few towns in
+the eighteenth century could have equalled; and it is curious to
+remember the intense national feeling and keen patriotic understanding
+of how far the populace would or could endure interference, which made
+Duncan Forbes in his place in Parliament stand up as almost the defender
+of that wild outburst of lawlessness, and John of Argyle turn from the
+royal presence to prepare his hounds, as he said, against the Queen's
+threat of turning the rebellious country into a desert. These proud
+Scotsmen had supported the Union: they had perceived its necessity and
+its use: but there was a point at which all their susceptibilities took
+fire, and Whig lords and politicians were at one with every high-handed
+Tory of the early times.
+
+Allan Ramsay must also have seen, though he says nothing of it, the
+brief occupation of Edinburgh by the unfortunate Prince Charles Edward,
+and at a distance the pathetic little Court in Holyrood, the Jacobite
+ladies in their brief glory, the fated captains of that wild little
+army, in which the old world of tradition and romance made its last
+outbreak upon modern prose and the possibilities of life. One would
+imagine that for a man who had lived through that episode in the heart
+of the old kingdom of the Stewarts, and whose house lay half-way between
+the artillery of the castle, where a hostile garrison sat grimly
+watching the invaders below, and the camp at Holyrood--there would have
+been nothing in his life so exciting, nothing of which the record would
+have been more distinct. But human nature, which has so many
+eccentricities, is in nothing so wonderful as this, that the most
+remarkable historical scenes make no impression upon its profound
+everyday calm, and are less important to memory than the smallest
+individual incident. The swarm of the wild Highlanders that took sudden
+possession of street and changehouse, the boom of the cannon overhead
+vainly attempting to disperse a group here and there or kill a rebel,
+and the consciousness which one would think must have thrilled through
+the very air, that under those turrets in the valley was the most
+interesting young adventurer of modern times, the heir of the ancient
+Scots kings, their undoubted representative--how could these things fail
+to affect the mind even of the most steady-going citizen? But they did,
+though we cannot comprehend it. Allan has a word for every little
+domestic event in town or suburbs, but there is not a syllable said
+either by himself or his biographers to intimate that he knew what was
+going on under his eyes at that brief and sudden moment, the "one
+crowded hour of glorious life," which cost so much blood of brave men,
+and which the hapless Prince paid for afterwards in the disenchanted
+tedium of many a dreary year.
+
+[Illustration: SMOLLETT'S HOUSE]
+
+It was before this time, however, that Ramsay reached the height of his
+fame and of his productions in _The Gentle Shepherd_. He had written
+some years before "A Pastoral Dialogue between Patie and Roger,"
+published as usual in a sheet for a penny, and no doubt affording much
+pleasure to the great popular audience to whom the "new piece" was as
+the daily _feuilleton_, that friendly dole of fiction which sweetens
+existence. It was evidently so successful that after a while the poet
+composed a pendant--a dialogue between Jenny and Peggy. These two
+fragments pleased the fancy of both the learned and the simple, and no
+doubt called forth many a flattering inquiry after the two rustic pairs
+and demands for the rest of their simple history, which inspired the
+author to weave the lovers into the web of a continuous story, adding
+the rural background, so fresh and true to nature, and the rustic and
+humorous characters which were wanted for the perfection of the pastoral
+drama. Few poems ever have attained so great and so immediate a success.
+It went from end to end of Scotland, everywhere welcomed, read, conned
+over, got by heart. Such a fame would be indeed worth living for. The
+fat little citizen in his shop became at once the poet of his country,
+as he had been of the Edinburgh streets. It was nearly two centuries
+since Dunbar and Davie Lyndsay had celebrated their romantic town: and
+though the name of the latter was still a household word ("You'll no
+find that in Davie Lyndsay" being the popular scornful dismissal of any
+incredible tale), yet their works had fallen into forgetfulness. The new
+poet was received accordingly with acclamation. People did not talk of
+sales and profits in those days, and we have no information as to the
+numbers issued, or the time they took to find a home in every cottage,
+as well as to receive the distinction of illustration and critical
+discussion, which proved that it was not only the people who interested
+themselves in the new poet, but a more highly trained and difficult
+audience as well. We have before us two goodly octavos in which the
+little rustical comedy is enshrined in hundreds of pages of notes; and
+where the argument as to its localities, identifying every spot,
+occupies chapter after chapter of earnest discussion, proving exactly
+where every cottage is situated, and that New Hall, the home of the
+Forbeses, was the mansion of the poem, with its little farm-steading
+round. Shakspeare could not have been more closely followed, and we
+doubt if the localities which he has made famous were ever discussed at
+such length. I can remember nearly fifty years ago investigating, with
+the eagerness of a child to whom books were the most precious objects in
+existence, the little shelf high on the wall at the bedhead, where a
+very old woman, an old nurse in her retirement, kept her treasures, and
+mounted high upon a chair, finding a much-thumbed unbound copy of _The
+Gentle Shepherd_ in the dim twilight, ruddy with the glimmer of the
+fire, of the cottage room. In such places it was never absent; it was
+the one book which held its ground by the side of the Bible and perhaps
+a volume of old-world devotion, _The Crook in the Lot_, or _The Saint's
+Rest_. Such a distinction is a far more true and genuine triumph than
+the sale of many editions. It went straight into the heart of the
+peasant, who understood and appreciated every scene and line. And it was
+discussed by all the Edinburgh clubs, and by the literati who knew their
+Theocritus and could write dissertations on pastoral poetry. The
+greatest poet could have hoped for no more.
+
+And pastoral poetry was the fashion of the time. Ramsay himself had made
+various other attempts before he lighted upon this quite legitimate
+strain. We read with a shudder of comic horror a dialogue "On the Death
+of Mr. Addison," in which the interlocutors are "Richy and Sandy," to
+wit, Sir Richard Steele and Mr. Alexander Pope! who bewail their loss,
+which is far worse than misfortune to their flocks, or the scorn of
+their lasses, being no less than this, that "Addie, that played and sang
+so sweet, is dead"! The poet received, indeed, a complimentary copy of
+verses upon this production, in which he is thus addressed--
+
+    "Well fare thee, Allan, who in mother tongue
+    So sweetly hath of breathless Addy sung:
+    His endless fame thy nat'ral genius fired,
+    And thou hast written as if he inspired.
+    'Richy and Sandy,' who do him survive,
+    Long as thy rural stanzas last, shall live."
+
+The grotesque in poetry could scarcely go farther. Mr. Burchett, who
+addressed good Allan in these rhymes, was the refined gentleman who put
+the wigmaker's poems into English. "Richy and Sandy" was contained in a
+volume which Ramsay published by subscription, and which brought him in,
+to the immense admiration of his biographer, four hundred guineas
+sterling, which no doubt was a very admirable recompense indeed for so
+many foolish verses. This volume contained, among other things, Ramsay's
+bold continuation of "Christ's Kirk on the Green," which the same
+biographer describes as "King James the First's ludicrous poem," in
+which the poet of the High Street skilfully turns the poet-monarch's
+rustic revel into a vulgar village debauch. But these pieces of
+presumption and non-comprehension are happily all dead and gone, and
+Ramsay's reputation rests upon a happier basis. It is not a small matter
+to have pervaded a whole country with the simple measures of a rural
+idyll--a poem in which there are not perhaps five lines of poetry, but
+which is fragrant of the moors and fields, full of rustic good sense and
+feeling, and as free of harm or offence as the most severe moralist
+could desire. This latter quality is all the more remarkable as it
+belongs to an age not at all squeamish in these matters, and to which
+the frankest assaults upon a heroine's virtue were supposed to be quite
+adapted for the treatment of fiction. But there is no Lovelace in _The
+Gentle Shepherd_; the rustic love-making is ardent, but simple and
+without guile. The swains respect as much as they admire their nymphs:
+the nymphs are confident in their frank innocence, and fear no evil; the
+old fathers sit cheerful and sagacious at their doors and indulge in
+their cracks, not less pleased with themselves and their share of life
+than are the young ones with their livelier pleasures: the cows breathe
+balmy breath into the wild freshness of the pastoral scenery. There is
+scarcely anything affected, false, or even stilted in the poetical
+dialogues which, with a little licence for the verse and something for
+the sentiment, come naturally and simply from the wholesome, genial
+young shepherds and their sweethearts. To say this is to say as much as
+the most fastidious critic could desire from such a composition.
+
+Nor is it spoiled by classic models or similes. How Ramsay succeeded in
+keeping Venus and Cupid out of it, in forgetting all eclogues and
+pastorals, Virgil or Theocritus, and indulging in nothing that was out
+of place in Scotland, it is hard to tell. The Mantuan bard, the oaten
+reed, Philomela and her songs, Hymen, Ganymede, Bacchus, and all the
+Olympian band disport themselves in his other verses: but _The Gentle
+Shepherd_ is void of those necessary adjuncts of the eighteenth-century
+muse. The wimpling burn is never called Helicon nor the heathery braes
+Parnassus, and nothing can be more genuine, more natural, and familiar
+than the simple scenery of Habbie's Howe--in which the eager critics
+identified every scene, and the sensible poet enhanced his art by a
+perfect truth to nature. _The Gentle Shepherd_ is perhaps the only
+so-called Pastoral of which this can be said, and it must have required
+no small amount of self-denial to dispense with all those accustomed
+auxiliaries. Even the sentiments are not too highflown for the locality.
+If they are perhaps more completely purified from everything gross or
+fleshly than would have been the case in fact, the poet has not been
+afraid to temper passion with those considerations which naturally rise
+to the mind of the young farmer in choosing his mate. His Peggy, though
+she has beauty enough to make up for every deficiency, has also "with
+innocence the wale of sense."
+
+    "In better sense without a flaw,
+    As in her beauty, far excels them a'."
+
+She, on her part, anticipates not raptures and blisses in her marriage,
+but the hallowed usages of life.
+
+        "I'll employ with pleasure all my art
+    To keep him cheerful, and secure his heart.
+    At e'en, when he comes weary frae the hill,
+    I'll have a' things made ready to his will;
+    In winter when he toils through wind and rain,
+    A bleezin' ingle, and a clean hearth-stane;
+    And soon as he's flung by his plaid and staff,
+    The seething pot's be ready to tak' aff."
+
+Ramsay's sobriety here shines in comparison with all the fables and
+idylls of his age. It is entirely natural, living, and of his time.
+Patie plays upon a flute of "plum-tree made with ivory virls round,"
+which he bought from the proceeds of "sax good fat lambs" sold at the
+West Port, instead of the rustic pipe or oaten reed, which in his heart
+of hearts no doubt our wigmaker thought much finer. Thus he secured his
+audience, who knew nothing about oaten reeds, and instead of the
+plaudits of the dilettanti secured the true fame of popular
+comprehension and knowledge. Burns was far higher and nobler in genius,
+and the worship awarded to him by his countrymen is one of the favourite
+subjects of gibe and jest among writers on the other side of the Tweed.
+But even Burns had not the universal acceptance, the absolute command of
+his audience, which belonged to honest Allan. There were politicians and
+there were ecclesiastics, and good people neither one nor the other, who
+shook their troubled heads over the ploughman who would not confine
+himself to the daisy of the field or the Saturday night's observances of
+the Cottar, but was capable of Holy Willie and the Holy Fair. But Ramsay
+had no gainsayer, and _The Gentle Shepherd_ was the first of books in
+most Lowland homes. Its construction, its language and sentiments, are
+all as commonplace as could be imagined, but it is a wholesome, natural,
+pure, and unvarnished tale, and the mind that brought it forth (well
+aware of what pleased his public) and the public who relished and bought
+it, give us a better view of the honest tastes and morals of the period
+than anything else which has come to us from that time. There has always
+been a good deal of drinking, and other vices still less consistent with
+purity of heart, in Scotland. Now and then we are frightened by
+statistics that give us a very ill name; but it is difficult to believe
+that if the national heart had been corrupt _The Gentle Shepherd_ could
+have afforded it such universal and wholesome delight.
+
+It is curious to find two very ordinary and prosaic tradesmen thus in
+the front of popular literature in the beginning of the eighteenth
+century. There is no comparison between Allan Ramsay and Samuel
+Richardson in respect to genius. That humdrum old bookseller evoked by
+some miraculous art the most delicate and lovely of creations out of the
+midst of revolting and disgusting circumstances. Fielding was a far
+finer gentleman, a much more accomplished writer, even a greater genius;
+but there are none of his women who are fit to tie the shoes of Clarissa
+Harlowe, to whom indeed there exists no fit companion out of Shakspeare.
+Our good-humoured Allan had no such gift, but he had the art of
+producing one spotless and lifelike tale, absolutely true to nature and
+within the power of verification by any reader, which was accepted by a
+whole country with enthusiasm as the best rendering of its rural life.
+We doubt if there ever was a greater literary triumph.
+
+Ramsay would not have been the true man he was to every tradition and
+inheritance of his class had he not shown a modest complacency in his
+own success. He was assailed, we are told, by nameless critics, who put
+forth "A Block for Allan Ramsay's Wigs," "Remarks on Ramsay's Writings,"
+and so forth--and retaliated, not without dignity: "Dull foes," he says,
+"nought at my hand deserve."
+
+    "The blundering fellows ne'er forget,
+      About my trade to sport their fancies,
+    As if, forsooth, I would look blate,
+      At what my honour most advances.
+
+    "Auld Homer sang for's daily bread;
+      Surprising Shakspeare fin'd the wool;
+    Great Virgil creels and baskets made;
+      And famous Ben employed the trowel.
+
+    "Yet Dorset, Lansdown, Lauderdale,
+      Bucks, Stirling, and the son of Angus,
+    Even monarchs, and o' men the wale,
+      Were proud to be enrolled amang us."
+
+It is true that Homer and Shakspeare might be surprised to find
+themselves rubbing elbows with the wigmaker of the High Street. Still,
+he shows a fine spirit, and his very strut is respectable.
+
+[Illustration: ALLAN RAMSAY'S HOUSE]
+
+In the end of his life, when the author of _The Gentle Shepherd_ by all
+his trades, both as poet and shopkeeper, had amassed a fortune, he built
+himself a house in the most glorious position which poet could have
+chosen. It is on the crest of the hill, a little way below the castle,
+and is still to be seen from Princes Street--a distinct feature in the
+picturesque and varied line of building. He is said, though on what
+authority we are not told, to have applied to the Crown for ground
+enough to build a cage for _his burd_, meaning his wife: which is
+supposed to be the reason why he built his house in an octagonal shape
+like a cage: his wife, however, did not live long enough to inhabit it.
+Additions and emendations have been made, so that there is no great
+peculiarity in the form of the old square house on the summit of the
+green slope, just clear of the rocks of the castle, as it is visible
+to-day. When it was built the new town of Edinburgh was not yet dreamed
+of, and nothing disturbed the panorama of green fields that lay between
+Edinburgh and the Firth. The town wall was falling into ruin, yet still
+existed in fragmentary towers and ramparts here and there, and low down
+in the depths of the descent, which was not so precipitous there as
+under the castle, the high houses and green braes were reflected in the
+quiet waters of the North Loch. From thence the fields and scattered
+farmhouses, the Calton Hill in unadorned greenness, a church spire and a
+cluster of village roofs here and there, led the eye to the shining of
+the Scottish Sea, the great water with its islands, the coast of Fife
+with its dotted line of little fishing towns, the two green Lomonds
+standing softly distinct against the misty line of more distant hills.
+It was the same view that moved Fitz-Eustace to ecstasy, still but
+little changed in the eighteenth century from what it had been in the
+sixteenth. And picturesque as Edinburgh still continues to be in spite
+of many modern disadvantages, it was no doubt infinitely more
+picturesque then, crowning the rocky ridge, with straggling lanes and
+wynds dropping steeply down into the valley--opening here and there a
+glimpse of the green country and the shimmer of the Firth--while on the
+edge of the hill, from all the high windows, the wide landscape softened
+into distance on every side, into the far-off broken ranges of mountains
+and cloudy rolling vapours, and the far-retiring sweep of a horizon
+traversed by all the lights and all the storms--a wide world of air and
+space and infinite variety. The life of our busy modern world had
+scarcely yet invaded that city on the hill. It stood isolated on the
+height of its rock, reigning from that domination over all the tranquil
+country: while within its lines still thronged and clamoured an active
+noisy population cooped up and packed together as if it were still
+unsafe to stray away out of shelter of the walls, all the faculties and
+trades, all the wit and the wealth, one above another, with the
+concentration, the picturesqueness, the universal acquaintance and
+familiarity of a mediæval town. And beautiful as the prospect must have
+been from those high-built houses, it could scarcely have exceeded the
+sight of the old Edinburgh of the kings from without, standing high
+above the level of the soil, with the open crown of St. Giles's rising
+over its grey heights, its walls broken down by careless peace and
+wellbeing, its tall tenements standing up like a line of castles. And in
+the night with its glimmer of household lights at every window hanging
+high in mid air, repeated with a gleam in the waters beneath and in the
+stars above, which sparkled keen out of the northern blue, and the mist
+of habitation, the smoke of the fires and the lamps hanging over
+all--confusing outlines, yet revealing all the more brightly a higher
+and a higher altitude of human lights--what a wonderful sight rising
+sheer out of the green and silent champaign below!
+
+Such was royal Edinburgh still, when the shopkeeper-poet, with his jokes
+and his quips, and his good-humoured self-esteem, and certainty of his
+own power, settled down in Ramsay Lodge. It would be well if all poets
+had as prosperous and as fair a retirement for their old age. He lived
+for some time in his quaint self-contained (according to the equally
+quaint Scotch phraseology) birdcage upon the top of the hill, and
+enjoyed his celebrity and his ease and the pleasant conviction that "I
+the best and fairest please." His only son, the second Allan Ramsay, was
+a painter of some reputation, and he had daughters to care for him and
+keep his home cheerful as long as he lived. A man more satisfied with
+his lot could not be. His chirrup of self-satisfaction, the flattery,
+yet familiarity, of his address to all the noble lords and lairds, the
+judges and advocates, his laugh of jovial optimism and personal content,
+belong perfectly to the character of the comfortable citizen, "in fair
+round belly with good capon lined," and the shopkeeper's rather than the
+poet's desire to please. One can better fancy him at the door of his
+shop looking down the High Street jocose and beaming, with a joke for
+the Lord President and for the Cadie alike, hand in glove with all the
+Town Council, with a compliment for every fair lady or smiling lass that
+tripped by under her tartan screen, delighted with himself and all
+around him--than retired in his garden on the Castle Hill, though with
+all the variations of the heavens and magnificence of the landscape
+before his eyes. He had no doubt the admiration of that landscape which
+is never wanting to an Edinburgh citizen, a part of the creed to which
+he is born; but the homely limits of the green glens and knowes, the
+wimpling burn, the washing-green, the laird's hospitable house behind,
+were more in Allan's way when he wanted any relaxation from the even
+more attractive town. The High Street and Habbie's Howe are the true
+centres of his soul.
+
+It would be wrong not to note the collections of songs which made his
+name dear to all the pleasant singers both of drawing-room and cottage.
+It is a strange peculiarity in a nation possessing a characteristic and
+melodious popular music of its own like Scotland, to find how little
+place music as a science, or even in its more serious developments, has
+ever had in the country. Nothing can be more sweet, more touching, more
+tender, than the native growth of Scottish song--nothing more full of
+fun and spirit than the brilliant dance music which, like the song,
+seems to have sprung spontaneous from the soil. And no country has ever
+more loved both songs and strathspeys, or clung to them with greater
+devotion. It would be perhaps impossible for the most learned to decide
+between the rival claims of Scotland and Ireland in respect to the airs
+which seem native to both; but Ireland has always laboured under the
+disadvantage of being far less homogeneous than Scotland, and certainly,
+before the time of Moore at least, her native songs did not belong to
+all classes as in the sister country. And Scotland has always through
+all ages (previous to the present age) preferred her own songs to every
+other. During the eighteenth century, when Edinburgh was almost more
+completely the centre of society than ever before, the old tunes were
+sung by ladies as much as by maid-servants, and the delicate old spinets
+performed a soft accompaniment to ballads of the "Ewebuchting" and of
+the "Corn Rigs," and prolonged the pathetic notes of "Waly, waly" and
+the trembling wail of the "Flowers of the Forest" in the finest houses
+as in the humblest. Music, more properly so called, the art which has
+gradually made its way from being a modest handmaiden of poetry to full
+rivalship, if not a half-implied superiority, was already a scientific
+pursuit in England; and though the Italian opera aroused a violent
+opposition, and Tweedledum and Tweedledee called forth the gibes of the
+wits, there existed a vigorous English school of learned musicians, and
+Handel and Haydn found an audience not incapable of appreciating their
+best works. But while this development went on in London, Scotland still
+sang her ancient simple melodies, and contemned everything else with
+that audacious superiority which is born of ignorance. One might almost
+imagine that this was the penalty of a national inheritance so ample and
+so sweet, and that the comparative absence of traditionary music in
+England opened the heart of the country to strains more ambitious and
+classical. However it came about, there is no denying that so it was. If
+there was any Scottish composer at all, his productions were only
+imitations or modifications of the old airs. Music continued to be
+represented by the songs of immemorial attraction, the woodnotes wild of
+nameless minstrels, pure utterance of the soil. Perhaps the absence of
+music, except in the kindred shape of psalm tunes, which was but another
+form of popular song, in the Church, was one great prevailing cause of
+the national insensibility to all more lavish and elaborate strains. But
+this peculiarity and insensibility had at least one advantage--they kept
+in constant cultivation a distinct branch of national literature, and
+one that is always attractive and delightful. I do not think it is too
+strong an utterance of national partiality to say that the songwriters
+of Scotland are beyond comparison with those of either of the other
+united kingdoms. The simplest of the old ditties brought out of the
+ancient poets contain a grace of genuine poetry and real feeling far
+above the unmeaning jingle of verse which is the most common utterance
+of popular song; and the cultivation of this delightful gift has called
+forth the most tender and artless poems from gentle writers whom nothing
+but that inspiration could have made to produce what was in them. The
+pathetic wail of the poor lady who found to her cost that
+
+    "Love is bonnie, a little time when it is new,"
+
+but that
+
+    "When love's auld it waxeth cauld,
+    And fades away like morning dew";
+
+and that touching lullaby in which the mother hushes the babe whose
+
+    "Father wrought her great annoy,"
+
+with its tender and simple refrain--
+
+    "It grieves me sore to hear thee weep,"
+
+breathe out of the ancient depths of human trouble with a reserve and
+simplicity of feeling that seem almost personal. But the kindred
+inspiration which called forth the two versions of the "Flowers of the
+Forest" and the ballad of "Auld Robin Gray," along with many more, shows
+how warm was the impulse to this expression of feelings, which were at
+once intensified and drawn out of the sphere of revelations too
+individual by the breath of the melody which carried them forth.
+
+Allan Ramsay has the merit of being the first collector of Scottish
+song. He was remorseless, like his century, and made the wildest havoc
+with some of his originals, cutting and slashing as suited his fancy,
+and adding of his own whenever it pleased him so to do. But with the
+exception of a number of Strephons and Chloes, not always ungraceful, in
+the newer fashion, and a sprinkling of ruder verses in which there is
+more indecency than immorality, the first two volumes of the _Tea-table
+Miscellany_ are full of merit, and include many delightful simple
+lyrics, songs which compare most advantageously with the insipid "words"
+which at this present advanced age are used as a sort of necessary evil
+to serve the purpose of the music. "Say that our way is only an
+harmonious speaking of many witty or soft thoughts after the poet has
+dressed them in four or five stanzas," says Ramsay, with the apology
+which is a veiled assertion of higher aims, "yet undoubtedly these must
+relish best with people who have not bestowed much of their time in
+acquiring a taste for that downright perfect music which requires none
+or very little of the poet's assistance." And he tells us in the same
+preface of a letter he has had from America informing him that there too
+his manual of song has gone, and that his
+
+    "Soft verse made to a Scottish air
+    Is often sung by our Virginian fair."
+
+The book is dedicated to the ladies--the _Donne qui hanno intelletto
+d'amore_, long supposed to be the final critics and judges of such
+productions: and is confidently recommended to these "fair singers" for
+whose "modest eyes and ears," according to the poet (but with notable
+exceptions, as has been said), they were prepared. The third volume
+consisted almost exclusively of English songs, among which are many
+classic verses. If it were but as a stepping-stone to those perfect
+lyrics, so full of natural truth and feeling, with which Burns
+afterwards brought to a climax the songs of his country, the _Tea-table
+Miscellany_ would have a merit of its own.
+
+Ramsay died in 1758, when the troubles of the country were over, the
+last seeds of insurrection stamped out, and the powerful revolution
+begun which made the clans loyal to Government and Scotch politicians
+faithful to the Union. He was buried in the Greyfriars Churchyard, where
+so many of the most notable of the citizens of Edinburgh were laid. A
+hundred years or so after, the enlightened community placed his statue
+in the gardens that lie between the old town and the new. And thus the
+poet's career was run; it was a prosperous one, full of the success that
+was most sweet to him; comfort and competence and reputation, at once
+that of a warm and well-to-do citizen and that of a poet. Few poets have
+lived to see their productions so popular. _The Gentle Shepherd_ may be
+said to have been in every cottage in Scotland in its author's lifetime,
+and his songs were sung by everybody. Nor did this fame interfere with
+the citizen's well-earned and more substantial reward. The shop in which
+he began his prosperous career, and which was crowded so continually by
+eager messengers with their pennies in search of Allan Ramsay's last new
+piece--the most immediate and one of the most pleasant evidences of
+success--still exists, with its high steps and broad low windows, in the
+heart of the old town with which his name is so completely associated;
+and the quaint square house in which his later days of ease and
+retirement were spent still keeps its place on the east of the Castle
+Hill, surveying from its windows the enriched and amplified yet
+unalterable panorama so dear and beautiful to all Scottish eyes.
+
+[Illustration: ALLAN RAMSAY'S MONUMENT]
+
+[Illustration: DOORWAY, LADY STAIR'S CLOSE]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE GUEST OF EDINBURGH
+
+
+Royal Edinburgh, the city of the Scots kings and Parliament, the capital
+of the ancient kingdom, would seem to have become weary somewhere in the
+eighteenth century of dwelling alone upon her rock. There were, to be
+sure, reasons more prosaic for the construction of the New Town, the
+partner and companion of the old historical city. The population had
+increased, the desire for comfort and space, and many luxuries unknown
+to the early citizens of Edinburgh, had developed among the new. It was
+no longer agreeable to the lawyers and philosophers to be crowded up
+with the other inhabitants of a common stair, to have the din of street
+cries and commotion ever in their ears, and the lowest of the population
+always about their feet, as was inevitable when gentle and simple were
+piled together in the High Street and Canongate. The old houses might be
+noble houses when they were finally got at, through many drawbacks and
+abominations--though in those days there was little appreciation even of
+the stately beauty of old masonry and ornament--but their surroundings
+became daily more and more intolerable. And it was an anachronism to
+coop up a learned, elegant, and refined class, living under the
+Hanoverian Georges in peace and loyalty, within the circle of walls now
+broken down and useless, which had been adapted to protect the subjects
+of the old Scottish Jameses from continual attacks.
+
+Happily the nature of the situation prevented any amalgamation or loss
+of the old boundaries and picturesque features of the ancient city, in
+the new. There was no question of continuation or enlargement. Another
+Edinburgh rose at the feet of the first, a sober, respectable, modern,
+and square-toed town, with wide streets and buildings solid and strong,
+not without pretensions to a certain stateliness of size and design, but
+in strong contrast with the architecture and fashion native to the
+soil--the high gables and turreted stairs of the past. The old town had
+to throw a drawbridge, permanent and massive, over the hollow at her
+feet before she could even reach the terraced valley on which the first
+lines of habitation were drawn, and which, rounding over its steep
+slope, descended towards another and yet another terrace before it stood
+complete, a new-born partner and companion in life of the former
+capital, lavish in space as the other was confined, leisurely and
+serious as the other was animated--a new town of great houses, of big
+churches--dull, as only the eighteenth century was capable of making
+them--of comfort and sober wealth and intellectual progress. The
+architects who adorned the Modern Athens with Roman domes and Greek
+temples, and placid fictitious ruins on the breezy hill which possessed
+a fatal likeness to the Acropolis, would have scoffed at the idea of
+finding models in the erections of the fourteenth century--that
+so-called dark age--or recognising a superior harmony and fitness in
+native principles of construction.
+
+Yet though the public taste has now returned more or less intelligently
+to the earlier canons, it would be foolish not to recognise that there
+is a certain advantage even in the difference of the new town from the
+old. It is not the historical Edinburgh, the fierce, tumultuous,
+mediæval city, the stern but not more quiet capital of the Reformers,
+the noisy, dirty, whimsical, mirth-loving town, full of broad jest and
+witty epigram, of the eighteenth century. The new town has a character
+of its own. It is the modern, not supplanting or effacing, but standing
+by the old. Those who built it considered it an extraordinary
+improvement upon all that Gothic antiquity had framed. They were far
+more proud of these broad streets and massive houses than of anything
+their fathers had left to them, and flung down without remorse a great
+deal of the antiquated building after which it is now the fashion to
+inquire with so much regret. Notwithstanding the change of taste since
+that time, the New Town of Edinburgh still regards the old with a little
+condescension and patronage; but there is no opposition between the two.
+They stand by each other in a curious peacefulness of union, each with a
+certain independence yet mutual reliance. London and Paris have rubbed
+off all their old angles and made themselves, notwithstanding the
+existence of Gothic corners here and there, all modern, to the
+extinction of most of the characteristic features of their former
+living. But happy peculiarities of situation have saved our northern
+capital from any such self-obliteration. Edinburgh has been fortunate
+enough to preserve both sides--the ancient picturesque grace, the modern
+comfort and ease. And though Mr. Ruskin has spoken very severely of the
+new town, we will not throw a stone at a place so well adapted to the
+necessities of modern life. Those bland fronts of polished stone would
+have been more kindly and more congenial to the soil had they cut the
+air with high-stepped gables and encased their stairs in the rounded
+turrets which give a simple distinctive character to so many Scottish
+houses; and a little colour, whether of the brick which Scotch builders
+despise or the delightful washes[6] which their forefathers loved, would
+be a godsend even now. But still, for a sober domestic partner, the new
+town is no ill companion to the ancient city on the hill.
+
+[6] In this respect I venture to think all Scotland errs. Many houses
+throughout the country, built roughly with a rude and irregular but solid
+mason-work, were made points of light in the landscape by these washes of
+colour which poor dwellings retain. There is a yellow which I remember on
+many old houses in which the stains of time and weather produced
+varieties of tone almost as agreeable as the mellowing of marble under
+the same influences, which are now stripped into native roughness and
+rise in sombre grey, sometimes almost black, abstracting a much-needed
+warmth from the aspect of the country round.
+
+This adjunct to the elder Edinburgh had come into being between the time
+when Allan Ramsay's career ended in the octagon house on the Castle
+Hill, and another poet, very different from Ramsay, appeared in the
+Scotch capital. In the meantime many persons of note had left the old
+town and migrated towards the new. The old gentry of whom so many
+stories have been told, especially those old ladies who held a little
+court, like Mrs. Bethune Balliol, or made their bold criticism of all
+things both new and old, like those who flourish in Lord Cockburn's
+lively pages--continued to live in the ancestral houses which still kept
+their old-fashioned perfection within, though they had to be approached
+through all the squalor and misery which had already found refuge
+outside in the desecrated Canongate; but society in the Scotch
+metropolis was now rapidly tending across the lately erected bridge
+towards the new great houses which contemplated old Edinburgh across the
+little valley, where the Nor' Loch glimmered no longer and where fields
+lay green where marsh and water had been. The North Bridge was a noble
+structure, and the newly-built Register House at the other end one of
+the finest buildings of modern times to the admiring chroniclers of
+Edinburgh. And the historians and philosophers, the great doctors, the
+great lawyers, the elegant critics, for whom it was more and more
+necessary that the ways of access between the old town and the new might
+be made more easy, presided over and criticised all those wonderful new
+buildings of classic style and unbroken regularity, and watched the
+progress of the Earthen Mound, a bold and picturesque expedient which
+filled up the hollow and made a winding walk between, with interest as
+warm as that which they took in the lectures and students, the books and
+researches, which were making their city one of the intellectual centres
+of the world.
+
+This is a position to which Scotland has always aspired, and the pride
+of the ambitious city and country was never more fully satisfied than in
+the end of last and the beginning of the present century. Edinburgh had
+never been so rich in the literary element, and the band of young men
+full of genius and high spirit who were to advance her still one step
+farther to the climax of fame in that particular, were growing up to
+take the places of their fathers. A place in which Walter Scott was just
+emerging from his delightful childhood, in which Jeffrey was a
+mischievous boy and Henry Brougham a child, could not but be overflowing
+with hope, especially when we remember all the good company there
+already--Dugald Stewart, bringing so many fine young gentlemen from
+England to wonder at the little Scotch capital, and a crowd of Erskines,
+Hunters, Gregories, Monroes, and Dr. Blair and Dr. Blacklock, and the
+Man of Feeling--not to speak of those wild and witty old ladies in the
+Canongate, and the duchesses who still recognised the claims of
+Edinburgh in its season. To all this excellent company, whose fame and
+whose talk hung about both the old Edinburgh and the new like the smoke
+over their roofs, there arrived one spring day a wonderful visitor, in
+appearance like nothing so much as an honest hill farmer, travelling on
+foot, his robust shoulders a little bowed with the habit of the plough,
+his eyes shining, as no other eyes in Scotland shone, with youth and
+genius and hope. He knew nobody in Edinburgh save an Ayrshire lad like
+himself, like what everybody up to this time had supposed Robert Burns
+to be. The difference was that the stranger a little while before had
+put forth by the aid of a country printer at Kilmarnock a little volume
+of rustic poetry upon the most unambitious subjects, in Westland Scotch,
+the record of a ploughman's loves and frolics and thoughts. It is
+something to know that these credentials were enough to rouse the whole
+of that witty, learned, clever, and all-discerning community, and that
+this visitor from the hills and fields in a moment found every door
+opened to him, and Modern Athens, never unconscious of its own
+superiority and at this moment more deeply aware than usual that it was
+one of the lights of the earth, at his feet.
+
+[Illustration: LADY STAIR'S CLOSE]
+
+Burns was but a visitor, the lion of a season, and therefore we are not
+called upon to associate with Edinburgh the whole tragic story of his
+life. And yet his appearance was one of the most remarkable that has
+distinguished the ancient town. He arrived among all the professors, the
+men of letters, the cultured classes who held an almost ideal
+pre-eminence, more like what a young author hopes than is generally to
+be met with among men--his heart beating with a sense of the great
+venture on which he was bound, and a proud determination to quit himself
+like a man whatever were the magnitudes among which he should have to
+stand. Mere Society so called, with all its bustle of gaiety and endless
+occupation about nothing, might have exercised upon him something of the
+fascination which fine names and fine houses and the sweep and whirl of
+hurried life certainly possess; but he who expresses almost with
+bitterness his disgust to see a blockhead of rank received by one of his
+noble patrons with as much, nay more, consideration than is given to
+himself, would probably have had very little toleration for the
+butterflies of fashion: whereas Edinburgh society impressed him greatly,
+as of that ideal kind of which the young and inexperienced dream, where
+the best and brightest are at the head of everything, where poetry is a
+passport to the innermost sanctuary and conversation is like the talk of
+the gods. They were all distinguished for one literary gift or grace or
+another, philosophers golden-mouthed, poets of the most polished sort:
+their knowledge, their culture, their intellectual powers, were the
+foundation upon which their little world was built. The great people who
+were to be found among them were proud to know these scholars and
+sages--it was they, and not an occasional family of rank, or still more
+rare man of wealth, who gave character and meaning to Edinburgh. To be
+received in such society was the highest privilege which a young poet
+could desire; and it was worthy to receive and foster and encourage that
+new light that came from heaven.
+
+On their side the heads of society in Edinburgh were much interested in
+this young man. There had been an article in the _Lounger_, fondly
+deemed a Scotch _Spectator_, an elegant literary paper widely read not
+only in Scotland but even beyond the Border, upon him and his works.
+"The Ayrshire Ploughman" was the title of the article, and it set forth
+all the imperfections of his breeding, his want of education, his
+ignorance both of books and of the world, and yet the amazing verses he
+had produced, which, though disguised in a dialect supposed to be
+unknown to the elegant reader, and for which Henry Mackenzie, the Man of
+Feeling, supplied a glossary--living, he himself, in an old-fashioned
+house in the South Back of the Canongate and within the easiest reach of
+those wonderful old ladies who spoke broad Scotch, and left no one in
+any doubt as to the strong opinions expressed therein--were certified to
+be worthy the perusal of the most fastidious critic. Lord Monboddo, who
+was the author of speculations which forestalled Darwin and who
+considered a tail to be an appendage of which men had not long got rid,
+on the one side, and the metaphysicians and philosophers on the other,
+would no doubt prick up their ears to hear of this absolutely new being
+in whom there might be seen some traces of primeval man. We forget which
+of the early Jameses it was who is said to have shut up two infants with
+a dumb nurse in one of the islands of the Firth to ascertain what kind
+of language they would speak when thus left to the teaching of nature.
+The experiment was triumphantly successful, for the heaven-taught babies
+babbled, the chroniclers tell us, a kind of Hebrew, thus proving beyond
+doubt that the language of the Old Testament was the original tongue of
+man. The Edinburgh savants must have received Burns with something of
+the same feeling: for here was a new soul which had been shut up amid
+the primeval elements, and the language it spoke was Poetry! yet poetry
+disguised in imperfect dialect which might yet be trained and educated
+into elegance. They asked him to dinner as a first step, and gathered
+round him to hear what he would have to say; to observe the effect
+produced by the sight of learning, criticism, knowledge; to enjoy his
+awe, and note the improvement that could not but ensue. This curiosity
+was full of kindness; their hearts were a little touched by the
+ploughman, by his glowing eyes, and by the strange sight of him there
+among them in the midst of their high civilisation, a rustic clown who
+knew nothing better than a thatched cottage and a clay floor. No doubt
+they had the sincerest desire that he should be made to understand how
+much he was deficient, what a great deal he had to learn, and be taught
+to use fine language, and turn his attention to higher subjects, and be
+altogether elevated and brought on in the world. The situation is very
+curious and full of human interest, even had the stranger been less in
+importance than he was. It is wonderfully enlightening in any
+circumstances to see such an encounter from both sides, to perceive the
+light in which it appears to them, and the very different light in which
+it is seen by _him_. There was the usual great divergence between the
+views of the visitor and the highly-cultured community to which he came.
+For he indeed did not come there at all to be enlightened and trained
+and put in the way he should go. He came full of delightful hope that he
+was coming among his own kind, that he was for the first time to meet
+his own species, and recognise in other human faces the light that shone
+about his own path, but in none of the other muddy ways of the
+country-side; to make friends with his natural brethren, and be
+understood of them as no one yet had been found to understand him. In
+his high anticipations, in his warm enthusiasm of hope, he himself
+figured dimly as a sort of noble exile coming back to his father's
+house. So does every child of fancy regard the world of which he knows
+nothing, the world of the great and famous, where to dazzled fancy all
+the beautiful things, words, and thoughts for which he has been sighing
+all his life are to be found.
+
+They met, and they were, if not mutually disappointed, yet strangely
+astonished and perplexed. Burns would seem to have been always on his
+guard, too much on his guard we should be disposed to say, suspicious of
+the intention to guide, to chasten, to educate and refine, which was
+indeed in the kindest way at the bottom of everybody's thoughts. He was
+determined to be astonished by nothing, to keep his head so that no one
+should ever be able to say that it was turned by his new experiences--an
+attitude which altogether bewildered the good people, who were willing
+to give him every kind of education, to excuse any rudeness or roughness
+or imperfection, but not to see a man at his ease, appearing among them
+as if he were of them, requiring no allowance to be made for him,
+holding his head high as any man he met. All the accounts we have of his
+appearance in Edinburgh agree in this. He was neither abashed nor
+embarrassed; no rustic presumption or vulgarity, but quite as little any
+timidity or awkwardness, was in the Ayrshire ploughman. His shoulders a
+little bent with the work to which he had been accustomed, his dress
+like a countryman, a rougher cloth perhaps, a pair of good woollen
+stockings rig and fur, his mother's knitting, instead of the silk which
+covered limbs probably not half so robust--but so far as manners went,
+nothing to apologise for or smile at. The accounts all agree in this. If
+he never put himself forward too much, he never withdrew with any
+unworthy shyness from his modest share in the conversation. Sometimes he
+would be roused to eloquent speech, and then the admiring ladies said he
+carried them "off their feet" in the contagion of his enthusiasm and
+emotion. But this was a very strange phenomenon for the Edinburgh
+professors and men of letters to deal with: a novice who had not come
+humbly to be taught, but one who had come to take up his share of the
+inheritance, to sit down among the great, as in his natural place. He
+was not perhaps altogether unmoved by their insane advices to him, one
+of the greatest of lyrical poets, a singer above all--to write a
+tragedy, to give up the language he knew and write his poetry in the
+high English which, alas! he uses in his letters. Not unmoved, and
+seriously inclining to a more lofty measure, he compounded addresses to
+Edinburgh:
+
+    "Edina, Scotia's darling seat!"
+
+and other such intolerable effusions. One can imagine him roaming
+through the fields between the old town and the new, and looking up to
+the "rude rough fortress," and on the other side to the brand-new
+regular lines of building, where
+
+    "Architecture's noble pride
+      Bids elegance and splendour rise,"
+
+and musing in his mind how to celebrate them in polished verse so that
+even the critics may be satisfied--
+
+    "Thy sons, Edina! social, kind,
+      With open arms the stranger hail;
+    Their views enlarged, their liberal mind,
+      Above the narrow, rural vale;
+    Attentive still to sorrow's wail,
+      Or modest merit's silent claim;
+    And never may their sources fail!
+      And never envy blot their name!"
+
+One wonders what the gentlemen said to this in the old town and the
+new--whether it did not confuse them still further, as well intended
+perhaps, but not after all like the "Epistle to Davie," though they had
+all advised him to amend that rustic style. A very confusing business
+altogether--difficult for the kind advisers as well as for the poet, and
+with no outlet that any one could see.
+
+[Illustration: DUGALD STEWART'S MONUMENT]
+
+We have, however, a more agreeable picture of the visitor on another
+occasion when he walked out into the country with Dugald Stewart in a
+spring morning to the hills of Braid and talked that gentle
+philosopher's heart away, not now about Edina's palaces and towers. "He
+told me ... that the sight of so many smoking cottages gave a pleasure
+to his mind which none could understand who had not witnessed like
+himself the happiness and worth which they contained." It is more
+pleasant to think of the poet's dark eyes lighting up as he said this
+than to watch him proud and self-possessed in the drawing-rooms holding
+his own, taking such good care that nobody should divine how his heart
+was beating and his nerves athrill.
+
+But after all there is no such account given of this wonderful visitor
+to Edinburgh as that we have from the after-recollections of a certain
+"lameter" boy who was once present in a house where Burns was a guest.
+The Scott boys from George Square had been admitted to the party which
+they were too young to join in an ordinary way, in order that they might
+see this wonder of the world, the ploughman-poet who was not afraid, but
+behaved as well as any of the gentlemen. And it befell by the happiest
+chance that Burns inquired who was the author of certain verses
+inscribed upon a print which he had been looking at. No one knew but
+young Walter, who we may be sure had not lost a look or a word of the
+stranger, and who had read everything in his invalid childhood. The boy
+was not bold enough to answer the question loud out, but he whispered it
+to some older friend, who told the poet, no doubt with an indication of
+the blushing and eager lad from whom it came, which procured him a word
+and a look never forgotten. But there passed at the same time a thought
+through young Walter's mind, the swift reflection of that never-failing
+criticism of youth which pierces unaware through all wrappings and veils
+of the soul. "I remember I thought Burns's acquaintance with English
+poetry was rather limited; and also that having twenty times the ability
+of Allan Ramsay and of Fergusson, he talked of them with too much
+humility as his models." The much-read boy was a little shocked, no
+doubt disturbed in his secret soul that the poet--so far above any other
+poet that was to be seen about the world in those days--should not have
+known that verse: though indeed men better read than Burns might have
+been excused for their want of acquaintance with a minor poet like
+Langhorne; but how true was the indignant observation, half angry, that
+with "twenty times the ability" it was Allan Ramsay and the still less
+important unfortunate young Fergusson to whom Burns looked up! Did the
+boy wonder perhaps, though too loyal to say it--for criticism at his age
+is always keen--whether there might be a something not quite real in
+that devotion, and ask in the recesses of his mind whether it was
+possible for such a man to be so self-deceived?
+
+There were no doubt various affectations about Burns, as when he talks
+big in his diary of observing character and finding this pursuit the
+greatest entertainment of his life in Edinburgh, with a pretension very
+general among half-educated persons: but there is no reason to believe
+that he was not quite genuine about his predecessors. A poet is not
+necessarily a critic; and Allan Ramsay's fame had been exactly of the
+popular kind which would attract a son of the soil, whereas Fergusson
+was the object of Burns's especial tenderness, pity, and regard. And it
+is touching to recollect that the only sign he left of himself in
+Edinburgh, where for the first time he learned what it was to mix in
+fine company and to feel the freedom of money in his pocket, from which
+he could afford a luxury, was to place a stone over the grave of
+Fergusson in the Canongate Churchyard, where he lay unknown. His
+application to the Kirk-Session for leave to do this is still kept upon
+the books--a curious interruption amid the minutes of church discipline
+and economics. One wonders if that homely memorial is kept as it ought
+to be. It is a memorial not only of the admiration of one poet for
+another, but of Burns's poignant pity--a wellnigh intolerable pang--for
+a young soul who preceded himself in the way of poetry and despair, one
+whose life, destined to better and brighter things, had been flung away
+like a weed on the dismal strand. Only twenty-three years of poetry and
+folly had sufficed that other reckless boy to destroy himself and
+shatter his little lamp of light. Burns was only a few years older, and
+perhaps, though on the heights of triumph, felt something of that
+horrible tide already catching his own feet to sweep him too into the
+abyss. There are few things in the world more pathetic than this tribute
+of his to the victim who had gone before him.
+
+I may perhaps venture to say, with an apology for recurring to a subject
+dealt with in another book, that this poetic visit to Edinburgh reminds
+me of the visit of another poet in every way very different from Burns
+to another city which cannot be supposed to resemble Edinburgh except in
+the wonderful charm and attraction for devotees which she possesses.
+There is indeed no just comparison between Petrarch at Venice and Burns
+at Edinburgh, nothing but the fantastic link, often too subtle to be
+traced, which makes the mind glide or leap over innumerable distances
+and diversities from one thing to another. The Italian poet came
+conferring glory, great as a prince, and attended by much the same
+honours and privileges, though he was but a half priest, the son of an
+exile, in an age and place where birth and family were of infinitely
+more importance than they are now. He was the perfection and flower of
+learning and high culture, and a fame which had reached the point which
+is high-fantastical, and can mount no farther--and he came to a palace
+allotted to him by the Government, and every distinction which it was in
+their power to bestow, and demeaned himself _en bon prince_, adorning
+with skilful eloquent touches of description the glorious scene beneath
+his windows, the pageants at which he was an honoured spectator. Nothing
+could be more unlike the young, shy, proud, yet genial-hearted rustic,
+holding firmly by that magic wand of poetry which was his sole right to
+consideration, and facing the curious, puzzled, patronising world with a
+certain suspicion, a certain defiance, as of one whom no craft or wile
+could betray or pretension daunt--yet ready to melt into an enthusiasm
+almost extravagant when a lovely young woman or a noble youth pushed
+open with a touch the door always ajar, or at least unfastened, of his
+heart.
+
+    "The mother may forget the child
+      That smiles sae sweetly on her knee;
+    But I'll remember thee, Glencairn,
+      And a' that thou hast done for me!"
+
+What Glencairn had done was nothing but kindness, a warm reception which
+not even the poet's susceptibility could think condescending: but he is
+repaid with an exuberant, extravagant gratitude. Such was the man; ever
+afraid to compromise his dignity, but with no measure for the
+overflowings of his heart. Petrarch, so much more assured in his
+eminence and superiority to all living poets, was driven from his palace
+on the Riva and all his delights by the impertinent gibes of some
+foolish young men. But Burns was flattered and caressed to the top of
+his bent, and--forgotten, or at least dropped, and no more thought of.
+He returned to Edinburgh only to find that, the gloss of novelty having
+worn off, his friends were no longer ready to move heaven and earth in
+order to bring him to their parties, though probably had he chosen he
+might have worked himself back "into society" in a slower but more
+permanent fashion. This, however, he did not choose, but fell back among
+the convivial middle class, the undistinguished and over merry, where
+nobody thought it too great humility to refer to Allan Ramsay and
+Fergusson as his models. It must be recollected, however, that his
+second visit to Edinburgh, and what seems in the telling a foolish and
+almost vulgar flirtation, produced one of the most impassioned and
+exquisite songs of love and despair which has ever been written in any
+language.
+
+    "Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
+    Ae farewell, alas! for ever!"
+
+There is a stillness of exhausted feeling in this wonderful utterance
+which is the very soul of despair.
+
+There has been no more remarkable moment in the experience of the town
+which has known so many strange and striking scenes, though its interest
+has little to do with history or even with national feeling. It is pure
+humanity in an unusual development, an episode in the life of the poet
+such as has many less important parallels, but scarcely any so fully
+representative and typical. It discloses to us suddenly, as by a flash
+of light striking into the darkness, the persons, the entertainments,
+the sentiments of a hundred years ago. We make improvements daily in
+external matters, but society--we had almost said humanity--rarely
+learns. There is not the smallest hope that in Edinburgh or elsewhere a
+young man of genius in Burns's position would now be either more wisely
+noticed or more truly benefited by such a period of close contact with
+people who ought by experience and knowledge to know better than he. The
+only thing that is probable is a falling-off, not an advance. I think it
+highly doubtful whether a ploughman from Ayrshire, however superlative
+his genius, would now be received at all in "the best houses" and by the
+first men and women in Edinburgh; and if not in Edinburgh, surely
+nowhere else would such a reception as that given to Burns await the
+untutored poet. The world has seldom another chance permitted to it, and
+in this case I cannot but think it would be worse and not better used.
+
+[Illustration: BURNS'S MONUMENT]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE SHAKSPEARE OF SCOTLAND
+
+
+There are many variations in degree of the greatest human gifts, but
+they are few in kind. The name we have ventured to place at the head of
+this chapter is one not so great as that of Shakspeare, not so
+all-embracing--though widely-embracing beyond any other second--not so
+ideal, not so profound. Walter Scott penetrated with a luminous
+revelation all that was within his scope, the most different kinds and
+classes of men, those whom he loved (and he loved all whom it was
+possible to love) and the few whom he hated, with the same comprehension
+and power of disclosure. But Shakspeare was not restrained by the limits
+of any personal scope or knowledge. He knew Lear and Macbeth, and Hamlet
+and Prospero, though they were beings only of his own creation. He could
+embody the loftiest passion in true flesh and blood, and show us how a
+man can be moved by jealousy or ambition in the highest superlative
+degree and yet be a man with all the claims upon our understanding and
+pity that are possessed by any brother of our own. Nothing like Lear
+ever came in our Scott's way: that extraordinary embodiment of human
+passion and weakness, the forlorn and awful strength of the aged and
+miserable, did not present itself to his large and genial gaze. It would
+not have occurred to him perhaps had he lived to the age of Methuselah.
+He knew not those horrors and dreadful depths of humanity that could
+make such tragic passion possible. But he had his revenge in one way
+even upon Shakspeare. Dogberry and Verges, as types of the muddle-headed
+old watch--pompous, confused, and self-important--are always diverting;
+but they would have been men not all ridiculous had Scott taken them in
+hand--real creatures of flesh and blood, not watchmen in the abstract.
+Our greater poet did not take trouble enough to make them individual,
+his fancy carrying him otherwhere, and leaving him scarce the time to
+put his jotting down. To Shakspeare the great ideals whom he almost
+alone has been able to make into flesh and blood; to Scott all the
+surrounding world, the men as we meet them about the common
+thoroughfares of life. He knows no Rosalind nor Imogen, but on the other
+hand Jeanie Deans and Jenny Headrigg would have been impossible to his
+great predecessor. Both, we may remark, are incapable of a young
+hero--the Claudios and the Bertrams being if anything a trifle worse
+than Henry Morton and Young Lovel. But whereas Shakspeare is greatest
+above that line of the conventional ideal, it is below that Sir Walter
+is famous. The one has no restriction, however high he may soar; the
+other finds nothing so common that he cannot make it immortal.
+
+[Illustration: ST. GILES'S FROM PRINCES STREET]
+
+It is, however, especially in the breadth and largeness of a humanity
+which has scarcely any limit to its sympathy and understanding that the
+great romancist of Scotland resembles the greatest of English poets.
+They are both so great, so broad, so little restrained by any individual
+limitations, that a perverse criticism has made this catholic and
+all-comprehending nature a kind of reproach to both, as though that
+great and limpid mirror of their minds, in which all nature was
+reflected, was less noble than the sharp face of a stone which can catch
+but one ray. They were both subject to political prejudices and
+prepossessions. Shakspeare has made of many a youth of the nineteenth
+century an ardent Lancastrian, ready to pluck a red rose with Somerset
+and die for Margaret and her prince; and Scott in like manner has made
+many a Jacobite, though in the latter case our novelist is too full of
+sense even in the midst of his own inclinations to become ever an
+out-and-out partisan. But, except these prepossessions, they have no
+_parti pris_. Every faction renders up its soul of meaning, the most
+diverse figures unclose themselves side by side. The wit, the scholar,
+the true soldier, the braggart and thief, the Jew and the Christian, the
+Hamlet, hero of all time, and Shallow and Slender from the fat pastures
+of English rural life, come all together, each as true as if on him
+alone the poet's eye had fixed. And Scott is like him, setting before us
+with unerring pencil the old superstitious despot of mediæval France,
+the bustling pedant of St. James's, the ploughmen and shepherds, the
+churchmen, the Border reivers and Highland caterans, the broad country
+lying under a natural illumination, without strain or effort, large and
+temperate as the day. Neither in the greatest poet nor the great
+romancer is there any force put upon the natural fulness of life to
+twist its record into a narrow circle with one motive only. It is the
+round world and all that it inhabits, the grandeur and divinity of a
+universe, that delights them. Their view is large as the vision of God,
+or as nearly so as is given to mortal eyes. It is in this, above all,
+that they resemble each other. In degree Shakspeare, it need not be
+said, is all-transcendent, reaching heights such as no other man has
+reached in delineation and creation: but Scott is of his splendid
+species, one of his kind, the only one among all the many sons of genius
+with whom this island has been blessed, for whom the boldest could make
+such a claim.
+
+Walter Scott belongs to all Scotland. He was, no man more, a lover of
+the woods and fields, of mountain-sides and pastoral braes, of the river
+and forest, Ettrick and Tweed and Yarrow, and Perthshire--that princely
+district, half Highland, half Lowland--and the chain of silvery lochs
+that pierce the mountain shadows through Stirling and Argyle: every
+league of the fair country he loved. From the Western Isles and the
+Orkneys to the very fringe of debatable land which parts the northern
+and the southern half of Great Britain--is his, and has tokens to show
+of his presence. When he came home to die at the end of almost the most
+tragic yet most noble chapter of individual history which our century
+has known, it was the longing of his sick heart above all other that he
+should not be so unblest as to lay his bones far from the Tweed.
+
+But yet, above all other places, it was to Edinburgh that Scott
+belonged. His birth, his growth, the familiar scenes of his youth, his
+education and training, the business and work of his life, were all
+associated with the ancient capital. George Square--with its homely and
+comfortable old-fashion, which has nothing to do with antiquity, the
+first breaking out of the Edinburgh citizens into large space and air
+outside the strait boundaries of the city, with the Meadows and their
+trees beyond, and all the sunshine of the south side to warm the deep
+_corps de logis_, the substantial and solid mansions which are so grey
+without yet so full of warmth and comfort within--was the first home he
+knew, and his residence up to manhood. No boy could be more an Edinburgh
+boy. Lame though he was, he climbed every dangerous point upon the
+hills, and knew the recesses of Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags by
+heart before he knew his Latin grammar. His schoolboy fights, his
+snowballing, the little armies of urchins set in battle array, the
+friendly feuds of gentle and simple (sometimes attended by hard knocks,
+as among his own Liddesdale farmers), fill the streets with amusing
+recollections. And when he was promoted in due time to the Parliament
+House and to all the frolics of the youthful Bar, and his proud father
+steps forth in the snuff-coloured suit which Mr. Saunders Fairford wore
+after him, to tell his friends that "my son Walter passed his private
+Scots law examination with good approbation," and on Friday "puts on the
+gown and gives a bit chack of dinner to his friends and acquaintances,
+as is the custom," how familiar and kindly is the scene, how the sober
+house lights up, and the good wine about which we have known all our
+lives comes out of the cellar and the jokes fly round--Parliament House
+pleasantries and recollections of the witticisms of the Bench gradually
+giving place to the sallies of the wild young wits, the shaft from the
+new-bent bow of the young advocate himself. Nothing can be more true and
+simple than he is through all the tale, or more real than the Edinburgh
+atmosphere; the fun that is mostly in the foreground; the work that is
+pushed into corners yet always gets done, though it has not the air of
+being important except to the excellent father whose steps on the stair
+are the signal for the disappearance of a chess-board into a drawer or a
+romance under the papers,--well-known tricks of youth which we have all
+been guilty of. There is a curious evidence, however, in Lockhart's
+_Life_, less known than the usual tales of frolic and apparent idleness,
+of the professional trick of Scott's handwriting, which showed how
+steadily he must have laboured even in his delightful, easy, innocently
+irregular youth. "I allude particularly to a sort of flourish at the
+bottom of the page, originally, I presume, adopted in engrossing as a
+safeguard against the intrusion of a forged line between the legitimate
+text and the attesting signature. He was quite sensible," adds his
+biographer, "that this ornament might as well be dispensed with; and his
+family often heard him mutter after involuntarily performing it, 'There
+goes the old shop again!'" Which of us now could see that flourish
+without the water coming into our eyes?
+
+[Illustration: THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH]
+
+It is impossible to eradicate, from the minds of youthful students at
+least, the admiration which always attends the performances of the young
+man who gains his successes without apparently working for them. As a
+matter of fact, it is the work which we ought to respect rather than
+that apparently fortuitous accidental result: but nothing will ever cure
+us of our native delight in an effect which appears to have no vulgar
+cause, and great has been the misery produced by this prejudice to many
+a youth who has begun with the tradition of easy triumph and presumed
+upon it to the loss of all his after-life. But when there shows in the
+apparent idler a sign like this of many a long hour's labour ignored and
+lightly thought of, covered over with a pleasant veil of fun and ease
+and happy leisure, the combination is one that no heart can resist.
+
+Scott had read everything he could lay his hands on while he was still a
+child, and boasted himself a virtuoso, that is, according to his
+explanation, at six years old, "one who wishes and will know
+everything;" but his boyish tastes and triumphs became more and more
+athletic as he gained a firmer use of his bodily powers. No diseased
+consciousness of disability in respect to his lameness, like that which
+embittered Byron, could find a place in the rough wholesome atmosphere
+of the Edinburgh High School and playgrounds, where nobody was too
+delicate about reminding him of his infirmity, and the stout-hearted
+little hero took it like a man, offering "to fight mounted," and being
+tied upon a board accordingly for his first combat. "You may take him
+for a poor lameter," said one of the Eldin Clerks, a sailor, with equal
+friendly frankness to a party of strangers, "but he is the first to
+begin a row, and the last to end it." To such a youth the imperfection
+was a virtue the more. When the jovial band strolled forth upon long
+walks the cheerful "lameter" bargained for three miles an hour, and kept
+up with the best. They would start at five in the morning, beguiling the
+way with endless pranks, on one occasion at least without a single
+sixpence in all their youthful pockets with which to refresh themselves
+during a thirty miles' round. "We asked every now and then at a cottage
+door for a drink of water; and one or two of the goodwives, observing
+our worn-out looks, brought forth milk instead of water, so with that
+and hips and haws we came in little the worse." Little they cared for
+fatigue and inconvenience; they were things to laugh over when the lads
+got back. Scott only wished he had been a player on the flute, like
+George Primrose in the _Vicar of Wakefield_, and his father shook his
+head and doubted the boy was born "for nae better than a gangrel
+scrapegut"--reproach of little gravity, as the expedition so poorly
+provisioned was of little harm. Thus the young gentlemen bore cheerfully
+what would have been hardship to a ploughman, and gibed even at each
+other's weaknesses without a spark of unkindness, which made the
+weakness itself into a robust matter of fact not to be brooded over.
+High susceptibility might have suffered from the treatment, but high
+susceptibility generally means egotism and inordinate self-esteem,
+qualities which it is the very best use of public school and college to
+conjure away.
+
+Nothing indeed more cheerful, more full of endless frolic and enjoyment,
+fresh air and fun and feeling, ever existed than the young manhood of
+Walter Scott. Talk of Scotch gravity and seriousness! The houses in
+which they were received as they roamed about--farmers' or lairds', it
+was all the same to the merry lads--were only too uproarious in their
+mirth; with songs and laughter they made the welkin ring. At home in
+Edinburgh the fun might be less noisy, but it was not less sincere. In
+the very Parliament House itself the young men clustered in their
+corner, telling each other the last good things, and with much ado to
+keep their young laughter within the bounds of decorum. The judge on the
+Bench, the Lord President himself, greatest potentate of all, was not
+more safe from the audacious wits than poor Peter Peebles. There was
+nothing they did not laugh at, themselves and each other as much as Lord
+Braxfield, and all the humours of a town more full of anecdote and jest,
+laughable eccentricity and keen satire and amusing comment, than any
+town in literature. The best joke of all perhaps was Sydney Smith's
+famous _bon mot_ about the surgical operation, which no doubt he meant
+as an excellent joke in the midst of that laughing community, where the
+fun was only too fast and furious. Nowadays, when life is more temperate
+and the world in general has mended its manners, the habits of that
+period fill us with dismay; but perhaps after all there was less harm
+done than appears, and not more of the fearful tribute of young life
+which our fated race is always paying than is still exacted amid a
+population much less generally addicted to excess. But that of course
+increased rather than diminished the jovial aspect of Edinburgh life
+when Walter Scott was young, and when the few cares he had in hand, the
+occasional bit of work, interfered very little with the warm and lively
+social life in the midst of which he had been born. He dwelt, in every
+sense of the word, among his own people, his friends, the sons of his
+father's friends, his associates all belonging to families like his own,
+of good if modest rank and lineage, the "kent folk" of whom Scotland
+loves to keep up the record. This, which is perhaps one of the greatest
+advantages with which a young man can enter on life, was his from his
+infancy. He and his companions had been at school together, together in
+the college classes, in frequent social meetings, on the floor of the
+Parliament House. Familiar faces and kind greetings were round him
+wherever he went. No doubt these circumstances, so genial, so friendly
+and favourable, helped to perfect the most kind, the most generous and
+sunshiny of natures. And thus no man could be more completely at once
+the best product and most complete representative of his native soil.
+
+His life too was as prosperous and full of good fortune and happiness as
+a man could desire. He married at twenty-six, and a few years later
+received the appointment of Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire, which
+rendered him independent of the precarious incomings of his profession,
+and made the pleasure he always took in roaming the country into a
+necessary part of his life's work. He had begun a playful and
+pleasurable authorship some time before with some translations from the
+German, Bürger's _Lenore_ and Goethe's _Götz von Berlichingen_--the
+first of which was hastily made into a little book, daintily printed and
+bound, in order to help his suit with an early love, so easy, so little
+premeditated, was this beginning. With equal simplicity and absence of
+intention he slid into the Border Minstrelsy, which he intended not for
+the beginning of a long literary career, but in the first place for "a
+job" to Ballantyne the printer, whom he had persuaded to establish
+himself in Edinburgh--the best of printers and the most attached of
+faithful and humble friends--and for fun and the pleasure of scouring
+the country in pursuit of ballads, which was a search he had already
+entered upon to his great enjoyment. From this nothing was so easy as to
+float into original poetry, inspired by the same impulse and inspiration
+as his ballads. One of the ladies of the house of Buccleuch told him the
+story of the elfin page, and begged him to make a ballad of it; and from
+this suggestion the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ arose. The time was ripe
+for giving forth all that had been unconsciously stirring in his teeming
+fertile imagination. It came at once like a sudden bursting into flower,
+with a splendid _éclosion_, out-bursting, involuntary, unlaborious,
+delightful to himself as to mankind. From henceforward his name stood in
+one of the highest places of literature and his fame was assured.
+
+[Illustration: PLAYFAIR'S MONUMENT, CALTON HILL]
+
+Nothing could be more unintentional, more spontaneous, almost careless;
+a thing done for his pleasure far more than with any serious purpose;
+nothing--except the later beginning, equally unintentional, of a still
+more important stream of production. The poems of Scott will always be
+open to much criticism; even those who love them most--and there are
+many whose love for this fresh, free, spontaneous, delightful fountain
+of song is strong enough to repress every impulse of criticism and
+transport it beyond the reach of comment to a romantic enchanted land of
+its own, where it flows in native sunshine and delight for
+ever--declining to pronounce any definite judgment as to their
+greatness. But to Scott in his after-work we are inclined to say no man
+worthy of expressing an opinion can give any but the highest place. It
+is true, and the fact has to be admitted with astonishment and regret,
+that one great writer, his countryman, speaking the same language and in
+every way capable of pronouncing judgment, has failed to appreciate Sir
+Walter. We cannot tell why, nor pretend to solve that amazing question.
+Perhaps it was the universal acclaim, the consent of every voice, that
+awoke the germ of perversity that was in Thomas Carlyle: an impulse of
+contradiction, especially in face of an opinion too unanimous, which is
+one of our national characteristics: perhaps one of those prejudices
+pertinacious as the rugged peasant nature itself, which sometimes warps
+the clearest judgment; perhaps, but this we find it difficult to
+believe, a narrower intensity and passion of meaning in himself which
+found little reflection in the great limpid mirror which Scott held up
+to nature. The beginning of Scott's chief and greatest work was as
+fortuitous, as accidental (if we may use the word), as the poetry. He
+took up by some passing impulse the idea of a prose story on the events
+of the 'forty-five, which perhaps he considered too recent to be treated
+in poetry; wrote (everybody knows the story) half a volume, read it to a
+trusted critic, who probably considered it foolish for a man who had
+risen to the heights of fame by one kind of composition to risk himself
+now with another. It is very likely that Scott himself was easily moved
+to the same opinion. He tossed the MS. into a drawer, and gave it up.
+There had been no special motive in the effort, and it cost him nothing
+to put it aside, to whistle for his dogs, and go out for a long round by
+wood and hill, or to take his gun or rod, or to entertain his
+visitors--all of which were more rational, more entertaining, and
+altogether important things to do than the writing of a dull story,
+which after all was not his line. For years the beginning chapters of
+_Waverley_ lay there unknown. They lay very quietly, we may well
+believe, not bursting the dull enclosure as they might have done had the
+Baron of Bradwardine been yet born; but that good young Waverley was
+always a little dull, and might have slept till doomsday had nothing
+occurred to disturb his rest. One day, however, some fishing tackle was
+wanted for the use of one of Scott's perpetual visitors at
+Ashiestiel--not even for himself, for some chance man taking advantage
+of the Shirra's open house. Visitor arriving in a good hour! fortunate
+sorner, to be thereafter blessed of all men! Let us hope he got just the
+lines he wanted and had a good day's sport. For in his search Scott's
+eyes lighted upon the bundle of written pages. "Hallo!" he must have
+said to himself, "there they are! Let's see if they're as bad as Willie
+Erskine thought." In his candid soul he did not think they were very
+good, unless it was perhaps the description of Waverley Honour, a great
+mild English mansion which he would admire all the more that it was so
+unlike Tully Veolan. Perhaps it was the contrast which brought into his
+teeming brain a sudden vision of that "Scottish manor-house sixty years
+since," which he went off straightway and built in his eighth chapter
+with the baron and all his surroundings, which must have been awaiting
+impatient that happy moment to burst into life.
+
+And thus by spontaneous accident, by delightful, careless chance, so to
+speak, the thing was done. One wonders by what equally, nay more
+fortunate unthought-of haphazard it was, that the country rogue
+Shakspeare, his bright eyes shining with mock penitence for the wildness
+of his woodland career, and the air and the accent of the fields still
+on his honeyed lips, first found out that he could string a story
+together for the theatre and make the old knights and the fair ladies
+live again. Of this there is no record, but only enough presumption, we
+think, to make it sufficiently clear that the discovery which has ever
+since been one of the chief glories of the English name, and added the
+most wonderful immortal inhabitants to the population, was made, like
+Scott's, by what seems a divine chance, without apparent preparation or
+likelihood. In our day much more importance is given to a development
+which the scientific thinker would fondly hope to be traceable by all
+the leadings of race and inheritance into an evolution purely natural
+and to be expected; while, on the other hand, there is nothing which
+appears more splendid and dignified to others than the aspect of a life
+devoted to poetry, in which the man becomes but a kind of solemn
+incubator of his own thoughts. It will always be, however, an additional
+delight to the greater part of the human race to see how here and there
+the greatest of all heavenly tools is found unawares by the happy hand
+that can wield it, no one knowing who has put it there ready for his
+triumphant grasp when the fated moment comes.
+
+Everybody will remember as a pendant--but one so much more grave that we
+hesitate to cite it, though the coincidence is curious--the pause made
+by Dante in the beginning of the _Inferno_, which resembles so exactly
+the pause in Scott's career. The great Florentine had written seven
+cantos of his wonderful poem when the rush of his affairs carried him
+away from all such tranquil work and left the Latin fragment, among
+other more vulgar papers, shovelled hastily into some big cassone in the
+house in Florence from which he was a banished man. It was found there
+after five years by a nephew who would fain have tried his prentice hand
+upon the poem, yet finally took the better part of sending it to its
+author--who immediately resumed _Io dico sequitando_, in a burst of
+satisfaction to have recovered what he must have begun with far more
+zeal and intention than Scott. The resemblance, however, which is so
+curiously exact, the seven cantos and the seven chapters, the five
+years' interval, the satisfaction of the work resumed, is, different as
+are the men and their work, one of those fantastic parallels which are
+delightful to the fantastic soul. Nothing could be more unlike than that
+dark and splendid poem to Scott's sunshiny and kindly art; nothing less
+resembling than the proud embittered exile with his hand against every
+man, and the genial romancer whose heart overflowed with the milk of
+human kindness. Yet this strange occurrence in both lives takes an
+enhanced interest from the curious dissimilarity which makes the
+repetition of the fact more curious still.
+
+The sudden burst into light and publicity of a gift which had been
+growing through all the changes of private life, of the wonderful stream
+of knowledge, recollection, divination, boundless acquaintance with and
+affection for human nature, which had gladdened the Edinburgh streets,
+the Musselburgh sands, the Southland moors and river-sides, since ever
+Walter Scott had begun to roam among them, with his cheerful band of
+friends, his good stories, his kind and gentle thoughts--was received by
+the world with a burst of delighted recognition to which we know no
+parallel. We do not know, alas! what happened when the audience in the
+Globe Theatre made a similar discovery. Perhaps the greater gift, by its
+very splendour, would be less easily perceived in the dazzling of a
+glory hitherto unknown, and obscured it may be by jealousies of actors
+and their inaptitude to do justice to the wonderful poetry put into
+their hands. But of that we know nothing. We know, however, that there
+were no two opinions about _Waverley_. It took the world by storm, which
+had had no such new sensation and no such delightful amusement for many
+a day. It was not only the beginning of a new and wonderful school in
+romance, a fresh chapter in literature, but the revelation of a region
+and a race unknown. Scotland had begun to glow in the sunshine of
+poetry, in glimpses of Burns's westland hills and fields, of Scott's
+moss-troopers and romantic landscapes, visions of battle and old
+tradition: but the wider horizon of a life more familiar, of a broad
+country full of nature, full of character, running over with fun and
+pawky humour, thrilling with high enthusiasm and devotion, where men
+were still ready to risk everything in life for a falling cause, and
+other men not unwilling to pick up the spoils, was a discovery and
+surprise more delightful than anything that had happened to the
+generation. The books flew through the island like magic, penetrating to
+corners unthought of, uniting gentle and simple in an enthusiasm beyond
+parallel. How the multitude got at them at all it is difficult to
+understand, for these were the days of really high prices, before the
+actual cost of a book got modified by one-half as now, and when there
+were as yet no cheap editions. _Waverley_ was printed in three small
+volumes at the cost of a guinea. We believe that to buy books was more
+usual then than now, and there were circulating libraries everywhere,
+conveying perhaps the stream of literature more evenly over the country
+than can be attained by one gigantic Mudie. At all events; by whatever
+means it was procured, _Waverley_ and its successors were read
+everywhere, not only in great houses but in small, wherever there was
+intelligence and a taste for books; and the interest, the curiosity, the
+eagerness, were everywhere overwhelming. I have heard of girls in a
+dressmaker's workroom who kept the last volume in a drawer, from whence
+it was read aloud by one to the rest, the drawer being closed hurriedly
+whenever the mistress came that way. From this humble scene to the
+highest in the land, where the Prince Regent sat--
+
+    "His table spread with tea and toast,
+    Death-warrants, and the _Morning Post_,"
+
+these volumes went everywhere. One of them lies before me now in rough
+boards of paper, with the "blue back" of which one of Scott's
+correspondents talks, not a prepossessing volume, but independent of
+externals and all things else except its own native excellence and
+power.
+
+For fifteen years after, this stream of living literature poured forth
+in the largest generous volume like a great river, through every region
+where English was spoken or known. His work was as the march of a
+battalion, always increasing, new detachments appearing suddenly, now an
+individual, now a group, to join the line. The Baron of Bradwardine with
+his attendant bailie; Vich Ian Vohr and noble Evan Dhu, and all the
+clan; the family at Ellangowan and that at Charlieshope, good Dandie and
+all his delightful belongings; Jock Jabos and the rest; Monkbarns and
+Edie Ochiltree, and all the pathos of the Mucklebackits; Bailie Nicol
+Jarvie and the Dougal Cratur; humours of the clachan and the hillside;
+Jeanie Deans in her perfect humbleness and truth. It would be vain to
+attempt to name the new inhabitants of Scotland who appeared out of the
+unseen wherever Scott moved. Neither to himself nor to his audience
+could it seem that these friends of all were new created, invented by
+any man. Scott, who alone could do it, withdrew the veil that had
+concealed them. He opened up an entire country, a full world of men and
+women, so living, so various, with their natural garb of fitting
+language, and their heart of natural sentiment, and the thoughts which
+they must have been thinking, by inalienable right of their humanity.
+There might have been better plots or more carefully constructed
+stories; as indeed in life, heaven knows, all our stories might be much
+better constructed; but could we conceive it possible that these, our
+country-folk and friends, could be dismissed again off the face of the
+earth, how impoverished, how diminished, would Scotland be! The want of
+them is more than we could contemplate, and we can well understand how
+our country must have appeared to the world a poor little turbulent
+country, without warmth or wealth, before these representatives of a
+robust and manifold race were born.
+
+Yet, amid the delightful enrichment of these productions to the nation
+and the world, the man himself who produced them was perhaps the finest
+revelation of all. And here he transcends for once the larger kindred
+genius of whom we do not know, yet believe, that he was such a man as
+Scott, though better off in one way and less well in others. Shakspeare
+must have been somewhat oppressed with noble patrons, which Scott never
+was--patrons to whom his own splendid courtesy and the magnifying
+glamour in his poetic eyes must sometimes have made him more flattering
+than was needful, overwhelming them with magnificent words; but on the
+other hand he had not those modern drawbacks under which Scott's great
+career was so bitterly burdened, the strain for money, the constant
+combat with debt and liability. To bear the first yoke must have taken
+much of a man's strength and tired him exceedingly: but to bear the
+second is perhaps the severest test to which any buoyant spirit can be
+put. And from the very beginning of his career as a novelist Scott had
+this burden upon his shoulders. He bore the chains very lightly at first
+with a hundred hairbreadth 'scapes which made the struggle--as even that
+struggle can be made while the sufferer is strong and young--almost
+exhilarating, with a glee in the relief and the power to surmount every
+difficulty, and a faith strengthened by numberless examples of the
+certainty--however dark things might seem up to the very last moment--of
+bursting through, with an exquisite sensation of success, the hardest
+coil of circumstance. But as Scott grew older these obstacles grew
+stronger; he could not put sense or prudence into the heads of his
+colleagues, and it was hard to teach himself, the most liberal, the most
+hospitable and princely of entertainers, those habits of frugality which
+are never harder to learn than by a Scots gentleman of the ancient
+strain accustomed to keep open house. I do not think it has ever been
+acknowledged that there is in this desperate struggle to keep afloat a
+certain intoxication of its own. To foil your pursuers, your enemies,
+whether they take the form of armed assailants or of pressing creditors,
+by ever another and another daring combination, by sudden reliefs
+unthought of, by a bold _coup_ executed at the very moment when the
+crisis seems inevitable, by all the happy yet desperate chances of
+warfare, has a fascination in it which no one could conceive as
+attending a sordid struggle for money. The pursuit becomes exciting,
+breathless, in proportion as it becomes desperate. Sometimes, when all
+the stars in their courses have seemed to be fighting against the
+combatant, a sudden aid like the very interposition of heaven will bring
+him safety; and a confidence in this interposition takes possession of
+him. He does not see how deliverance can come, but it will come. His
+labouring breast strains, his brain whirls, he is at his last gasp: when
+all at once the heart leaps up in his bosom, the wheels in his head
+stand still, a flash of satisfaction comes over him. Once more and once
+more, again and again, at the last gasp of the struggle he is saved.
+
+No doubt something of this was in the long and desperate fight which
+Scott waged with the creditors of the Ballantynes, who were also his
+own. The worst of the struggle is that it almost legalises a prodigality
+which to men always fixed on solid ground would be impossible. The
+conviction that the money will come somehow, added to the still more
+intoxicating conviction that this somehow depends oftenest upon your own
+unrivalled power of work, and the confidence which all men have in you,
+permits, almost sanctions, a yielding to personal temptations, and the
+indulgence of a little taste and inclination of your own in the midst of
+so many burdens for others. Thus Abbotsford grew, of which all the
+critics have talked as if its, alas! somewhat sham antiquity and its few
+acres had been the cause of all the trouble. One could have wished that
+Scott's taste had been more true, that he had so dearly bought and so
+fondly collected curiosities more worthy, that he should have had a
+genuine old house, a direct and happy lineage, son and son's son, to
+bear his name--not to posterity, with whom it was safe, but on Tweedside
+among the other Scotts,--a kindly and not ignoble ambition. But he has
+himself forestalled the criticisms of the antiquarians by that
+delightful record of good Monkbarns's mistakes and deceptions which
+would make us forgive him for any "lang ladle" or fictitious relic; and
+it would be a hard heart that would be otherwise than thankful that he
+had so much as Abbotsford to indemnify him for his labours and trials.
+As the time approached when he was no longer able to maintain that
+gallant struggle, and the power of labour failed and confidence was
+lost, the position of the man becomes more tragical than the spectator
+can well bear to look upon. Who can read unmoved the story of the time
+when his faithful friends (though it was their necessities that had
+pulled him down to the ground of this bitter failure) had to come and
+tell him that his last romance was scarcely worth paper and print? who
+could refrain from going down on his knees to kiss that failing hand
+which could now only bring forth Count Robert of Paris where once it had
+set out in glorious array of battle Sir Kenneth of Scotland, and the
+stout old Constable of Chester, and Front de Boeuf, and the Scottish
+archers--and which still could not be inactive, but would struggle on,
+on--to pay that miserable money and leave behind a spotless name!
+
+There is one melancholy and almost terrible consolation in such a
+heartbreaking record, terrible from the light it throws upon the
+constitution of human nature and the conditions of that supreme sympathy
+which is the noblest kind of fame. Had Sir Walter been able to throw his
+burdens from him, had he loosed the millstone from his neck and retired
+in full credit and comfort to his Abbotsford to pass the conclusion of
+peaceful and glorious days on the banks of the Tweed--had we known him
+only as the greatest romancist of the world, the next to Shakspeare in
+large creation and revelation of mankind, proud had every Scotsman been
+of his name, and fondly had the nation cherished his memory. But when
+his brilliant and wonderful life fell under the shadow of all these
+tragical clouds, when its course was arrested by obstacles which are
+usually unsurmountable, before which any other man must have broken
+down, when he stood in the face of fate, in the face of every
+misfortune, broken in health, in hope, in power, a lonely man where he
+had been the centre of every joy in life, an enchanter with his magic
+wand broken and his witchery gone--then, and then only, does Scott
+attain his highest greatness and give the world most noble assurance of
+a man. His diary as his life dwindles away, that life once so splendid
+and so full, is like the noblest poem--its broken and falling sentences
+go direct to the heart. _Fuimus_ was never written more grandly, with
+more noble patience and valour. Without this downfall his triumph might
+have been but as the other triumph--the tragedy of the conclusion is a
+sight for men and angels. Lockhart, who preserves the record for us,
+becomes for the time the greatest, with a subject more moving, more
+noble, than any that his hero had selected from the records of the ages.
+The pity and anguish grow too much for the spectator. We are spectators
+no longer, but mournful and devoted retainers standing about, all hushed
+and silent, scarcely able either to shed or to restrain the choking
+tears.
+
+One asks one's self, Is this the cost of supreme human power? is it to
+be bought by nothing but the agony in which failure, real or apparent,
+is a part, and in which all the exquisite tenement of reputation,
+happiness, and delightsome life seems to crumble down like a house of
+cards before our eyes? Dread question for the genius of the future, sad
+yet sublime problem of the past! At all events it was so in the life of
+Scott, which in all its greatness was never so great, so touching, so
+secure of love and honour, as in the moment when his weapons fell from
+his hands and his genius and being alike failed, breaking down in a last
+supreme struggle for justice and honour and fair dealing, to avoid what
+he thought disgrace and the intolerable stigma of having done any man
+wrong.
+
+It is a penalty of such greatness, especially in the midst of an
+enthusiastic and unanimous country, that it becomes more or less a thing
+to trade upon, the subject of vague patriotic vapourings, and much froth
+of foolish talk from uninstructed lips in the following generations. As
+Stratford-on-Avon is in respect to Shakspeare all Scotland is in respect
+to Burns and Scott. It has even become a mark of culture and superiority
+among certain fine spirits in consequence to pretend to despise the
+former of these names--perhaps really to despise it, for there is no
+fathom that can sound the depths of human foolishness even in the
+learned and wise. The vulgarity of fame when it becomes the cry of the
+most prosaic is, however, calculated justly to alarm the literary soul,
+and in the excess of Scott monuments, and wooden quaighs, and tartan
+paper-knives, there is a damping and depressing quality which we must
+all acknowledge.
+
+[Illustration: SIR WALTER SCOTT'S HOUSE]
+
+We need not, however, in these follies forget the illuminating presence
+of Scott in the midst of all the picturesque scenes of what he has
+proudly called "mine own romantic town." From the High School Yards and
+"the kittle nine steps," from George Square, lying cosy but grey in the
+hollow amid the enlarged and beautiful openings of the Meadows, to the
+Parliament House, withdrawn in the square, once blocked by the Old
+Tolbooth, now confronted solely by an embellished and restored
+cathedral, and to the sober street on the other side of the hollow,
+where to 39 North Castle Street he took his bride and set up his
+independent home, there is no corner of Edinburgh where his step and
+voice have not been. And some of the most characteristic scenes which we
+can call to mind in recent history rise before us in his narrative as if
+we had been there. The Porteous Mob riots in our ears, the flare of the
+sudden fire at the gates of the Tolbooth, the blinding smoke, the tramp
+of the crowd, the sudden concentrated force of that many-headed
+multitude stilled by stern resolve into unity and action, are as visible
+as if they had happened yesterday. And after ransacking all the serious
+volumes that tell the story and picture the aspect of old Edinburgh, we
+turn back to that tale, and for the first time see the tortuous passage
+between the church and the Tolbooth, the dark old prison with its lofty
+turrets, the Luckenbooths linked on to its dark shadow, oppressing the
+now wide thoroughfare of the High Street, where these buildings have
+left no trace. No topographical record or painstaking print comes within
+a hundred miles of that picture, dashed in boldly by the way, to the
+entrancing tale. I cannot refrain from placing here one or two
+vignettes, which I have no doubt the artist himself will allow to
+surpass his best efforts, and which set the landscape before us with a
+distinct yet ideal and poetical grace which pencil and graver can very
+seldom equal. The first is of the exterior aspect of Edinburgh.
+
+    "Marching in this manner they speedily reached an eminence, from
+    which they could view Edinburgh stretching along the ridgy hill
+    which slopes eastward from the Castle. The latter, being in a state
+    of siege, or rather of blockade, by the northern insurgents, who had
+    already occupied the town for two or three days, fired at intervals
+    upon such parties of Highlanders as exposed themselves, either on
+    the main street, or elsewhere in the vicinity of the fortress. The
+    morning being calm and fair, the effect of this dropping fire was to
+    invest the Castle in wreaths of smoke, the edges of which dissipated
+    slowly in the air, while the central veil was darkened ever and anon
+    by fresh clouds poured forth from the battlements; the whole giving,
+    by the partial concealment, an appearance of grandeur and gloom,
+    rendered more terrific when Waverley reflected on the cause by which
+    it was produced, and that each explosion might ring some brave man's
+    knell."
+
+The second introduces us to the interior of the city.
+
+    "Under the guidance of his trusty attendant, Colonel Mannering,
+    after threading a dark lane or two, reached the High Street, then
+    clanging with the voices of oyster-women and the bells of pie-men,
+    for it had, as his guide assured him, just 'chappit eight upon the
+    Tron.' It was long since Mannering had been in the street of a
+    crowded metropolis, which, with its noise and clamour, its sounds of
+    trade, of revelry and of license, its variety of lights, and the
+    eternally changing bustle of its hundred groups, offers, by night
+    especially, a spectacle which, though composed of the most vulgar
+    materials when they are separately considered, has, when they are
+    combined, a striking and powerful effect on the imagination. The
+    extraordinary height of the houses was marked by lights, which,
+    glimmering irregularly along their front, ascended so high among the
+    attics, that they seemed at length to twinkle in the middle sky.
+    This _coup d'oeil_, which still subsists in a certain degree, was
+    then more imposing, owing to the uninterrupted range of buildings on
+    each side, which, broken only at the space where the North Bridge
+    joins the main street, formed a superb and uniform Place, extending
+    from the front of the Luckenbooths to the head of the Canongate, and
+    corresponding in breadth and length to the uncommon height of the
+    buildings on either side."
+
+Since then this great Place has become more majestic, as well as more
+open, by the clearing away of the Luckenbooths: but nothing can be finer
+than the touch of the graphic yet reticent pencil which sets down before
+us the glimmering of the irregular lights which seemed at last to
+twinkle in the middle sky. This was how the main street of Edinburgh
+still appeared when Scott himself was a boy, and no doubt he must have
+caught the aspect of the previous sketch on some king's birthday or
+other public holiday, the 4th of June perhaps, that familiar festival in
+other regions, when the guns of the Castle were saluting and the smoke
+hanging about those heights like a veil.
+
+It was one of the privations of Scott's life as it began to fall into
+its last subdued and suffering stage that he had to give up his
+Edinburgh house and the cheerful company which had so long made his
+winters pleasant. He loved the country and his home there at all
+seasons, as the readers of the poetical chapters of friendly dedication
+and communing addressed to different friends between the cantos of
+_Marmion_ will well remember: but yet the yearly change, the natural
+transfer of life in the short days to the cheerful surroundings of town,
+the twinkling of those very lights, the assembling of bright faces, the
+meeting of old friends, were always dear to him, and this sacrifice was
+not one of the least which he made during the tremendous struggle of his
+waning years.
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH]
+
+With no other name could we so fitly close the story of our ancient
+capital, a story fitfully told with many breaks and omissions, yet
+offering some thread of connection to link together the different eras
+of a picturesque and characteristic national life. Had space and
+knowledge permitted, there is, in the records of Scottish law alone,
+much that is interesting, along with a still larger contribution of wit
+and humour and individual character, to the elucidation of the period
+which passed between the end of the history of Edinburgh under her
+native kings and the beginning of her brilliant record under the modern
+reign of literature and poetry. This book, however, does not pretend to
+set forth the Edinburgh of the Kirk or the Parliament House, each of
+which has an existing record of its own. Seated on the rocks which are
+more old than any history, though those precipices are now veiled with
+verdure and softness, and the iron way of triumphant modern science runs
+at their feet; with her crown of sacred architecture hanging over her
+among the mists, and the little primeval shrine mounted upon her highest
+ridge; with her palace, all too small for the requirements of an
+enlarged and splendid royalty, and the great crouched and dormant
+sentinel of nature watching over her through all the centuries; with her
+partner, sober and ample, like a comely matron, attended by all the
+modern arts and comforts, seated at the old mother's feet,--Edinburgh
+can never be less than royal, one of the crowned and queenly cities of
+the world. It does not need for this distinction that there should be
+millions of inhabitants within her walls, or all the great threads of
+industry and wealth gathered in her hands. The pathos of much that is
+past and over for ever, the awe of many tragedies, a recollection almost
+more true than any reality of the present, of ages and glories gone--add
+a charm which the wealthiest and greatest interests of to-day cannot
+give, to the city, always living, always stirring, where she stands amid
+traditionary smoke and mist, the grey metropolis of the North, the
+Edinburgh of a thousand fond associations,
+
+    Our Own Romantic Town.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+THE END
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Printed by R. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh_
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Royal Edinburgh, by Margaret Oliphant
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Royal Edinburgh, by Margaret Oliphant
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Royal Edinburgh
+       Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets
+
+Author: Margaret Oliphant
+
+Illustrator: George Reid
+
+Release Date: June 5, 2008 [EBook #25701]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROYAL EDINBURGH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1>ROYAL EDINBURGH</h1>
+
+<h2>HER SAINTS, KINGS, PROPHETS AND POETS</h2>
+
+
+<p class='center'>'Mine own romantic town.' <span class='smcap'>Marmion</span></p>
+
+
+<p class='center' style="margin-top: 4em;">BY<br />
+<span style="font-size: x-large;">MRS. OLIPHANT<br /></span>
+AUTHOR OF 'MAKERS OF FLORENCE,' 'MAKERS OF VENICE,' ETC.</p>
+
+<p class='center'  style="margin-top: 4em;">WITH ILLUSTRATIONS<br />
+BY<br />
+<span style="font-size: x-large;">GEORGE REID, R.S.A.</span></p>
+
+<p class='center'  style="margin-top: 4em;">LONDON<br />
+MACMILLAN AND CO.<br />
+AND NEW YORK<br />
+<br />
+1891</p>
+
+<p class='center'><i>All rights reserved</i></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 397px;"><a name="Frontispiece" id="Frontispiece"></a>
+<img src="images/illus_001.jpg" width="397" height="600" alt="ST. GILES&#39;S FROM THE LAWNMARKET" title="" />
+<span class="caption">ST. GILES&#39;S FROM THE LAWNMARKET</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p class='center'>
+<i>First Edition (Medium 8vo) 1890</i><br />
+<i>Second Edition (Crown 8vo) 1891</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class='center'>TO MY OLD FRIEND<br />
+<br />
+ALEXANDER MACMILLAN</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">{ix}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#PART_I">PART I</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>MARGARET OF SCOTLAND, ATHELING&mdash;QUEEN AND SAINT</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' style="padding-top: 2em;"><a href="#PART_II">PART II</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>THE STEWARDS OF SCOTLAND</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' style="padding-top: 1em;"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>James I. Poet and Legislator</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_38">38</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>James II: with the Fiery Face</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_80">80</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>James III: the Man of Peace</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>James IV: the Knight-Errant</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_155">155</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>James V: the last of the Heroic Age</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_200">200</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">{x}</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' style="padding-top: 2em;"><a href="#PART_III">PART III</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>THE TIME OF THE PROPHETS</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' style="padding-top: 1em;"><a href="#CHAPTER_I_II">CHAPTER I</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Under the Queen Regent</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_258">258</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#CHAPTER_II_II">CHAPTER II</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Under Queen Mary</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_310">310</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#CHAPTER_III_II">CHAPTER III</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>The Triumph and End</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_350">350</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV_II">CHAPTER IV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>The Scholar of the Reformation</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_374">374</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' style="padding-top: 2em;"><a href="#PART_IV">PART IV</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>THE MODERN CITY</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' style="padding-top: 1em;"><a href="#CHAPTER_I_III">CHAPTER I</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>A Burgher Poet</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_435">435</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#CHAPTER_II_III">CHAPTER II</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>The Guest of Edinburgh</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_471">471</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'><a href="#CHAPTER_III_III">CHAPTER III</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>The Shakspeare of Scotland</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_491">491</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">{xi}</a></span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS" id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>St. Giles's from the Lawnmarket</span></td><td align='right'><i><a href="#Frontispiece">Frontispiece</a></i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Royal Edinburgh</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Queen Margaret's Chapel, Edinburgh Castle</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Pillar in Nave, Dunfermline Abbey</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_5">5</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Dunfermline Abbey</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_7">7</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>West Tower, Dunfermline Abbey</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>The Nave, Dunfermline Abbey&mdash;looking West</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Queen Margaret's Cave</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>West Doorway, Dunfermline Abbey</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Interior of Queen Margaret's Chapel, Edinburgh Castle</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Arms of Queen Margaret of Scotland</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>The Bass Rock</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Holyrood</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_77">77</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Edinburgh Castle from the South-west</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_81">81</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Inner Barrier, Edinburgh Castle</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_87">87</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Edinburgh Castle from the Vennel</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_97">97</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>St. Anthony's Chapel and St. Margaret's Loch</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_115">115</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Mons Meg</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_123">123</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>The Canongate Tolbooth</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_127">127</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Arms of James IV of Scotland</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_155">155</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">{xii}</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Old House in Lawnmarket</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>St. Anthony's Chapel</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Old Houses at Head of West Bow</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Bakehouse Close</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_183">183</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>White Horse Close</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_195">195</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Salisbury Crags</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_201">201</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Reid's Close, Canongate</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_211">211</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Doorway, Sir A. Aitcheson's House</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_217">217</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Linlithgow Palace</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_227">227</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Falkland Palace</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_253">253</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>St. Andrews</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_287">287</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Knox's House, High Street</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_307">307</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Holyrood Palace and Arthur's Seat</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_311">311</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Lochleven</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_331">331</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Queen Mary's Bath</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_335">335</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>West Doorway, Holyrood Chapel</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_341">341</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Doorway, Holyrood Palace</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_349">349</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Moray House, Canongate</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_359">359</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>The Pends, St. Andrews</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_365">365</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Interior of St. Giles's</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_369">369</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Knox's Pulpit</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_372">372</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>North Doorway, Heriot's Hospital</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_381">381</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Stirling Castle</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_417">417</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Greyfriars Churchyard</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_433">433</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Edinburgh: General View</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_437">437</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Allan Ramsay's Shop</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_439">439</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Crown of St. Giles's</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_445">445</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Smollett's House</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_453">453</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">{xiii}</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Allan Ramsay's House</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_461">461</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Allan Ramsay's Monument</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_469">469</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Doorway, Lady Stair's Close</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_471">471</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Lady Stair's Close</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_477">477</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Dugald Stewart's Monument</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_483">483</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Burns's Monument</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_489">489</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>St. Giles's from Princes Street</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_493">493</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>The University of Edinburgh</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_497">497</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Playfair's Monument, Calton Hill</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_503">503</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Sir Walter Scott's House</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_515">515</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>George Street, Edinburgh</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_519">519</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class='smcap'>Sir Walter Scott</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_520">520</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv"></a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/illus_002.jpg" width="300" height="286" alt="Royal Edinburgh" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>ROYAL EDINBURGH</h1>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">{1}</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/illus_003.jpg" width="400" height="394" alt="QUEEN MARGARET&#39;S CHAPEL, EDINBURGH CASTLE." title="" />
+<span class="caption">QUEEN MARGARET&#39;S CHAPEL, EDINBURGH CASTLE.</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>PART I<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%">MARGARET OF SCOTLAND, ATHELING&mdash;QUEEN AND SAINT</span></h2>
+
+
+<p>It is strange yet scarcely difficult to the imagination to realise the
+first embodiment of what is now Edinburgh in the far distance of the
+early ages. Neither Pict nor Scot has left any record of what was going
+on so far south in the days when the king's daughters, primitive
+princesses with their rude surroundings, were placed for safety in the
+<i>castrum puellarum</i>, the maiden castle, a title in after days<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">{2}</a></span> proudly
+(but perhaps not very justly) adapted to the supposed invulnerability of
+the fortress perched upon its rock. Very nearly invulnerable, however,
+it must have been in the days before artillery; too much so at least for
+one shut-up princess, who complained of her lofty prison as a place
+without verdure. If we may believe, notwithstanding the protest of that
+much-deceived antiquary the Laird of Monkbarns, that these fair and
+forlorn ladies were the first royal inhabitants of the Castle of
+Edinburgh, we may imagine that they watched from their battlements more
+wistfully than fearfully, over all the wide plain, what dust might rise
+or spears might gleam, or whether any galley might be visible of reiver
+or rescuer from the north. A little collection of huts or rude forts
+here and there would be all that broke the sweeping line of Lothian to
+the east or west, and all that width of landscape would lie under the
+eyes of the watchers, giving long notice of the approach of any enemies.
+"Out over the Forth I look to the north," the maidens might sing,
+looking across to Dunfermline, where already there was some royal state,
+or towards the faint lines of mountains in the distance, over the soft
+swelling heights of the Lomonds. No doubt Edinburgh, Edwinesburgh, or
+whatever the antiquaries imagine it to have been, must have been sadly
+dull if safe, suspended high upon the rock, nearer heaven than earth. It
+is curious to hear that it was "without verdure"; but perhaps the young
+ladies took no account of the trees that clothed the precipices below
+them, or the greenness that edged the Nor' Loch deep at their feet, but
+sighed for the gardens and luxuriance of Dunfermline, where all was
+green about their windows and the winding pathways of the dell of
+Pittendreich would be pleasant to wander in. This first romantic aspect
+of the Castle of Edinburgh is, however, merely traditional, and the
+first real and authentic appearance of the old fortress and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">{3}</a></span>city in
+history is in the record, at once a sacred legend and a valuable
+historical chronicle, of the life of Margaret the Atheling, the first of
+several Queen Margarets, the woman saint and blessed patroness of
+Scotland, who has bequeathed not only many benefits and foundations of
+after good to her adopted country, but her name&mdash;perhaps among
+Scotswomen still the most common of all Christian names.</p>
+
+<p>No more moving and delightful story was ever written or invented than
+the history of this saint and Queen. She was the daughter of Edward,
+called the Outlaw, and of his wife a princess of Hungary, of the race
+which afterwards produced St. Elizabeth: and the sister of Edgar
+Atheling, the feeble but rightful heir of the Saxon line, and
+consequently of the English throne. The family, however, was more
+foreign than English, having been brought up at the Court of their
+grandfather, the King of Hungary, one of the most pious and one of the
+richest Courts in Christendom; and it was not unnatural that when
+convinced of the fact that the most legitimate of aspirants had no
+chance against the force of William, they should prefer to return to the
+country of their education and birth. It was no doubt a somewhat forlorn
+party that set out upon this journey, for to lose a throne is seldom a
+misfortune accepted with equanimity, and several of the beaten and
+despondent Saxons had joined the royal exiles. Their voyage, however,
+was an unprosperous one, and after much beating about by winds and
+storms they were at last driven up the Firth of Forth, where their ship
+found shelter in the little bay at the narrowing of the Firth, which has
+since borne the name of St. Margaret's Hope.</p>
+
+<p>Lying here in shelter from all the winds behind the protecting
+promontory, with perhaps already some humble shrine or hermit's cell
+upon Inchgarvie or Inchcolm to give them promise of Christian kindness,
+with the lonely rock of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">{4}</a></span>Edinburgh in the distance on one side, and the
+soft slopes of the Fife coast rising towards the King's palace at
+Dunfermline on the other, the travellers must have awaited with some
+anxiety, yet probably much hope, the notice of the barbaric people who
+came to the beach to stare at their weather-beaten ships, and hurried
+off to carry the news inland of such unwonted visitors. It is the very
+spot which is now disturbed and changed by the monstrous cobwebs of iron
+which bear the weight of the Forth Bridge and make an end for ever of
+the Queen's Ferry, which Margaret must have crossed so often, and by
+which a personage more familiar, Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck, once, as we all
+know, made his way to the North; but these are modern reflections such
+as have nothing to do with that primitive morning, fresh no doubt as
+to-day with sun and dew, when Malcolm's messengers came hurrying down to
+see what were these intruders, and what their purpose, and whether
+anything was to be apprehended from a visit apparently so unusual. The
+eager and curious emissaries had apparently no warrant to board the
+strangers, but gazed and wondered at the big ship and all its
+equipments, so unlike their own rude galleys; then hastened back again
+with an excited and exciting description of the greatness of the
+passengers on board and all their splendid array. Malcolm, cautious yet
+excited too, sent forth, as we are told in the <i>Scotichronicon</i>, "his
+wisest councillors" to make further inquiries. They too were astonished
+by the splendour of all they saw, and especially by the mien of a
+certain lady among these strangers, "whom, by her incomparable beauty,
+and the pleasantness of her jocund speech, I imagined to be the chief of
+the family," said the spokesman; "nor was it wonderful," adds the
+chronicler, "that they should believe her to be the chief who was
+destined to be Queen of Scotland and also heir of England." Perhaps it
+was the after light of these events that conveyed that high appreciation
+of Margaret's qualities into the story, for she must have been quite
+young, and it is very unlikely that in presence of her mother, and the
+brother whom they all considered as the King of England, a young girl,
+however gifted, would have taken upon her the chief place.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">{5}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 257px;">
+<img src="images/illus_004.jpg" width="257" height="600" alt="PILLAR IN NAVE, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY" title="" />
+<span class="caption">PILLAR IN NAVE, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">{6}</a></span>The report he received, however, had so much effect upon King Malcolm
+that he went himself to visit the strangers in their ship. He was not a
+mere barbaric prince, to be dazzled by the sight of these great persons,
+but no doubt had many a lingering recollection in his mind of Siward's
+great house in Northumberland, where he had taken refuge after his
+father's murder. It is curious and bewildering to go back in that dawn
+of national life to familiar Shaksperian regions, and to think that this
+primitive King who had so much in him of the savage, along with all his
+love and gentleness, was the son of that gracious Duncan who addressed
+his hostess like a kingly gentleman though her hospitality was to be so
+fatal. King Malcolm came down, no doubt with such state as he could
+muster, to see the wandering foreign princes. He was not unlearned, but
+knew Latin and the English tongue, though he could not read, as we are
+afterwards told. He had already reigned for fourteen years, after about
+as long a period of exile, so that he could not now be in his first
+youth, although he was still unmarried. He came down with his suite to
+the shore amid all the stir of the inquiring country folk, gathered
+about to see this strange thing&mdash;the ship with its unusual equipments,
+and the group of noble persons in their fine clothes who were to be seen
+upon the deck. The Athelings were carrying back with them to Hungary all
+the gifts with which the Emperor, Henry III, had loaded their father
+when he went to England, and had jewels and vessels of gold and many
+fine things unknown to the Scots. And Margaret, even though not so
+prominent as the chroniclers say, was evidently by the consent of all a
+most gracious and courteous young lady, with unusual grace and vivacity
+of speech. The grave middle-aged King, with his recollections of a
+society more advanced than his own, which probably had made him long for
+something better than his rude courtiers could supply, would seem at
+once to have fallen under the spell of the wandering princess. She was
+such a mate as a poor Scots King, badgered by turbulent clans, could
+scarcely have hoped to find&mdash;rich and fair and young, and of the best
+blood in Christendom. Whether the wooing was as short as the record we
+have no means of knowing, but in the same year, 1070, Margaret was
+brought with great rejoicing to Dunfermline, and there married to her
+King, amid the general joy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">{7}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 367px;">
+<img src="images/illus_005.jpg" width="367" height="600" alt="DUNFERMLINE ABBEY" title="" />
+<span class="caption">DUNFERMLINE ABBEY</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">{8}</a></span>The royal house at Dunfermline, according to the chronicle, was
+surrounded by a dense forest and guarded by immense cliffs. The latter
+particular, however, it is difficult to accept, for the dell in which
+the ruins of the medi&aelig;val palace (a building much more recent, it is
+needless to say, than that of Malcolm) still stand, though picturesque
+in its acclivities and precipices, is as far as possible from including
+any cliffs that could be called immense. The young Queen made a great
+change in the internal arrangements of what was no doubt a grim
+stronghold enough, soft as was the country around. Probably the absence
+of decoration and ornament struck her painfully, accustomed as she was
+to palaces of a very different kind&mdash;for almost the first thing we hear
+in the contemporary history written by her confessor Theodoric,
+afterwards a monk at Durham, is of the workshops and rooms for
+embroidery and all the arts which were established in Dunfermline,
+presumably in the palace itself under Margaret's own eye, for the
+beautifying of the great church which she founded there, and also no
+doubt for her own house. Certain women of good birth were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">{9}</a></span>judged worthy
+to share the Queen's work, and lived with her, it would seem, in a kind
+of seclusion, seeing only such chosen visitors as Margaret brought with
+her to cheer their labours, and forswearing all idle talk and frivolity.
+The Queen had such austerity mingled with her graciousness and such
+grace with her severity, says her monkish biographer, loving an
+antithesis, that all feared and respected her presence. "Her life was
+full of moderation and gentleness, her speech contained the very salt of
+wisdom; even her silence was full of good thoughts."</p>
+
+<p>This biographer&mdash;according to the conscientious and painstaking
+investigations of the Bollandist Fathers, who examine in their careful
+way all the guarantees and traditions of the manuscript with a jealousy
+worthy of the most enlightened historians&mdash;is not Turgot, who is usually
+credited with it, but Theodoric, a monk of Durham, who must have shared
+with Turgot, at some period of his life, the office of spiritual
+director and confidant to the Queen. It is curious that both these
+writers should have passed from the northern Court to the community at
+Durham, of which Turgot was prior and Theodoric a simple brother; yet
+not so strange either, for Durham was largely patronised and enriched by
+Margaret and her husband, their kingdom at this period reaching as far
+south. Of Turgot's Life, which was presumably written in the vernacular,
+there seems nothing existing; but that of Theodoric is very full, and
+contains many details which set before us the life of the simple Court,
+with its many labours and charities: the King full of reverence and
+tender surprise and admiration of all his wife's perfections; the young
+saint herself, sweet and bright in modest gravity amid a tumultuous
+world little respectful of women, full of the excessive charity of the
+age and of her race, and of those impulses of decoration and
+embellishment which were slow to develop among the ruder difficulties of
+the north. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">{10}</a></span>Theodoric himself must have been more or less of an artist,
+for in speaking of the "golden vases" and ornaments for the altars of
+her new church which Margaret devised, "I myself carried out the work,"
+he says. These must have been busy days in Malcolm's primitive palace
+while the workmen were busy with the great cathedral close by, the mason
+with his mallet, the homely sculptor with his chisel, carving those
+interlaced and embossed arches which still stand, worn and gray, but
+little injured, in the wonderful permanency of stone, in the nave of the
+old Abbey of Dunfermline: while the Queen's rooms opened into the hall
+where her ladies sat over their embroidery, among all the primitive dyes
+that art had caught from herbs and traditional mixtures, on one
+hand&mdash;and on the other into noisier workshops, where workmen with
+skilful delicate hammers were beating out the shining gold and silver
+into sacred vessels and symbols of piety. Margaret along with her stores
+of more vulgar wealth, and the ingots which were consecrated to the
+manufacture of crucifix and chalice, had brought many holy relics: and
+no doubt the cases and shrines in which these were enclosed afforded
+models for the new, over which Father Theodoric, with his monkish cape
+and cowl laid aside, and his shaven crown shining in the glow of the
+furnace, was so busy. What a pleasant stir of occupation and progress,
+the best and most trustworthy evidences of growing civilisation, must
+have arisen within the shelter of the woods which framed that centre of
+development and new life: the new abbey rising day by day, a white and
+splendid reality in the clearing among the trees; the bells, symbols of
+peace and pleasantness, sounding out over the half-savage country; the
+chants and songs of divine worship swelling upward to the skies.
+Margaret's royal manufactory of beautiful things, her tapestries and
+metal work, her adaptation of all the possibilities of ornament latent
+in every primitive community, with the conviction, always ennobling to
+art, that by these means of sacred adornment she and her assistants and
+coadjutors were serving and pleasing God, no doubt consoled her ardent
+and active spirit for the loss of many comforts and graces with which
+she must have been familiar. At the same time her new sphere of
+influence was boundless, and the means in her hand of leavening and
+moulding her new country almost unlimited&mdash;a thing above all others
+delightful to a woman, to whom the noiseless and gradual operation of
+influence is the chief weapon in the world.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">{11}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 272px;">
+<img src="images/illus_006.jpg" width="272" height="600" alt="WEST TOWER, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY" title="" />
+<span class="caption">WEST TOWER, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">{12}</a></span>There is nothing, however, in this history more charming than the
+description of the relations between the royal pair. King Malcolm had
+probably known few graces in life except those, a step or two in advance
+of his own, which were to be found in Northumberland in the house of
+Earl Siward; and after the long practical struggle of his reign between
+the Scots and Celts, who had already so far settled down together as to
+constitute something which could be called a kingdom, he had no doubt
+fallen even from that higher plane of civilisation. Such rude state as
+the presence of a queen even in those primitive days might have procured
+had been wanting, and all his faculties were probably absorbed in
+keeping peace between the unruly chieftains, and fostering perhaps here
+and there the first rising of a little community of burghers, strong
+enough by union to defend themselves. Uneasy, there can be little doubt,
+was often the head which bore the circlet of troubled supremacy among
+all those half-subdued tribes; and his dwelling in the heart of the
+"dense forest," amid all the noisy retainers in the hall and jealous
+nobles in the council chamber, would leave little room for beauty or
+sweetness of any kind. When the stranger princess suddenly came in like
+an enchantment, with her lovely looks and "jocund eloquence"&mdash;full of
+smiles and pleasant speech, yet with a dignity which overawed every <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a>{14}</span>rude
+beholder&mdash;into these rude and noisy halls, with so many graceful ways
+and beautiful garments and sparkling jewels, transforming the very
+chambers with embroidered hangings and all the rare embellishments of a
+lady's bower, with which no doubt the ship had been provided, and which
+medi&aelig;val princesses, like modern fine ladies, carried about with
+them&mdash;the middle-aged man of war was evidently altogether subdued and
+enraptured. To see her absorbed in prayer&mdash;an exercise which Malcolm had
+perhaps felt to be the occupation of monks and hermits only&mdash;to see her
+bending over her beautiful book with all its pictures, reading the
+sacred story there, filled him with awe and a kind of adoration. He
+could not himself read, which made the wonder all the more; but though
+incapable of mastering what was within, he loved to handle and turn over
+the book from which his beautiful wife derived her wisdom, touching it
+with his rude hands with caressing touches, and kissing the pages she
+loved. When he found one manuscript which she particularly esteemed, he
+"sent for his goldsmith" and had the vellum encased in gold and
+ornamented with jewels; then carried it back to her with such fond
+pleasure as may be easily imagined. Margaret on her part did what she
+could to secure to her King some of the punctilios of reverential
+respect due in her knowledge to a monarch. She suggested the formation
+of a royal guard to protect the King's person and surround him with
+honour and observance. She filled the palace with her wealth, adorning
+it in every way, providing fine clothes for the retainers and so
+enriching the house that the table was served with dishes of gold and
+silver. And it would seem that the reputation of a new and splendid
+Court thus suddenly evolved among the northern mists got abroad, and
+brought merchants with their wares up the Firth, and quickened, if it
+did not altogether originate, the first feeble current of trade which
+was the precursor and origin of all our after wealth in Scotland.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 317px;">
+<img src="images/illus_007.jpg" width="317" height="600" alt="THE NAVE, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY&mdash;LOOKING WEST" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE NAVE, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY&mdash;LOOKING WEST</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 332px;"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">{15}</a></span>
+<img src="images/illus_008.jpg" width="332" height="400" alt="QUEEN MARGARET&#39;S CAVE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">QUEEN MARGARET&#39;S CAVE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>This was not all, however, that Margaret did for the commonwealth. If we
+may trust her biographer, it was she who established that great
+principle of reform so important in all states, and generally one of the
+later fruits of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">{16}</a></span>civilisation, that the soldiers should be prevented from
+exacting or putting under requisition the peaceful people about, and
+that all they had should be honestly paid for, which was the last thing
+likely to be thought of by a medi&aelig;val prince. Altogether Margaret's
+influence was exerted for the best purposes to induce her husband "to
+relinquish his barbarous manners and live honestly and civilly," as the
+chronicler says. It was perhaps not so good an exercise of her power
+when she opened arguments, apparently through Malcolm as interpreter,
+with the native clergy of Scotland, the hermits and ecclesiastics of
+Columba's strain, and the mysterious Culdees of whom we know so little.
+The one certain fact fully established concerning them being, that they
+kept Easter at a different date from that appointed by Rome. The King,
+though no scholar, would seem to have been a linguist in his way, since
+he spoke both languages, that is the Saxon, and the Celtic or Pictish,
+again a most difficult question to determine&mdash;with a smattering of
+Latin; and was thus able to act as Margaret's mouthpiece in her
+arguments. She found fault with the Celts not only for the date of their
+Easter, but for their habit of not communicating at that festival. It is
+very curious to note in their answer the very same reason which has
+prevailed in later days among all the changes of faith and ceremonial,
+and is still put forth in Highland parishes as an excuse for the small
+number of communicants. The Celtic priests and bishops defended their
+flocks by producing the words of St. Paul, in which that Apostle says
+that those who eat and drink unworthily eat and drink condemnation to
+themselves. So, according to Theodoric, the Celtic party in the Church
+answered Margaret, and so would their descendants, the "Men" of the
+Highlands, answer at this day. The integrity of the tradition is very
+remarkable. On the other hand, they offended the devout Queen by their
+neglect of Sunday, a reproach which cannot be addressed to their
+descendants.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">{17}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/illus_009.jpg" width="350" height="450" alt="WEST DOORWAY, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY" title="" />
+<span class="caption">WEST DOORWAY, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>These theological discussions between the fair and learned Queen and the
+Highland ecclesiastics and anchorites, carried on by means of her chief
+convert the warrior King, whom <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">{18}</a></span>love for her had taught to respect and
+share in her devotion, must have afforded many picturesque and striking
+scenes, though unfortunately there was no modern observer there to be
+interested and amused, but only Theodoric standing by, himself very hot
+upon the atrocity of a miscalculated Easter, and perhaps helping his
+royal mistress here and there with an argument. Naturally his story is
+especially full upon the religious side of Margaret's life&mdash;her much
+prayer, her humility and reverence during the services of the Church, an
+intent and silent listener to all teachings, only a little disposed to
+rebel now and then when her confessor passed too lightly over her
+faults. As for her charities, they were boundless. It was not for
+nothing that the blood of St. Ursula, and that which was to give life to
+still another saint, Elizabeth of Hungary, was in her veins. It is
+needless to say that nobody in those days had discovered the evil of
+indiscriminate almsgiving, which was, on the contrary, considered one of
+the first of Christian virtues. Margaret was the providence of all the
+poor around her. Her biographer tells us na&iuml;vely, with no sense that the
+result was not one to be proud of, that the fame of her bounty and
+kindness brought the poor in crowds to every place where she was. When
+she went out they crowded round her like children round their mother.
+When she had distributed everything she had of her own she took garments
+and other things from her courtiers and attendants to give away, a
+spoliation to which they consented willingly, knowing that the value of
+everything thus appropriated would be returned to them&mdash;an excellent
+reason for acquiescence. This "rapine of piety" was so strong in her
+that she sometimes even appropriated to her poor certain of the gold
+pieces which it was the King's custom to offer at Easter to the
+Church&mdash;a pious robbery which Malcolm pretended not to perceive until he
+caught her in the act, when he accused her with a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">{19}</a></span>laugh of tender
+amusement for her rapacity. In all the touches by which the sympathetic
+priest delineates the union of this pair there is something at once
+humorous and pathetic in the figure of the King, the rough old warrior,
+always following with his eyes the angelic saintly figure by his side,
+all believing, half adoring, and yet not without that gleam of amusement
+at the woman's absolute unhesitating enthusiasm&mdash;an amusement mingled
+with admiration and respect, but still a smile&mdash;a delighted surprise at
+all her amazing ways, and wonder what she will do next, though
+everything in his eyes was perfect that she did&mdash;such as may still be
+seen in the eyes of many a world-worn husband looking on at the
+movements of that directer, more simple, yet more subtle being, and the
+quick absolutism and certainty of the bright spirit at his side. The
+grey-bearded old soldier, leader of many a raid and victor in many a
+struggle, with this new revelation of beauty and purity bursting upon
+his later life, becomes to us a recognisable and friendly human soul in
+these glimpses we have of him, unintentional and by the way. Theodoric
+himself must have liked Malcolm, half-barbarian as he was, and even
+admired the look of ardent supplication which would come into the King's
+face, "a great intentness and emotion," such as seemed to him
+extraordinary in a secular person, and which his wife's beautiful
+example and the contagion of her piety alone could have developed.</p>
+
+<p>Among Margaret's many duties there was one which throws a very strange
+light upon the time. Just before her arrival in Scotland, King Malcolm
+had been carrying fire and sword through Northumberland in one of the
+many raids over the Border which were the commonplace of the time&mdash;if
+indeed we may speak of the Border at such an unsettled and shifting
+period when the limits of the kingdoms were so little certain. The issue
+of this raid was that Scotland, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">{20}</a></span>probably meaning for the most part
+Lothian, the southern portion of the country, was filled with English
+captives, apportioned as slaves, or servants at least, through the
+entire population, so that scarcely a house was without one, either male
+or female. The Queen interested herself particularly in these captives,
+as was natural; sometimes paying the ransom exacted for them, and in all
+cases defending and protecting them. Her emissaries went about among
+them inquiring into their condition and how they were treated, visiting
+them from house to house: and all that Margaret could do to mitigate the
+evils of their captivity was done. Nothing can be more strange than to
+realise a time when Northumbrian prisoners of war could be house slaves
+in Lothian. No doubt what was true on one side was true on the other,
+and Scotch captives had their turn of similar bondage.</p>
+
+<p>In those days the ancient county which her children love to call the
+Kingdom of Fife was far more than Edinburgh, then a mere fortress
+standing up on an invulnerable rock in the middle of a fertile plain,
+the centre of the national life. Not only was the King's residence at
+Dunfermline, but the great Cathedral of St. Andrews was the
+ecclesiastical capital, gradually working out that development of Roman
+supremacy and regularity which soon swept away all that was individual
+in the apostleship of St. Columba and the faith of his followers. That
+the King and Queen were frequently at Edinburgh is evident from the fact
+that Margaret had her oratory and chapel on the very apex of the rock,
+and had there established a centre of worship and spiritual life. St.
+Andrews, however, was the centre of influence, the shrine to which
+pilgrims flowed, and the pious Queen, in her care for every office of
+religion and eagerness to facilitate every exercise of piety, gave
+special thought to the task of making the way easy and safe towards that
+holy metropolis. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">{21}</a></span>The Canterbury of the north was divided from the other
+half of Malcolm's kingdom by that sea which in these later days, at much
+cost of beauty, money, and life, has been bridged over and
+shortened&mdash;"the sea which divides Lothian from Scotland" according to
+the chronicler, "the Scottish Sea" as it is called by others, the mighty
+Firth, which to the rude galleys of the little trading villages along
+its shores must have been a sea dangerous and troubled, full of risks
+and perils. The Queen, we are told, erected houses of shelter on either
+side of this angry strait, and established what we should call a line of
+passenger boats to take the pilgrims over at the expense of the State.
+One wonders how much or how little of State policy might mingle in this
+pious act, for no doubt the establishment of an easy and constant means
+of communication between the wealthy Lothians and the then centre of
+national life must have been of unspeakable use in consolidating a
+kingdom still so imperfectly knit together and divided by the formidable
+line of the great estuary. It is one drawback of a religious chronicler
+that no such motive, large and noble as it might be, is thought of,
+since even national advantage counted so much less than the cultivation
+of piety. And it is very likely that Margaret thought of nothing else,
+and reckoned a prayer at the shrine of the patron saint as far more
+important than the intercommunications thus established and the
+knowledge of each other thus acquired by the different parts of a
+kingdom which still retained the differences of separate nationalities.
+A mingled aim, a practical motive, might not have accomplished half so
+much; but no doubt among Malcolm's men, his greybeards pondering in
+council, or perhaps himself thinking of many things as he protected all
+his wife's schemes, there was a dawning perception, along with the
+undoubted advantages of piety, of a national use in the quickened
+intercourse and securely established communications. If so he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">{22}</a></span>would
+probably blame himself for a mixed motive by the side of Margaret's pure
+and absolute heavenly-mindedness, yet take pleasure in the secondary
+unacknowledged good all the same.</p>
+
+<p>Thus their life went on for nearly a quarter of a century in a course of
+national development to which everything contributed, even the love of
+splendour which Margaret brought with her, and her artistic tastes, and
+the rage for decoration and beautiful surroundings which had then begun
+to be so strong an element in national progress. She had many children
+in the midst of all these labours and public interests, seven sons and
+two daughters, whom she brought up most carefully in all the perfection
+of her own faith. Three of these sons succeeded one after the other to
+the Scottish throne, and proved the efficacy of her teaching by piety as
+strong and as liberal as her own. It was in the year 1093 that
+Margaret's beautiful and touching life came to an end, in great sorrow
+yet triumph and pious victory over trouble. Before this time, but at a
+date not indicated in the narrative, she had parted with her friend and
+biographer Theodoric, probably not very long before her own death, as we
+are told that she was oppressed by forebodings, or rather premonitions
+of death and sorrow, of which she spoke to him with tears. When the
+moment of separation came both penitent and confessor so long united in
+the closest bonds of sympathy wept sore. "Farewell," said the Queen; "I
+shall not live long, but you will live long after me. Remember my soul
+in your prayers, and take care of my children; cease not to teach and
+admonish them, especially when they are raised to great estate." He made
+the promise with tears, not daring to contradict her by happier
+auguries, and in this way took his last farewell of the Queen, and never
+saw her more. He continues his story, however, taking it from the lips
+of a priest who <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">{23}</a></span>remained with her during the rest of her life, probably
+also a Saxon, since he became a monk of St. Cuthbert's on Margaret's
+death.</p>
+
+<p>The narrative goes on with an account of the declining health of the
+Queen. For more than six months she had been unable to mount a horse, or
+sometimes to rise from her bed, and in the midst of this illness the
+King set forth upon one of his raids into England, on what provocation
+or with what motive it is difficult to tell, except that the provocation
+was perpetual and the motive persistent the leading rule of life. His
+two elder sons accompanied him on this expedition, which for some reason
+Margaret had opposed, "much dissuading" him from going; but this time,
+unfortunately, had not been hearkened to. Probably she set out along
+with him, on her way to Edinburgh to pass the time of his absence there,
+which was a place where news could be had more readily than beyond the
+sea in Fife. The solitary castle, high perched upon its hill, whence
+messengers could be seen approaching, or, better still, the King's
+banners coming back, was a fitter home for an anxious wife than the
+palace over the Firth among its woods. How long she remained there we
+are not told, and there are now unhappily no articulate remains at all
+of the old stronghold which must have risen upon that height, with its
+low massive walls and rude buildings. The oldest relic in Edinburgh is
+that little sanctuary, plain and bare as a shed, deprived of all
+external appearance of sanctity, and employed for vulgar uses for many
+centuries, which has been at length discovered by its construction, the
+small dark chancel arch and rude ornament, to have been a chapel, and
+which there seems no doubt is at least built upon the site consecrated
+for Margaret's oratory, if not the very building itself. It is small
+enough and primitive enough, with its little line of toothed ornament,
+and its minute windows sending in a subdued light even in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">{24}</a></span>the very flush
+of day, to be of any antiquity. I believe that even the fortunate
+antiquary who had the happiness of discovering it does not claim for
+this little chapel the distinction of being the very building itself
+which Margaret erected. Yet it must have been one very similar,
+identical in form and ornament, so that the interested spectator may
+well permit himself to picture the sick and anxious Queen, worn out with
+illness and weighed down by sore forebodings, kneeling there in the
+faint light before the shadowed altar, trying to derive such comfort as
+was possible from the ministrations of the priests, and following with
+her prayers her husband and her boys, so young still and not hardened to
+war, who might be falling by the hands perhaps of her own kindred, in
+the country which was hers, yet which she scarcely knew. In the
+intervals of these anxious prayers, when her failing strength permitted,
+how wistfully the Queen and her ladies must have gazed from the walls
+far around on every side to watch for the first appearance of any
+messenger or herald of return. From the woods of Dunfermline and its
+soft rural landscape, and the new abbey with its sweet singing and all
+its magnificence, it must have been a change indeed to dwell imprisoned
+so near the sky, within the low, stern rugged walls of the primitive
+fort, with a few rude houses clinging about it, and the little chapel on
+the rock, small and dark, as the only representative of the stately
+arches and ornate services which she loved. But the little chapel is
+deeply involved in all the later history of Margaret's life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">{25}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 339px;">
+<img src="images/illus_010.jpg" width="339" height="450" alt="INTERIOR OF QUEEN MARGARET&#39;S CHAPEL, EDINBURGH CASTLE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">INTERIOR OF QUEEN MARGARET&#39;S CHAPEL, EDINBURGH CASTLE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>One day her attendants remarked that she was even more sad than her
+wont, and questioning her received a reply which must have made them
+tremble. "Perhaps to-day," she said, "a great evil has fallen upon the
+Scots, such as has not happened to them for years." Her hearers, however
+it alarmed them, made as light as they could of this prophetic
+foreboding, which might be but a deepened impression of the prevailing
+despondency in her heart. No doubt it was a melancholy night in the
+fortress, where the women who had husbands or sons or brothers in the
+distant army would cluster together in the antechamber and watch for the
+attendants who came and went behind <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a>{26}</span>the curtain into the sick chamber
+where the Queen, visibly sinking day by day, lay sleepless and sad,
+listening for every sound. Terrors surrounded the castle for the
+personal safety of its occupants as well as for their brethren in the
+wars; and no doubt there would be whispers of the King's brother, Donald
+Bane, and of the watchful jealous Celtic chiefs all ready to rise with
+him, should an opportunity occur, and dash the stranger brood from the
+throne. All these sad prognostications were quickly realised. Next
+morning brought messengers in fear and distress from the army to say
+that the King had fallen at Alnwick in Northumberland, and to prove that
+Margaret's prophecy had been fulfilled at the very time it was spoken.
+It was November, dark and cheerless both within and without, and the
+Queen would seem to have been prostrated for a day or two by the sad
+news: but on the fourth day she rose from her bed and tottered to the
+little chapel on the rock to hear mass for the last time, and receive
+the Holy Sacrament in preparation for death. She then returned to her
+rooms with the pallor of death already on her face, and bidding all
+around&mdash;"me," says the priest, "and the others who stood by"&mdash;to
+recommend her to Christ, asked that the black rood should be brought to
+her. This was the most holy of all the relics which she had brought with
+her to Scotland. It was a case of pure gold in the form of a cross,
+ornamented with marvellous work, bearing the image of the Saviour
+curiously carved in ivory, and enclosing a portion of the true cross
+(proved to be so by many miracles). The Queen took it in her hands,
+pressed it to her dying breast, and touched with it her eyes and face.
+While thus devoutly employed, with her thoughts diverted from all
+earthly things, Margaret was brought back to her sorrow by the sudden
+entrance of her son Ethelred, who had returned from the defeated army to
+carry to his mother <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">{27}</a></span>the dreadful news of the death not only of his
+father but of his elder brother. The sight of his mother in extremity,
+almost gone, no doubt confused the poor boy, still little more than a
+stripling, and with that weight of disaster on his head&mdash;and he answered
+to her faltering inquiry at first that all was well. Margaret adjured
+him by the holy cross in her arms to tell her the truth: then when she
+heard of the double blow, burst out in an impassioned cry. "I thank
+Thee, Lord," she said, "that givest me this agony to bear in my death
+hour." Her life had been much blessed; she had known few sorrows; it was
+as a crown to that pure and lovelit existence that she had this moment
+of bitterest anguish before God gave to His beloved sleep.</p>
+
+<p>While this sad scene was enacting within, the country was full of tumult
+and conspiracy without. Donald Bane, the brother of Malcolm, had no
+doubt chafed at the Saxon regime under which the King had fallen, for
+years, and struggled against the influences brought in from abroad in
+the retinue of the foreigner, as has been done in every commonwealth in
+history at one time or another. He represented the old world, the Celtic
+rule, the traditions of the past. Some of the chroniclers indeed assert
+that Malcolm was illegitimate and Donald Bane the rightful heir to the
+crown. He was, at all events, a pretender kept in subjection while
+Malcolm's strong hand held the sceptre, but ready to seize the first
+opportunity of revolution. No doubt the news of the King's death, and of
+that of his heir, would run like wildfire through the country; but it
+would seem that the attempt of Donald must have been already organised,
+since his siege of Edinburgh, where most of his brother's children were
+with their mother, placed there for safety in the King's absence, had
+already begun. Upon the death of the Queen, Donald was not likely to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">{28}</a></span>
+have treated the royal children who stood in his way with much mercy;
+and the state of affairs was desperate when young Ethelred, the third of
+her sons, not yet arrived at man's estate, closed his mother's eyes, and
+found himself at the head of the weeping family shut up within the
+castle, surrounded by precipices on every side except that upon which
+his angry uncle lay with all the forces of the discontented in Scotland
+at his back, all the lovers of the old regime and enemies of the
+stranger, and with a fierce contingent from Norway to support his Celtic
+horde. In the simplicity of the narrative we hear not a word of the
+troubled councils which must have been held while the boy prince in his
+sorrow and the sudden dreadful responsibility laid on his young
+shoulders turned to such wise advisers as might have followed Margaret
+into the stronghold, and took thought how to save the children and carry
+off the precious remains of the Queen. The expedient to which they had
+recourse was one which their assailants evidently thought impossible.
+That the rock upon which Edinburgh Castle stands should have been
+considered inaccessible by practical mountaineers like the followers of
+Donald Bane seems curious: but in those days the art of climbing for
+pleasure had not been discovered, and it had no place in the methods of
+warfare. It seemed enough to the assailants to hold the gates and the
+summit of the eastern slopes, where probably there must already have
+been some clusters of huts or rough half-fortified dwellings descending
+from the Castle Hill, foreshadowing a Lawnmarket at least if not yet a
+Canongate. No one would seem to have thought of the possibility of any
+descent on the other side from that perpendicular rock.</p>
+
+<p>But despair sharpens the wits, and no doubt after many miserable
+consultations a desperate expedient was found. Even now nothing but a
+goat, or a schoolboy, or perhaps a young private fearful of punishment,
+could find a way down <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">{29}</a></span>the wonderful curtain of rock which forms the west
+side of Edinburgh Castle; and to guide the children and their
+attendants, a sorrowful little group of mourners, distracted with grief
+and fear, and Margaret's body in its litter, down those rocks where
+there was scarcely footing for an alert and experienced climber, must
+have been one of the most difficult as it was one of the boldest of
+undertakings. While the rebel host raged on the other side, and any
+traitor might have brought the enemy round to intercept that slow and
+painful descent, it was accomplished safely under cover of "a great
+myst," Heaven, as all thought, helping the forlorn fugitives by that
+natural shield. Mists are no rare things, as everybody knows, on these
+heights. Perhaps it was the well-known easterly haar, the veil of salt
+sea fog which Edinburgh so often wraps round her still, which, blowing
+up from the mouth of the Firth, enveloped the travellers and hid them in
+its folds of whiteness, impenetrable by the closest watcher, till they
+had safely reached the level ground, and stealing down to the Queen's
+Ferry escaped to loyal Fife and their home in Dunfermline. Needless to
+say that this mist was a miraculous agency to all the family and
+servants of the Queen. To us it adds a touch of local colour, the
+well-known symbol of a familiar scene. Edinburgh was then nothing but a
+castle upon a rock, and now is one of the fairest and most celebrated of
+historical cities; but still its perpendicular crags rise inaccessible
+against the setting sun, and still the white mist comes sweeping up from
+the sea.</p>
+
+<p>It is to the credit of the priests that this is the only miracle that is
+connected with the name of Margaret, if we except the pretty legend
+which tells how a hundred years later, when her descendants removed the
+remains of the saint from the place where they had been deposited to lay
+them before the high altar in Dunfermline, the coffin <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">{30}</a></span>in which they were
+placed could not be carried past the humble spot in which lay, brought
+back from Northumberland, the bones of her King. The cortege stopped
+perforce, the ceremonial had to be interrupted, for all the force of all
+the bearers could not carry even in death the faithful wife from her
+husband; and the only thing it was found that could be done was to
+transport Malcolm along with the partner of his life to the place of
+honour, to which on his own account that rude soldier had but little
+claim. Many saints have had whims as to the place of their interment,
+and showed them in a similar way, but this is all sweetness and tender
+fidelity and worthy to be true. The royal pair were carried off
+afterwards, stolen away like so much gold or silver, by Philip of Spain
+to enrich his gloomy mausoleum-palace, and can be traced for a long time
+in one place or another receiving that strange worship which attaches to
+the most painful relics of humanity. But where they now lie, if in the
+bosom of the kindly earth or among other dreadful remains in some
+sanctuary filled with relics, no one knows.</p>
+
+<p>Margaret had done in her lifetime great things for Scotland. She had
+introduced comforts and luxuries of every kind, and the decorative arts,
+and a great deal of actual wealth, into a very poor and distracted
+country. The earliest charter which is found in the Scottish archives is
+one of Malcolm and Margaret, showing how the time of settlement and
+established order began in their reign. She had helped to give the
+distracted and divided kingdom, made up of warring sects, that
+consolidation and steadiness which enabled it to take its place among
+recognised nations. She turned the wavering balance between Celt and
+Saxon to what has proved to be the winning side, the side of progress
+and advancement. The Donalds and Duncans were swept away after a brief
+and bloody interval and were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">{31}</a></span>no more possible in Scotland after her, and
+the reign of the Anglo-Saxon was assured. She was apparently the
+instrument too, though there is little information on this subject, of
+drawing the Church of Scotland into that close union with Rome which had
+been already accomplished in England; a step which, if it lost some
+doubtful freedom and independence in ecclesiastical matters, secured
+still more completely a recognised place in Catholic Christendom to the
+northern kingdom. "The pure Culdee" of whom we know so little did not
+survive, any more than did the Celtic kings, her influence and the
+transformation she effected. Her life and legend formed the
+stepping-stone for Scotland into authentic history as into a
+consolidated and independent existence. The veil of fable and
+uncertainty cleared away before the mild shining of her name and story.
+Like Edinburgh coming suddenly into sight, as in some old and primitive
+picture, high upon its rock, with the slope of the Castle Hill on one
+side and the precipices round, and the white mist sweeping up from the
+sea, Scotland itself becomes recognisable and grows into form and order
+by the light of her peaceful and gracious presence.</p>
+
+<p>And it is something worth noting that this image of purity and
+excellence was no monkish vision of the purity of the cloister, but that
+more complete and at the same time more humble ideal of the true wife,
+mother, and mistress, whose work was in and for the world and the
+people, not withdrawn to any exceptional refuge or shelter&mdash;which has
+always been most dear to the Anglo-Saxon race. The influence of such an
+example in a country where manners and morals were equally rudimentary,
+where the cloister proved often the only refuge for women, and even that
+not always a safe one&mdash;was incalculable, and the protection of a
+virtuous Court something altogether novel and admirable. The gentlewomen
+who worked at their tapestry <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">{32}</a></span>under Margaret's eye, and learned the
+gentler manners of other Courts and countries of old civilisation by her
+side, and did their wooing modestly with the sanction of her approval,
+must have changed the atmosphere of the north in the most wonderful way
+and quickened every current of national development though the influence
+was remote and the revolution unperceived. The chroniclers go back with
+a fond persistence to the story of Margaret and her sons, and the number
+of her family and the circumstances of her marriage and of her death.
+Before her there is little but fable; after her the stream of history
+flows clear. The story of Macbeth, which is, yet is not, the
+Shakspearian drama, and accordingly takes quite a curious distinct flow
+of its own, like a new and imperfect version of something already
+familiarly known, is the only episode of secular history that has any
+reality before we come, in the next generation, to herself and her King.
+The earlier annals of Adamnan, the life of Columba and the records of
+his sacred isle, belong to those ever-living ever-continuing legends of
+the saints in which the story of the nations counts for little. But
+Margaret was fortunately secular, and though a saint, a great and
+influential personage in the front of everything, and also a woman in
+the fullest tide of life to whom all human events were happening; who
+lived by love and died of grief, and reigned and rejoiced and triumphed
+as well as suffered and prayed.</p>
+
+<p>There followed, however, a terrible moment for that new Scottish-Saxon
+royal family, when both their parents were thus taken from them. Donald
+Bane set up a brief authority, restoring the old kingdom and banishing,
+after the familiar use and wont of such revolutions, his brother's
+children from Scotland. Of these children, however, but three sons are
+mentioned: Edgar, Alexander, and David, who must all have been under age
+at the time. Ethelred, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">{33}</a></span>who had the dangerous office of conveying his
+brothers and sisters along with his mother's body to Dunfermline, died
+or was killed immediately after this feat, and was laid with the King
+and Queen before the rood altar in Dunfermline; and of Edmund, an elder
+son, we have but a confused account, Wynton and Fordun both describing
+him as "a man of gret wertu," who died in religion, having taken the
+cowl of a monk of Cluny; whereas William of Malmesbury accuses him of
+treachery and complicity in the murder of his base-born brother Duncan.
+However this might be, he was at least swept from the succession, in
+which there is no mention of him. Malcolm's lawful heirs were thus
+reduced to the three boys whom their uncle, Edgar Atheling, had received
+in England. But Donald Bane was not long permitted to enjoy his conquest
+in peace. Duncan, the illegitimate son (but this counted for little in
+those days) of Malcolm, who was a hostage in England, after his uncle
+had held the sovereign power for six months, made a rush upon Scotland
+with the help of an English army, and overcame and displaced Donald; but
+in his turn was overcome after a reign of a year and a half, Donald Bane
+again resuming the power, which he held for three years more. By this
+time young Edgar, Margaret's son, had come to man's estate, and with the
+help of the faithful Saxons who still adhered to his uncle, Edgar
+Atheling, and encouraged by dreams and revelations that the crown was to
+be his, came back to Scotland and succeeded finally in overcoming Donald
+and securing his inheritance. The period of anarchy and trouble lasted
+for five years, and no doubt the civilisation and good order which
+Malcolm and Margaret had toiled to establish were for the moment much
+disturbed. But after Edgar's succession the interrupted progress was
+resumed. "He was a man of faire havyng," says old Wynton, and in his
+time the Saxon race came again to great honour and promotion, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">{34}</a></span>at once by
+his own firm establishment upon the Scottish throne, and by the marriage
+of his sister Maud to the new King of England, Henry I., which restored
+the Saxon succession and united right to might in England. Thus after a
+moment of darkness and downfall the seed of the righteous took root
+again and prospered, and the children of St. Margaret occupied both
+thrones. Edgar, like so many of his race, died childless; but he was
+peacefully succeeded by his brother Alexander, who, though as much
+devoted to church-building and good works as the rest of his family, was
+apparently a more warlike personage, since he was called Alexander the
+Fierce, an alarming title, and was apparently most prompt and
+thoroughgoing in crushing rebellion and other little incidents of the
+age. He was succeeded in his turn by the youngest of Margaret's sons,
+David, that "sair sanct for the crown," who covered Scotland with
+ecclesiastical foundations.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"He illumynyd in his dayes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His landys wyth kirkis and abbayis;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bishoprychs he fand bot foure or three,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bot or he deyd nyne left he."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Among the many other foundations made by King David was the house of the
+Holy Rood which has been so familiar a name in Scottish history&mdash;built
+low in the valley at the foot of the surrounding hills and that castle
+in which the Queen died pressing the black rood&mdash;most precious
+possession&mdash;to her dying breast. Whether a recollection of that scene,
+which might well have impressed itself even on the memory of a child,
+and of the strange wild funeral procession, with all its associations of
+grief and terror, which had stumbled down the dangerous rocks in the
+mist thirty-five years before, was in David's mind, it would be vain to
+inquire. The black rood of itself, besides these touching and sacred
+associations, was a relic of almost unequalled sanctity, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">{35}</a></span>well
+warranted the erection of a holy house for its guardianship and
+preservation. How far the street, which would be little more than a
+collection of huts, had crept down the Castle Hill towards the new
+monastery in the valley there is no evidence to show, but no doubt both
+the castle and the religious house were soon surrounded by those humble
+scattered dwellings, and David's charter itself makes it plain that
+already the borough of Edinburgh was of some importance. Part of the
+revenues of the monastery were to be derived from the dues and taxes of
+the town, and it was also endowed with "one half of the tallow, lard,
+and hides of the beasts slain in Edinburgh," an unsavoury but no doubt
+valuable gift. The canons of the Abbey of Holyrood, or Holyrood House as
+it is called from the beginning with a curious particularity, had also
+permission to build another town between themselves and Edinburgh, which
+would naturally cluster round the Canon's Gate&mdash;the road that led to St.
+Cuthbert's, at the farther end of the North Loch, where every man could
+say his mass; or more directly still to the dark little chapel upon the
+castle rock, made sacred by all its memorials of the blessed Margaret.
+The nucleus of the future capital is thus plainly apparent between the
+two great forces of that age, the Church, the great instrument of
+congregation and civilisation, and the Stronghold, in which at any
+moment of danger refuge could be taken. It is curious to realise the
+wild solitude of this historical ridge, with its rude houses coming into
+being one by one, the low thatched roofs and wattled walls which in the
+course of time were to give place to buildings so stately. The Canongate
+would be but a country road leading up towards the strong and gloomy
+gate which gave entrance to the <i>enceinte</i> of the castle&mdash;itself like
+some eagle's nest perched high among the clouds.</p>
+
+<p>The line of Margaret went on till her sons held their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">{36}</a></span>Courts and dated
+their charters from Holyrood House, and Parliaments were held and laws
+made in the Castle of Edinburgh, and the scattered huts upon the Castle
+Hill had grown into a metropolis. They were a pious and in many respects
+an enlightened race, and they came to great honour and renown on both
+sides of the house. Maud, Margaret's daughter, became Queen of England,
+and her grand-daughter Empress, while Scotland developed and flourished
+in the hands of the saintly Queen's sons and their descendants. There
+are unfortunate individuals in the most prosperous races, and Scotland
+never sustained greater humiliation than in her attempts to rescue
+William called the Lion, a sorry lion for his kingdom, when he allowed
+himself to be caught in a trap and made the prisoner of the English
+king. But the children of Malcolm and Margaret retained their character
+through many generations, and were a Godfearing house, full of faith and
+devotion, careful of their people's interests, and dear to their hearts.
+They prospered as the virtuous and excellent so often do even in this
+world, and covered Scotland with endowments&mdash;endowments which indeed
+proved a snare to the church on after occasions, but which at that
+period were probably the best means in which money could be invested for
+the benefit of the people, since alms and succour and help and teaching
+in every way came from the monks in the primitive circumstances of all
+nations. They were not only the guardians of learning; they were
+examples in husbandry, in building, in every necessary craft; nursing
+the sick, receiving the stranger, and, as the very title-deed of their
+existence, feeding the poor. In those uncomplicated times there was no
+such fear of pauperising the natives of the soil as holds our hands now,
+and everything had to be taught to the primitive labourer, who might
+have to leave the plough in the middle of the furrow and be off and away
+on his lord's commands at any moment, leaving <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">{37}</a></span>his wife and children to
+struggle on with the help of the good fathers who taught the boys, or
+the gentle sisters who trained the girls to more delicate work, feeding
+the widow and her brood. David and his brothers, and the devout kings
+who immediately followed, probably did what was best for their agitated
+kingdom in establishing so many centres of assured and quiet living,
+succour and peace, even if what was salvation for their age became the
+danger of another time. Those foundations continued through the whole of
+the period during which the lineal descendants of Margaret held the
+throne. Her lineage, it is true, has never died out: but the strain
+changed with the death of the last Alexander, and another change came
+over Scotland not so profound as that which attended the coming of the
+Saxon princess, yet great and remarkable&mdash;the end of an age of
+construction, of establishment, of knitting together; the beginning of a
+time disturbed with other questions, with complications of advancing
+civilisation, nobles and burghers, trade and war.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 240px;">
+<img src="images/illus_011.jpg" width="240" height="250" alt="ARMS OF QUEEN MARGARET OF SCOTLAND" title="" />
+<span class="caption">ARMS OF QUEEN MARGARET OF SCOTLAND
+<br />
+(From the Ceiling of St. Machar&#39;s Cathedral, Old Aberdeen)</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">{38}</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>PART II<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%">THE STEWARDS OF SCOTLAND</span></h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%">JAMES I. POET AND LEGISLATOR</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>The growth of Edinburgh is difficult to trace through the mists and the
+tumults of the ages. The perpetual fighting which envelops the Scotland
+of those days as in the "great stour" or dust, which was Sir Walter
+Scott's conception of a battle, with gleams of swords and flashes of
+fire breaking through, offers few breaks through which we can see
+anything like the tranquil growth of that civic life which requires
+something of a steady and settled order and authority to give it being.
+The revolutions which took place in the country brought perpetual
+vicissitude to the Castle of Edinburgh, and no doubt destroyed and drove
+from their nests upon the eastern slopes of the rock the settlers who
+again and again essayed to keep their footing there. When the family of
+St. Margaret came to a conclusion, and the great historical struggle
+which succeeded ended in the establishment of Robert Bruce upon the
+throne, that great victor and statesman destroyed the Castle of
+Edinburgh with other strongholds, that it might not afford a point of
+vantage <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">{39}</a></span>to the English invader or other enemies of the country's
+peace&mdash;a step which would seem to have been premature, though probably,
+in the great triumph and ascendency in Scotland which his noble
+character and work had gained, he might have hoped that at least the
+unanimity of the nation and its internal peace were secured, and that
+only an enemy would attempt to dominate the reconciled and united
+country. The Castle was, however, built up again and again,
+re-established and destroyed, a centre of endless fighting during the
+tumultuous reigns that followed, though it is only on the accession of a
+new race, a family so deeply connected with the modern history of Great
+Britain that no reader can be indifferent to its early appearances, that
+Edinburgh begins to become visible as the centre of government, the
+royal residence from whence laws were issued, and where the business of
+the nation was carried on. Following what seems to be one of the most
+wonderful rules of heredity&mdash;a peculiarity considerably opposed to the
+views which have been recently current on that subject&mdash;Robert Bruce was
+too great a man to have a son worthy of him: and after the trifling and
+treacherous David the inheritance of his kingdom came through his
+daughter to a family already holding a high place&mdash;the Stewards of
+Scotland, great hereditary officials, though scarcely so distinguished
+in character as in position. The tradition that their ancestor Banquo
+was the companion of Macbeth when the prophecy was made to him which had
+so great an effect upon that chieftain's career, and that to Banquo's
+descendants was adjudged the crown which Macbeth had no child to
+inherit, is far better known, thanks to Shakspeare, than any fact of
+their early history. It is probably another instance of that inventive
+ingenuity of the original chroniclers, which so cleverly imagined a
+whole line of fabulous kings, to give dignity and importance to the
+"ancient kingdom" thus carried back to inarticulate <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">{40}</a></span>prehistoric ages. In
+this way the Stewarts, actually a branch of a well-known Norman family,
+were linked to a poetic and visionary past by their supposed
+identification with the children of Banquo, with all the circumstantial
+details of an elaborate pedigree. According to the legend, the dignity
+of Grand Steward of Scotland was conferred by Malcolm Canmore upon a
+descendant of the ancient thane, and the lineage of the family is traced
+through all the dim intervening ages with scrupulous minuteness. The
+title of Steward of Scotland was enough, it would seem, to make other
+lordships unnecessary, and gradually developed into that family surname
+with which we are now so familiar, which has wrought both Scotland and
+England so much woe, yet added so intense an interest to many chapters
+of national history. The early Stewards are present by name in all the
+great national events: but have left little characteristic trace upon
+the records, as of remarkable individuals. They took the cross in
+repeated crusades, carrying their official coat with its chequers, the
+brand of the Chief Servitor of the Scottish Court, through the wars of
+the Holy Land, till they came finally into the highest favour and
+splendour in the days of Bruce, whose cause, which was also the cause of
+the independence of Scotland, they maintained. Walter, who then held the
+office of Steward, was knighted on the field of Bannockburn. He was
+afterwards, as the story goes, sent to receive on the Border, after
+peace had been made, various prisoners who had been detained in England
+during the war, and among them Marjory Bruce, the daughter of the
+patriot-king. It would be easy to imagine the romance that followed: the
+young knight reverently escorting the young princess across the
+devastated country, which had not yet had time to recover its cruel
+wounds, but yet was all astir with satisfaction and hope: and how his
+account of what had happened in Scotland, and, above all, of that
+memorable field <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">{41}</a></span>where he had won from the Bruce's own famous sword the
+touch of knighthood, would stir the maiden's heart. A brave young
+soldier with great hereditary possessions, and holding so illustrious an
+office, there was no reason why he should despair, however high-placed
+his affections might be. It takes a little from the romance to be
+obliged to acknowledge that he was already a widower; but marriages were
+early and oft-repeated in those days, and when Marjory Bruce died her
+husband was still only about twenty-three. It was thus that the crown
+came to the family of the Stewards of Scotland, the Stewarts of modern
+times: coming with a "lass" as her descendant said long afterwards, and
+likely to "go with a lass" when it was left to the infant Mary: though
+this last, with all her misfortunes, was the instrument not of
+destruction but transformation, and transferred that crown to a more
+splendid and enlarged dominion.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the reign of Marjory's son, the grandson and namesake of the
+Bruce, and of his successors, that Edinburgh began to be of importance
+in the country, slowly becoming visible by means of charters and
+privileges, and soon by records of Parliaments, laws made, and public
+acts proceeding from the growing city. Robert Bruce, though he had
+destroyed the castle, granted certain liberties and aids to the
+burghers, both in repression and in favour pursuing the same idea, with
+an evident desire to substitute the peaceful progress of the town for
+the dangerous domination of the fortress. Between that period and the
+reign of the second Stewart, King Robert III, the castle had already
+been re-erected and re-destroyed more than once. Its occupation by the
+English seemed the chief thing dreaded by the Scots, and it was again
+and again by English hands that the fortifications were restored&mdash;such a
+stronghold and point of defence being evidently of the first importance
+to invaders, while much less valuable as a means <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">{42}</a></span>of defence. In the year
+1385 the walls must have encircled a large area upon the summit of the
+rock, the <i>enceinte</i> probably widening, as the arts of architecture and
+fortification progressed, from the strong and grim eyrie on the edge of
+the precipice to the wide and noble enclosure, with room for a palace as
+well as a fortress, into which the great castles of England were
+growing. The last erection of these often-cast-down walls was made by
+Edward III on his raid into Scotland, and probably the royal founder of
+Windsor Castle had given to the enclosure an amplitude unknown before.
+The Scots king most likely had neither the money nor the habits which
+made a great royal residence desirable, especially in a spot so easily
+isolated and so open to attack; but he gave a charter to his burghers of
+Edinburgh authorising them to build houses within the castle walls, and
+to pass in and out freely without toll or due&mdash;a curious privilege,
+which must have made the castle a sort of <i>imperium in imperio</i>, a town
+within a town. The little closets of rooms which in a much later and
+more luxurious age must have sufficed for the royal personages whom fate
+drove into Edinburgh Castle as a residence, are enough to show how
+limited were the requirements in point of space of the royal Scots. The
+room in which James VI of Scotland was born would scarcely be occupied,
+save under protest, by a housemaid in our days. But indeed the Castle of
+Edinburgh was neither adapted nor intended for a royal residence. The
+abbey in the valley, from which the King could retire on receipt of evil
+tidings, where the winds were hushed and the air less keen, and gardens
+and pleasant hillsides accessible, and all the splendour of religious
+ceremonies within reach, afforded more fit and secure surroundings even
+for a primitive court. The Parliament met, however, within the fortress,
+and the courts of justice would seem to have been held within reach of
+its shelter. And thither the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">{43}</a></span>burghers carried their wealth, and built
+among the remains of the low huts of an earlier age their straight steep
+houses, with high pitched roofs tiled with slabs of stone, rising gray
+and strong within the <i>enceinte</i>, almost as strong and apt to resist
+whatever missiles were possible as the walls themselves, standing out
+with straight defiant gables against the northern blue.</p>
+
+<p>King Robert III was a feeble, sickly, and poor-spirited king, and he had
+a prodigal son of that gay, brilliant, attractive, and impracticable
+kind which is so well known in fiction and romance, and, alas! also so
+familiar in common life. David, Duke of Rothesay, was the first in the
+Scotch records who was ever raised to that rank&mdash;nothing above the
+degree of Earl having been known in the north before the son and brother
+of the King, the latter by the fatal title of Albany, brought a new
+degree into the roll of nobility. Young David, all unknowing of the
+tragic fate before him, was then a daring and reckless youth, held
+within bounds, as would appear, by the influence of a good and wise
+mother, and if an anxiety and trouble, at least as yet no disgrace to
+the throne. He was the contemporary of another madcap prince, far better
+known to us, of whose pranks we are all more than indulgent, and whose
+name has the attraction of youth and wit and freedom and boundless
+humour to the reader still. David of Scotland has had no one to
+celebrate his youthful adventures like him whose large and splendid
+touch has made Prince Hal<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> so fine a representative of all that is
+careless and gay in prodigal youth, with its noble qualities but half in
+abeyance, and abounding spirit and humour and reckless fancy making its
+course of wild adventure comprehensible even to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">{44}</a></span>gravest. Perhaps the
+licence of the Stewart blood carried the hapless northern prince into
+more dangerous adventures than the wild fun of Gadshill and Eastcheap.
+And Prince David's future had already been compromised by certain sordid
+treacheries about his marriage when he first appears in history, without
+the force of character which changed Prince Hal into a conquering leader
+and strong sovereign, but with all the chivalrous instincts of a young
+knight. He had been appointed at a very early age Lieutenant of the
+Kingdom to replace his father, it being "well seen and kenned that our
+lorde the Kyng for sickness of his person may not travail to govern the
+realm," with full provision of counsellors for his help and guidance;
+which argues a certain confidence in his powers. But the cares of
+internal government were at this point interrupted by the more urgent
+necessity of repelling an invasion, a danger not unusual, yet naturally
+of an exciting kind.</p>
+
+<p>On this occasion the invader was Henry IV of England, the father of the
+other prodigal, whose object is somewhat perplexing, and differs much
+from the usual raid to which the Scots were so well accustomed. So far
+as appears from all the authorities, his invasion was a sort of
+promenade of defiance or bravado, though it seems unlike the character
+of that astute prince to have undertaken so gratuitous a demonstration.
+He penetrated as far as Leith, and lay there for some time threatening,
+or appearing to threaten, Edinburgh Castle; but all that he seems to
+have done was to make proclamation by his knights and heralds in every
+town they passed through, of the old, always renewed, claim of
+allegiance to the English crown which every generation of Scots had so
+strenuously and passionately resisted. The fact that he was allowed to
+penetrate so far unmolested is as remarkable as that the invasion was an
+entirely peaceful one and harmed nobody. When Henry pitched his camp at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">{45}</a></span>
+Leith, Albany was within reach with what is called a great army, but did
+not advance a step to meet the invader&mdash;in face of whom, however, young
+David of Rothesay, and with him many potent personages, retired into
+Edinburgh Castle with every appearance of expecting a siege there. But
+when no sign of any such intention appeared or warlike movement of any
+kind, nothing but the gleam of Henry's spears, stationary day by day in
+the same place, and a strange tranquillity, which must have encouraged
+every kind of wondering rumour and alarm, the young Prince launched
+forth a challenge to the English king and host to meet him in person
+with two or three hundred knights on each side, and so to settle the
+question between them and save the spilling of Christian blood. Henry,
+it is said, replied with something of the sarcasm of a grave and
+middle-aged man to the hasty youth, regretting that Prince David should
+consider noble blood as less than Christian since he desired the
+effusion of one and not the other. The position of the young man shut up
+within the walls of the fortress in enforced inactivity while the hated
+Leopards of England fluttered in the fresh breezes from the Firth, and
+Henry's multitudinous tents shone in the northern sun&mdash;an army too great
+to be encountered by his garrison and noble attendants alone&mdash;while dark
+treason and evil intent in the person of Albany kept the army of
+Scotland inactive though within reach, was one to justify any such
+outbreak of impatience. David must have felt that should the invader
+press, there was little help to be expected from his uncle, and that he
+and his faction would look on not without pleasure to see the castle
+fall and the heir of Scotland taken or slain. But King Henry's object or
+meaning is more difficult to divine. Save for his proclamations, and the
+quite futile summons to King Robert to do homage, he seems to have
+attempted nothing against the country <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">{46}</a></span>through which he was thus
+permitted to march unmolested. The little party of knights with their
+attendant squires and heralds riding to every market-cross upon the way,
+proclaiming to the astonished burghers or angry village folk the
+invader's manifesto, scarcely staying long enough to hear the fierce
+murmurs that arose&mdash;a passing pageant, a momentary excitement and no
+more&mdash;was a sort of defiant embassage which might have pleased the fancy
+of a young adventurer, but scarcely of a king so wary and experienced;
+and his own stay in the midst of the startled country is still more
+inexplicable. When the monks of Holyrood sent a mission to him to beg
+his protection, lying undefended as they did in the plain, his answer to
+them was curiously apologetic. "Far be it from me," he said, "to be so
+inhuman as to harm any holy house, especially Holyrood in which my
+father found a safe refuge.... I am myself half Scotch by the blood of
+the Comyns," added the invader. The account which Boece gives of the
+expedition altogether is amusing, and strictly in accord with all that
+is said by other historians, though they may not take the same amiable
+view. I quote from the quaint translation of Bellenden.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"A schort time efter King Harry came in Scotland with an army.
+Howbeit he did small injury to the people thairof, for he desirit
+nowt but his banner to be erected on their walls. Alwayis he was ane
+plesand enneme, and did gret humaniteis to the people in all places
+of Scotland where he was lodgit. Finally he showed to the lords of
+Scotland that he come in their rialm more by counsel of his nobles
+than ony hatred that he bore to Scottes. Soon efter he returnit
+without any further injure in England."</p></div>
+
+<p>It is very seldom that a Scotch historian is able to designate an
+English invader as "a pleasant enemy," and whether there was some scheme
+which came to nothing under this remarkable and harmless raid, or
+whether it was only the carrying out of Henry's own policy "to busy
+giddy minds with foreign quarrels"</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"Lest rest and lying still might make them look<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Too near unto my state,"<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">{47}</a></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>it is difficult to say. The nobles pent up in Edinburgh Castle with the
+hot-headed young Prince at their head did not know what to make of the
+pleasant enemy. The alarm he had caused, compelling their own withdrawal
+into the stronghold, wrath at the mere sight of him there in the heart
+of Scotland, the humiliating inaction in which they were kept by a foe
+which neither attacked nor withdrew, must have so chafed the Prince and
+his companions that the challenge thrown forth like a bugle from the
+heights to break this oppressive silence and bring about the lingering
+crisis one way or another must have been a relief to their excitement if
+nothing else. One of the bewildered reasons alleged for the invasion is
+that young David had written letters to France in which he called
+Bolingbroke a traitor&mdash;letters which had fallen into Henry's hands; but
+this is as unlikely to have brought about the invasion as any other
+frivolous cause, though no doubt it might make the young Prince still
+more eager to take upon himself the settling of the quarrel. We have no
+reason to suppose that any foreboding of his fate had crossed the mind
+of the youth at this period of his career, yet to watch the army of
+England lying below, and to know his uncle Albany close at hand, and to
+feel himself incapable&mdash;with nothing but a limited garrison at his
+command and no doubt the wise Douglas and the other great noblemen
+holding him back&mdash;of meeting the invader except by some such fantastic
+chivalrous expedient, must have been hard enough.</p>
+
+<p>And how strange is the scene, little in accordance with the habits and
+traditions of either country: the English camp all quiet below, as if on
+a holiday expedition, the Scots looking on in uneasy expectation, not
+knowing what the next moment might bring. The excitement must have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">{48}</a></span>grown
+greater from day to day within and without, while all the inhabitants,
+both citizens and garrison, kept anxious watch to detect the first sign
+of the enemy's advance. Henry, we are told, was called away to oppose a
+rising in Wales; not indeed that rising which we all know so well in
+which Prince Hal, more fortunate than his brother prodigal, had the
+means of showing what was in him; but even the suggestion approaches
+once more strangely and suggestively the names of the two heirs whose
+fate was so different&mdash;the one almost within sight of a miserable
+ending, the other with glory and empire before him. Prince Henry did not
+apparently come with his father to Scotland, or there might perhaps have
+been a different ending to the tale, and it would not have needed Harry
+Hotspur to rouse his namesake from his folly. There was, alas! no such
+noble rival to excite David of Scotland to emulation, and no such happy
+turning-point before him. No one, not even a minstrel or romancer, has
+remembered it in his favour that he once defied the English host for the
+love of his country and the old never-abandoned cause of Scottish
+independence. Already it would seem a prodigal who was a Stewart had
+less chance than other men. Whether some feeble fibre in the race had
+already developed in this early representative of the name, or whether
+it was the persistent ill-fortune which has always pursued them, making
+life a continual struggle and death a violent ending, the fatal thread
+which has run through their history for so many generations comes here
+into the most tragic prominence, the beginning of a long series of
+tragedies. It adds a softening touch to the record of David's unhappy
+fate that the death of his mother is recorded as one of the great
+misfortunes of his life. In the same year in which these public
+incidents occurred the Queen died, carrying with her the chief influence
+which had restrained her unfortunate son. She was Annabella Drummond, a
+woman <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">{49}</a></span>of character and note, much lamented by the people. And to add to
+this misfortune she was followed to the grave within a year by the great
+Earl of Angus, David's father-in-law, and the Bishop of St. Andrews, to
+whom, as the Primate of Scotland, the young Prince's early instruction
+had probably been committed, as his loss is noted along with the others
+as a special disaster.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the rash and foolish youth was left to face the world and all its
+temptations with no longer any one whom he feared to grieve or whom he
+felt himself bound to obey. His father, a fretful invalid, had little
+claim upon his reverence, and his uncle Albany, the strong man of the
+family, was his most dangerous enemy, ever on the watch to clear out of
+his path those who stood between him and the throne: or such at least
+was the impression which he left upon the mind of his time. Thus
+deprived of all the guides who had power over him, and of the only
+parent whom he could respect, the young Duke of Rothesay, only
+twenty-three at most, plunged into all those indulgences which are so
+fatally easy to a prince. It is supposed that the marriage into which a
+false policy had driven him was not the marriage he desired. But this
+was a small particular in those days, as it has proved even in other
+times less rude. He ran into every kind of riot and dissipation, which
+the councillors appointed to aid him could not check. After no doubt
+many remonstrances and appeals this band of serious men relinquished the
+attempt, declaring themselves unable to persuade the Prince even to any
+regard for decency: and the ill-advised and feeble King committed to
+Albany, who had been standing by waiting for some such piece of good
+fortune, the reformation of his son. The catastrophe was not slow to
+follow. Rothesay was seized near St. Andrews on the pretence of stopping
+a mad enterprise in which he was engaged, and conveyed to Falkland,
+where he died in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">{50}</a></span>strict confinement, "of dysentery or others say of
+hunger" is the brief and terrible record&mdash;blaming no one&mdash;of the
+chroniclers, on Easter Eve 1401. It would be vain to attempt to add
+anything to the picture of the young unfortunate and his end which Sir
+Walter Scott has given. We can but rescue out of obscurity the brief
+moment in which that young life was at the turning-point and might have
+changed into something noble. Had his challenge been accepted, and had
+he died sword in hand outside the castle gates for Scotland and her
+independence, how touching and inspiring would have been the story! But
+fortune never favoured the Stewarts; they have had no luck, to use a
+more homely expression, such as falls to the lot of other races, and
+what might have been a legend of chivalry, the record of a young hero,
+drops to the horror of a miserable murder done upon a victim who foils
+even the pity he excites&mdash;a young debauchee almost as miserable and
+wretched as the means by which he died.</p>
+
+<p>There was this relic of generosity and honour about the unfortunate
+Prince, even in his fallen state, that he refused to consent to the
+assassination of the uncle, who found no difficulty, it would appear, in
+assassinating him; thus showing that wayward strain of nobleness among
+many defects and miseries which through all their tragic career was to
+be found even in the least defensible of his race.</p>
+
+<p>King Robert, who had for some time been retired from the troubles of the
+throne, a poor man, infirm in health and in purpose, virtually deposed
+in favour of the son who was Lieutenant or the brother who was Regent of
+the kingdom, and from whom all his domestic comfort had been taken as
+well as his power, was driven to desperation by this blow. He had lost
+his wife and his best counsellors; he had never been strong enough to
+restrain his son, nor resist his brother. David, his first-born and
+heir, the gay and handsome youth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">{51}</a></span> who was dazzling and delightful to his
+father's eyes even in his worst follies, had been, as no doubt he felt,
+delivered over to his worst enemy by that father's own tremulous hand;
+and the heart-broken old man in his bereavement and terror could only
+think of getting the one boy who remained to him safe and out of harm's
+way, perhaps with the feeling that Albany might once again persuade him
+to deliver over this last hope into his hands if he did not take a
+decisive step at once. The boy-prince was at St. Andrews, pursuing his
+studies, under the care of the bishop, when his brother was murdered;
+and from thence he was sent, when the preparations were complete, across
+the Firth to the Bass, there to await a ship which should take him to
+France. It was a forlorn beginning for the Prince of Scotland to be thus
+hastily taken from his books and the calm of a semi-monastic life and
+hurried off to that wild rock in the middle of the waves, probably with
+his brother's awful story thrilling in his ears and his terrible uncle
+within reach, pushing forward a mock inquiry in Parliament into the
+causes of Rothesay's death. How easy it would have been for that uncle
+with the supreme power in his hands to seize the boy who now stood alone
+between him and the throne; and with what burning at the heart, of
+impotent rage and fierce indignation, the little Prince, old enough to
+know and feel his father's helplessness, his own abandonment, and his
+brother's terrible end, must have been conveyed away to the sea
+stronghold among the bitter eastern blasts. James, the first of the
+name, was not one of the feeble ones of the family. With all the romance
+and poetry of his race he conjoined a great spirit and a noble
+intelligence, and even at twelve, in the precocious development of that
+age of blood, when even a royal stripling had to learn to defend himself
+and hold his own, he must have had some knowledge why it was that he had
+to be sent thus clandestinely out of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">{52}</a></span>his native country: he, the hope of
+Scotland, in terror for his life.</p>
+
+<p>The little garrison on the rock and the governor to whom the Prince's
+safety was confided must have watched with many an anxious vigil among
+the trading vessels stumbling heavily down the Firth from Leith, for
+that sail which was to carry their charge, into safety as they thought.
+Whether there was any navy belonging to the Crown at this period, or
+whether the King himself possessed some galley that could venture on the
+voyage to France, we are not told. But no doubt the ship when it arrived
+bore some sign by which the Prince's guardians, and unfortunately others
+besides, could recognise it. It could not be in any way a cheerful
+embarkation. It was in the dark days of Lent, in March, when the north
+is most severe: and the grey skies and blighting wind would be
+appropriate to the feelings of the exiles as they put forth from their
+rock amid the wild beating of the surf, anxiously watched by the
+defenders of the place, who no doubt had at the same time to keep up a
+vigilant inspection landward, lest any band of spearmen from Albany
+should arrive upon the adjacent shore in time to stop the flight. The
+grey rock, the greyer leaden sea, the whirling flight of wild sea birds
+white against the dark horizon, the little boat, kept with difficulty
+from dashing against the cliffs and rocky boulders, the attendant ship,
+driven up and down by the waves, and distant Fife, with its low hills in
+tones of neutral tint upon the horizon&mdash;would all increase the sadness
+of the parting: but no doubt there was a long breath of relief breathed
+by everybody about when the vessel continued its course, and slowly
+disappeared down the Firth. Whatever might happen elsewhere, at least
+the heir was safe.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">{53}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 413px;">
+<img src="images/illus_012.jpg" width="413" height="600" alt="THE BASS ROCK" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE BASS ROCK</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">{54}</a></span>But this hope soon proved futile. Whether it was some traitorous
+indication from Albany, or information from another source, or pure
+hazard, which directed the English ships to this one vessel with its
+royal freight, it had but rounded the headland of Flamborough when it
+fell into the hands of the enemy. Palm Sunday 1405 was the date of this
+event, but it was not till the end of Lent 1423, almost exactly eighteen
+years after, that James came back. The calamity seemed overwhelming to
+the nation and to all who were not pledged to Albany throughout
+Scotland. It was the death-warrant of poor old King Robert in his
+retirement. He lingered out a weary year in sickness and sorrow, and
+when the anniversary of his son's loss came round again, died at
+Rothesay, in Bute, amid the lovely lakes and islets of western
+Scotland&mdash;a scene of natural peace and tranquillity, which, let us hope,
+shed some little balm upon the heart of the helpless superseded
+sovereign. Perhaps he loved the place because it had given his title to
+his murdered boy, the hapless David, so gallant and so gay. There is
+something more than ordinarily pathetic and touching in the misfortunes
+of the feeble in an age of iron. As civilisation advances they have
+means of protecting themselves, but not in a time which is all for the
+strongest. One son buried, like any peasant's son, ignobly in the Abbey
+of Lindores: the other in an English prison, at the mercy of the "auld
+enemy," whom Scotland had again and again resisted to the death: and his
+kingdom entirely gone from him, in the hands of his arrogant and
+imperious brother; there was nothing left for poor King Robert but to
+die.</p>
+
+<p>Thus James became at thirteen, and in an English castle, the King of
+Scotland. His prison, however, proved a noble school instead of an
+ignoble confinement to his fine and elevated spirit. The name of Stewart
+has never been so splendidly illustrated as by this patriotic and
+chivalrous Prince. No doubt it is infinitely to the credit of the
+English kings, both Henrys, IV and V, that he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">{55}</a></span>received from them all the
+advantages of education that could have been given to a prince of their
+own blood&mdash;advantages by which he profited nobly, acquiring every art
+and cultivation that belonged to his rank, besides that divine art which
+no education can communicate, and which is bestowed by what would seem a
+caprice, were it not divine, upon prince or ploughman as it pleases God.
+For above all his knightly and kingly qualities, his studies in chivalry
+and statesmanship, which prepared him to fill the throne of Scotland as
+no man save his great ancestor Bruce had yet filled it, James Stewart
+was a poet of no mean rank, not unworthy to be named even in the
+presence of Chaucer, and well worthy of the place which he has kept in
+literature. We need not enter here into that part of his history which
+concerns another locality full of great and princely associations&mdash;the
+noble Castle of Windsor, where the royal youth first saw and sang the
+lady of his love, "the fairest and the sweeteste yonge flour," of whom
+he has left one of the most tender and beautiful descriptions that is to
+be found in all the course of poetry. It is more to our present purpose
+to tell how, amid all the charms of that courtly residence, so far
+superior to anything which primitive Scotland could offer in the way of
+dignity or luxury, the boy-king remained faithful to his country, and
+maintained the independence for which she had so long struggled. It is
+said that the one advantage taken of his captivity and youth was to
+press the old oft-repeated arguments concerning the supposed supremacy
+of England, and the homage due from the kings of Scotland, upon the boy
+who bore that title sadly amid the luxury and splendour of what was
+still a prison, however gracious and kind his jailers might be. No
+circumstances could have been better suited to impress upon James's mind
+the conviction that submission was inevitable: and it would have been
+almost more than mortal virtue on <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">{56}</a></span>the part of his captors had they not
+attempted to bring about so advantageous a conviction. King Henry V,
+under whom it is said the attempt was made, had been most generously
+liberal to and careful of the boy. He was a man so brilliant in
+reputation and success that a generous youth might well have been led by
+enthusiasm into any homage that was suggested, too happy to feel himself
+thus linked to so great a king; and James was very young, distant from
+his own country and all native advisers, his very life as well as his
+liberty in the power of those who asked this submission from him, and
+the force of circumstances so great that even his own people might have
+forgiven, and Holy Church could scarcely have hesitated to dispense him
+from keeping, an obligation entered into under such pressure. But the
+royal youth stood fast, and was not to be moved by any argument. Boece,
+whose authority is unfortunately not much to be depended upon, has a
+still more distinct and graphic story of judgment and firmness on the
+part of the young captive. He had been, according to this account, taken
+to France in the train of King Henry, who after the defeat the English
+had sustained near Orleans, chiefly through the valour of the Scots who
+had joined the French army, sent for James, and desired him "to pass to
+the Scots, and to command them to return to Scotland. King Harry
+promised, gif the said James brought this matter to good effect, not
+only to remit his ransom but to send him to Scotland with great riches
+and honour." James answered courteously, with expressions of goodwill
+and gratitude for the humanity shown towards him, but "I marvel not
+little," he said, "that thou considerest not how I have no power above
+the Scots so long as I am ane private man and holden in captivity." The
+chronicler adds: "Then said King Henry, 'Maist happy people shall they
+be that happens to get yon noble man to their prince.'" <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">{57}</a></span>It is a pity
+that we have no more trustworthy proof of this charming story.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact James attained his freedom only after the death of
+Albany, when the resistance or the still more effectual indifference to
+his liberation of the man who alone could profit by his death in prison,
+or by any unpopular step he might be seduced into making to gain his
+freedom, was dead, and had ceased from troubling. It would perhaps,
+however, be false to say that his imprisonment had done him nothing but
+good. So far as education went this was no doubt the case; but it is
+possible that in his subsequent life his reforms were too rapid, too
+thorough-going, too modern, for Scotland. The English sovereigns were
+richer, stronger, and more potent; the English commonalty more perfectly
+developed, and more capable of affording a strong support to a monarch
+who stood against the nobles and their capricious tyranny. James might
+not have been the enlightened ruler he was but for his training in a
+region of more advanced and cultivated civilisation; but had he been
+less enlightened, more on the level of his subjects, he might have had a
+less terrible end and a longer career.</p>
+
+<p>He returned to Scotland&mdash;with the bride of whom he had made so beautiful
+a picture, preserving her lovely looks and curious garments, and even
+the blaze of the Balas ruby on her white throat, to be a delight to all
+the after generations&mdash;in 1423, during Lent; and on Passion Sunday,
+which Boece calls <i>Care</i> Sunday, entered Edinburgh, where there was "a
+great confluence of people out of all parts of Scotland richt desirous
+to see him: for many of them," says the chronicle, "had never seen him
+before, or else at least the prent of his visage was out of their
+memory." There must indeed have been but few who could recognise the
+little prince who had been stolen away for safety at twelve in the
+accomplished man of thirty in all the fulness of his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">{58}</a></span>development, a
+bridegroom, and accustomed to the state and prestige of a richer Court
+than anything that Scotland could boast, who thus came among them full
+of the highest hopes and purposes, and surrounded by unusual splendour
+and wealth. It is true there was the burden behind him of a heavy ransom
+to pay, but her English kindred, we may well believe, did not suffer the
+Lady Jane to appear in her new kingdom without every accessory that
+became a queen; and a noble retinue of adventurous knights, eager to try
+their prowess against the countrymen of that great Douglas whose name
+was still so well known, would swell the train of native nobles who
+attended the sovereign. Old Edinburgh comes to light in the glow of this
+arrival, not indeed with any distinctness of vision, but with something
+of the aspect of a capital filled to overflowing with a many-coloured
+and picturesque crowd. The country folk in their homespun, and all the
+smaller rank of gentlemen, with their wives in the French hoods which
+fashion already dictated, thronged the ways and filled every window to
+see the King come in. It was more like the new setting up of a kingdom,
+and first invention of that dignity, than a mere return: and eager
+crowds came from every quarter to see the King, so long a mere name, now
+suddenly blazing into reality, with all the primitive meaning of the
+word so much greater and more living than anything that is understood in
+it now. The King's Grace! after the long sway of the Regent, always
+darkly feared and suspected, and the feeble deputyship full of abuses of
+his son Murdoch, it was like a new world to have the true Prince come
+back, the blood of Bruce, the genuine and native King, not to speak of
+the fair Princess by his side and the quickened life they brought with
+them. From the gates of the castle where they first alighted, down the
+long ridge&mdash;through the half-grown town within its narrow walls, where a
+few high houses, first evidences of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">{59}</a></span>the growth of the wealthy burgher
+class, alternated with the low buildings which they were gradually
+supplanting&mdash;through the massive masonry of the Port with its
+battlements and towers to the country greenness and freshness of the
+Canon's Gate which led to the great convent of the valley, there could
+be no finer scene for a pageant. Holyrood was one of those great
+monastic establishments in which kings could find a lodgment more
+luxurious than in their own castles, and though there would scarcely
+seem as yet to have been any palace attached to that holy house, it was
+already a frequent residence of royalty, and with all its amenities of
+parks and gardens would be more fit for the reception of a young queen
+coming straight from princely Windsor than the narrow chambers in the
+castle. Among the many presents which she is said to have brought with
+her from England there is a special mention of fine tapestries for the
+adornment of her new habitation.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the royal pair took possession of their kingdom, and of the
+interest and affection of the lively and eager crowd for which Edinburgh
+has always been famous&mdash;a populace more like that of a French town than
+an English, though with impulses sometimes leading to tragedy. James
+would scarcely seem to have been settled in that part of the ancient
+establishment of the abbey which was appropriated to the lodging of the
+King, or to have exhausted the thanksgivings of Easter and the
+rejoicings of the restoration, when he set himself to inquire into the
+state of the country and of the royal finances, to which he had been so
+long a stranger. There was no Civil List in those days nor votes of
+supply, and the state of the Crown lands and possessions, "the King's
+rents," was doubly important in view of the ransom yet to be paid, of
+which only a fourth part had been remitted as the portion of the Queen.
+The result of this investigation <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">{60}</a></span>was anything but satisfactory. It was
+found that during the reign of Albany many of these possessions had been
+alienated, made into fiefs, and bestowed upon the leaders of the faction
+which supported the Regent. "There was nothing left to sustain the
+Crown," says Boece, "except the customs of burrows. He was naething
+content of this," adds the chronicler with pithy conciseness, "howbeit
+he shewed good will (gud vult) for the time." James had already griefs
+enough against the family of his cousin without this startling
+discovery; and his "gud vult" would seem rather to have been the serious
+self-control of a man who was biding his time than any pretence of
+friendliness with his unfaithful relations and stewards. Amid the early
+pageants and festivities it is indeed recorded that he knighted Walter
+Stewart among the other candidates for that honour, the flower of the
+noble youth, a band of twenty-six gentlemen of the best houses in
+Scotland; but this was probably a step which was inevitable, as it would
+have been impossible to leave his own nearest relative out of the list
+until he had finally made up his mind how the family of Albany was to be
+treated. It is stated that the complaints and grievances of the people
+brought him to a decision on this point, and helped him to carry out his
+revenge upon the house which had, in popular belief at least, the guilt
+of his brother's blood upon it as well as that of his own long
+confinement. Walter Stewart, whose only other appearance in history is
+that of a rebellious and undutiful son whom his father was incapable of
+keeping in subjection, was arrested in Edinburgh Castle about a year
+after James's restoration, and after an interval of several months his
+arrest was followed by that of Duke Murdoch and his son Alexander, both
+of whom were also seized in Edinburgh Castle, where they had probably
+retired for safety. A few of their retainers arrested with them were
+speedily liberated, and it became apparent that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">{61}</a></span>upon this doomed family
+alone was King James's wrath directed. They were tried at Stirling, by a
+court of their peers, under the presidency of the King himself. The
+offences charged against them were misgovernment and oppression of the
+people, the greatest of public sins: but it was no less the end of a
+long tragedy. The younger branch of the race had been engaged in a
+struggle with the elder for the last two generations at least: and it
+had been the royal line that had suffered most during that period.
+Bitterly, in blood and heartbreak and long suppression, they had been
+weighed down under superior force: but now the time of reprisals had
+come. As they stood there confronting each other, the stern young King
+on one side and his kinsmen on the other, with a quarter of a century of
+wrong between them, the shadow of the young prince at Falkland, and the
+old father at Rothesay, and the eighteen years of captivity full in the
+minds of all, what a day of reckoning at last! It makes the retribution
+almost more tragic, like the overwhelming fate of the Greek drama, that
+the men upon their trial had nothing to do with these crimes, unless it
+might be the last. Murdoch of Albany had not exerted himself to liberate
+James, but that was his only evident offence, and his sons were not
+instrumental, so far as appears, in any injury to their royal cousin.
+The sins of the fathers were to be visited upon the children. We are
+told that the two sons, young men in the flower of their youth, were
+executed one day, and their father and maternal grandfather, a very old
+man, the Earl of Lennox, whose share in the matter it is difficult to
+make out, on the next. Thus James settled summarily the question between
+himself and his kinsmen. The house of Albany ended upon the scaffold,
+and however just their doom might have been, there was something
+appalling in this swift and sweeping revenge, carried out rigorously
+without a sign of hesitation by a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">{62}</a></span>young king, a happy bridegroom, an
+accomplished and gay cavalier.</p>
+
+<p>It must indeed be allowed, notwithstanding his poetry and his evident
+love of everything that was lovely and of good report, that the reign of
+the first James was a stern one. Every witness agrees as to his
+accomplishment, and that he was the flower of knighthood, of splendour
+and courtesy, the most chivalrous, the most daring, the most graceful
+and gracious of all his Court: and his genius as a poet is even more
+generally acknowledged. The King's "Quhair" as a poem is quite capable
+of standing on its own merits, and needs no additional prestige as the
+performance of a king. Had he been but a wandering minstrel Chaucer
+would have had no need to be ashamed of his pupil. It is full of
+delightful descriptions of nature and love and youth: the fresh morning
+as it rises upon the castled heights, the singing of the birds and
+fluttering of the leaves, the impulse of a young heart even in the
+languor of imprisonment to start up and meet the sun, with all the
+springs of new life which at that verdant season come with every new
+day&mdash;the apparition of the beautiful one suddenly appearing in the old
+immemorial garden with all its flowers, herself the sweetest and the
+fairest of flowers, all are set before us, with a harmony and music not
+to be excelled. The young Prince chafing at his imprisonment, dreaming
+of all the fantastic wonderful things he might do were he free, yet
+still so full of irrepressible hope that his impatience and his longings
+are but another form of pleasure, takes shape and identity as distinct
+as if he had been one of the figures in that famous pilgrimage to
+Canterbury, which had been part of his training in this delightful art.
+If James had never reigned at all he would still have lived through all
+these centuries in the guise in which he stood at his window on that May
+morning, and suddenly, amid his youthful <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">{63}</a></span>dreams, beheld the lovely
+vision of the Lady Jane emerging from under the young spring verdure of
+the trees. There is a certain window not generally supposed to be that
+at which the royal captive stood&mdash;a window in the Norman Tower of
+Windsor Castle, now fitly garnished and guarded by sympathetic hands,
+from which the spectator looking out upon the deep moat-garden
+underneath in the circle about the old donjon will scarcely be able to
+withstand the thrill of feeling which attends a poetic scene and
+incident fully realised. Nothing could be more green, more fresh, more
+full of romance and association, than this garden where all is youthful
+as the May, yet old in endless tradition, the garden of the Edwards and
+Henrys, where Chaucer himself may have thought over his accounts or
+taken the delightful image of his young squire "synging" who was, "or
+flouting all the day" from among some group of bright-faced lads in
+their bravery, where the countess who dropped her garter may have
+wandered, and the hapless Henry, the mild and puny child who was born
+there while James was undergoing his far from harsh captivity, played.
+James Stewart's name, had he been no king, would have been associated
+with this place, as that of his master in poetry is with the flowery
+ways of Kent.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was his inspiration derived alone from the well of English
+undefiled. A still more wonderful gift developed in him when he got home
+to his native country. Though the tones of Scotch humour were much less
+refined, and its utterances at that early period could be scarcely more
+than the jests and unwritten ballads of the populace, yet his early
+acquaintance with them must have lingered in the young Prince's mind,
+acquiring additional zest from the prepossessions of exile and the
+longing for home. And when the polished singer of the King's "Quhair"
+found himself again in his native land he seems to have burst forth with
+the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">{64}</a></span>most genuine impulse into the broad fun, rustical and natural and
+racy of the soil, which perhaps was more congenial to his Scottish
+audience. "Peblis to the Play" and "Christis Kirk on the Green" are
+poems full of the very breath of rural life and the rude yet joyous
+meetings of the country folk at kirk and market, which with wonderfully
+little difference of sentiment and movement also inspired Burns. He must
+have had a mind full of variety and wide human sympathy almost
+Shakspearian, who could step from the musings of Windsor and the
+beautiful heroine, all romance and ethereal splendour, to the lasses in
+their gay kirtles, and Hob and Raaf with their rustic "daffing," as true
+to the life as the Ayrshire clowns of Burns, and all the clumsy yet
+genial gambols of the village festival. It is one of the most curious
+and least to be expected transformations of poetic versatility&mdash;for it
+is even amazing how he could know the life into which he thus plunged
+joyous, as if he had been familiar with it from his childhood. King
+James was not without an object amid all the laughter and the pranks of
+his holiday. The King's cheerful ridicule of the clumsy fellows who
+could not draw the bow was intended, with a prick of scorn under the
+laughter, to rouse up his rustic lieges to emulation, not to be behind
+the southern pock-puddings whose deadly arrows were, in every encounter
+between Scots and English, the chief danger to the fighting men of the
+north. It is curious that this difference should have existed and
+continued with such obstinacy through all these fighting centuries; the
+Scotch spearmen were all but invulnerable in their steady square, like a
+rock, but they had little defence against the cloth-yard shafts of the
+English bowmen, which neither exhortation nor ridicule, neither prizes
+to win nor disaster to fear, could teach them to adopt. James laboured
+hard, in ways more practical than his poems, to introduce this new arm,
+but in vain. It was kept up languidly in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">{65}</a></span>holiday contentions, like that
+of Christis Kirk on the Green, while his life lasted; but when his reign
+was over and the momentary stimulus withdrawn the bows were all thrown
+away.</p>
+
+<p>The King's command of this humorous vein, so dear to his people, with
+its trenchant sketches from the life and somewhat rough jests, is
+wonderful, when his courtly breeding and long separation even from such
+knowledge of rustic existence as a prince is likely to obtain is
+considered. And the many-sided nature which made these humours so
+familiar and easy to him is a strange discovery in the midst of all the
+tragic circumstances of his life and reign. The union of the most
+delicate poetry and romance with that genial whim and fancy is unusual
+enough: but it is still more unusual to find the stern Justiciar,
+avenger of blood and redresser of wrong, the reconstructer of a
+distracted country, capable not only of the broad fun of the rustic
+ballad-maker, but of so tolerant and humorous a view of the humble
+commons, the underlying masses upon which society is built. For the
+first aspect of affairs in Scotland could not be a cheerful one:
+although it was rather with the nobles and gentlemen, the great
+proprietors of the country, who had to be summoned to exhibit their
+charters and prove their titles, partly no doubt with the view of
+discovering what Crown lands had been alienated by the Albany party,
+that the King's quarrel was, than with the humbler subjects of the
+nation.</p>
+
+<p>Yet there is no doubt, with all these lights and softening influences of
+character and genius, that his reign was a stern one. James had
+everything to reform in the country to which he came with so many new
+ideas and so enlarged a knowledge of what the internal economy of a
+nation might be made. It is rather against the general historical
+estimate of the talents and power of the Regent Albany that the new <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">{66}</a></span>King
+should have found, as appears, so much to do for the reorganisation of
+the commonwealth&mdash;regulating the laws, appointing courts of justice,
+inquiring into the titles of property, and in every other way giving
+consistency and order to the affairs of Scotland. However, the lavish
+grants made to the great Scots lords and the licence given them to rule
+their vassals as they pleased arose not from weakness but from Albany's
+deliberate policy of securing a strong party on his side, a policy
+exactly opposed to that of James, whose heart was set on subduing these
+fierce nobles, and perhaps of developing the people at large, the nation
+itself, if that is not too modern an ambition. The reign of Law, broken
+and disturbed by a hundred storms, but still henceforward with a
+statute-book to fall back upon and some fitful authority at its command,
+began in Scotland in his day.</p>
+
+<p>There are some curious details in the <i>Scotichronicon</i> about the taxes,
+now, it would seem, for the first time levied upon the general mass of
+the people. In 1424, the year after James's return, a tax of twelvepence
+in the pound was imposed by the Parliament at Perth, for the maintenance
+of the King's state and payment of his ransom, upon all goods, lands,
+and annual revenues of whatever description, both spiritual and
+temporal, which was passed with the consent of the estates, no doubt
+under the stimulus of the general rejoicing at the King's return. This
+impost was to last for two years. An income tax so general and
+all-embracing could scarcely be expected to be popular, but for the
+first year it was paid, we are told, with readiness, certain of the
+greatest nobles in the kingdom being appointed in their various
+districts to the office of collecting. That the Church should have taken
+her share in the payment of this tax says much for the loyalty of the
+Scotch priesthood and their unity with the people at this crisis of the
+national history. In the second year, however, grumblings arose. It is
+comprehensible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">{67}</a></span> that a nation unaccustomed to this pressure should
+respond to it in a moment of enthusiasm, yet become uneasy under the
+repetition when the enthusiasm had probably died away, especially if a
+fear arose that it might become permanent. King James, however, adopted
+a course not at all usual with governments when the power to exact has
+once been placed in their hands. When the popular murmur came to his
+ears he stopped at once the unpopular demand. How the paying of the
+ransom was carried on, and how the maintenance of the King's state we
+need not inquire. The Crown lands were no doubt extensive still. Some
+years later another experiment of the same kind was made; the new tax,
+however, being only twopence in the pound, and its object the payment of
+expenses of a mission sent to France to negotiate a marriage between the
+baby-princess Margaret and the equally juvenile dauphin&mdash;an object which
+does not appear to have appealed to the sympathies of the people, since
+we are told that it was the cause of immediate murmurs, the King not
+only stopped the unpopular tax but returned the money to those who had
+paid it&mdash;a most admirable but seldom followed example.</p>
+
+<p>The curious system afterwards employed by all the Scots kings of tours
+or "raids" of justice throughout the kingdom seems to have originated in
+James's energetic reign, but he carried not only the officers of the
+law, but occasionally his entire Parliament with him, moving about to
+the different centres of Scotland with great impartiality. Sometimes
+they met at Edinburgh, in the Great Parliament Hall in the Castle, and
+made "many good laws if they could have been kept," says the chronicler;
+sometimes at Perth, a favourite residence of the King; and on one
+memorable occasion so far north as Inverness, where, impatient of
+continual disquietude in the Highlands, James went to chastise the
+caterans and bring them within the reach of law. This he did with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">{68}</a></span>a
+severe and unsparing hand, seizing a number of the most eminent chiefs
+who had been invited to meet him there, and executing certain dangerous
+individuals among them without mercy. These summary measures would seem
+to have borne immediate fruit in the almost complete subjugation of the
+Highlands. But it was hard to reckon with such a restless element as the
+clans, and hanging and heading were very ineffectual measures among
+people with whom "another for Hector" was the simplest suggestion of
+natural law.</p>
+
+<p>It was after this stern Parliament of Inverness that there occurred at
+Edinburgh one of the most curious and picturesque scenes that it is
+possible to imagine. One of the chiefs tried at that assize was the
+greatest and most important of all, the Lord of the Isles, sometimes
+called Donald and sometimes Alexander by the chroniclers, who on his
+promise to amend his ways, and no longer harbour caterans or head
+forays, was, no doubt out of respect for his almost princely position,
+set at liberty. But no sooner was the fierce chieftain set free, "within
+a few days after," says the chronicler, than he took and burnt the town
+of Inverness, in which the Parliament had been held, and showed his
+impenitence by an utter abuse of the mercy accorded to him. When,
+however, he heard that the King himself with all the forces of the
+kingdom was coming against him, Donald hastily disbanded his men and
+took refuge in the watery fastnesses of his islands: and it would seem
+that he must have felt the tide of national sentiment to be against him,
+and his power not equal to make any stand against all the force of
+peaceful and law-abiding Scotland under the energetic new King. The wily
+Highlander made his submission in the way which, no doubt, he thought
+most likely to disarm authority and gain exemption. He choose Easter
+day, the greatest of religious festivals, for his appearance <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">{69}</a></span>as a
+penitent, and in the middle of the service in the Chapel of Holyrood
+appeared suddenly, almost without clothing, and knelt down before the
+King "where he was sittand at his orison," praying for grace in the name
+of Him who rose from the dead that day. So strange an interruption in
+the midst of all the glories of the Easter mass throws a strange and
+wild light upon the varieties of national life in Scotland. That
+half-savage figure, with plaid and weapons cast aside, defenceless, at
+the King's mercy, in all the primitive abandonment yet calculation of
+early patriarchal times; while all that the art and culture of a
+splendid age could do to give magnificence to the most imposing
+ceremonial of the Church surrounded this strange apparition, the incense
+rising, the music pealing, the Court in all its glory of flashing jewels
+and splendid stuffs filling the lofty area. Like some wild god of the
+mists suddenly gleaming through the fragrant smoke between the bishop's
+white robes and the kneeling King, what a strange interruption to the
+mass! The King, at the request of the Queen we are told, gave him his
+life, as the adjuration addressed to him and all the force of the
+surroundings gave James little choice but to do; for he could not have
+offended the sentiment of his people by refusing the boon which was
+demanded in that Name, however doubtful he might be of the expediency of
+granting it. "Then the King began to muse," says Boece. He must have
+been devout indeed to have been able to return to the course of the
+service with the Islesman before him on his knees, and all that wild
+half of the kingdom, with its dangerous habits and fierce tribal laws,
+thus suddenly made visible&mdash;a spectre which had often before troubled
+the King's peace. James had not to learn for the first time that
+apparent submission from such a suppliant did not necessarily mean any
+real change, and must have thoroughly felt the hollowness of that
+histrionic appearance and all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">{70}</a></span>the difficulties which beset his own
+action in the matter. The conclusion was, that the life of the Lord of
+the Isles was spared, but he was committed to safe keeping in the strong
+Castle of Tantallon, with, however, the unfailing consequence, that his
+brother took the field with all his caterans in his stead.</p>
+
+<p>James reigned in Scotland for thirteen years&mdash;a reign full of commotion
+and movement, by which many in high place were humiliated, the spoils of
+the feudal tyrants taken from them, and the wrongs of the suffering
+commonalty redressed, proceedings which procured for the King many
+enemies among the nobility before the force of popular sentiment was
+strong enough to balance this opposition by its support. He began in
+Scotland that struggle which for some time had been going on in England
+against the power of the nobles, who were still in the north something
+like a number of petty kings ruling in their own right, making little
+account of national laws, and regarding the King with defiance as almost
+a hostile power. One of the greatest risks of such a struggle is that it
+raises now and then a fiery spirit stung by the sense of injury and the
+rage of deprivation into a wild passion of revenge which bursts every
+restraint. The Grahams of Strathearn in the north had fallen specially
+under the rectifying process of James's new laws of property: and out of
+this house there suddenly arose the tragic figure of an avenger whose
+brief but terrible career occupies but a single page in history, yet
+contains all the elements of a fatal drama. Sir Robert Graham, of whose
+antecedents there is little record, was not the head of the house, but a
+younger brother of daring character, and one of those fanatics of race
+to whom the glory of their house is a religion. The first we hear of him
+is a sudden appearance in the Parliament of January 1435, when he made a
+fiery and violent speech, ending by an impeachment <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">{71}</a></span>of the King himself
+for injustice and robbery. Such an assault would find little support in
+the public assembly of the States, in the awe of the royal presence, and
+Graham had to escape for his life, finding means of flight into the
+Highlands, the ever-ready refuge for rebels. There he launched wild
+threats against James, which the King, probably well accustomed to
+missiles of the kind, paid little attention to. The monarch was warned
+too, we are told, by another wild apparition, which suddenly appears out
+of the mists for this purpose&mdash;a Highland witch of the order of those
+who drove Macbeth's ambition to frenzy, but whose mission now was to
+warn James of the mischief brewing against him. The King was brave and
+careless, used to the continual presence of danger, keeping his
+Christmas merrily at Perth with all the sports and entertainments with
+which it was possible to cheat the gloomy weather, and made little but
+additional mirth both of the prophecy and the threats. Evidently the
+Court found pleasure in the fair city on the Tay. They were still
+lingering there, having taken up their residence in the monastery of the
+Black Friars, at the end of February. In Scotland as elsewhere the great
+religious houses seem to have been the best adapted to give hospitality
+to kings. It was long after this date before anything that could be
+called an independent royal residence was built at Holyrood itself: for
+generations the King and Court were but guests in the stately abbey,
+which was, like the monastery of the Black Friars, so convenient and
+commodious a house both for entertainment and shelter that its great
+chambers became the natural, as they were the most stately and pleasant,
+lodging that could be provided for a monarch.</p>
+
+<p>The tragedy that followed is well known. At the end of a pleasant
+evening when there had been music&mdash;in which James himself was the first
+connoisseur in Scotland, inventing, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">{72}</a></span>some say, the national lilt, the
+rapidly rising and falling strain which is so full of pathos yet so
+adaptable to mirth&mdash;"and other honest solaces of grete pleasance and
+disport," the sound of trampling feet and angry voices broke upon the
+conventual stillness outside and the cheerful talk of the friendly group
+within. The King was taken at a disadvantage, apparently without even a
+gentleman of his Court near him, nothing but his wife and her ladies
+lingering for a last moment of pleasant conversation before they went to
+bed. It is easy to imagine the horror with which the little party must
+have listened to the rush of the savage band, hoping perhaps at first
+that it was but some tumult in the street, or affray between the
+townsfolk and the caterans&mdash;never very far off and often threatening St.
+John's town&mdash;till the cries and clashing of the arms came nearer, and
+wild torch-light flared through the high windows and proved the fatal
+object of the raid. The groans of a few easily despatched sentinels, the
+absence of any serious opposition or stand in defence, the horrible
+discovery of bolts and bars removed and the King at the mercy of his
+enemies, must have followed in a few terrible moments. No incident in
+history is better known than that piteous attempt of one distracted
+girl, a Douglas, born of a heroic race, to bar the door with her own
+slim arm, thrusting it through the holdfasts from which the bolt had
+been taken away: poor ineffectual bar! yet enough to gain a moment when
+moments were so precious, and while there was still a chance of saving
+the King.</p>
+
+<p>The narrative of the death struggle, and the distracted attempts to find
+a place of concealment for the victim, are too heartrending to be
+repeated here. James fell, it is said, with sixteen wounds in him,
+hacked almost to pieces, yet facing his murderers so desperately that
+some of them bore the marks of his dying grip when they were brought to
+the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">{73}</a></span>scaffold to be killed in their turn with every circumstance of
+horror conceivable some time later. The execution of these miserable
+traitors, one of them the King's own uncle Athole, took place at
+Edinburgh for the greater solemnity and terror of the punishment, which
+was accomplished by every kind of torture. The Queen, too, after the
+horrible scene of which she had been a witness, and almost more than a
+witness&mdash;for she had thrown herself before her husband and had been
+wounded in the terrible struggle&mdash;gathered her children and fled to
+Edinburgh Castle to put the little heir of the kingdom, now James II, in
+security. The hapless child was sadly crowned at Holyrood at six years
+old, with a hastily adapted ceremonial, the first of many such
+disastrous rites to come.</p>
+
+<p>The time of James's reign had been one of rising prosperity throughout
+the realm. Law and order had been established in recognised courts and
+tribunals, the titles of property had been ascertained and secured, not
+without loss, no doubt, to many arrogant lords who had seized upon stray
+land without any lawful title, or on whom it had been illegally bestowed
+during the Albany reign&mdash;but to the general confidence and safety. And
+the condition of the people had no doubt improved in consequence. It is
+difficult to form any estimate of what this condition was. All foreign
+witnesses give testimony of an unpleasing kind, and represent the
+country as wretched, squalid, and uncivilised: but on the other hand
+nothing can be more unlike this report than the most valuable and
+unintentional evidence furnished by King James's own poems, with their
+tale of village merry-makings and frays which convey no impression of
+abject poverty, nor even of that rudest level of life where material
+wants are so pressing as to exclude all lighter thoughts. "On Mayday,"
+says King James, "when everybody is bound to Peblis to the play,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">{74}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"At Beltane quhan ilke bodie bownis<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To Peblis to the play,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To heir the singing and sweit soundis,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The solace suth to say.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be firth and forest furth they found,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">They graythit them full gay;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God wot that wald they do that stound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">For it was thair feist day<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">They said<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Of Peblis to the Play."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>All the lasses of the west, he goes on to tell us, were up at cockcrow,
+and no men might rest for the chatter and the noise of their
+preparations. One cried that her curch was not starched enough, another
+that a hood was best, another bewailed herself as "so evil sunburnt"
+that she was not fit to be seen. The young folk stream along "full bold"
+with the bagpipes blowing, and every village adding its contingent, "he
+before and she before to see which was most gay."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"Some said that they were mercat folk,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some said the Quene of May<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">Was cumit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Peblis to the Play."<br /></span></div></div>
+
+<p>When they arrive at the "taverne hous" they give orders that the board
+be served, and to see that the napery is white, "for we will dyn and
+daunce." At "Christis Kirk on the Green" there is a similar description,
+the lasses coming out as before, "weshen clean," in their new grey
+kirtles "well prest with many plaits," with their gloves of doeskin and
+morocco shoes. All these incidental traits, and the atmosphere of the
+merry ballads, though both end in a fray, contradict with vigour the
+cold and wretched picture given by outsiders of a country where the
+people warmed themselves by burning sulphureous stones dug out of the
+ground, where the houses had a cow's hide stretched for a door, and all
+was squalid misery and nakedness. There was plenty of fighting going on
+it is evident&mdash;not a lowland fair <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">{75}</a></span>without its broken heads (a habit
+that, according to Sir Walter Scott, no mean authority, lasted into the
+nineteenth century)&mdash;and much oppression, the great lords reigning like
+absolute tyrants in the midst of subjects without resource or
+protection; but the case of the peasantry notwithstanding all these
+evils does not seem to have been a bad one. A certain vigorous capacity
+of revival, which history shows us continually as existing on the broad
+level of the soil, must have brought them back to rough ease and
+comfort, and the freedom of the natural healthful atmosphere which makes
+itself apparent in transcripts of life so little likely to be forced or
+optimistic. In all times and circumstances there can be little doubt
+that the amount of simple enjoyment to be got out of life, especially by
+the young, who form at least the half of every community, far exceeds
+the elements of wellbeing which outsiders see in it. And the protection
+of the Church, the comparative quiet to be enjoyed on church lands, the
+charities and succour of the cloister, must have made an incalculable
+addition to the possibilities of existence. Everything in James's reign
+was calculated to increase the stability and good order which are the
+best guarantees of national life; even his severities cultivating a
+sense of security in the weak and a wholesome consciousness of the
+necessity of self-restraint in the strong. For the first time for many
+generations the nobles were kept within bounds, and exceptional
+cruelties became if not impossible, yet of so certain discovery and
+punishment that lesser tyrants at least must have trembled. The law that
+might makes right fell into temporary disuse, and a better law, that of
+the courts that sat periodically over all the kingdom, and&mdash;appealing
+still more strongly to the imagination&mdash;a king that shut his ears to no
+petition and interfered with a strong hand to right the wronged, began a
+new era for the commonalty of Scotland. Even the unfavourable
+description <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">{76}</a></span>so often quoted of Eneas Silvius, reports the common people
+as having "abundance of flesh and fish," no small ingredient of
+wellbeing, and records rather a complete absence of luxuries than that
+want which reduces the vital strength of a nation. The same authority
+tells of exportations of "hides, wool, salt fish, and pearls," the
+latter a curious item, although there were as yet no manufactures, and
+even such necessaries as horse-shoes and every kind of harness had to be
+imported from Flanders. But the Scots in their farmhouses and cottages
+made the cloth with which they were clothed, and their "blew caps," the
+well-known blue bonnet which has lasted to our own days. And they
+retained the right which, according to her monkish chronicler, St.
+Margaret had been the first to secure for them&mdash;of immunity from all
+military requisitions, and even, which is a curious contradiction of the
+supposed tyrannies of the nobles, held an absolute property in their own
+goods which out of the island of Great Britain no peasantry in the world
+possessed. The French allies who were in Scotland in the end of the
+fourteenth century were struck with angry consternation to hear
+themselves hailed by a set of clodhoppers, and bidden to keep the paths
+and not trample down the growing corn, and to find that, however willing
+the Scots men-at-arms might be to harry England when occasion offered,
+not the greatest lord in the French contingent could carry off a cow or
+a brace of pullets without compensation. We cannot but think that the
+country in which the peasant's barnyard was thus defended was at least
+as forward in the best elements of civilisation as those in which there
+were hangings of arras and trenches of silver, but no security for
+anything in homesteads or workshop which might be coveted by the
+seigneur.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">{77}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 372px;">
+<img src="images/illus_013.jpg" width="372" height="400" alt="HOLYROOD" title="" />
+<span class="caption">HOLYROOD</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Edinburgh, as has been said, never seems to have been a favourite
+habitation of this enlightened and accomplished Prince. Perhaps Queen
+Jane found the east winds too keen on the heights, or the Abbey of the
+Holy Rood too low in the valley. The heir was born there it is true, and
+we have note of various Parliaments and visits, but no settled residence
+in the capital. One incident is mentioned by the chroniclers which must
+have afforded a picturesque scene, when the King himself presided,
+before the gates of Edinburgh Castle, at a duel between a knight called
+Henry Knokkis or Knox (curious precursor in the dimness of distance of
+another of his name!), who had been accused by an Edinburgh burgess of
+treasonable speeches against the King&mdash;and his accuser. But who this
+accuser was, and by what <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">{78}</a></span>privilege he was allowed to meet a gentleman
+and knight in single combat we have no information. Perhaps he was
+himself of noble blood, a younger son, a man before his time, seeking
+the peaceful profits of trade instead of those of the marauder, as it
+has become the fashion of a later age to do. It is almost impossible not
+to fancy that there must have been a touch of the burlesque in this
+combat, which James himself interfered to stop, separating the
+combatants. He was very careless it would seem of treasonable speeches,
+apt to treat them lightly and very probably smiled a little at the zeal
+of the citizen who was more jealous of his honour than he was himself.
+The platform before the gates would still make a splendid area for any
+feat of arms, if the winds did not interfere before the King and blow
+the combatants away: and the old-world crowd with their many colours,
+the jerkins slashed and embroidered with the blazon of all the great
+families in Scotland, the plumed caps and dazzling helmets of courtier
+and knight, the border of blue bonnets outside, and all the shining
+array of fair ladies around and behind the throne, would present a more
+striking picture than the best we could do nowadays. Let us hope the sun
+shone and warmed the keen clear air, and threw into high relief the
+towers and bastions against the northern blue.</p>
+
+<p>Edinburgh by this time had grown into the proportions of a town. The
+houses which the citizens had the privilege of building within the
+castle precincts would appear to have been low, to secure the protection
+of the walls; and by certain precautionary regulations for their
+preservation from fire it would seem that many of them were still
+thatched. The King's residence there, judging from the straitened
+accommodation, which was all that existed in a much more advanced
+period, must have been small and poor, though there already existed a
+Parliament Hall, in which probably <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">{79}</a></span>other great assemblies were held. The
+city walls were continued along the crest of the ridge in narrow lines,
+deflecting a little only on the south side, where the limits were broken
+by several wealthy and well-cultivated enclosures where brotherhoods
+were established&mdash;White and Black Friars, sons of Augustine and Dominic,
+with their great detached houses, their gardens always an example of
+husbandry, and chapels filling the air with pleasant sound of bells.
+King James had himself endowed, besides many existing foundations, a
+monastery for the Franciscans or Grey Friars, which has always continued
+to be one of the chief ecclesiastic centres of Edinburgh. It was so fine
+a building, as the story goes, that the humble-minded Minors declined at
+first to take possession of it as being too magnificent for an Order
+vowed to poverty; though as their superior was a monk from Cologne, sent
+for by the King on account of his learning and sanctity, and accustomed
+to the great convents of the Continent, such an objection is curious. On
+the south side of the town, at some distance outside the walls, on the
+platform afterwards occupied by the buildings of the old High School,
+stood amid its blossoming gardens the Church of St. Mary in the Field,
+afterwards so fatally known as the Kirk of Field, a great house so
+extensive and stately that it had already served on several occasions as
+a royal lodging. St. Giles's, one of the oldest foundations of all,
+stood among its graves, at the foot of the Castle Hill in the centre of
+the life of ancient Edinburgh, as it does still. These clusters of
+sacred buildings, encircled by their orchards and gardens, made a fringe
+of verdure, of charity and peace, sanctuaries for the living and
+resting-places for the dead, round the strong and dark fortifications of
+the little royal town, which hitherto had held for its life upon that
+ridge of rock, a dangerous eminence lying full in every invader's way.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> We here take Shakspeare's Prince Hal for granted, as we
+feel disposed at all times to take the poet's word in defiance of
+history; though no doubt the historical argument is calculated to throw
+a chill of doubt upon that gay and brilliant image.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">{80}</a></span></p></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">JAMES II: WITH THE FIERY FACE</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>It is clear that the public opinion of Scotland, so far as there was
+such a thing in existence, had no sympathy whatever with the murderers
+of James. The instruments of that murder were in the first place
+Highland caterans, with whom no terms were ever held and against whom
+every man's hand was armed. And the leaders who had taken advantage of
+these wild allies against their natural monarch and kindred were by the
+very act put beyond the pale of sympathy. They were executed ferociously
+and horribly, according to the custom of the time, the burghers of Perth
+rising at once in pursuit of them, and the burghers of Edinburgh looking
+on with stern satisfaction at their tortures&mdash;these towns feeling
+profoundly, more perhaps than any other section of the community, the
+extraordinary loss they had in the able and vigorous King, already, like
+his descendant and successor, the King of the commons, their stay and
+encouragement. If there was among the nobility less lamentation over a
+ruler who spared none of them on account of his race, and was sternly
+bent on repressing all abuse of power, it was silent in the immense and
+universal horror with which the event filled Scotland. It would seem
+probable that the little heir, only six years old, the only son of King
+James, was not with his parents in their Christmas rejoicings at Perth,
+but had been left behind at Holyrood, for we are told that the day after
+his father's death the poor little wondering child was solemnly but
+hastily crowned <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">{82}</a></span>there, the dreadful news having flown to the centre of
+government. He was "crownd by the nobilitie," says Pitscottie, the great
+nobles who were nearest and within reach having no doubt rushed to the
+spot where the heir was, to guard and also to retain in their own hands
+the future King. He was proclaimed at once, and the crown, or such
+substitute for it as could be laid sudden hands upon, put on his infant
+head. The scene is one which recurred again and again in the history of
+his race, yet nothing can take from it its touching features. At six
+years old even the intimation of a father's death, especially when
+taking place at a distance, would make but a transitory impression upon
+the mind; yet we may well imagine the child taken from his toys, wrapped
+from head to foot in some royal mantle, with a man's crown held over his
+baby head, receiving with large eyes of wonder and fright easily
+translated into tears, the sacred oil, the sceptre which his little
+fingers could scarcely enclose. Alas for the luckless Stewarts! again
+and again this affecting ceremony took place before the time of their
+final promotion which was the precursor of their overthrow. They were
+all kings almost from their cradle&mdash;kings ill-omened, entering upon
+their royalty with infant terror and tears.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 419px;">
+<img src="images/illus_014.jpg" width="419" height="600" alt="EDINBURGH CASTLE FROM THE SOUTH-WEST" title="" />
+<span class="caption">EDINBURGH CASTLE FROM THE SOUTH-WEST</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>When they had crowned the little James, second of the name, the lords
+held a convention "to advise whom they thought most able both for
+manheid and witt to take the government of the commonwealth in hand."
+They chose two men for this office, neither of whom was taken from a
+very great family, or had, so far as can be known, any special
+importance&mdash;Sir Alexander Livingstone, described as Knight of Callender,
+and Sir William Crichton, Chancellor of Scotland. Perhaps it was one of
+the compromises which are so common when parties are nearly equal in
+power which thus placed two personages of secondary importance <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">{83}</a></span>at the
+head of affairs: but any advantage which might have been secured by this
+selection was neutralised by the division of power, which added to all
+the evils of an interregnum the perplexity of two centres of government,
+so that "no man knew," as says Pitscottie, "whom he should obey." One of
+the Regents reigned in Edinburgh, the other in Stirling&mdash;one had the
+advantage of holding possession of the King, the other had the doubtful
+good of the support of the Queen. It may be imagined what an
+extraordinary contrast this was to the firm and vigilant sway of a
+monarch in the fulness of manhood, with all the prestige of his many
+gifts and accomplishments, his vigorous and manful character and his
+unquestioned right to the government and obedience of the country. It
+had been hard work enough for James I., with all these advantages, to
+keep his kingdom well in hand: and it would not be easy to exaggerate
+the difficulties now, with two rival and feeble powers, neither great
+enough to overawe nor united enough to hold in check the independent
+power of the great houses which vied with each other in the display of
+dominion and wealth. In a very brief time all the ground gained by King
+James was lost again. Every element of anarchy arose in new force, and
+if it had been hard to secure the execution of the laws which would have
+been so good had they been kept in the time when their chief
+administrator was the King himself, it may be supposed what was the
+difficulty now, when, save in a little circuit round each seat of
+authority, there was virtually no power at all. Pitscottie gives a
+curious and vivid picture of the state of affairs in this lamentable
+interval.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"In the mean time many great dissensions rose amongst us, but it was
+uncertain who were the movers, or by what occasion the chancellor
+exercised such office, further than became him. He keeped both the
+Castle of Edinburgh and also our young King thereintill, who was
+committed to his keeping by the haill nobilitie and ane great part
+of the noble men assisted to his opinion. Upon the other side, Sir
+Alexander <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">{84}</a></span>Livingstoun bearing the authoritie committed to him by
+consent of the nobilitie, as said is, contained another faction, to
+whose opinion the Queen mother with many of the nobility very trewly
+assisted. So the principals of both the factions caused proclaime
+lettres at mercat crosses and principal villages of the realm that
+all men should obey conforme to the aforesaid letters sent forth by
+them, under the pain of death. To the which no man knew to whom he
+should obey or to whose letters he should be obedient unto. And also
+great trouble appeared in this realm, because there was no man to
+defend the burghs, priests, and poor men and labourers hauntind to
+their leisum (lawful) business either private or public. These men
+because of these enormities might not travel for thieves and
+brigands and such like: all other weak and decrepit persons who was
+unable to defend themselves, or yet to get food and sustentation to
+themselves, were most cruelly vexed in such troublous times. For
+when any passed to seek redress at the Chancellor of such injuries
+and troubles sustained by them, the thieves and brigands, feigning
+themselves to be of another faction, would burn their house and
+carry their whole goods and gear away before ever they returned
+again. And the same mischief befell those that went to complain to
+the Governor of the oppression done to them. Some other good men
+moved upon consideration and pitie of their present calamities
+tholed (endured) many such injuries, and contained themselves at
+home and sought no redresse. In the midst of these things and
+troubles, all things being out of order, Queen-Mother began to find
+out ane moyane (a means) how she should diminish the Chancellor's
+power and augment the Governor's power, whose authority she
+assisted."</p></div>
+
+<p>The position of Queen Jane in the circumstances in which her husband
+left her, a woman still young, with a band of small children, and no
+authority in the turbulent and distracted country, is as painful a one
+as could well be imagined. Her English blood would be against her, and
+even her beauty, so celebrated by her chivalrous husband, and which
+would no doubt increase the immediate impulse of suitors, in that
+much-marrying age, towards the beautiful widow who was of royal blood to
+begin with and still bore the title of Queen. That she seems to have had
+no protection from her royal kindred is probably explained by the fact
+that Henry VI was never very potent or secure upon his throne, and that
+the Wars of the Roses were threatening and demanding the whole attention
+of the English Government. Wounded in her efforts to protect her husband
+by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">{85}</a></span>her own person, seeing him slaughtered before her eyes, there could
+not be a more terrible moment in any woman's life, hard as were the
+lives of women in that age of violence, than that which passed over Jane
+Beaufort's head in the Blackfriars Monastery amid the blood and tumult
+of that fatal night. The chroniclers, occupied by matters more weighty,
+have no time to picture the scene that followed that cruel and horrible
+murder, when the distracted women, who were its only witnesses, after
+the tumult and the roar of the murderers had passed by, were left to
+wash the wounds and compose the limbs of the dead King so lately taking
+his part in their evening's pastime, and to look to the injuries of the
+Queen and the torn and broken arm of Catherine Douglas, a sufferer of
+whom history has no further word to say. The room with its imperfect
+lights rises before us, the wintry wind rushing in by those wide-open
+doors, waving about the figures on the tapestry till they too seemed to
+mourn and lament with wildly tossing arms the horror of the scene&mdash;the
+cries and clash of arms as the caterans fled, pausing no doubt to pick
+up what scattered jewels or rich garments might lie in their way: and by
+the wild illumination of a torch, or the wavering leaping flame of the
+faggot on the hearth, the two wounded ladies, each with an anxious group
+about her&mdash;the Queen, covered with her own and her husband's blood; the
+girl, with her broken wrist, lying near the threshold which she had
+defended with all her heroic might. They were used to exercise the art
+of healing, to bind up wounds and bring back consciousness, these
+hapless ladies, so constantly the victims of passion and ambition. But
+amid all the horrors which they had to witness in their lives, horrors
+in which they did not always take the healing part, there could be none
+more appalling than this. Neither then nor now, however, is it at the
+most terrible moment of life, when the revolted soul desires it most,
+that death comes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">{86}</a></span>to free the sufferer. The Queen lived, no doubt, to
+think of the forlorn little boy in Holyrood, the five little maidens who
+were dependent upon her, and resumed the burden of life now so strangely
+different, so dull and blank, so full of alarms and struggles. Her elder
+child, the little Princess Margaret, had been sent to France three or
+four years before, at the age of ten, to be the bride of the Dauphin&mdash;a
+great match for a Scottish princess&mdash;and it is possible that her next
+sister, Eleanor, who afterwards married the Duc de Bretagne, had
+accompanied Margaret&mdash;two little creatures solitary in their great
+promotion, separated from all who held them dear. But the four infants
+who were left would be burden enough for the mother in her unassured and
+unprotected state. It would seem that she was not permitted to be with
+her boy, probably because of the jealousy of the Lords, who would have
+no female Regent attempting to reign in the name of her son: but had
+fixed her residence in Stirling under the shield of Livingstone, who as
+Governor of the kingdom ought to have exercised all the functions of the
+Regency, and especially the most weighty one, that of training the King.
+Crichton, however, who was Chancellor, had been on the spot when James
+II was crowned, and had secured his guardianship by the might of the
+strong hand, if no other, removing him to Edinburgh Castle, where he
+could be kept safe under watch and ward. The Queen, who would seem to
+have been throughout of Livingstone's faction, and who no doubt desired
+to have her son with her, both from affection and policy, set her wits
+to discover a "moyane," as the chroniclers say, of recovering the
+custody of the boy. The moyane was simple and primitive enough, and
+might well have been pardoned to a mother deprived of her natural
+rights: but it shows at the same time the importance attached to the
+possession of the little King, when it was only in such a way that he
+could be secured. Queen Jane set out from Stirling "with a small train"
+to avert suspicion, and appeared at the gates of Edinburgh Castle
+suddenly, without warning as would seem, asking to be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">{88}</a></span>admitted to see
+her son. The Chancellor, wise and wily as he was, would appear to have
+acknowledged the naturalness of this request, and "received her," the
+chronicler says, "with gladness, and gave her entrance to visit her
+young son, and gave command that whensoever the Queen came to the castle
+it should be patent to Her Grace." Jane entered the castle accordingly,
+with many protestations of her desire for peace and anxiety to prevent
+dissensions, all which was, no doubt, true enough, though the
+chroniclers treat her protestations with little faith, declaring her to
+have "very craftilie dissembled" in order to dispel any suspicion the
+Chancellor may have entertained. It would seem that she had not borne
+any friendship to him beforehand, and that her show of friendship now
+required explanation. However that might be, she succeeded in persuading
+Crichton of her good faith, and was allowed to have free intercourse
+with her son and regain her natural place in his affections. How long
+they had been separated there is no evidence to show, but it could
+scarcely be difficult for the mother to recover, even had it fallen into
+forgetfulness, the affection of her child. When she had remained long
+enough in the castle to disarm any prejudices Crichton might entertain
+of her, and to persuade the little King to the device which was to
+secure his freedom, the Queen informed the Chancellor that she was about
+to make a pilgrimage to the famous shrine of Whitekirk, "the white kirk
+of Brechin," Pitscottie says, in order to pray for the repose of the
+soul of her husband and the prosperity of her son, and asked permission
+to carry away two coffers with her clothes and ornaments, probably
+things which she had left in the castle before her widowhood, and that
+means of conveyance might be provided for these possessions to Leith,
+where she was to embark. This simple request was easily granted, and the
+two coffers carried out of the castle, and conveyed by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">{89}</a></span>"horss" to the
+ship in which she herself embarked with her few attendants. But instead
+of turning northward Queen Jane's ship sailed up the Firth, through the
+narrow strait at Queensferry, past Borrowstounness, where the great
+estuary widens out once more, into the quiet waters of the Forth,
+winding through the green country to Stirling on its hill. She was "a
+great pairt of the watter upward before ever the keepers of the castle
+could perceive themselves deceived," says Pitscottie. As the ship neared
+Stirling, the Governor of the kingdom came out of the castle with all
+his forces, with great joy and triumph, and received the King and his
+mother. For one of the coffers, so carefully packed and accounted for,
+contained no less an ornament than the little King in person, to whose
+childish mind no doubt this mode of transport was a delightful device
+and pleasantry. One can imagine how the Queen's heart must have throbbed
+with anxiety while her son lay hidden in the bed made for him within the
+heavy chest, where if air failed, or any varlet made the discovery
+prematurely, all her hopes would have come to an end. She must have
+fluttered like a bird over her young about the receptacle in which her
+boy lay, and talked with her ladies over his head to encourage and keep
+him patient till the end of the journey was near enough, amid the
+lingering links of Forth, to open the lid and set him free. It is not a
+journey that is often made nowadays, but with all the lights of the
+morning upon Demayat and his attendant mountains, and the sun shining
+upon that rich valley, and the river at its leisure wending, as if it
+loved them, through all the verdant holms and haughs, there is no
+pleasanter way of travelling from Edinburgh to Stirling, the two
+hill-castles of the Scottish crown.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 433px;">
+<img src="images/illus_015.jpg" width="433" height="600" alt="INNER BARRIER, EDINBURGH CASTLE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">INNER BARRIER, EDINBURGH CASTLE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It would be pleasant to think that Queen Jane meant something more than
+the mere bolstering up of one faction against another in the distracted
+kingdom by the abduction <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">{90}</a></span>of her son. It is very possible indeed that she
+did so, and that to strengthen the hands of the man who was really
+Regent-Governor of Scotland, but whose power had been stolen from his
+hands by the unscrupulousness of Crichton, seemed to her a great
+political object, and the recovery of the supreme authority, which would
+seem to have appeared to all as infallibly linked with the possession of
+the young King, of the greatest importance. It is evident it was
+considered by the general public to be so; but there is something
+pitiful in the struggle for the poor boy, over whose small person those
+fierce factionaries fought, and in whose name, still so innocent and
+helpless as he was, so many ferocious deeds were done.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner was he secure in Stirling than the Governor called together a
+convention of his friends, to congratulate each other and praise the wit
+and skill of "that noble woman, our soverain mother," who had thus set
+things right. "Whereby I understand," he says piously, "that the wisest
+man is not at all times the sickerest, nor yet the hardy man happiest,"
+seeing that Crichton, though so great and sagacious and powerful, should
+be thus deceived and brought to shame. "Be of good comfort therefore,"
+adds this enlightened ruler; "all the mischief, banishment, troubles,
+and vexation which the Chancellor thought to have done to us let us do
+the like to him." He ended this discourse by an intimation that he was
+about to besiege Edinburgh. "Let us also take up some band of
+men-of-war, and every man after his power send secret messages to their
+friends, that they and every one that favours us may convene together
+quietly in Edinburgh earlie in the morning, so that the Chancellor
+should not know us to come for the sieging of the castle till we have
+the siege even belted about the walls; so ye shall have subject to you
+all that would have arrogantly oppressed you."</p>
+
+<p>This resolution was agreed to with enthusiasm, the Queen <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">{91}</a></span>undertaking to
+provision the army "out of her own garners"; but the Governor had no
+sooner "belted the siege about the castle," an expression which renders
+most graphically the surrounding of the place, than the Chancellor,
+taken by surprise, prostrated by the loss of the King, and finding it
+impossible to draw the powerful Earl of Douglas to his aid, made
+overtures of submission, and begged for a meeting "in the fields before
+the gates," where, with a few chosen friends on either side, the two
+great functionaries of the kingdom might come to an agreement between
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>By this time there would seem to have begun that preponderating
+influence of the Douglas family in Scotland which vexed the entire reign
+of the second James, and prompted two of the most violent and tragic
+deeds which stain the record of Scottish history. James I. was more
+general in his attempt at the repression and control of his fierce
+nobility, and the family most obnoxious to him was evidently that of his
+uncle, nearest in blood and most dangerous to the security of the
+reigning race. The Douglas, however, detaches himself in the following
+generation into a power and place unexampled, and which it took the
+entire force of Scotland, and all the wavering and uncertain expedients
+of law, as well as the more decisive action of violence quite lawless,
+to put down. Whether there was in the pretensions of this great house
+any aim at the royal authority in their own persons, or ambitious
+assertion of a rival claim in right of the blood of Bruce, which was as
+much in their veins as in those of the Stewarts, as some recent
+historians would make out, it is probably now quite impossible to
+decide. The chroniclers say nothing of any such intention, nor do the
+Douglases themselves, who throughout the struggle never hesitated to
+make submission to the Crown when the course of fortune went against
+them. The Chancellor had been deeply stung, it is evident, by the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">{92}</a></span>answer
+of Douglas to his appeal, in which the fierce Earl declared that discord
+between "you twa unhappie tyrants" was the most agreeable thing in the
+world to him, and that he wished nothing more than that it should
+continue. Deprived of the sanction given to all his proceedings by the
+name of the King, outwitted among his wiles, and exposed to the ridicule
+even of those who had regarded his wisdom with most admiration, Crichton
+would seem to have turned fiercely upon the common opponent, perhaps
+with a wise prescience of the evil to come, perhaps only to secure an
+object of action which might avert danger from himself and bring him
+once more into command of the source of authority&mdash;most likely with both
+objects together, the higher and lower, as is most general in our
+mingled nature. The meeting was held accordingly outside the castle
+gates, the Chancellor coming forth in state bearing the keys of the
+castle, which were presented, Buchanan says, to the King in person, who
+accompanied the expedition, and who restored the great functionary to
+his office. The great keys in the child's hand, the little treble pipe
+in which the reappointment would be made, the tiny figure in the midst
+of all these plotters and warriors, gives a touch of pathos to the many
+pictorial scenes of an age so rich in the picturesque; but the earlier
+writers say nothing of the little James's presence. There was, however,
+a consultation between the two Regents, and Douglas's letter was read
+with such angry comments as may be supposed. The Earl's contempt
+evidently cut deep, and strongly emphasised the necessity of dealing
+authoritatively with such a high-handed rebel against the appointed
+rulers.</p>
+
+<p>It would appear, however, that little could be done against the
+immediate head of that great house, and the two rulers, though they had
+made friends over this common object, had to await their opportunity,
+and in the meantime <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">{93}</a></span>do their best to maintain order and to get each the
+chief power into his own hands. Crichton found means before very long to
+triumph over his adversaries in his turn by rekidnapping the little
+King, for whom he laid wait in the woods about Stirling, where James was
+permitted precociously to indulge the passion of his family for hunting.
+No doubt the crafty Chancellor had pleasant inducements to bring forward
+to persuade the boy to a renewed escape, for "the King smiled," say the
+chroniclers, probably delighted by the novelty and renewed
+adventure&mdash;the glorious gallop across country in the dewy morning, a
+more pleasant prospect than the previous conveyance in his mother's big
+chest. Thus in a few hours the balance was turned, and it was once more
+the Chancellor and not the Governor who could issue ordinances and make
+regulations in the name of the King.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing, however, could be more tedious and trifling in the record than
+these struggles over the small person of the child-king. But the story
+quickens when the long-desired occasion arrived, and the two rulers,
+rivals yet partners in power, found opportunity to strike the blow upon
+which they had decided, and crush the great family which threatened to
+dominate Scotland, and which was so contemptuous of their own sway. The
+great Earl, Duke of Touraine, almost prince at home, the son of that
+Douglas whose valour had moved England, and indeed Christendom, to
+admiration, though he never won a battle&mdash;died in the midst of his
+years, leaving behind him two young sons much under age as the
+representatives of his name. It is extraordinary to us to realise the
+place held by youth in those times, when one would suppose a man's
+strength peculiarly necessary for the holding of an even nominal
+position. Mr. Church has just shown in his Life of Henry V how that
+prince at sixteen led armies and governed provinces; and it is clear
+that this was by no means exceptional, and that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">{94}</a></span>the right of boys to
+rule themselves and their possessions was universally acknowledged and
+permitted. The young William, Earl of Douglas, is said to have been only
+about fourteen at his father's death. He was but eighteen at the time of
+his execution, and between these dates he appears to have exercised all
+the rights of independent authority without tutor or guardian. The
+position into which he entered at this early age was unequalled in
+Scotland, in many respects superior to that of the nominal sovereign,
+who had so many to answer to for every step he took&mdash;counsellors and
+critics more plentiful than courtiers. The chronicles report all manner
+of vague arrogancies and presumptions on the part of the new Earl. He
+held a veritable court in his castle, very different from the
+semi-prison which, whether at Edinburgh or Stirling, was all that James
+of Scotland had for home and throne&mdash;and conferred fiefs and knighthood
+upon his followers as if he had been a reigning prince. "The Earl of
+Douglas," says Pitscottie, "being of tender age, was puffed up with new
+ambition and greater pride nor he was before, as the manner of youth is;
+and also prideful tyrants and flatterers that were about him through
+this occasion spurred him ever to greater tyranny and oppression." The
+lawless proceedings of the young potentate would seem to have stirred up
+all the disorderly elements in the kingdom. His own wild Border county
+grew wilder than ever, without control. Feuds broke out over all the
+country, in which revenge for injuries or traditionary quarrels were lit
+up of the strong hope in every man's breast not only of killing his
+neighbour, but taking possession of his neighbour's lands. The caterans
+swarmed down once more from the mountains and isles, and every petty
+tyrant of a robber laird threw off whatever bond of law had been forced
+upon him in King James's golden days. This sudden access of anarchy was
+made more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">{95}</a></span>terrible by a famine in the country, where not very long
+before it had been reported that there was fish and flesh for every man.
+"A great dearth of victualls, pairtly because the labourers of the
+ground might not sow nor win the corn through the tumults and cumbers of
+the country," spread everywhere, and the state of the kingdom called the
+conflicting authorities once more to consultation and some attempt at
+united action.</p>
+
+<p>The meeting this time was held in St. Giles's, the metropolitan church,
+then, perhaps, scarcely less new and shining in its decoration than now,
+though with altars glowing in all the shadowy aisles and the breath of
+incense mounting to the lofty roof. There would not seem to have been
+any prejudice as to using a sacred place for such a council, though it
+might be in the chapter-house or some adjacent building that the barons
+met. It is to be hoped that they did not go so far as to put into words
+within the consecrated walls the full force of their intention, even if
+it had come to be an intention so soon. There was but a small following
+on either side, that neither party might be alarmed, and many fine
+speeches were made upon the necessity of concord and mutual aid to
+repress the common enemy. The Chancellor, having restolen the King,
+would no doubt be most confident in tone; but on both sides there were
+equal professions of devotion to the country, and so many admirable
+sentiments expressed, that "all their friends on both sides that stood
+about began to extol and love them both, with great thanksgiving that
+they both regarded the commonwealth so mickle and preferred the same to
+all private quarrels and debates." The decision to which they came was
+to call a Parliament, at which aggrieved persons throughout the country
+might appear and make their complaints. The result was a crowd of woeful
+complainants, "such as had never been seen before. There were so many
+widows, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">{96}</a></span>bairns, and infants seeking redress for their husbands, kin, and
+friends that were cruelly slain by wicked murderers, and many for
+hireling theft and murder, that it would have pitied any man to have
+heard the same." This clamorous and woeful crowd filled the courts and
+narrow square of the castle before the old parliament-hall with a murmur
+of misery and wrath, the plaint of kin and personal injury more sharp
+than a mere public grief. The two rulers and their counsellors no doubt
+listened with grim satisfaction, feeling their enemy delivered into
+their hands, and finding a dreadful advantage in the youth and
+recklessness of the victims, who had taken no precaution, and of whom it
+was so easy to conclude that they were "the principal cause of these
+enormities." Whether their determination to sacrifice the young Douglas,
+and so crush his house, was formed at once, it is impossible to say.
+Perhaps some hope of moulding his youth to their own purpose may have at
+first softened the intention of the plotters. At all events they sent
+him complimentary letters, "full of coloured and pointed words,"
+inviting him to Edinburgh in their joint names with all the respect that
+became his rank and importance. The youth, unthinking in his boyish
+exaltation of any possibility of harm to him, accepted the invitation
+sent to him to visit the King at Edinburgh, and accompanied by his
+brother David, the only other male of his immediate family, set out
+magnificently and with full confidence with his gay train of knights and
+followers&mdash;among whom, no doubt, the youthful element
+predominated&mdash;towards the capital. He was met on the way by
+Crichton&mdash;evidently an accomplished courtier, and full of all the habits
+and ways of diplomacy&mdash;who invited the cavalcade to turn aside and rest
+for a day or two in Crichton Castle, where everything had been prepared
+for their reception. Here amid all the feastings and delights the great
+official discoursed to the young noble about the duties of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">{98}</a></span>his rank and
+the necessity of supporting the King's government and establishing the
+authority of law over the distracted country, sweetening his sermon with
+protestations of his high regard for the Douglas name, whose house, kin,
+and friends were more dear to him than any in Scotland, and of affection
+to the young Earl himself. Perhaps this was the turning-point, though
+the young gallant in his heyday of power and self-confidence was all
+unconscious of it; perhaps he received the advice too lightly, or
+laughed at the seriousness of his counsellor. At all events, when the
+gay band took horse again and proceeded towards Edinburgh, suspicion
+began to steal among the Earl's companions. Several of them made efforts
+to restrain their young leader, begging him at least to send back his
+young brother David if he would not himself turn homeward. "But," says
+the chronicler, "the nearer that a man be to peril or mischief he runs
+more headlong thereto, and has no grace to hear them that gives him any
+counsel to eschew the peril."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 301px;">
+<img src="images/illus_016.jpg" width="301" height="600" alt="EDINBURGH CASTLE FROM THE VENNEL" title="" />
+<span class="caption">EDINBURGH CASTLE FROM THE VENNEL</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The only result of these attempts was that the party of boys spurred on,
+more gaily, more confidently than ever, with the deceiver at their side,
+who had spoken in so wise and fatherly a tone, giving so much good
+advice to the heedless lads. They were welcomed into Edinburgh within
+the fatal walls of the Castle with every demonstration of respect and
+delight. How long the interval was before all this enthusiasm turned
+into the stern preparations of murder it seems impossible to say&mdash;it
+might have been on the first night that the catastrophe happened, for
+anything the chroniclers tell us. The followers of Douglas were
+carefully got away, "skailled out of the town," sent for lodging outside
+the castle walls, while the two young brothers were marshalled, as
+became their rank, to table to dine with the King. Whether they
+suspected anything, or whether the little James in his helpless
+innocence had any knowledge of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">{99}</a></span>what was going to happen, it is
+impossible to tell. The feast proceeded, a royal banquet with "all
+delicatis that could be procured." According to a persistent tradition,
+the signal of fate was given by the bringing in of a bull's head, which
+was placed before the young Earl. Mr. Burton considers this incident as
+so picturesque as to be merely a romantic addition; but no symbol was
+too boldly picturesque for the time. When this fatal dish appeared the
+two young Douglases seem at once to have perceived their danger. They
+started from the table, and for one despairing moment looked wildly
+round them for some way of escape. The stir and commotion as that tragic
+company started to their feet, the vain shout for help, the clash of
+arms as the fierce attendants rushed in and seized the victims, the
+deadly calm of the two successful conspirators who had planned the
+whole, and the pale terrified face of the boy-king, but ten years old,
+who "grat verie sore," and vainly appealed to the Chancellor for God's
+sake to let them go, make one of the most impressive of historical
+pictures. The two hapless boys were dragged out to the Castle Hill,
+which amid all its associations has none more cruel, and there beheaded
+with the show of a public execution, which made the treachery of the
+crime still more apparent; for it had been only at most a day or two,
+perhaps only a few hours, since the Earl and his brother in all their
+bravery had been received with every gratulation at these same gates,
+the welcome visitors, the chosen guests, of the King. The populace would
+do little but stare in startled incapacity to interfere at such a scene;
+some of them, perhaps, sternly satisfied at the cutting off of the
+tyrant stock; some who must have felt the pity of it, and had
+compunction for the young lives cut off so suddenly. A more cruel
+vengeance could not be on the sins of the fathers, for it is impossible
+to believe that the Regents did not take advantage of the youth of these
+representatives of the famous <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">{100}</a></span>Douglas race. Older and more experienced
+men would not have fallen into the snare, or at all events would have
+retained the power to sell their lives dear.</p>
+
+<p>If the motives of Livingstone and Crichton were purely patriotic, it is
+evident that they committed a blunder as well as a crime: for instead of
+two boys rash and ill-advised and undeveloped they found themselves in
+face of a resolute man who, like the young king of Israel, substituted
+scorpions for whips, persecuting both of them without mercy, and finally
+bringing Livingstone at least to destruction. The first to succeed to
+William Douglas was his uncle, a man of no particular account, who kept
+matters quiet enough for a few years; but when his son, another William,
+succeeded, the Regents soon became aware that an implacable and powerful
+enemy, the avenger of his two young kinsmen, but an avenger who showed
+no rash eagerness and could await time and opportunity, was in their
+way. The new Earl married without much ceremony, though with a papal
+dispensation in consequence of their relationship, the little Maid of
+Galloway, to whom a great part of the Douglas lands had gone on the
+death of her brothers, and thus united once more the power and
+possessions of his name. He was himself a young man, but of full age, no
+longer a boy, and he would seem to have combined with much of the steady
+determination to aggrandise and elevate his race which was
+characteristic of the Douglases, and their indifference to commonplace
+laws and other people's rights, an impulsiveness of character, and
+temptation towards ostentation and display, which led him at once to
+submission and to defiance at unexpected moments, and gave an element of
+uncertainty to his career. Soon after his succession it would seem to
+have occurred to him, after some specially unseemly disputes among some
+of his own followers, that to get himself into harmony with the laws of
+the realm and gain the friendship <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">{101}</a></span>of the young King would be a good
+thing to do. He came accordingly to Stirling where James was, very sick
+of his governors and their wiles and struggles, and throwing himself at
+the boy's feet offered himself, his goods and castles, and life itself,
+for the King's service, "that he might have the licence to wait upon His
+Majesty but as the soberest courtier in the King's company," and
+proclaimed himself ready to take any oath that might be offered to him,
+and to be "as serviceable as any man within the realm." James, it would
+seem, was charmed by the noble suitor, and all the glamour of youth and
+impulse which was in the splendid young cavalier, far more great and
+magnificent than all the Livingstones and Crichtons, who yet came with
+such abandon to the foot of the throne to devote himself to its service.
+He not only forgave Douglas all his offences, but placed him at the head
+of his government, "used him most familiar of any man," and looked up to
+him with the half-adoring admiration which a generous boy so often feels
+towards the first man who becomes his hero.</p>
+
+<p>This happened in 1443, when James was but thirteen. It would be as easy
+to say that Douglas displaced with a rush the two more successful
+governors of the kingdom, and took their places by storm&mdash;and perhaps it
+would be equally true: yet it would be vain to ignore James as an actor
+in national affairs because of his extreme youth. In an age when a boy
+of sixteen leads armies and quells insurrections, a boy of thirteen,
+trained amid all the exciting circumstances which surrounded James
+Stewart, might well have made a definite choice and acted with full
+royal intention, perhaps not strong enough to be carried out by its own
+impulse, yet giving a real sanction and force to the power which an
+elder and stronger man was in a position to wield. We have no such means
+of forming an idea of the character and personality of the second James
+as we have of his father. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">{102}</a></span>No voice of his sounds in immortal accents to
+commemorate his loves or his sadness. He appears first passively in the
+hands of conspirators who played him in his childhood one against the
+other, a poor little royal pawn in the big game which was so bloody and
+so tortuous. His young memory must have been full of scares and of
+guileful expedients, each party and individual about him trying to
+circumvent the other. Never was child brought up among wilder chances.
+The bewildering horror of his father's death, the sudden melancholy
+coronation, and all the nobles in their sounding steel kneeling at his
+baby feet, which would be followed in his experience by no expansion or
+indulgence, but by the confinement of the castle; the terrible
+loneliness of an imprisoned child, broken after a while by the sudden
+appearance of his mother, and that merry but alarming jest of his
+conveyance in the great chest, half stifled in the folds of her
+embroideries and cloth of gold. Then another flight, and renewed stately
+confinement among his old surroundings, monotony broken by sudden
+excitements and the babble in his ears of uncomprehended politics, from
+which, however, his mind, sharpened by the royal sense that these
+mysterious affairs were really his own, would no doubt come to find
+meaning at a far earlier age than could be possible under other
+circumstances. And then that terrible scene, most appalling of all, when
+he had to look on and see the two lads, not so much older than himself,
+young gallants, so brave and fine, to whom the boy's heart would draw in
+spite of all he might have heard against them, so much nearer to himself
+than either governor or chancellor, those two noble Douglases, suddenly
+changed under his eyes from gay and welcome guests to horrified victims,
+with all the tragic passion of the betrayed and lost in their young
+eyes. Such a scene above all must have done much to mature the
+intelligence of a boy full like all his race of spirit and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">{103}</a></span>independence,
+and compelled to look on at so much which he could not stop or remedy.
+Thus passive and helpless, yet with the fiction of supremacy in his
+name, we see the boy only by glimpses through the tumultuous crowd about
+him with all their struggles for power, until suddenly he flashes forth
+into the foreground, the chief figure in a scene more violent and
+terrible still than any that had preceded it, taking up in his own
+person the perpetual and unending struggle, and striking for himself the
+decisive blow. There is no act so well known in James's life as that of
+the second Douglas murder, which gives a sinister repetition, always
+doubly impressive, to the previous tragedy. And yet between the two what
+fluctuations of feeling, what changes of policy, how many long
+exasperations, ineffectual pardons, convictions unwillingly formed, must
+have been gone through. That he was both just and gentle we have every
+possible proof, not only from the unanimous consent of the chronicles,
+but from the manner in which, over and over again, he forgives and
+condones the oft-repeated offences of his friend. And there could be few
+more interesting psychological studies than to trace how, from the
+sentiments of love and admiration he once entertained for Douglas, he
+was wrought to such indignation and wrath as to yield to the weird
+fascination of that precedent which must have been so burnt in upon his
+childish memory, and to repeat the tragedy which within the recollection
+of all men had marked the Castle of Edinburgh with so unfavourable a
+stain.</p>
+
+<p>We are still far from that, however, in the bright days when Douglas was
+Lieutenant-Governor of the kingdom, and the men who had murdered his
+kinsmen were making what struggle they could against his enmity, which
+pursued them to the destruction of one family and the frequent hurt and
+injury of the other. How Livingstone and his household escaped from time
+to time but were finally brought to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">{104}</a></span>ruin, how Crichton wriggled back
+into favour after every overthrow, sometimes besieged in his castle for
+months together, sometimes entrusted with the highest and most
+honourable missions, it would be vain to tell in detail. James would
+seem to have yielded to the inspiration of his new prime minister for a
+period of years, until his mind had fully developed, and he became
+conscious, as his father had been, of the dangers which arose to the
+common weal from the lawless sway of the great nobles, their continual
+feuds among themselves, and the reckless independence of each great
+man's following, whose only care was to please their lord, with little
+regard either for the King and Parliament or the laws they made. During
+this period his mother died, though there is little reason to suppose
+that she had any power or influence in his council, or that her loss was
+material to him. She had married a second time, another James Stewart
+called the Black Knight of Lorne, and had taken a considerable part in
+the political struggles of the time always with a little surrounding of
+her own, and a natural hope in every change that it might bring her son
+back to her. It is grievous that with so fair a beginning, in all the
+glow of poetry and love, this lady should have dropped into the position
+of a foiled conspirator, undergoing even the indignity of imprisonment
+at the hands of the Regents whom she sometimes aided and sometimes
+crossed in their arrangements. But a royal widow fallen from her high
+estate, a queen-mother whose influence was feared and discouraged and
+every attempt at interference sternly repressed, would need to have been
+of a more powerful character than appears in any of her actions to make
+head against her antagonists. She died in Dunbar in 1446, of grief, it
+is said, for the death of her husband, who had been banished from the
+kingdom in consequence of some hasty words against the power of the
+Douglas, of whom however, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">{105}</a></span>even while he was still in disgrace, Sir James
+Stewart had been a supporter. Thus ended in grief and humiliation the
+life which first came into sight of the world in the garden of the great
+donjon at Windsor some quarter of a century before, amid all the
+splendour of English wealth and greatness, and all the sweet
+surroundings of an English May.</p>
+
+<p>James was married in 1450, when he had attained his twentieth year, to
+Mary of Gueldres, about whom during her married life the historians find
+nothing to say except that the King awarded pardon to various
+delinquents at the request of the Queen&mdash;an entirely appropriate and
+becoming office. No doubt his marriage, so distinct as a mark of
+maturity and independence, did something towards emancipating James from
+the Douglas influence; and it is quite probable that the selection of
+Sir William Crichton to negotiate the marriage and bring home the bride
+may indicate a lessening supremacy of favour towards Douglas in the mind
+of his young sovereign. Pitscottie records a speech made to the Earl and
+his brothers by the King, when he received and feasted them after their
+return from a successful passage of arms with the English on the Border,
+in which James points out the advantage of a settled rule and lawful
+authority, and impresses upon them the necessity of punishing robbers
+and reivers among their own followers, and seeing justice done to the
+poor, as well as distinguishing themselves by feats of war. By this time
+the Douglases had once more become a most formidable faction. The head
+of the house had so successfully worked for his family that he was on
+many occasions surrounded by a band of earls and barons of his own
+blood, his brothers having in succession, by means of rich marriages or
+other means of aggrandisement, attained the same rank as himself, and,
+though not invariably, acting as his lieutenants and supporters, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">{106}</a></span>while
+his faction was indefinitely increased by the followers of these cadets
+of his house, all of them now important personages in the kingdom. It
+was perhaps the swelling pride and exaltation of a man who had all
+Scotland at his command, and felt himself to have reached the very
+pinnacle of greatness, which suggested the singular expedition to France
+and Rome upon which Douglas set forth, in the mere wantonness of
+ostentation and pride, according to the opinion of all the chroniclers,
+to spread his own fame throughout the world, and show the noble train
+and bravery of every kind with which a Scottish lord could travel. It
+was an incautious step for such a man to take, leaving behind him so
+many enemies; but he would seem to have been too confident in his own
+power over the King, and in his greatness and good fortune, to fear
+anything. No sooner was he gone, however, than all the pent-up
+grievances, the complaints of years during which he had wielded almost
+supreme power in Scotland, burst forth. The King, left for the first
+time to himself and to the many directors who were glad to school him
+upon this subject, was startled out of his youthful ease by the tale of
+wrong and oppression which was set before him. No doubt Sir William
+Crichton would not be far from James's ear, nor the representatives of
+his colleague, whom Douglas had pursued to the death. The state of
+affairs disclosed was so alarming that John Douglas, Lord Balvenie, the
+brother of the Earl, who was left his procurator and representative in
+his absence, was hastily summoned to Court to answer for his chief.
+Balvenie, very unwilling to risk any inquisition, held back, until he
+was seized and brought before the King. His explanations were so little
+satisfactory, that he was ordered at once to put order in the matter,
+and to "restore to every man his own:" a command which he received
+respectfully, but as soon as he got free ignored altogether, keeping
+fast hold of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">{107}</a></span>the ill-gotten possessions, and hoping, no doubt, that the
+momentary indignation would blow over, and all go on as before. James,
+however, was too much roused to be trifled with. When he saw that no
+effect was given to his orders he took the matter into his own hands.
+The Earl of Orkney with a small following was first sent with the King's
+commission to do justice and redress wrongs: but when James found his
+ambassador insulted and repulsed, he took the field himself, first
+making proclamation to all the retainers of the Douglas to yield to
+authority on pain of being declared rebels. Arrived in Galloway, he rode
+through the whole district, seizing all the fortified places, the narrow
+peel-houses of the Border, every nest of robbers that lay in his way,
+and, according to one account, razed to the ground the Castle of Douglas
+itself, and placed a garrison of royal troops in that of Lochmaben, the
+two chief strongholds of the house. But James's mission was not only to
+destroy but to restore. He divided the lands thus taken from the House
+of Douglas, according to Pitscottie, "among their creditors and
+complainers, till they were satisfied of all things taen from them,
+whereof the misdoers were convict." This, however, must only have
+applied, one would suppose, to the small losses of the populace, the
+lifted cows and harried lands of one small proprietor and another. "The
+King," adds the same authority, "notwithstanding of this rebellion, was
+not the more cruel in punishing thereof nor he was at the beginning:"
+while Buchanan tells us that his clemency and moderation were applauded
+even by his enemies.</p>
+
+<p>This is throughout the opinion which we find of James. He was capable of
+being moved to sudden violent indignation and hasty action, as was too
+distinctly demonstrated afterwards; but the hasty outburst once over
+came back at once without rancour to his natural benignity, always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">{108}</a></span>
+merciful, slow to anger, ready to hear whatever the accused might have
+to say for himself, and to pardon as long as pardon was possible.
+Notwithstanding the rebellious and audacious contempt of all authority
+but their own shown by the Douglas party, notwithstanding the standing
+danger of their insolent power, their promises so often broken, their
+frequent submissions and actual defiance, his aim in all his dealings
+with them was rather to do justice to the oppressed than to punish the
+guilty. His genial temper, and that belief in his kind which is always
+so ingratiating a quality, is proved by the account Major gives of his
+life on those military expeditions which from this time forth occupied
+so much of his time. He lived with his soldiers as an equal, that
+historian tells us, eating as they did, without the precaution of a
+taster, which Major thinks highly imprudent, but which would naturally
+bind to the frank and generous monarch the confidence and regard of his
+fellow-soldiers, and the captains with whom he shared the sometimes
+scanty provisions of the campaign.</p>
+
+<p>News of these strange events was conveyed to Douglas, now in England on
+his return from the pilgrimage of pride and ostentation to which, though
+it was professedly for the Papal jubilee, no one attempts to give a
+religious character. He was returning at his leisure, lingering on his
+way, not without suspicion of secret treaties with the English in
+support of the party of York, though all the prepossessions of Scotland
+and King James were on the other side: but hurried home on hearing the
+news, and was politic enough to make immediate submission as soon as he
+became aware of the seriousness of the crisis, promising everything that
+could be demanded of him in the way of obedience and respect of "the
+King's peace." Once more he was fully and freely pardoned, his lands,
+with some small diminution, restored, and the King's confidence given
+back to him with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">{109}</a></span>a too magnanimous completeness. In the Parliament held
+in Edinburgh in June 1451 he was present, and received back his charters
+in full amity and kindness, to the great satisfaction and pleasure of
+"all gud Scottis men." Later in the year, in his capacity of Warden of
+the Marches, he was employed to assuage the endless quarrels of the
+Border, but during his negotiations for this purpose secretly renewed
+his mysterious and treacherous dealings with England, of which there is
+no very clear account, but which was of all others the kind of treachery
+most obnoxious to his countrymen. So far as would appear, James obtained
+some hint of these clandestine proceedings, and was very angry, "highly
+commoved," as was natural: on hearing which Douglas appeared once more
+to ask pardon, with apparently an inexhaustible confidence in the
+clemency of the young man whom he had guided so long. But the idea of
+some "quyet draucht betwixt him and the King of Ingland," some secret
+understanding with the old enemy, was more serious still than domestic
+rebellion, and though he pardoned at the "great request" of the Queen
+and nobles, the King did not again restore so doubtful a representative
+to the great offices he had held. There would seem to have been a pause
+of consternation on the part of Douglas when he found for the first time
+the charm of his friendship and every petition for pardon ineffectual.
+To attribute the change to old Crichton, who had recovered much of his
+former influence and was again Chancellor, was easy, and the Earl who
+had but the other day sworn the King's peace with all, set an ambush for
+his old opponent, and would have succeeded in killing him but for
+Crichton's son, "ane young valiant man," who overcame the bravos, and
+housed his father safely in his Castle of Crichton. Douglas himself was
+afterwards almost surprised in Edinburgh by Crichton's followers, and
+saved himself only by a hurried departure not unlike a flight.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">{110}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This disappointment, and the loss of the King's favour, and the apparent
+solidity of his rivals in their place, half maddened the great noble,
+little accustomed to yield to any contradiction. He had been up to this
+time, save in so far as his private feuds and covetousness were
+concerned, on the side of lawful authority; the King's man so long as
+the King was his man, and did not interfere with the growth of his
+wealth and greatness. But now he would seem to have given up hope of
+recovering his hold upon his sovereign, and turned his eyes elsewhere
+for support. The Earl of Crawford in the north country, and the Lord of
+Isles who was also Earl of Ross in the west, were as powerful and as
+intractable as Douglas himself, and more often in open rebellion than in
+amity with the King, a constant danger and disturbance of all good order
+and law. Douglas in his anger made an alliance with these two, by which
+all bound themselves to resent and avenge any injury offered to either.
+It was probably an expedient of rage and despair&mdash;the desire of doing
+what was most baneful and insolent to his former friends, such as
+happens often when a breach occurs&mdash;as much as a political act; but it
+is evident that in every way Douglas was on the eve of open treachery,
+no longer disposed to keep any terms with the royal master whose
+patience had been exhausted at last. It required, however, a crowning
+outrage to arouse once more James's much-forgiving spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Among the gentlemen of Galloway, the most of whom rode with Douglas and
+supported him in all his high-handed proceedings, too near neighbours to
+venture upon independence, were a few who preferred to hold the other
+side, that of law and justice and the authority of the King. Among them
+was "one called Maclelan, who was tutor of Bombie for the time, and
+sister's son to Sir Patrick Gray, principal servitor to the King, and
+captain of his guard." The refusal <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">{111}</a></span>of this man to serve in the
+rebellious host under the Earl was immediately punished by Douglas, who
+assailed his house and carried him off prisoner. The story reads like a
+romance, which, however, is no reason for receiving it with discredit. A
+more doubtful circumstance is that it is asserted to have happened in
+Douglas Castle, which had been very recently destroyed by James, and
+which was besides at a great distance from Edinburgh. I hazard a
+conjecture whether it may have happened in the Castle of Abercorn, since
+it must have been impossible for Douglas in Galloway to pursue Sir
+Patrick to the very gates of Edinburgh. Wherever the incident may have
+occurred, the story is, that Sir Patrick Gray, the uncle of the
+prisoner, hastened to the King with the story of his nephew's danger,
+and was at once sent off by James with "a sweit letter of supplication,"
+praying the Earl to deliver over the unfortunate gentleman to the
+messenger for love of the King. The Earl was at dinner when, "bloody
+with spurring, fiery red with haste," Sir Patrick arrived at the castle,
+where the drawbridge was lifted and the doors closed. "The Earle caused
+incontinent draw the boards, and rose and met the said Sir Patrick with
+great reverence and humilitie, because he was the King's principal
+servant and familiar to His Grace." I tell the rest of the tale in the
+words of Pitscottie:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"He inquired at the said Patrick if he had dined, who answered that
+he had not. Then the Earle said there was 'no talk to be had betwixt
+ane full and ane fasting; therefore ye shall dine, and we shall
+talke together at length.'</p>
+
+<p>"In this meane tyme Sir Patrick Gray sat down to his dinner, and the
+Earle treatted him and made him goode cheare, whereof Sir Patrick
+was well contented, believing all things to succeed well thereafter.
+But the Earle of Douglas on the other pairt took a suspicion and
+conjecture what Sir Patrick's Gray's commission was, and dreading
+the desyne thereof should be for his friend, the tutor of Bombie;
+therefore in the meane time when they were at the dinner, talking of
+merry matters, the Earle caused quietly take forth the tutor of
+Bombie out of prison, and have him to the greene and there strooke
+off his head <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">{112}</a></span>and took the samine away from him, and syne covered a
+fair cloth on his bodie that nothing might be seene of that
+treasonable act that was done.</p>
+
+<p>"In this meane time when dinner was done Sir Patrick Gray presented
+the King's writing unto the Earle, who reverently received it and
+considered the effect thereof. He gave great thanks to Sir Patrick
+Gray, saying he was beholden to him that brought so familiar an
+writing from his Prince to him, considering how it stood betwixt
+them at that time: and as to the desire and supplication, it should
+be thankfullie granted to the King, and the rather for Sir Patrick's
+sake; and took him by the hand and led him furth to the greene where
+the gentleman was lying dead, and shew him the manner, and said,
+'Sir Patrick, you are come a litle too late; but yonder is your
+sister's son lying, but he wants the head; take his body and do with
+it what you will.' Sir Patrick answered again with ane sore heart,
+and said, 'My Lord, ye have taken from him his head, dispone upon
+the body as ye please;' and with that called for his horse and leapt
+thereon. And when he was on horseback he said to the Earle on this
+manner, 'My Lord, an I live ye shall be rewarded for your labour
+that ye have used at this time, according to your demerits.' At this
+saying the Earle was highly offended and cryed for horse. Sir
+Patrick seeing the Earle's fury spurred his horse, but he was chased
+neare to Edinburgh before they left him, and had it not been his
+leid horse was so tryed and goode he had been taken."</p></div>
+
+<p>The scene that ensued when James&mdash;awaiting in Edinburgh the return of
+his messenger, without a doubt we may suppose of the obedience of
+Douglas the friend of his youth, the often-pardoned, owing so much to
+his clemency and friendship&mdash;saw Sir Patrick arrive breathless and
+haggard, scarcely escaping, though the King's messenger, with his life,
+and heard his story&mdash;the insolent contempt, the brutal jest, the cruel
+murder&mdash;is one that might well mark the turning-point even in a mind so
+magnanimous. The King had not been entirely without signs of inheriting
+his father's firmness and promptitude; but his gentleness of
+disposition, and strong inclination towards kindness and peace, had in
+general carried the day over his sterner qualities. He had shown both
+sides of his character when he pardoned Douglas and accepted his
+promises of reformation on his return, but cut him off from public
+service and closed all the doors of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">{113}</a></span>advancement against him. The
+defiance now addressed to him, the scorn of his letters and request, so
+audaciously shown, raised a sudden storm of indignation in his breast.
+Whether his future action was based on the decision of his council to
+which he submitted, sanctioning on his own part the treachery by which
+alone Douglas could be beguiled within his reach, as the chroniclers, to
+whom such a device was quite justifiable, tell us; or whether when he
+issued his safe-conduct he still hoped to be able to convince the Earl
+of his folly in resisting, and to bring him to a real and effectual
+change of mind, no one can now tell. But James was so little addicted to
+treachery, so fair, tolerant and merciful, that we may well give him the
+benefit of the doubt, and believe that it was with the intention of
+making another effort to bring Douglas back to his right mind and
+allegiance that the King invited him to Stirling, where it was strange
+indeed that with all his enormities on his conscience Douglas ventured
+to come, whatever were the safe-conducts given. "Some sayes he got the
+great seale thereunto before he would grant to come to the King," says
+the chronicle. The fact that he did come however, after all that had
+passed, says much for his confidence in King James and in his own power
+over him, for Douglas must have been very well aware that safe-conducts
+and royal promises were but broken reeds to trust to.</p>
+
+<p>When he arrived in Stirling, whatever lowering looks he might see around
+him&mdash;and it is scarcely possible to believe that Sir Patrick Gray for
+one could have entirely cleared his countenance of every recollection of
+their last meeting, of the men-at-arms thundering at his heels, and his
+nephew's body headless on the greensward&mdash;Douglas found no change in the
+King, who received and banqueted him "very royally," thinking if it were
+possible "with good deeds to withdraw him from his attempt that he
+purposed to do." <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">{114}</a></span>After supper the King took his rebellious subject
+aside, into another room opening from that in which they had supped, and
+which is still exhibited in Stirling Castle to the curious stranger, and
+once more reasoned with him on his conduct. No private matter would seem
+to have been introduced, the treasonable league which the Earl had made
+with Crawford and Ross, rebels against the lawful authority of the
+kingdom, being the subject on which James put forth all his strength of
+argument. Douglas, Pitscottie tells us, answered "verrie proudlie," and
+the argument grew hot between the two men, of whom one had always
+hitherto been the conqueror in every such passage of arms. It was
+probably this long habit of prevailing that made the proud Earl so
+obstinate, since to submit in words had never heretofore been difficult
+to him. At last the dispute came to a climax, in the distinct refusal of
+Douglas to give up his traitor-allies. "He said he myt not nor wald
+not," says a brief contemporary record. "Then the King said, 'False
+traitor, if you will not, I sall,' and stert sodunly till him with ane
+knyf." "And they said," adds this chronicle with grim significance,
+"that Patrick Gray straik him next the King with ane pole ax on the
+hed." The other companions crowded round, giving each his stroke. And
+thus within a short space of years the second Earl of Douglas was killed
+in a royal castle, while under a royal safe-conduct, at a climax of
+hopeless discord and antagonism from which there seemed no issue. The
+exasperation of the King, the dead-lock of all authority, the absolutely
+impracticable point at which the two almost equal powers had arrived,
+account for, though they do not excuse, such a breach of faith. I prefer
+to believe that James had at least no decided purpose in his mind, but
+hoped in his own power to induce Douglas to relinquish these alliances
+which were incompatible with his allegiance; but that the sudden
+exasperation with which he became convinced of his own powerlessness to
+move him brought about in a moment the fatal issue (with who knows what
+sudden wild stimulus of recollection from the murder of which he had
+been a witness in his childhood?) which statesmen less impulsive had
+already determined upon as necessary, though probably not in this sudden
+way.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115"></a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 382px;">
+<img src="images/illus_017.jpg" width="382" height="600" alt="ST. ANTHONY&#39;S CHAPEL, AND ST. MARGARET&#39;S LOCH" title="" />
+<span class="caption">ST. ANTHONY&#39;S CHAPEL, AND ST. MARGARET&#39;S LOCH</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">{116}</a></span>The "Schort Memorial of the Scottis Cronikles," called the Auchinleck
+Chronicle, gives a brief but striking account of the proceedings that
+followed. Earl Douglas's retainers and kinsmen would seem to have been
+struck dumb by the event, and probably fled in horror and dismay; but it
+was not till long after, when the King had left Stirling, that the
+younger brothers returned, on St. Patrick's Day in Lent, bringing with
+them the safe-conduct with all its seals, which they exhibited at the
+cross and dragged through the streets tied to a horse's tail, with many
+wild and fierce words against the King and all that were with him,
+ending by spoiling and burning the town. As James was no longer in it,
+however, nor apparently any one who could resist them, this was a cheap
+and unsatisfactory vengeance.</p>
+
+<p>Some months after, in the summer of 1452, a Parliament was held at
+Edinburgh, in which the three Estates passed a declaration that no
+safe-conduct had been given on that fatal occasion&mdash;a declaration which
+it is evident no one believed, and which probably was justified by some
+quibble which saved the consciences of those who asserted it. The new
+Earl, James Douglas, was summoned to appear at this Parliament, but
+answered by a letter under his seal and that of his brother, which was
+secretly affixed to the door of the Parliament House, "declynand from
+the King, saying that they held not of him, nor would hold with him,
+with many other slanderous words, calling them traitors that were his
+secret council." Some say it was upon the church doors <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">{117}</a></span>that this
+defiance was attached. In any case it must have produced a wonderful hum
+and commotion through the town, where already no doubt the slaying of
+the Douglas had been discussed from every point of view&mdash;at the cross,
+and among the groups at the street corners, where there would be many
+adherents of the Douglas, and many citizens ready to discuss the new
+event and all its possible consequences. The Parliament was followed by
+a general muster upon the Burrowmuir, where the barons and their men
+gathered, with all their spears and steel caps glistening in the June
+sunshine, with an apparent intention of pursuing the race to its
+stronghold and making an end of it. The raid, which was led by the King
+in person, with an army of some thirty thousand men, accomplished little
+however, doing more mischief than good the chronicle says, treading down
+the new corn, and spoiling the country "right fellonly," notwithstanding
+the King's presence. The result, at all events, was complete submission
+on the part of the new Earl, accompanied by a promise to bear no enmity,
+a promise often made but altogether impossible in the fifteenth century
+to mortal flesh and blood.</p>
+
+<p>It was scarcely possible however, short of a moral miracle, that such a
+thing could happen as the abandonment of the entire policy of the house
+of Douglas at a moment when their minds were embittered by so great a
+tragedy. The new Earl was not a mere soldier, still less a courtier, but
+a man of some culture, originally intended, it is said, for the Church,
+though this does not seem to have withheld him from taking part in the
+tumults of the time. Nor did it restrain him from marrying his brother's
+widow, the hapless Maid of Galloway, whose share of the Douglas lands
+made her indispensable to her two warlike cousins, though it seems
+uncertain whether either of the two marriages, which necessitated two
+dispensations from the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">{118}</a></span>Pope, was anything but nominal. After his
+submission James Douglas was employed as his brother had been in the
+arrangement of terms of truce with England, which was too great a
+temptation for him, and led to further treasonable negotiations. He
+would seem also to have renewed his brother's alliances with the rebels
+of the north: and in a very brief period the nominal peace and doubtful
+vows were all thrown to the winds, and this time there seems to have
+been no question of partial rebellion, but every indication that a civil
+war, rending the entire country in two, was about to break forth.
+Douglas had the strong backing of England behind him, the support of the
+Highland hordes always ready to be poured upon the peaceful country, and
+many great lords in his immediate train. He had raised an army of, it is
+said, forty thousand men, an enormous army for Scotland, and it was
+evident that the struggle was one of life and death.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment it would seem that King James for the first time lost
+heart. He had been fighting during all the beginning of the year 1455,
+reducing the west and south, the Douglas country, to subjection and
+desolation. But when he found himself menaced by an army as great as
+anything he could muster, with the angry north in the background and
+clouds of half-savage warriors on the horizon, the King's heart sank. He
+is said to have left Edinburgh in disgust and depression, and taken ship
+at Leith for St. Andrews, to seek counsel from the best and most
+trustworthy of his advisers, a man whose noble presence appears in the
+distracted history with such a calm and sagacious steadfastness that we
+can well understand the agitated King's sudden impulse towards him at
+this painful period of his career. Bishop Kennedy had himself suffered
+from the lawlessness of the Douglas retainers: and he too had royal
+blood in his veins. He occupied one of the highest positions <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">{119}</a></span>in the
+Church, and his wisdom and strength had made him one of the most
+prominent statesmen in the kingdom. James arrived hastily, according to
+the chronicle, unexpected, and with many signs of distress and anxiety.
+He betrayed to the Bishop his weariness of the ever-renewed struggle,
+and of the falsehood and treachery which, even if victorious, were all
+he had to encounter, the failure of every pledge and promise, the faith
+sworn one day which failed him the next, and the deep discouragement
+with all things round him which had taken possession of his mind. The
+wise prelate heard this confession of heart-sickness and despondency,
+and with a fatherly familiarity bade the young King sit down to meat,
+which he much wanted, while he himself went to his oratory to pray for
+enlightenment. That James thought no less than to throw up the struggle
+and retire from his kingdom, is what the old writers say. But when, with
+his bosom lightened by utterance of his trouble, and his courage a
+little restored by food and rest, the Bishop came back to him with a
+cheerful countenance from his prayers, the King took heart again.
+Kennedy produced to him the old image of the sheaf of arrows which,
+bound together, were not to be broken, but one by one could easily be
+snapt asunder, and advised him to make proclamation of a free pardon to
+all who would throw down their arms and make submission, and to march at
+once against the rebel host with full confidence of victory. Inspired by
+this advice, and by the companionship of the Bishop who went with him,
+the King set out to meet the rebels, though with an army inferior in
+number to theirs. Douglas, from some unexplained reason, wavered and
+hesitated, taking no active step, and gave Bishop Kennedy time to put
+his own suggestion in practice in respect to his nephew Lord
+Hamilton&mdash;who was one of Douglas's chief supporters&mdash;sending secret
+messengers to him to urge him <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">{120}</a></span>to submission. Hamilton no doubt had
+already perceived signs of wavering purpose and insecurity in the
+heterogeneous host, in which were many whose hearts failed them at sight
+of the King's banners&mdash;men who were apt to rebellion without being wound
+up to the extreme point of civil war: but he had "ane kyndlie love to
+Earl Douglas" as well as a regard for his own honour, and would not
+lightly desert his friend. While thus uncertain he appealed to Douglas
+to know what he meant to do, warning him that the longer he hesitated,
+the less would be the forces at his disposal. Douglas replied haughtily
+that if he were tired of waiting he might go when he pleased&mdash;an
+indiscreet answer, which decided Hamilton to withdraw and throw himself
+upon the King's promised mercy. The same night he went over to the royal
+army, carrying with him so many that "on the morn thereafter the Earl
+Douglas had not ane hunder men by his own household," the whole host
+having melted away. Never was a greater risk for a monarchy nor a more
+easy and bloodless escape. The Earl fled to the depths of his own
+country and thence to England, where he lived long a pensioned
+dependant, after all his greatness and ambition, to reappear in history
+only like a ghost after many silent years.</p>
+
+<p>Amid all these bewildering and bitter struggles, in which much misery
+was no doubt involved, it is recorded of the King that he never lost his
+humane character, and that even in the devastations he was forced to
+sanction or command, the cruel reprisals carried out over all the south
+of Scotland, his severity was always tempered with mercy. "He was not so
+much feared as a king as loved like a father," says Major. This luminous
+trait appears through all the darkness of the vexed and furious time.
+The King was always ready to pardon at a word, to believe in the vows
+and receive the submission of the fiercest rebels. One curious <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">{121}</a></span>evidence
+of the confidence felt in him was shown by the widow of the murdered
+Earl, Margaret Douglas, the Maid of Galloway, a woman doubly injured in
+every relation&mdash;the sister of the young Earl murdered at Edinburgh,
+married by his successor in order to reunite the Douglas patrimony, a
+great portion of which went to her as her brother's heir&mdash;and again
+forced into another and unlawful marriage by her husband's brother,
+immediately upon his death, for the same end. James received this
+fugitive kindly, restored to her part of the lands of her family, and
+finally married her&mdash;thus freeing her from the lawless bond into which
+she had been driven&mdash;to his own step-brother, John, Earl of Atholl, "the
+Black Knight of Lorne's son;" upon hearing of which another fugitive of
+a similar description appeared upon the scene.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"When the Earl of Ross's wyff understood the King to be some pairt
+favourable to all that sought his grace she fled also under his
+protection to eschew the cruel tyranny of her husband, which she
+dreaded sometyme before. The King called to remembrance that this
+woman was married not by her own counsel to Donald of the Isles (the
+Earl of Ross). He gave her also sufficient lands and living whereon
+she might live according to her estate."</p></div>
+
+<p>The case of women, and especially heiresses, in that lawless age must
+have been miserable indeed. Bandied about from one marriage to another,
+forced to accept such security as a more or less powerful lord could
+give, and when he was killed to fall victim to the next who could seize
+upon her, or to whom she should be allotted by feudal suzerain or
+chieftain, the mere name of a king who did not disdain a woman's plaint,
+but had compassion and help to give, must have conveyed hope to many an
+unhappy lady bound to a repugnant life. James would seem to have been
+the only man who recognised the misery to which such unconsidered items
+in the wild and tumultuous course of affairs might be driven.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">{122}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thus King James and Scotland with him were delivered from the greatest
+and most dangerous of the powerful houses that held the country in fear.
+Shortly after he conquered, partly by arms, partly by the strain of a
+universal impulse, which seemed to rouse the barons to a better way,
+those great allies in the north who held the key of the Highlands, the
+Earl of Crawford and the Earl of Ross, so that at last something of a
+common rule and common sentiment began to move the country. It is almost
+needless to say that James took advantage of this temporary unity and
+enthusiasm in order to invade England&mdash;a thing without which no Scots
+King could be said to be happy. The negotiations by which he was at once
+stimulated and hindered&mdash;among others by ambassadors from the Duke of
+York to ask his help against Henry VI, with orders to arrest his army on
+their way&mdash;are too complicated to be entered upon; but at last the Scots
+forces set out and, after various successes, James found himself before
+Roxburgh, a town and castle which had remained in the hands of the
+English from the time when the Earl of March deserted his country for
+England in the reign of Robert III. The town was soon taken, but the
+castle, in which there was a brave garrison, stood out manfully. This
+invasion of the Borders, and opportunity of striking a blow at the "auld
+enemy," was evidently an act of the highest policy while yet the
+surgings of civil war were not entirely quieted, and a diversion of
+ideas as well as new opportunities of spoil were peculiarly necessary.
+Its first excellent result was that Donald of the Isles, the Earl of
+Ross and terror of the north country, whose submission had been but
+provisionally accepted, and depended upon some evidence of real desire
+for the interest of the common weal, suddenly appeared with "ane great
+armie of men, all armed in the Highland fashion," and claimed the
+vanguard, the place of honour, and to be allowed to take upon him "the
+first press and dint of the battell." James received this unexpected
+auxiliary with "great humanitie," but prudently provided, before
+accepting his offer, which apparently, however, was made in all good
+faith, that Donald should "stent his pavilliones a little by himself,"
+until full counsel had been taken on the subject. The army was also
+joined by "a great company of stout and chosen men," under the Earl of
+Huntly, whose coming "made the King so blyth that he commanded to charge
+all the guns and give the castle ane new volie." James would seem
+throughout to have felt the greatest interest in the extraordinary new
+arm of artillery which had made a revolution in warfare. He pursued
+siege after siege with a zeal in which something of the ardour of a
+military enthusiast and scientific inquirer mingled with the necessities
+of the struggle in which he was engaged. The "Schort Cronikle," <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">{124}</a></span>already
+quoted, describes him as lingering over the siege of Abercorn, "striking
+mony of the towers down with the gret gun, the whilk a Franche man shot
+richt wele, and failed na shot within a fathom where it was charged him
+to hit." And when, in the exultation of his heart to see each new
+accession of force come in, he ordered "a new volie" against the stout
+outstanding walls, the excitement of the discharge, the eagerness of an
+adept to watch the effect, no doubt made this dangerous expression of
+satisfaction a real demonstration of pleasure.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123"></a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/illus_018.jpg" width="400" height="386" alt="MONS MEG" title="" />
+<span class="caption">MONS MEG</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>King James had attained at this time a success which probably a few
+years before his warmest imagination could not have aspired to. He had
+brought into subjection the great families which had almost contested
+his throne with him. Douglas, the highest and most near himself, had
+been swept clean out of his way. The fiercest rebel of all, the head of
+the Highland caterans, with his wild host in all their savage array, was
+by his side, ready to charge under his orders. The country, drained of
+its most lawless elements, was beginning to breathe again, to sow its
+fields and rebuild its homesteads. Instead of the horrors of civil war
+his soldiers were now engaged in the most legitimate of all
+enterprises&mdash;the attempt to recover from England an alienated
+possession. Everything was bright before him, the hope of a great reign,
+the promise of prosperity and honour and peace.</p>
+
+<p>It is almost a commonplace of human experience that in such moments the
+blow of fate is near at hand. The big guns which were a comparatively
+new wonder, full of interest in their unaccustomed operation, were still
+a danger as well as a prodigy, and James would seem to have forgotten
+the precautions that were considered necessary in presence of an
+armament still only partially understood. The historian assumes, as
+every human observer is apt to do in face of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">{125}</a></span>such a calamity, a tone of
+blame. "This Prince," says the chronicle with a shrill tone of
+exasperation in the record of the catastrophe, "more curious than became
+the majestie of a king, did stand hard by when the artilliarie was
+discharging." And in a moment all the labours and struggles, and the
+hope of the redeemed kingdom and all the prosperity that was to come,
+were at an end. One can imagine the sudden dismay in the group around
+him, the rush of his attendants, his own feeble command to keep silence
+when some cry of horror rose from the pale-faced circle. His thigh had
+been broken, "dung in two," by the explosion of the gun, "by which he
+was struken to the ground, and died hastilie thereafter," with no time
+to say more than to order silence, lest the army should be discouraged
+and the siege prove in vain.</p>
+
+<p>So ended the troublous reign of the second James, involved in strife and
+warfare from his childhood, vexed by the treacheries and struggles over
+him of his dearest friends, full of violence alien to his mind and
+temper, which yet was justified by his example at the most critical
+moment of his life. He made his way through continual contention,
+intrigue, and blood, for which he was not to blame, to such a settlement
+of national affairs as might have consolidated Scotland and made her
+great&mdash;by patience and firmness and courage, and conspicuously by mercy,
+notwithstanding one crime. And when the helm was in his hands, and a
+fair future before him, fell, not ignominiously indeed, yet uselessly, a
+noble life thrown away, leaving once more chaos behind him. He was only
+twenty-nine when the thunderbolt thus falling from a clear sky destroyed
+all the hopes of Scotland; yet had reigned long, for twenty-three years
+of trouble, tumult, and distress.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">{126}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III<br /><br /><span style="font-size: 75%;">JAMES III: THE MAN OF PEACE</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Again the noises cease save for a wail of lamentation over the dead. The
+operations of war are suspended, the dark ranks of the army stand aside,
+and every trumpet and fatal cannon is silent while once more a woman and
+a child come into the foreground of the historic scene. Once more, the
+most pathetic figure surely in history, a little startled boy clinging
+to his mother&mdash;not afraid indeed of the array of war to which he has
+been accustomed all his life, and perhaps with an instinct in him of
+childish majesty, the consciousness which so soon develops even in an
+infant mind, of unquestioned rank, but surrounded by the atmosphere of
+horror and affright in which he has been taken from among his
+playthings&mdash;stands forth to be hastily enveloped in the robes so
+pitifully over-large of the dead monarch. The lords, we are told, sent
+for the Prince in the first sensation of the catastrophe, and had him
+crowned at Kelso, feeling the necessity of that central name at least,
+round which to rally. They were not always respectful of the real King
+when they had him, yet the divinity which hedged the title, however
+helpless the head round which it shone, was felt to be indispensable to
+the unity and strength of the kingdom. Mary of Gueldres in her sudden
+widowhood would seem to have behaved with great dignity and spirit at
+this critical <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">{127}</a></span>moment. She is said to have insisted that the siege should
+not be abandoned, but that her husband's death might at least accomplish
+what his heart had been set upon; and the army after a moment of
+despondency was so "incouraged" by the coming of the Prince "that they
+forgot the death of his father and past manfullie to the hous, and wan
+the same, and justified the captaine theroff, and kest it down to the
+ground that it should not be any impediment to them hereafter." The
+execution of the captain seems a hard measure unless he was a traitor to
+the Scottish crown; but no doubt the conflict became more bitter from
+the terrible cost of the victory.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 397px;">
+<img src="images/illus_019.jpg" width="397" height="600" alt="THE CANONGATE TOLBOOTH" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE CANONGATE TOLBOOTH</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">{128}</a></span>Once more accordingly the kingdom was thrown into the chaos which in
+those days attended a long minority, the struggle for power, the
+relaxation of order, and all the evils that follow when one firm hand
+full of purpose drops the reins which half a dozen conflicting
+competitors scramble for. There was not, at first at least, anything of
+the foolish anarchy which drove Scotland into confusion during the
+childhood of James II, and opened the way to so many subsequent
+disasters, for Bishop Kennedy, the dead King's chief counsellor and
+support and a man universally trusted, was in the front of affairs,
+influencing if not originating all that was done: and to him, almost as
+a matter of course, the education of the little heir was at once
+confided. But Mary of Gueldres was a woman of resolution and force, and
+did not give up without a struggle her pretensions to the regency.
+Buchanan relates a scene which, according to his history, took place in
+Edinburgh on the occasion of the first Parliament after James's death.
+The Queen had established herself in the castle while Kennedy was in
+Holyrood, probably with his little pupil, but there is no mention made
+of James. On the second day of the Parliament Mary appeared suddenly in
+what would seem to have been, according to modern phraseology, "a packed
+house," her own partisans having no doubt been warned to be present <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">{129}</a></span>by
+the action of some energetic "whip," and was, then and there, by a hasty
+Act, carried through at one sitting, appointed guardian and Regent,
+after which summary success she returned with great pomp to her
+apartments, though with what hope of having really attained a tenable
+position it is impossible to say. When the news was carried to Holyrood,
+Bishop Kennedy in his turn appeared before the Estates, which had been
+thus taken by surprise. It is evident that the populace of Edinburgh was
+excited by what had occurred&mdash;Mary's partisans no doubt rejoicing, while
+the people in general, always jealous of a foreigner and never very
+respectful of a woman, surged through the great line of street towards
+the castle with all the fury of a popular tumult. The High Street of
+Edinburgh was not unaccustomed to sudden encounters, clashing of swords
+between two passing lords, each with fierce followers, and all the risks
+of sudden brawls when neither would concede the "crown of the causeway."
+But the townsfolk seldom did more than look on, with perhaps an
+ill-concealed satisfaction in the wounds inflicted by their natural
+opponents upon each other. On this occasion, however, the tumult was a
+popular one, involving the interests of the citizens; and it is
+difficult to believe that the inclinations of the townsfolk would not
+rather lean towards the Queen, a woman of wealth and stately
+surroundings, likely to entertain princes and great personages and to
+fill Edinburgh with the splendour of a Court, than to the prelate,
+although his tastes also were magnificent, whose metropolis was not
+Edinburgh but St. Andrews, and who might consider frugality and sobriety
+the best qualities for the Court of a minor. At all events the crowd had
+risen and was ripe for tumult, when Bishop Kennedy persuaded them to
+pause, and reminded them of the mutual forbearance and patience and
+quiet which was above all necessary at such a troublous time. Other
+prelates <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">{130}</a></span>would seem to have been in his train, for we are told it was
+the intercessions and explanations of "the bishops" which prevented the
+tumult from rising into a fight. The parties would seem to have been so
+strong, and so evenly divided, that the question was finally solved by a
+compromise, Parliament appointing a council of guardians, two on each
+side: Seaton and Boyd for the Queen; John Kennedy, brother of the
+Bishop, and the Earl of Orkney, for the others&mdash;an experiment which was
+no more successful than in the previous minority.</p>
+
+<p>The Queen-mother had soon, however, something to occupy her leisure in
+the visit, if visit it can be called, of Henry VI and his Queen and
+household, fugitives before the victorious party of York, who had sought
+refuge from the Scots, and lodging for a thousand attendants&mdash;a request
+which was granted, and the convent of the Greyfriars allotted to them as
+their residence. The Queen at the Castle would thus be a near neighbour
+of the royal fugitives, and it is interesting to think of the meeting,
+the sympathy and mutual condolences of the two women. Margaret, the
+fervid Proven&ccedil;al, with her passionate sense of wrong and restless
+energy, and the hopeless task she had of maintaining and inspiring to
+play his part with any dignity her too patient and gentle king; and
+Mary, the fair and placid Fleming, stung too in her pride and affections
+by the refusal of the regency, and her subordination to those riotous
+and unmannerly lords and the proud Bishop who had got the affairs of
+Scotland in his hand. The two Queens might have had some previous
+acquaintance with each other, at a time when both had fairer hopes; at
+all events they amused themselves sadly, as they sat and talked
+together, with fancies such as please women, of making a marriage
+between the little Edward, the future victim of Tewkesbury, then a child
+at his mother's knee, and the little Princess of Scotland <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">{131}</a></span>who played
+beside him, in the good days when all these troubles should be past, and
+Henry or his son after him should have regained the English crown. One
+follows with regretful interest the noble figure of Margaret, under the
+guise in which that sworn Lancastrian Shakspeare has disclosed it to us,
+before her sweeter mood had disappeared under the pressure of fate, and
+when not curses but hopes came from her mouth in her young motherhood,
+and every recovery and restoration, and happy marriage and royal state,
+were possible for her boy. Mary too had been cut off in the middle of
+her greatness. They were two Queens discrowned, two fair heads veiled
+with misfortune, though nothing irremediable had as yet happened,
+nothing that should make the future a desert though the present might be
+dark; ready to live again in their children, and make premature treaties
+over the little blonde heads at their knee. So natural a scene comes in
+strangely to the records of violence and misery. Nothing more tragic
+could be than the fate of Margaret; and the splendour and happiness had
+been very shortlived in Mary's experience, soon quenched in sudden
+destruction; but to see the two young mothers planning over the heads of
+the little ones how the two kingdoms were to be united, and happiness
+come back in a future that was never to be, while they sat together in
+brief companionship in those strait rooms of Edinburgh Castle, which
+were so narrow and so poor for a queen's habitation, or within the
+precincts of the Greyfriars, looking out upon the peaceful Pentlands and
+the soft hills of Braid, is like the recurring melody in a piece of
+stormy music, the bit of light in a tempestuous picture. It teaches us
+to perceive that, however the firmament of a kingdom may be torn with
+storms, there are everywhere about, even in queens' chambers, scenes of
+tenderness and peace.</p>
+
+<p>Mary died in her own foundation of Trinity College <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">{132}</a></span>Hospital&mdash;the
+beautiful church of which was demolished within living memory&mdash;three
+years after her husband, while her children were still very young: and
+thus all further struggles about the regency were ended. She does not
+seem indeed ever to have repeated her one stand for power. Bishop
+Kennedy, we may well believe, was not a man with whom there would be
+easy fighting. His sway procured a little respite for Scotland in the
+ordinary miseries of her career. The Douglases were safely out of the
+way and ended, and there was a truce of fifteen years with England which
+kept danger from that side at arm's length&mdash;not, the chroniclers assure
+us, from any additional love between the two countries, but because "the
+Inglish had warres within themselves daylie, stryvand for the crown."
+Kennedy lived some years after the Queen, guiding all the affairs of the
+kingdom so wisely that "the commounweill flourished greatly." He was a
+Churchman of the noblest kind, full of care for the spiritual interests
+of his diocese as well as for the secular affairs which were placed in
+his hands. "He caused all persones (parsons) and vicars to remain at
+their paroche kirks," says Pitscottie, "for the instruction and edifying
+of their flocks: and caused them preach the Word of God to the people
+and visit them that were sick; and also the said Bishope visited every
+kirk within the diocese four times in the year, and preached to the said
+parochin himself the Word of God, and inquired of them if they were
+dewly instructed by their parson and vicar, and if the poor were
+sustained and the youth brought up and learned according to the order
+that was taine in the house of God."</p>
+
+<p>With all this, and many other gifts beside, among which are noted the
+knowledge he had of the "civil laws, having practised in the same," and
+his experience and sagacity in all public affairs&mdash;he was a scholar and
+loved all the arts. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">{133}</a></span>"He founded," says Pitscottie, "ane triumphant
+college in Sanct Androis, called Sanct Salvatore's College, wherein he
+made his lear (library) very curiouslie and coastlie; and also he biggit
+ane ship, called the Bishop's Barge, and when all three were complete,
+to wit, the college, the lear, and the barge, he knew not which of the
+three was the costliest; for it was reckoned for the time by honest men
+of consideration that the least of the three cost him ten thousand pound
+sterling." Major gives the same high character of the great Bishop,
+declaring that there were but two things in him which did not merit
+approval&mdash;the fact that he held a priory (but only one, that of
+Pittenweem) <i>in commendam</i>, "and the sumptuositie of his sepulchre."
+That sepulchre, half destroyed&mdash;after having remained a thing of beauty
+for three hundred years&mdash;by ignorant and foolish hands in the end of the
+eighteenth century, may still be seen in the chapel of his college at
+St. Andrews, the only existing memorial of the time when all Scotland
+was governed from that stormy headland to the great advantage of the
+commonwealth. It is difficult to make out from the different records
+whether the young King remained in the Bishop's keeping so long as he
+lived, which was but until James had attained the age of thirteen, or
+whether the usual struggle between the two sets of guardians appointed
+by Parliament, the Boyds and Kennedies, had begun before the Bishop's
+death. It may be imagined, however, that the evident advantages to the
+boy of Bishop Kennedy's care would outweigh any formal appointment;
+although at the same time the idea suggests itself whether in the
+perversity of human nature this training was not in itself partly the
+cause of James's weaknesses and errors. He would learn at St. Andrews
+not only what was best in the learning of the time, but as much of the
+arts as were known in Scotland, and especially that noble art of
+architecture, which has been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">{134}</a></span>the passion of so many princes. And no
+doubt he would see the advancement of professors of these arts, of men
+skilful and cunning in design and decoration, the builders, the
+sculptors, and the musicians, whose place in the great cathedral could
+never be unimportant. A Churchman could promote and honour such public
+servants in the little commonwealth of his cathedral town with greater
+freedom than might be done elsewhere; and James, a studious and feeble
+boy, not wise enough to see that the example of his great teacher was
+here inappropriate and out of place, learned this lesson but too well.
+The King grew up "a man that loved solitariness and desired never to
+hear of warre, but delighted more in musick and politie and building nor
+he did in the government of his realm." It would seem that he was also
+fond of money, which indeed was very necessary to the carrying out of
+his pursuits. It is difficult to estimate justly the position of a king
+of such a temperament in such circumstances, whether he is to be blamed
+for abandoning the national policy and tradition, or whether he was not
+rather conscientiously trying to carry out his stewardry of his kingdom
+in a better way when he withheld his countenance from the perpetual wars
+of the Border, and addressed himself to the construction of noble halls
+and chapels and the patronage of the arts. He was at least so far in
+advance of his time, still concerned with the rudest interests of
+practical life as to be universally misunderstood: and he had the
+further misfortune of sharing the unpopularity of the favourites with
+whom he surrounded himself, as almost every monarch has done who has
+promoted men of inferior position to the high places of the State.</p>
+
+<p>James's supineness, over-refinement, and love of peaceful occupations
+were made the more remarkable from the contrast with two manly and
+chivalrous brothers, the Dukes of Mar and Albany, of fine person and
+energetic tastes, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">{135}</a></span>interested in all the operations of war, fond of fine
+horses and gallant doings, and coming up to all the popular expectations
+of what was becoming in a prince. Nothing is more difficult to make out
+at any time than the real motives and meaning of family discords: and
+this is still more the case in an age not yet enlightened by the clear
+light of history. The chroniclers, especially Boece, have much doubt
+thrown upon them by more serious historians, who quote them and build
+upon them nevertheless, having really no better evidence to go upon. The
+report of these witnesses is that James had been warned by witches, in
+whom he believed, and by one Andrew the Fleming, an astrologer, that his
+chief danger arose from his own family, and that "the lion should be
+devoured by his whelps." Pitscottie's account, however, indicates a
+conspiracy between Cochrane and the Homes, whom Albany had mortally
+offended, as the cause at once of these prophecies and the King's alarm.
+The only thing clear is that he was afraid of his brothers, and
+considered their existence a danger to his life. It would appear that he
+had already begun to surround himself with those favourites to whom was
+attributed every evil thing in his reign, when this poison was first
+instilled into his mind: and the blame was attributed rightly or wrongly
+to Cochrane, the chief of his "minions," who very probably felt it to be
+to his interest to detach from James's side the manly and gallant
+brothers who were naturally his nearest counsellors and champions.</p>
+
+<p>There is very little that is authentic known of the men whom James III
+thus elevated to the steps of his throne. Cochrane was an architect
+probably, though called a mason in his earlier career, and had no doubt
+been employed on some of the buildings in which the King delighted,
+being "verrie ingenious" and "cunning in that craft." Perhaps, however,
+to make the royal favour for a mere craftsman <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">{136}</a></span>more respectable,
+according to the notions of the time, it is added in a popular story
+that the favourite was a man of great strength and stature, whose
+prowess in some brawl attracted the admiration of the timid monarch, to
+whom a man who was a tall fellow of his hands, as well as a person of
+similar tastes to himself, might well be a special object of approval. A
+musician, William Roger, an Englishman, whose voice had charmed the
+King&mdash;a weakness which at least was not ignoble, and was shared by
+various other members of his race&mdash;was the second of James's favourites:
+and there were others still less important&mdash;one the King's tailor&mdash;a
+band of persons of no condition, who surrounded him no doubt with
+flattery and adulation, since their promotion and maintenance were
+entirely dependent on his pleasure. King Louis XI was at that time upon
+the throne of France, a powerful prince whose little privy council was
+composed of equally mean men, and perhaps some reflection from the Court
+of the old ally of Scotland made young James believe that this was the
+best and wisest thing for a King to do. Louis was also a believer in
+astrologers, witches, and all the prophecies and omens in which they
+dealt. To copy him was not a high ambition, but he was in his way a
+great king, and it is conceivable that the feeble monarch of Scotland,
+never roused to the height of his father's or grandfather's example,
+took a little satisfaction in copying what he could from Louis. The
+example of Oliver le Dain might make him think that he showed his
+superiority by preferring his tailor, a man devoted to his service, to
+Albany or Angus. And if Louis trembled at the predictions of his Eastern
+sage, what more natural than that James should quake when the stars
+revealed a danger which every spaewife confirmed? No doubt he would know
+well the story of the mysterious spaewife who, had her advice been
+taken, might have saved James I. from his murderers. It is rarely <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">{137}</a></span>that
+there is not a certain cruelty involved in selfish cowardice. In a
+sudden panic the mildest-seeming creature will trample down furiously
+any weaker being who stands in the way of his own safety, and James was
+ready for any atrocity when he was convinced that his brothers were a
+danger to his life and crown. The youngest, the handsome and gallant
+Mar, was killed by one treachery or another; and Alexander of Albany,
+the inheritor of that ill-omened title, was laid up in prison to be safe
+out of his brother's way.</p>
+
+<p>We find ourselves entirely in the regions of romance in this unfortunate
+reign. Sir Walter Scott has painted for us the uncomfortable Court of
+Louis with his barber and his prophet, and Dumas has reproduced almost
+the identical story in his <i>Vingt Ans Apr&egrave;s</i>, of the Duke of Albany's
+escape from Edinburgh. There could scarcely be a more curious scene.
+Strangely enough James himself was resident in the castle when his
+brother was a prisoner there. One would have thought that so near a
+neighbourhood would have seemed dangerous to the alarmed monarch, but
+perhaps he thought, on the other hand, that watch and ward would be kept
+more effectually under his own eyes. Mar had died in the Canongate,
+perhaps in the Tolbooth there, according to tradition in a bath, where
+he was bled to death, probably in order that a pretence of illness or
+accident might be alleged; and Edinburgh, no doubt, was full of dark
+whispers of this strange end of one prince, and the danger of the other,
+shut up within the castle walls where the King's minions had full sway,
+and any night might witness a second dark deed. Prince Alexander's
+friends must have been busy and eager without, while he was not so
+strictly under bar and bolt inside that he could not make merry with the
+castle officials now and then, and cheat an evening with pleasant talk
+and a glass of good wine with a young captain of the guard. One day
+there came to him an intimation of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">{138}</a></span>arrival of a ship at Leith with
+wine from France, accompanied by some private token that there was more
+in this announcement than met the ear. Albany accordingly sent a trusted
+servant to order two flasks of the wine, in one of which, contained in a
+tube of wax, was enclosed a letter, in the other a rope by which to
+descend the castle walls. The whole story is exactly as Dumas tells the
+escape of the Duc de Beaufort, though whether the romancer could have
+seen the old records of Scotland, or if his legend is sanctioned by the
+authentic history of France, I am unable to tell. Alexander, like the
+prince in the novel, invited the Captain of the Guard to sup with him to
+try the new wine&mdash;an invitation gladly accepted. After supper the
+Captain "passed to the King's chamber to see what was doing, who was
+then lodged in the castle," probably to get the word for the night. It
+is curious to think of the unconscious officer, so little aware of what
+was about to befall, going from the chamber of the captive to that of
+the King, where the little Court would be assembled at their music or
+their "tables," or where perhaps James was taking counsel over the
+leafage of a capital or the spring of an arch&mdash;and thence returning when
+all the rounds were made, the great gates barred and bolted, the
+sentries set, to the Prince in his prison, who was a finer companion
+still. Alexander plied the unsuspecting Captain with his wine, spiced or
+perhaps drugged to make it act the sooner, and along with him a warder
+or two who were in constant attendance upon the royal prisoner. A prince
+to drink with such carles! "The fire was hett, and the wyne was strong":
+and the united influence of the spiced drink and the hot room soon
+overcame the revellers, all but Alexander and his trusty man, who had
+taken care to refrain. In Dumas the gaoler was but gagged and bound: but
+in Scotland life went for little, and some of the authorities say that
+when the Prince saw the drunkards in his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">{139}</a></span>power, "he lap from the board
+and strak the captane with ane whinger and slew him, and also stiked
+other two with his own hand." He had been informed that he was to die
+the next day if he did not escape that night, which was some excuse for
+him.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> When the men were thus disposed of, in one way or another, the
+Prince and his servant, "his chamber chyld," stole out with the rope to
+"a quiet place" on the wall. Coming out into the dark freshness and
+stillness of the night after that stifling and horrible room, seeing the
+stars once more and the distant glimmer of the sea, and feeling freedom
+at hand, it was little they would reck of the gaolers, always an
+obnoxious class. One would imagine that it must have been on the most
+precipitous side of the castle rock where there were few sentinels and
+the exit was easy, though the descent terrible. The faithful servant
+tried the rope first but found it too short, and fell, breaking his
+thigh. With what feelings Alexander must have stolen back to get his
+sheets with which to lengthen the rope, pushing through the smoke,
+almost despairing to get off in safety! One is relieved to hear that he
+took his crippled attendant on his back and carried him, some say to a
+safe place&mdash;or, as others say, all the way across country to where the
+ship rocked at the pier of Leith. They must have got down to some dark
+spot on the northern slopes, where there would be no city watchman or
+late passer-by to give the alarm, and all would be clear and still
+before them to the water's edge&mdash;though a long, weary, and darkling way.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"But on the morne when the watchman perceived that the towis were
+hinging over the walls, then ran they to seek the Captane to show<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">{140}</a></span>
+him the matter and manner, but he was not in his own chamber. Then
+they passed to the Duke's chamber and found the door open and ane
+dead man lying in the chamber door and the captane and the rest
+burning in the fire, which was very dollorous to them; and when they
+missed the Duke of Albanie and his chamber chyld, they ran speedilie
+and shewed the King how the matter had happened. But he would not
+give it credence till he passed himself and saw the matter."</p></div>
+
+<p>These events happened in 1479, when Albany escaped to France, where he
+remained for some years. Up to this period all that is said of him has
+been favourable. His treatment by his brother was undeserved, and there
+is no sign of either treachery or rebellion in him in these early years.
+But when he had languished for a long time in France perhaps,
+notwithstanding a first favourable reception, sooner or later eating the
+exile's bitter bread&mdash;exasperation and despair must have so wrought in
+him that he began to traffic with the "auld enemy" of England, and even
+put his hand to a base treaty, by which his brother was to be dethroned
+and he himself succeed to the kingdom by grace of the English king&mdash;a
+stipulation which Albany must have well known would damn him for ever
+with his countrymen.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime James had begun to breathe again in the relief he felt
+to be freed of the presence of both his brothers. He "passed through all
+Scotland at his pleasure, in peace and rest," says the chronicler. But
+it was not long that a king of Scotland could be left in this repose.
+The usual trouble on the Borders had begun again as soon as Edward IV
+was secure upon his throne, and the English king had even sent his ships
+as far as the Firth of Forth, where he burnt villages and spoiled the
+coast under the very eyes of James. Though he would so much rather have
+been left in quiet to complete his beautiful new buildings at Stirling
+and arrange the choir in his new chapel, where there was a double supply
+of musicians that the King might never <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">{141}</a></span>want this pleasure, yet the
+sufferings of the people and the angry impulse of the discontented
+nobles were more than James could resist, and he set forth reluctantly
+towards the Border to declare war. He had become more and more shut up
+within his little circle of favourites after the death and disappearance
+of his brothers, and Cochrane had gradually acquired a more and more
+complete sway over the mind of his master and the affairs of the realm.
+The favourite had been guilty of all those extravagances which
+constitute the Nemesis of upstarts. He had trafficked in patronage and
+promotion, he had debased the currency, and he was supposed to influence
+the King to everything least honourable and advantageous to the country.
+Last injury of all, he had either asked from the King or accepted from
+him&mdash;at least, permitted himself to be tricked out in the name of Mar,
+the title of the young prince whose death he was believed to have
+brought about. The lords of Scotland had already remonstrated with the
+King on various occasions as to the unworthy favourites who usurped
+their place around his throne: and their exasperation seems to have
+risen to a height beyond bearing when they found "the mason," as
+Cochrane is called, with his new liveries and extravagance of personal
+finery, at the head of the army which was raised to avenge the English
+invasion, and in the closest confidence of the King. When they had got
+as far as Lauder the great lords, who were left out of all James's
+private councils, assembled in a council of their own in the parish
+church to talk over their grievances, and to consult what could be done
+to reform this intolerable abuse and to bring back the King to the right
+way. Some, it would appear, went so far as to meditate deposition,
+declaring that James was no longer fit to be their King, having
+renounced their counsel and advice, banished one brother and slain
+another, and "maid up fallowes, maissones, to be lords and earls in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">{142}</a></span>
+place of noblemen." The result of the meeting, however, was that milder
+counsels prevailed so far as James was concerned: "They concluded that
+the King should be taine softlie without harm of his bodie, and conveyed
+to the Castle of Edinburgh with certain gentlemen," while Cochrane and
+the rest were seized and hanged over Lauder Brig.</p>
+
+<p>The question, however, remained, Who should be so bold as to take the
+first step and lay hands upon the favourite? It was now that Lord Gray,
+one of the conspirators, told, with that humour which comes in so grimly
+in many dark historic scenes, the story of the mice and the cat&mdash;how the
+mice conspired to save themselves by attaching a bell to the cat to warn
+them of her movements&mdash;until the terrible question arose which among
+them should attach to the neck of the enemy this instrument of safety.
+One can imagine the grave barons with half a smile looking at each other
+consciously, in acknowledgment of a risk which it needed a brave man to
+run. Angus, the head of the existing branch of the Douglas family, who
+had already risen into much of the power and importance of his forfeited
+kinsman, answered with equally grim brevity "I'se bell the cat." But
+while he spoke, the general enemy, mad with arrogance and
+self-confidence, and not believing in any power or boldness which could
+stop him in his career, forestalled the necessity. He came to the kirk,
+where no doubt he had heard there was some unauthorised assembly,
+arrayed in black velvet with bands of white, the livery he had chosen, a
+great gold chain round his neck, a hunting horn slung about him adorned
+with gold and jewels, and probably a marvel of medi&aelig;val art&mdash;and "rushed
+rudlie at the kirk door." The hum of fierce satisfaction which arose
+when the keeper of the door challenged the applicant for admission, and
+the answer, "The Earl of Mar," rang into <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">{143}</a></span>the silence in which each man
+had been holding his breath, may be imagined. It was Archibald
+Bell-the-Cat, ever hereafter known by that name, who advanced to meet
+the swaggering intruder in all his pride of privilege and place, but
+with a welcome very different from that which the favourite expected,
+who had come, no doubt, to break up the whisperings of the conspirators
+and assert his own authority. Angus pulled the gold chain from
+Cochrane's neck, and said "a rop would sett him better," while another
+Douglas standing by snatched at the horn. Cochrane, astonished but not
+yet convinced that any real opposition was intended, asked between
+offence and alarm, perhaps beginning to doubt the sombre excited
+assembly, "My lords, is it jest or earnest?" It would seem that the grim
+and terrible event of the execution "over the Bridge of Lauder" though
+why this special locality was chosen we are not told, followed with an
+awful rapidity. The chief offender had fallen into the hands of the
+conspirators with such unhoped-for ease that they evidently felt no time
+was to be lost.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Notwithstanding the lords held him quiet while they caused certain
+armed men pass to the King's pavilion, and two or three wyse men
+with them, and gave the King fair and pleasant words, till they had
+laid hands on all his servants, and took them and hanged them over
+the Bridge of Lauder before the King's eyes, and brought in the King
+himself to the council. Thereafter incontinent they brought out
+Cochrane and his hands bound with ane tow, behind his back, who
+desired them to take ane of his own pavilion tows [cords] which were
+of silk and bind his hands, for he thought shame to be bound with
+ane hemp tow lyk ane thiefe. The lords answered and said, 'He was
+worse than a thiefe, he was ane traitour and deserved no better.'"</p></div>
+
+<p>The last despairing bravado of the condemned man desiring that his hands
+might be bound with a silken cord at least, the horror and wrath of the
+pale King, helpless, looking on, forced into the assembly of the lords
+to witness their pitiless vengeance, are painfully tragical and
+terrible. All James's favourite attendants, the friends of his retired<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">{144}</a></span>
+leisure and sharers in the occupations he loved, were thus executed
+before his eyes&mdash;all but a certain young Ramsay, who was at least a
+gentleman, and who, to save his life, leapt up behind his master upon
+the horse which the King was compelled to mount to see the dreadful deed
+accomplished. Ramsay's life was spared, not to the advantage of Scotland
+as became afterwards apparent.</p>
+
+<p>The historical student will not fail to note how close in almost every
+particular is this grim incident to the catastrophe of Piers Gaveston in
+England in a previous age.</p>
+
+<p>The state of affairs in Scotland after this extraordinary event was more
+extraordinary still, if possible. James was conveyed to Edinburgh,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"with certain lords in companie with him that took hold on him and
+keeped him in the said castle and served and honoured him as ane
+prince ought to be in all things: for he was not put there as a
+prisoner, but for the maintaining of the commonweill: gave him leave
+to use all his directions, gifts, and casualties at his pleasure.
+For nothing was derogat from him by reason of his authority, and all
+letters was given and proclamations made and printed in his name
+lykas they were before at his inputting, nor no regent nor governour
+was chosen at that time, but every lord within his own bounds was
+sworn to minister justice and to punish theft and slaughter within
+themselves, or else to bring the doers of the same to the King's
+justice at Edinburgh."</p></div>
+
+<p>"Thus there was peace and rest in the country the space of
+three-quarters of a year," says Pitscottie. This, however, is a mistake,
+for the time of the King's retirement was only three or four months,
+from St. Magdalene's Day to Michaelmas. Short or long, it was one of the
+most curious moments of interregnum that history knows. James was
+conveyed back to Edinburgh with every show of respect, attended by the
+triumphant lords, who despised his milder virtues, his preferences and
+tastes, not one of whom could manage either pencil or lute, who cared
+for none of these things&mdash;while his strained eyes could still see
+nothing but the vision against the daylight, the impromptu gibbet of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">{145}</a></span>
+high-arched bridge over the Border stream, where his familiar friends
+had been strung up with every sign of infamy. He had to contain within
+himself the rage, the shame, the grief and loneliness of his heart, and
+endure as he best could the exultation which his captors would scarcely
+attempt to conceal. The historians tell us little or nothing of the
+Queen, Margaret of Denmark, to whom James had been married for several
+years, and who had brought with her the full allegiance of the isles,
+the Hebrides, which up to that time had paid a tribute to the
+Scandinavian kingdom, and Orkney and Shetland which were the Queen's
+portion. Whether he found any comfort in her and in his children, when
+he was thus brought back to them to the castle, which would seem to have
+been their favourite residence, we are not told. At all events the shame
+of such a return, and of the captivity which was veiled by so many
+ironical appearances of freedom, must have been grievous to him, even as
+reflected in the eyes of his foreign wife, or the wondering questions on
+his sudden return of his baby son.</p>
+
+<p>How this strange state of things was brought to an end it is difficult
+to tell, for the story is confused and troublesome. According to
+Pitscottie, James's private friends advised him first to take counsel
+with the Earl of Douglas, the long-forfeited and banished Earl,
+represented as being then imprisoned in Edinburgh, which is clearly
+apocryphal: and afterwards with the Duke of Albany, to whom Pitscottie
+is throughout very favourable, making no mention of his undoubted
+treachery. For whatever may be the actual truth of all the curious and
+confused movements that were going on, it appears to be beyond doubt
+that Albany&mdash;though he had lately visited the English Court and formed a
+treasonable bargain with Edward IV to dethrone James, and to be himself
+made King in dependence upon England<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">{146}</a></span>&mdash;now acted like a true brother.
+His first use of his alliance with Edward seems to have been for the
+advantage of the sovereign whom he intended to displace, a curious
+paradox of which we can offer no explanation. In this magnanimous act he
+had the support of the English who had engaged to help him, as the
+documents prove, in so different an enterprise: all which is very
+bewildering. Accompanied by the Duke of Gloucester and a small army, he
+suddenly appeared in Edinburgh to deliver the royal prisoner. There
+would seem to have been no fighting of any kind, nor any attempt on the
+part of Albany to dethrone his brother&mdash;nothing, indeed, but what would
+appear the most magnanimous action on his part, were not those secret
+treaties in existence bearing a silent testimony against him. When the
+lords heard of the coming of this expedition, which occurred in August
+1482 (Albany having escaped in 1479, three years before), they "drew
+themselves together to ane council," apparently to watch the proceedings
+of the invaders.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Soon therafter compeired the Duke of Albanie and the Duke of
+Gloucester within the town of Edinburgh, with the number of ane
+thousand gentlemen, and entered within the Tolbooth thereof before
+the lords of Scotland, who were sitting at ane council at that time,
+and there very reverently saluted the Duke of Albanie, reverenced
+him and welcomed him home, and required of him what was his
+petition. He answered, 'I desire the King's grace, my brother, to be
+put to libertie,' which was granted to him incontinent. But the
+Chancellor answered and said, 'My lord, we will grant you your
+desires; but as to that man that is with you, we know him not, nor
+yet will we grant nothing to his desire.'"</p></div>
+
+<p>This speech, which breathes that undying defiance of English
+interference which was the very inspiration of Scotland, is too
+characteristic not to be genuine. "That man" was Richard, afterwards
+Richard III, "Crookback Richard," the bitter and powerful hunchback of
+Shakespeare, whom other authorities have endeavoured in vain to persuade
+us <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">{147}</a></span>to regard in a more favourable light. Whatever he might be in other
+aspects, in Scotland he was merely Albany's companion, silently aiding
+in what seems a most legitimate and honourable mission. The only way the
+historians can find of reconciling this strangely virtuous and exemplary
+behaviour with the secret engagements between Albany and England is by
+the conjecture that the lords of Scotland were so evidently indisposed
+to favour Albany, and there was so little feeling shown towards him by
+any part of the population, that the treason was silently abandoned, and
+in the hopelessness of playing a treasonable part he played a
+magnanimous one, with the utmost grace and semblance of sincerity; which
+is a bewildering conclusion. In any case he was the deliverer of his
+brother. It would seem to be the fact, however, that James's deliverance
+was much aided by the attitude of the burghers of Edinburgh, who were,
+as so often, on the King's side&mdash;and to whom the character of a patron
+of the arts, and promoter of so many persons of their own class into his
+friendship, would naturally be as great a recommendation as it was an
+offence to the others. Their action at this period excited the King's
+gratitude so much that he conferred upon the city a special charter,
+securing the independence of their municipal government, as well as
+their right to levy customs in the port of Leith, and also, it is said,
+a sign of these privileges, in the shape of the standard called the Blue
+Blanket, which still remains in the possession of the Edinburgh guilds,
+with liberty to display it for their king, country, and city rights,
+when occasion calls.</p>
+
+<p>The two Dukes of Albany and Gloucester marched together to the castle,
+preceded by heralds, to claim the King from the officials who had him in
+charge. One can imagine the mingled relief and humiliation of James when
+delivered from that stronghold by the brother who had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">{148}</a></span>escaped from it by
+night, within a few hours of the time when he had been ordered for
+execution, and who in the meantime had been an exile. There is no reason
+to suppose that he was aware of the secret understanding with England to
+which his brother had set his seal, so that there was nothing to lessen
+the intensity of the coals of fire thus heaped upon his head. No doubt
+all Edinburgh was in the streets to watch that strange sight, as the
+King rode from the castle gates, past the great Church of St. Giles, and
+down the long line of the Canongate to Holyrood, making his emancipation
+visible to all. Apparently he had not left the castle since he was
+brought into it in shame and misery after the fatal episode at Lauder.
+One wonders how he looked upon the crowd which no doubt would throng
+after him with acclamations&mdash;whether thankfully and cheerfully in the
+pleasure of release, or with a revengeful sense of how little he owed to
+their easy applauses. It is said that Albany rode behind him on the same
+horse as an exhibition of amity. It is very probable that James would
+find bitterness in that too, as another humiliation.</p>
+
+<p>The King was no sooner free than he made it evident that he had not
+forgiven the humiliation and shame to which he had been subjected. He
+imprisoned in their turn a number of the lords who had been foremost in
+the death of Cochrane, and would have "justified" them we are told, but
+for the interference of Angus&mdash;now too great apparently for James to
+touch&mdash;and Albany. For some time after the latter remained with his
+brother, fulfilling the functions of chief counsellor and Prime
+Minister. But whether he displayed his ambition and evil intentions, or
+the old jealousy and terrors of James got the upper hand as the lords
+again became suspicious of him, it is difficult to tell. At all events
+Albany was forced to escape once more for his life, and again took
+refuge in France, where either now or <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">{149}</a></span>previously, for the chronology is
+difficult to follow, he had made a great marriage. Here he disappears
+altogether from Scottish history, and not long after from life, having
+been killed by accident in a tournament. Had Albany been the elder
+instead of the younger brother it seems very probable that a dark
+chapter might have been left out of the history of Scotland, and a third
+patriotic and energetic King carried on the traditions of the first and
+second James.</p>
+
+<p>But it was scarcely to be looked for that, after all the dissensions
+between the King and the lords, everything should settle into harmony
+again. James is said to have removed to Stirling from Edinburgh, which
+no doubt had acquired painful associations to him from the time of his
+enforced residence there&mdash;and to have resumed or completed the buildings
+in which he had taken so much pleasure&mdash;especially the great hall of
+Stirling Castle, with all its grotesque and curious ornamentation, which
+seems to prove that Scotland was still much behind in refinement, though
+with a barbaric inspiration of her own. Whether the renewed tumults
+began by the appropriation of certain Church lands hitherto in the power
+of the Homes, for the endowment of the King's new chapel, it is
+difficult to tell, a similar reason having been already alleged for
+disturbances in which the Duke of Albany was the antagonist of that
+powerful family; at all events a very small matter was enough to awake
+again all the old rancours. The malcontents headed by the same men who
+had already inflicted so much suffering and shame upon the King began to
+draw together in alarming numbers. Roused from among his more congenial
+occupations by this renewed commotion, James sent a herald to ask the
+reason of their assembling: but the herald was disrespectfully treated
+and his letters torn in pieces, an insult which seems to have convinced
+the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">{150}</a></span>King that the strongest measures of defence were necessary. He is
+said to have strongly fortified Stirling, where Prince James, the heir
+of the kingdom, now a boy of fifteen or sixteen, was. Perhaps the King
+was suspicious of the boy, perhaps his old terrors as to the danger to
+his life which was to arise from his own family had returned to him: for
+the restrictions under which young James was left were exceedingly
+severe and arbitrary. No man was to be allowed to enter the castle,
+great or small, till the King's return, nor was the Prince to be allowed
+to pass the gates "to no game, nor to meet with no man." Pitscottie says
+that Edinburgh Castle was also strengthened, and the King's treasury
+placed in it and all his valuables laid up there. When these precautions
+were taken James embarked "in ane ship of Captane Woode's"&mdash;probably the
+most legitimate way in which he could have travelled, the vessel being
+that of the Admiral, Andrew Wood, the greatest sailor in Scotland&mdash;and
+went to Fife, from whence he marched to the north, calling the nobles of
+the northern counties round him, and gathering an army with which to
+oppose the greater lords and lairds who awaited him on the other side of
+the Firth of Forth. James's unusual energy must have equally roused and
+alarmed the rebels, against whom the royal name was as a strong tower.
+That such men as Angus and the other great nobles of Scotland, who had
+reduced their King to a puppet with such entire success, should now feel
+it necessary to get possession of Prince James in order to confer
+dignity, on their proceedings seems very strange; but perhaps when
+rebellion comes to the dignity of a pitched battle its flags and
+pretensions are of more importance than when it can so order matters as
+to put on an appearance of acting in the King's own interests, as at
+Lauder. And how far the Prince might be an independent actor in this
+troubled drama there is no evidence <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">{151}</a></span>to show. He had arrived at an age
+when youths in these early-maturing days acted for themselves; even in
+our own a lad of sixteen would scarcely allow his name to be employed
+against his father without some protest, and could not be treated as a
+child in a conflict so momentous. Therefore it is scarcely possible to
+imagine that the Prince was entirely guiltless. And the spectator cannot
+but enter with warmth into the feelings of the King when he discovered
+what had been done, and that his heir was in the enemy's camp, giving
+substance and reason to their rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>There is a curious story told of how Lord Lindsay of the Byres, a fierce
+and grim baron of Fife, presented on the very eve of the battle "a great
+grey courser" to the King, assuring him that were he ever in extremity
+that horse would carry him, "either to fly or to follow," better than
+any horse in Scotland, "if well sitten"&mdash;a present which James accepted,
+and which comes in as part of the paraphernalia of fate. On the morning
+of the day of battle the King mounted this horse, and "rade to ane hill
+head to see the manner of the cuming" of his enemies against him. He saw
+the host defiling "in three battells," with six thousand men in each,
+their spears shining, their banners waving, Homes and Hepburns in the
+front, with Merse and Teviotdale and all the forces of the Border, and
+the men of Lothian in the rear: while in the main body rose the ensigns
+of all the great lords who had already beaten and humbled
+him&mdash;Bell-the-Cat and the other barons who had hanged his friends before
+his eyes&mdash;but now bearing his own royal standard, with his son among
+them, the bitterest thought of all. James sat upon his fleet horse,
+presented to him the night before with such an ominous recommendation,
+and saw his enemies bearing down upon him&mdash;his enemies and his son.
+"Then," says the chronicler, "he remembered the words which the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">{152}</a></span>witch
+had spoken to him many days before, that he should be suddenly destroyed
+and put down by the nearest of his kin." For this he had allowed the
+murder of young Mar and driven Alexander of Albany into exile; but who
+can wonder if in his stricken soul he now perceived or imagined that no
+man can cheat the Fates? His own son, his boy! Some nobler poignancy of
+anguish than the mere sick despair and panic of the coward must surely
+have been in his mind as he realised this last and crowning horror. The
+profound moral discouragement of a man caught in the toils, and for whom
+no escape was possible; the sickening sense of betrayal; the wide
+country before him, in which there might still be found some peaceful
+refuge far from these distractions and contradictions of men; the whirl
+of the dreadful yet beautiful sight, companies marching and ever
+marching, spears and helmets shining, banners waving, and all against
+him&mdash;a man who had never any pleasure in the pomp and circumstance of
+war. Who can wonder as these hurrying thoughts overwhelmed his mind, and
+the fleet courser pawed the turf, and the wild sweet air blew free in
+his face, inviting him to escape, to flee, to find somewhere comfort and
+peace&mdash;that such a man should have yielded to the mad impulse, and in an
+access of despair, longing for the wings of a dove that he might flee
+away and be at rest, have turned from the rising tumult and fled?</p>
+
+<p>Of all the ironies of Fate there could be none more bitter than that
+which drove the hapless fugitive, in growing consciousness of shame,
+like a straw before the wind, across the famous field of Bannockburn.
+What an association to be connected with that victorious name! He had
+aimed at Stirling, but wild with despair and panic and misery missed the
+way. As the grey courser entered the village of Bannockburn at full
+flight a woman drawing water let fall <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">{153}</a></span>her "pig" or earthen pot in
+affright, and startled the horse; and the King "being evill sitten"
+(having a bad seat) fell from his saddle before the door of the mill.
+The sight of this strange cavalier in his splendid armour, covered with
+foam and dust, borne to the earth like a log by the weight of his
+armour, appalled the simple people, who dragged him inside the mill and
+covered him where he lay with some rough horsecloth, not knowing what to
+do. When he had come to himself James implored the wondering people to
+fetch him a priest before he died. "Who are you?" they asked, standing
+over him. What a world of time had passed in that wild ride! how many
+ages since the dying fugitive lying on the dusty floor and covered with
+the miller's rug was James Stewart, at the head of a gallant army! "This
+morning," he said, with a bitter comprehension of all that had passed
+since then, "I was your King." The miller's wife ran forth to her door
+calling for a priest, and some one who was passing by answered her call;
+but whether he was really a priest, or only one of the stragglers of the
+rebel army, seems uncertain. He came into the mill, hearing no doubt the
+cries of the astonished couple that it was the King, and kneeling down
+recognised the fallen monarch; but instead of hearing his confession,
+drew a knife and stabbed him three or four times in the breast. Thus
+miserably ended James Stewart, the third of the name.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the tragical conclusions to which his family had come this was
+the most deplorable, as his life had been the least satisfactory.
+Whether there was more than weakness to be alleged against him it is now
+impossible to tell; and whether his favourite companions and occupations
+proved a spirit touched to finer issues than those about him, or showed
+only, as his barons thought, a preference for low company and paltry
+pursuits of peace. But howsoever his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">{154}</a></span>patronage of the arts, the
+buildings he has left to Scotland, or the tradition of the music and
+gentle pleasures which he loved, may justify him to the reader, it is at
+least clear that his stewardry of his kingdom was a miserable failure,
+and his life a loss and harm to his country. Instead of promoting the
+much-interrupted progress of her development, so far as his individual
+influence went, he arrested and hindered it. And, difficult as the
+position of affairs had been when he succeeded at seven years old to his
+father's uncompleted labours, the situation which he left behind him,
+the country torn in two, one half of his subjects in arms against the
+other, his son's name opposed to his own, and every national benefit
+postponed to the settlement of this quarrel, was ten times more
+difficult and terrible. He was the first of his name whose influence was
+all unfavourable to the progress of the nation, not only by evil
+fortune, but by the disasters of a mind not sufficient for the weight
+and burden of his time. He thus died ignominiously, in the month of June
+1488, having reigned twenty-eight years and lived thirty-five&mdash;a short
+lifetime for so much trouble and general misfortune.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Buchanan's account is not so bloodthirsty: he represents
+Alexander as entertaining his guests with stories of his restoration to
+favour, and approaching deliverance, and dismissing them in all mirth
+and friendliness though heavy with wine: so that his guards having
+incontinently fallen asleep at their posts he was able to make his
+escape.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">{155}</a></span></p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 244px;">
+<img src="images/illus_020.jpg" width="244" height="350" alt="ARMS OF JAMES IV OF SCOTLAND" title="" />
+<span class="caption">ARMS OF JAMES IV OF SCOTLAND
+<br />
+(From King&#39;s College Chapel, Old Aberdeen)</span>
+</div>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">JAMES IV: THE KNIGHT-ERRANT</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>The graver records of the nation pause at the point to which we have
+arrived. The tale leaves both battlefield and council chamber, though
+there is an inevitable something of both in the chronicle as there is
+something of daily bread in the most festive day. But it is not with
+these grave details that the historian occupies himself. The most
+serious page takes a glow from the story it has to tell, the weighty
+matters of national life and development stand aside, and it is a knight
+of romance who stands forth to occupy the field. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">{156}</a></span>The story of James, the
+fourth of the name, is one of those passages of veritable history in
+which there is scarcely anything that might not be borrowed from a tale
+of chivalry. It is pure romance from beginning to end.</p>
+
+<p>Of the character and personality of the boy whose education was carried
+on under strict surveillance at Stirling we know nothing whatever, until
+he suddenly appears before us in the enemy's camp, whether with his own
+consent or not, or how much, if with his own consent, with any knowledge
+of what he was about, it is difficult to tell. His mother had died while
+he was still a child, and probably for the last few years of his much
+disturbed life James III had but little attention to spare for his son.
+If there is any truth in a curious story told by Pitscottie of a search
+on board Sir Andrew Wood's ship for the murdered King, while yet the
+fact of his death was unknown, and the Prince's wistful address to the
+great sailor, "Sir, are ye my father?" we might suppose that the boy had
+been banished altogether from his father's presence. But perhaps this is
+too slender a foundation to build upon. There can be no doubt, however,
+that after the battle, little honourable to either side, and lost by the
+King's party almost before begun, from which he fled in a panic so
+ignominious and fatal, there was a moment of great perplexity and
+dismay, when King James's fate remained a mystery, and the rebel nobles
+with the boy-prince among them knew not what to do or to say, in the
+doubt whether he was dead or alive, whether he might not reappear at any
+moment with a host from the Highlands or from France, or even England,
+at his back. When they had fully realised their unsatisfactory victory
+they marched to Edinburgh, with the Prince always among them and a chill
+horror about them, unaware what way to look for news of the King. The
+rush of the people to watch their return with their drooping banners and
+faces full of consternation, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">{157}</a></span>and wonder at the unaccustomed sight of the
+young Prince which yet was not exciting enough to counterbalance the
+anxiety, the wonder, the perpetual question what had become of the
+King&mdash;must have been as a menace the more to the perplexed leaders, who
+knew that a fierce mob might surge up into warfare at any moment, or a
+rally from the castle cut off their discouraged and weary troops. Where
+was the King? Had he perhaps got before them to Edinburgh? was he there
+on that height, misty with smoke and sunshine, turning against them the
+great gun, which had been forged for use against the Douglas: or ready
+to appear from over the Firth terrible with a new army; or in the ships,
+most likely of all, with the great admiral who lay there watching, ready
+to carry off a royal fugitive or bring back strange allies to revenge
+the scorn that had been done to the King? The lords decided to take
+their dispirited and broken array to Leith instead of going to Holyrood,
+and there collected together to hold a council of war. Among the
+confused reports brought to them of what one man and another had seen or
+heard was one, more likely than the rest, of boats which had been seen
+to steal down Forth and make for the <i>Yellow Carvel</i> lying in the
+estuary, with apparently wounded men on board. They sent accordingly to
+summon Sir Andrew Wood to their presence. The sailor probably cared
+nothing about politics any further than that he held for the King&mdash;and
+furious with the Lords who had withstood his Majesty declined to come
+unless hostages were sent for his safety. When this was accorded, the
+old sea-lion, the first admiral of Scotland, came gruffly from his ships
+to answer their questions. Whether there was any resemblance between the
+two men, as he stood with his cloak wrapped round him defiant before the
+rebel lords, or if the Prince had, as is possible, been so long absent
+from his father that the vague outline of a man enveloped and muffled
+deceived <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">{158}</a></span>him, it is impossible to say. But there is a tone of
+penetrating reality in the "Sir, are ye my father?" of the troubled boy,
+perhaps only then aroused to a full comprehension of his position and
+the sense that he was himself guiltily involved in the proceedings which
+had brought some mysterious and unknown fate upon the King. It is
+difficult to see why, accepting from Pitscottie all the rest of this
+affecting narrative, the modern historian should cut out this as
+unworthy of belief, "Who answered," continues the chronicler, "with
+tears falling from his eyes,"</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"'Sir, I am not your father, but I was a servand to your father, and
+sall be to his authoritie till I die, and ane enemy to them that was
+the occasion of his doon-putting.' The lords inquired of Captain
+Wood if he knew of the King or where he was. He answered he knew
+nothing of the King nor where he was. Then they speired what they
+were that came out of the field and passed into his ships. He
+answered: 'It was I and my brother, who were ready to have waired
+our lives with the King in his defence.' Then they said, 'He is not
+in your ships?' who answered again, 'He is not in my ship, but would
+to God he were in my ship safelie, I should defend him and keep him
+skaithless frae all the treasonable creatures who has murdered him,
+for I think to see the day when they shall be hanged and quartered
+for their demerites.'"</p></div>
+
+<p>The lords would fain have silenced this rude sailor, but having given
+hostages for his safe return were obliged to let him go. There could not
+be a more vivid picture of their perplexity and trouble. They proceeded
+to Edinburgh after this rebuff, coming in, we may well believe, with
+little sound of trumpet or sign of welcome, and with many a threatening
+countenance among the crowds that gazed wistfully upon the boy in their
+midst, who, if the King were really dead, was the King&mdash;another James.
+There might be old men about watching from the foot of the Canongate the
+silent cortege trooping along the valley to Holyrood&mdash;men who remembered
+with all the force of boyish recollection how the assassins of James I.
+had been dragged and tormented through Edinburgh streets, and might
+wonder <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">{159}</a></span>and whisper inquiries to their sons whether such a horrible sight
+might be coming again, and what part that pale boy had in the dreadful
+deed? It was but fifty years since that catastrophe, and already two
+long minorities had paralysed the progress of Scotland. How the crowding
+people must have eyed him, as he rode along, the slim stripling, so
+young, so helpless, in the midst of all these bearded men! What part did
+he have in it? Was his father done to death by his orders? Was he
+consenting at least to what was done? Was he aware of all that was to
+follow that hurried ride with the lords, into which he had been beguiled
+or persuaded? James III had to some degree favoured Edinburgh, where,
+notwithstanding his long captivity in the Castle, he had found defenders
+and friends. And there must have been many in the crowd who took part
+with the unfortunate monarch, so mysteriously gone out of their midst,
+and who looked with horror upon the boy who had something at least to do
+with the ruin and death of his father. It was a sombre entry upon the
+future dwelling to which this young James was to bring so much splendour
+and rejoicing.</p>
+
+<p>How these doubts were cleared up and certainty attained we have no sure
+way of knowing. Pitscottie's story is that when the false priest
+murdered the King, he took up the body on his back and carried it away,
+"but no man knew what he did with him or where he buried him." Other
+authorities speak of a funeral service in the Abbey of Cambuskenneth on
+the banks of the Forth&mdash;a great religious establishment, of which one
+dark grey tower alone remains upon the green meadows by the winding
+river; and there is mention afterwards of a bloody shirt carried about
+on the point of a lance to excite the indignant Northmen to rebellion.
+But notwithstanding these facts no one ventures to say that James's body
+was found or buried. Masses for the dead <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">{160}</a></span>were sung, and every religious
+honour paid; but so far as anything is told us, these rites might have
+been performed around an empty bier. At last however, in some way, a
+dolorous certainty, which must by many have been felt as a relief, was
+attained, and the young King was crowned in Edinburgh in the summer of
+1488, some weeks after his father's death. At the same time a Parliament
+was called, and the Castle of Edinburgh, which all this time seems to
+have kept its gates closed and rendered no submission, was summoned by
+the herald to yield, "which was obediently done at the King's command,"
+says the chronicle. There was evidently no thought of rebellion or of
+resisting the lawful sovereign, so soon as it was certain which he was.
+The procession of the herald, perhaps the Lord Lyon himself, with all
+his pursuivants, up the long street to sound the trumpets outside the
+castle gates and demand submission, must have brightened the waiting and
+wondering city with the certainty of the new reign. But the bravery and
+fine colours of such a procession, though made doubly effective by the
+background of noble houses and all the lofty gables and great churches
+in the crowded picturesque centre at the foot of the Castle Hill, were
+not then as now strange to the "grey metropolis of the North." No
+country in Christendom would seem to have so changed under the influence
+of the Reformation as Scotland. The absence of pageant and ceremonial,
+the discouragement of display, the suppression of the picturesque in
+action, in the midst of one of the most picturesque scenes in the world,
+are all of modern growth. In the fifteenth century, and especially in
+the reign that was now begun, the town ran over with bright colour and
+splendid spectacle. When the lists were formed upon the breezy platform,
+overlooking the fair plains of Lothian, the great Firth, and the
+surrounding circle of hills, at the castle gate&mdash;how brilliant must have
+been both scene and setting, the living picture and the wonderful frame,
+and how every window would be crowded to see the hundred little
+processions of knights to the jousts and ladies to the tribunes, and the
+King and Queen riding with all their fine attendants "up the toun" all
+the way from Holyrood! Nor would the curiosity be much less when, coming
+in from the country, with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">{162}</a></span>every kind of quaint surrounding, the great
+nobles with their glittering retinue, the lairds each with a little
+posse of stout men-at-arms, as many as he could muster, the burgesses
+from the towns, the clergy from all the great centres of the Church, on
+mules and soft-pacing palfreys, would gather for the meetings of
+Parliament. It scarcely wanted a knight-errant like the fourth James,
+with his chivalrous tastes and devices, to fill the noble town with
+brightness, for all these fine sights were familiar to Edinburgh. But
+the brightest day was now to come.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161"></a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 418px;">
+<img src="images/illus_021.jpg" width="418" height="600" alt="OLD HOUSE IN LAWNMARKET" title="" />
+<span class="caption">OLD HOUSE IN LAWNMARKET</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Parliament which assembled in all the emotion of that curious
+crisis, while still the wonder and dismay of the King's tragic
+disappearance were in the air, was a strange one. It was evidently
+convened with the intention of shielding the party which had taken arms
+against James III, while making a cunning attempt to throw the blame on
+those who had stood by him: these natural sentiments being combined with
+the determination, most expedient in the circumstances, to reconcile all
+by punishing none. The young King and the power now exercised in his
+name were in the hands of the lords who had headed the rebellion, Angus,
+Home, Bothwell, and the rest; and while their own safety was naturally
+their first consideration, they had evidently no desire to stir up
+troublesome questions even for the fierce joy of condemning their
+opponents. At one or other of the early Parliaments in this reign,
+either that first held by way of smoothing over matters and preparing
+such an account of all that had happened as might be promulgated by
+foreign ambassadors to their respective Courts&mdash;or one which followed
+the easy settlement of an attempt at rebellion already referred to, when
+the Lord of Forbes carried a bloody shirt, supposed to be that of King
+James, through the streets of Aberdeen, and raised a quickly-quelled
+insurrection&mdash;there occurs the trial of Sir David Lindsay, one of the
+most <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">{163}</a></span>quaint narratives of a <i>cause c&eacute;l&egrave;bre</i> ever written. The
+chronicler, whom we may quote at some length&mdash;and whose living and
+graphic narrative none even of those orthodox historians who pretend to
+hold lightly the ever-delightful Pitscottie, upon whom at the same time
+they rely as their chief authority, attempt to question in this
+case&mdash;was himself a Lindsay, and specially concerned for the honour of
+his name. The defendant was Lindsay of the Byres, one of the chief of
+James III's supporters, he who had given the King that ominous gift of a
+fleet courser on the eve of the battle. When he appeared at the bar of
+the house so to speak&mdash;before Parliament&mdash;the following "dittay" or
+indictment was made against him:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Lord David Lindsay of the Byres compeir for the cruel coming
+against the King at Bannokburne with his father, and in giving him
+counsall to have devored his sone, the King's grace, here present:
+and to that effect gave him ane sword and ane hors to fortify him
+against his sone: what is your answer heirunto?"</p></div>
+
+<p>A more curious reversal of the facts of the case could not be, and the
+idea that James the actual monarch could be a rebel against his own son,
+then simply the heir to the crown, is bewildering in its grave defiance
+of all reason. There is not much wonder that Lindsay, "ane rasch man,
+and of rud language, albeit he was stout and hardy in the field and
+exercised in war," burst forth upon the assembled knights and lords,
+upbraiding them with bringing the Prince into their murderous designs
+against the King. The effect of his speech on the assembly would seem to
+have been considerable, and it is very apparent that the party in power
+had no desire to make any fight, for the Chancellor anxiously excused
+Lindsay to the King as "ane man of the old world, that cannot answer
+formallie nor get speech reverentlie in your Grace's presence." This
+roused the brother of the culprit, a certain Mr. Patrick Lindsay,
+otherwise described <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">{164}</a></span>as a Churchman, who was by no means content to see
+the head of his house thus described, nor yet that Lord Lindsay should
+come "in the King's will," thus accepting forfeiture or any other
+penalties that might be pronounced against him. Accordingly he
+interfered in the following remarkable way:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"To that effect he stamped on his brother's foot to latt him
+understand that he was not content with the decree which the
+Chancellour proponed to him. But this stamp of Mr. Patrick's was so
+heavy upon his brother's foot, who had ane sair toe which was
+painful to him, wherefore he looked to him and said, 'Ye were over
+pert to stampe upon my foot; were you out of the King's presence I
+would overtake you upon the mouth.' Mr. Patrick, hearing the vain
+words of his brother, pled on his knees before the King and the
+Justice, and made his petition to them in this manner: 'Sir, if it
+will please your Grace and your honorabill counsall, I desire of
+your Grace, for His cause that is Judge of all, that your Grace will
+give me leave this day to speak for my brother, for I see there is
+no man of law that dare speak for him for fear of your Grace; and
+although he and I has not been at ane this mony yeires, yet my heart
+may not suffer me to see the native house whereof I am descended to
+perish!' So the King and the Justice gave him leave to speak for his
+brother. Then the said Mr. Patrick raise off his knees, and was very
+blythe that he had obtained that license with the King's favour. So
+he began very reverentlie to speak in this manner, saying to the
+whole lords of Parliament, and to the rest of them that were
+accusers of his brother at that time, with the rest of the lords
+that were in the summons of forfaltrie, according to their dittay,
+saying: 'I beseech you all, my lords, that be here present, for His
+sake that will give sentence and judgment on us all at the last day,
+that ye will remember now instantly is your time ... therefore now
+do all ye would be done to in the administration of justice to your
+neighbours and brethren, who are accused of their lives and
+heritages this day, whose judgment stands in your hands. Therefore
+beware in time, and open not the door that ye may not steik.' Be
+this Mr. Patrick had ended his speeches, the Chancellour bid him say
+something in defence of his brother, and to answer to the points of
+the summons made and raised upon his brother and the rest of the
+lords and barons. Then Mr. Patrick answered again and said: 'If it
+please the King's grace, and your honours that are here present, I
+say the King should not sit in judgment <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">{165}</a></span>against his lords and
+barons, because he has made his oath of fidelity when he received
+the crown of Scotland that he should not come in judgment against
+his lords and barons in no action where he is partie himself. But
+here His Grace is both partie, and was at the committing of the
+crime himself, therefore he ought not, neither by the law of God nor
+of man, to sit in judgment at this time; wherefore we desire him, in
+the name of God, to rise and depart out of judgment, till the matter
+be further discussed conform to justice.'"</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 369px;">
+<img src="images/illus_022.jpg" width="369" height="600" alt="ST. ANTHONY&#39;S CHAPEL" title="" />
+<span class="caption">ST. ANTHONY&#39;S CHAPEL</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">{166}</a></span>This bold request apparently commended itself to the Parliament, for we
+hear that the Chancellor and lords considered it reasonable, and the
+King was accordingly desired "to rise up and pass into the inner
+tolbooth, which," adds Pitscottie, "was very unpleasant to him for the
+time, being ane young prince sittand upon his royall seat to be raised
+by his subjects." Mr. Patrick so pressed his advantage after this
+strange incident, and the argument of the young King's presence and
+complicity in all that had happened was so unanswerable, added to some
+inaccuracy in the indictment, of which the keen priest made the most,
+that the summons was withdrawn, and Lindsay along with all the other
+barons of his party would seem to have shared in the general amnesty, as
+probably was the intention of all parties from the beginning. For the
+victors, who were victors by a chance, were not powerful enough to carry
+matters with a high hand, and their opponents, though overcome, were too
+strong to be despised. It was better for all to gather round the new
+King, who had no evil antecedents nor anything to prevent a new
+beginning of the most hopeful kind. The scene ends with characteristic
+liveliness. "The lord David Lindsay was so blyth at his brother's
+sayings that he burst forth saying to him, 'Verrilie, brother, ye have
+fine pyet words. I should not have trowed, by St. Amarie, that you had
+sic words'"&mdash;an amusing tribute of half-scornful gratitude from the
+soldier to the Churchman whose pyet or magpie words were so wonderfully
+efficacious, yet so despicable in themselves, to change the fate of a
+gentleman! It is grievous to find that the King was so displeased at Mr.
+Patrick and his boldness that he sent him off to the Ross of Bute, and
+kept <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">{167}</a></span>him imprisoned in that solitary yet beautiful region for a whole
+year.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding, however, this little failure of respect to the
+sovereign, and the dismal uncertainty and anxiety in which his reign
+began, there seemed to be nothing but the happiest prospects opening
+before the young King. Out of the miserable struggle which brought him
+to the throne, he himself, most probably only awakened to the meaning of
+it after all was over, brought a lifelong remorse which he never threw
+off, and which was increased by the melancholy services of commemoration
+and expiation, the masses for his father's soul and solemn funeral
+ceremonials whether real or nominal, at all of which the youth would
+have to be present with a sore and swelling heart. We are told that he
+went and unburthened himself to the Dean of the Chapel Royal in
+Stirling, his father's favourite church, which James III had built and
+endowed, arranging the services and music with special personal care.
+The Dean received his confession with kindness seeing him so penitent,
+and gave him "good counsel and comfort," and remained his friend and
+spiritual adviser as he grew into manhood; but we are not told whether
+it was by his ordinance as a penance and constant reminder of his sin,
+or by a voluntary mortification of his own, that James assumed the iron
+belt which he wore always round him "and eikit it from time to time,"
+that is, increased its size and weight as long as he lived. This
+sensibility, which formed part of his chivalrous and generous character,
+the noble, sweet, and lovable nature which conquered all hearts, at once
+subdued and silenced his many critics, and furnished them with a
+reproach which spite and ill-will could bring up against him when
+occasion occurred. But the enemies were few and the lovers many who
+surrounded the young Prince when the contentions of the crisis were once
+over, and the warring factions conciliated <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">{168}</a></span>by general condemnations in
+principle which hurt nobody so long as they were not accompanied by
+confiscations or deprivations. Such clemency in so young a king was a
+marvel to all, the chroniclers say, though indeed there could be little
+question of clemency on James's part in a mutual hushing-up, which was
+evidently dictated by every circumstance of the time and the only source
+of mutual safety.</p>
+
+<p>When, however, he had arrived at man's estate, and makes a recognisable
+and individual appearance upon the stage of history, the picture of him
+is one of the most attractive ever made, the happiest and brightest
+chapter in the tragic story of the Stewarts. Youth with that touch of
+extravagance which becomes it, that genial wildness which all are so
+ready to pardon, and an adventurous disposition, careless of personal
+safety, gave a charm the more to the magnificent young King, handsome,
+noble, brave, and full of universal friendliness and sympathy, who comes
+forth smiling in the face of fate, ready to turn back every gloomy
+augury and bring in another golden age. Pitscottie's description is full
+of warmth and vivid reality:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"In this mean time was good peace and rest in Scotland and great
+love betwixt the King and all his subjects, and was well loved by
+them all: for he was verrie noble, and though the vice of
+covetousness rang over meikle in his father it rang not in himself:
+nor yet pykthankis nor cowards should be authorised in his companie,
+nor yet advanced; neither used he the council but of his lords,
+whereby he won the hearts of the whole nobilitie; so that he could
+ride out through any part of the realme, him alone, unknowing that
+he was King; and would lie in poor men's houses as he had been ane
+travellour through the country, and would require of them where he
+lodged, where the King was, and what ane man he was, and how he used
+himself towards his subjects, and what they spoke of him through the
+countrie. And they would answer him as they thought good, so by this
+doing the King heard the common bruit of himself. This Prince was
+wondrous hardie and diligent in execution of justice, and loved
+nothing so well as able men and horses; therefore at sundry times he
+would cause make proclamations through the land to all and sundry
+his lords and barons who were able for justing and tourney to come
+to Edinburgh to him, and there to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">{169}</a></span>exercise themselves for his
+pleasure, some to run with the spear, some to fight with the
+battle-axe, some with the two-handed sword, and some with the bow,
+and other exercises. By this means the King brought the realm to
+great manhood and honour: that the fame of his justing and tourney
+spread through all Europe, which caused many errant knights to come
+out of other parts to Scotland to seek justing, because they heard
+of the kinglie fame of the Prince of Scotland. But few or none of
+them passed away unmatched, and ofttimes overthrown."</p></div>
+
+<p>The town to which, under this young and gallant Prince, the stream of
+chivalry flowed, was yet more picturesque than the still and always
+"romantic town" of which every Scotsman is proud. The Nor' Loch
+reflected the steep rocks of the castle and the high crown of walls and
+turrets that surmounted them, with nothing but fields and greenery, here
+and there diversified by a village and fortified mansion between it and
+the sea. The walls, which followed the irregularities of the rocky
+ridge, as far as the beginning of the Canongate, were closed across the
+High Street by the picturesque port and gateway of the Nether Bow, the
+boundary in that direction of the town, shutting in all its busy life,
+its markets, its crowding citizens, its shops and churches. On the south
+at the foot of the hill, the burghers' suburb, where the merchants,
+lawyers, and even some of the nobles had their houses and gardens, lay
+outside the walls in the sunshine, protected only by the soft summits of
+the Braid and Pentland hills: what is now the Cowgate, not a savoury
+quarter, being then the South Side, the flowery and sheltered faubourg
+in which all who could afford the freedom of a country residence while
+still close to the town, expanded into larger life, as the wealthy
+tradesfolk of all ages, and persons bound to a centre of occupation and
+duty, always love to do. Towards the east, and gradually becoming as
+important and busy as the High Street itself, though outside the series
+of towers which guarded the city gate, lay the long line of the Court
+suburb, the lofty and noble Canongate descending towards <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">{170}</a></span>the abbey and
+palace, where all that was splendid in Scotland congregated around the
+gay and gallant King. Outside the Netherbow Port, striking out in
+opposite directions, was the road which led to the seaport of Leith and
+that which took its name from the great Kirk of Field, St. Mary's Wynd,
+a pleasant walk along the outside of the fortifications to the great
+monastery on its plateau, with the Pleasance, a name suggestive of all
+freshness and greenery and rural pleasure, at its feet. Inside the town,
+between the castle gates and those of the city, were the crowded
+habitations of a medi&aelig;val town, the only place where business could be
+carried on in safety, or rich wares exhibited, or money passed from hand
+to hand. The Lawnmarket or Linen Market would be the chief centre of
+sale and merchandise, and there, no doubt, the booths before the lower
+stories, with all their merchandise displayed, and the salesmen seated
+at the head of the few deep steps which led into the cavernous depths
+within, would be full of fine dresses and jewellery, and the gold and
+silver which, some one complains, was worn away by the fine workmanship,
+which was then more prized than solid weight. The cloth of gold and
+silver, the fine satins and velvets, the embroidery, more exquisite than
+anything we have time or patience for now&mdash;embroidery of gold thread
+which we hear of, an uncomfortable sort of luxury, even upon the linen
+of great personages&mdash;would there be put forth and inspected by gallants
+in all their fine array, or by the ladies in their veils, half or wholly
+muffled from public inspection. Even the cheaper booths that adorned the
+West Bow or smaller wynds, where the country women bought their kirtles
+of red or green when they brought their produce to the market, would
+show more gay colours under their shade in a season than we with our
+soberer taste in years; and the town ladies, in their hoods and silk
+gowns, which were permitted even in more primitive times to the
+possessors of so much a year, must have been of themselves a fair sight
+in all their ornaments, less veiled and muffled from profane view <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">{172}</a></span>than
+more high-born dames and demoiselles. No doubt it would be a favourite
+walk with all to pass the port and see what was doing among the great
+people down yonder at Holyrood, or watch a gay band of French knights
+arriving from Leith with their pennons displayed, full of some challenge
+lately given by the knights of Scotland, or eager to maintain on their
+own account the beauty of their ladies and the strength of their spears
+against all comers. Edinburgh can never have been so amusing, never so
+gay and bright, as in these fine times; though, no doubt, there was
+always the risk of a rush together of two parties of gallants, a m&ecirc;l&eacute;e
+after the old mode of Clear the Causeway, a hurried shutting of shops
+and pulling forth of halberds. For the younger population, at least, no
+doubt these risks were almost the best part of the play.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171"></a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 448px;">
+<img src="images/illus_023.jpg" width="448" height="600" alt="OLD HOUSES AT HEAD OF WEST BOW" title="" />
+<span class="caption">OLD HOUSES AT HEAD OF WEST BOW</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Thus Edinburgh breasted its ridge of rock&mdash;a fair sight across all the
+green country; its sentinel mountain crouching eastward between the
+metropolis and the sea, its suburbs growing and expanding; this full of
+the fine people of the Court, that of the quiet wealth and enjoyment
+which made no extravagant demonstration. It had never been so
+prosperous, never so much the centre of all that was splendid in the
+kingdom, as in the reign of the fourth James&mdash;the knight of romance, the
+gayest and brightest representative of the House of Stewart, though
+unable to defend himself from the tragic fate which awaited every
+sovereign of his name.</p>
+
+<p>Among the finest sights seen in Edinburgh must have been those which
+occurred very early in his reign, when the great Admiral, Sir Andrew
+Wood, he who had met so proudly the inquisition of the lords, came from
+sea with his prisoners and his spoils. Wood had not pleased the reigning
+party by his rough fidelity to the dead King, but they could not induce
+the other sea captains, by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">{173}</a></span>any promise of reward or advancement, to
+attack and punish, as was their desire, the greatest sailor in Scotland.
+And when an English expedition began to vex the Scottish coasts, there
+was no one but Wood to encounter and defeat them, which he did on two
+different occasions, bringing the captains of the rover
+vessels&mdash;probably only half authorised by the astute King Henry VII, who
+had evidently no desire to attack Scotland, but who had to permit a raid
+from time to time as the most popular thing to do&mdash;as prisoners to the
+courteous King, who though he "thanked Sir Andrew Wood greatly and
+rewarded him richlie for his labours and great proof of his manhood,"
+yet "propined (gave presents to) the English captain richlie and all his
+men and sent them all safelie home, their ships and all their
+furnishing, because they had shown themselves so stout and hardie
+warriours." "So he sent them all back to the King of England," says the
+chronicler, with full enjoyment of James's magnanimous brag and of thus
+having the better of "the auld enemy" both in prowess and in courtesy,
+"to let him understand he had as manlie men in Scotland as he had in
+England; therefore desired him to send no more of his captains in time
+coming." England was obliged to accept, it appeared, this bravado of the
+Scots, having no excuse for repeating the experiment, but was
+"discontented" and little pleased to be overcome both in courtesy and in
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>A more serious matter than this encounter at sea, which was really more
+a trial of strength than anything else, was the purely chivalric
+enterprise of James in taking up the cause of Perkin Warbeck, the
+supposed Duke of York, who imposed upon all Europe for a time, and on
+nobody so much as the King of Scotland. This adventurer, who was given
+out as the younger son of Edward IV escaped by the relenting of the
+murderers when his elder brother was killed in the Tower, was by
+unanimous consent <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">{174}</a></span>of all history a youth of person and manners quite
+equal to his pretensions, playing his part of royal prince with a grace
+and sincerity which nobody could resist. The grave Pinkerton, so
+sarcastically superior to all fables, writing at the end of the
+eighteenth century, had evidently not even then made up his mind how to
+accept this remarkable personage, but speaks of him as "this unfortunate
+prince or pretender," and of James as "sensible of the truth of his
+report or misled by appearance," with an evident leaning to the side of
+the hero who played so bold a game. The young adventurer came to James
+with the most illustrious of guarantees. He brought letters from Charles
+VIII of France, and from the Emperor Maximilian, and was followed by a
+train of gallant Frenchmen and by everything that was princelike,
+gracious, and splendid. So completely was he received and believed at
+the Scottish Court that when there arose a mutual love, as the story
+goes, between him and the Lady Catherine Gordon, daughter of the Earl of
+Huntly, one of the most powerful peers in Scotland, and at the same time
+of royal blood, a cousin of the King, the marriage seems to have been
+accepted as a most fit and even splendid alliance. No greater pledge of
+belief could have been given than this. The King of Scots threw himself
+into the effort of establishing the supposed prince's claims as if they
+had been his own. Curious negotiations were entered into as to what the
+pretender should do if, by the help of Scotland, he was placed upon the
+English throne. He was to cede Berwick, that always-coveted morsel which
+had to change its allegiance from generation to generation as the
+balance between the nations rose and fell&mdash;and pay a certain sum towards
+defraying the expenses of the expedition, a bargain to which Perkin,
+playing his part much better than any king of the theatre ever did
+before, demurred, insisting upon easier terms&mdash;as he afterwards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">{175}</a></span>
+remonstrated when James harried the Borders, declaring that he would
+rather resign all hopes of the crown than secure it at the expense of
+the blood and goods of his people. A pretended prince who thus spoke
+might well be credited as far as faith could go. The story of this
+strange enterprise is chiefly told in the letters to Henry VII of
+England of Sir John Ramsay, the same who had been saved by James III
+when the rest of his favourites were killed, and who had more or less
+thriven since, though in evil ways, occupying a position at the Court of
+James IV whom he hated, and acting as spy on his actions, which were all
+reported to the English Court. Ramsay gives the English Government full
+information of all that his sovereign is about to do on behalf of the
+fengit (feigned) boy, and especially of the invasion of England which he
+is about to undertake "against the minds of near the whole number of his
+barons and people. Notwithstanding," Ramsay says, "this simple
+wilfulness cannot be removed out of the King's mind for nae persuasion
+or mean. I trust verrilie," adds the traitor, "that, God will, he be
+punished by your mean for the cruel consent of the murder of his
+father."</p>
+
+<p>Curiously enough Pitscottie, the most graphic and circumstantial of
+historians, says nothing whatever of this most romantic episode. Why he
+should have left it out, for it is impossible that it could have been
+unknown to him, we are unable to imagine; but so it is. Buchanan however
+enters fully into the tale. The wisest of James's counsellors, he tells
+us, were disposed to have nothing to do with this spurious young prince
+coming out of the unknown with his claim to be the rightful King of
+England; but many more were in his favour, specially with the reflection
+that the moment of England's difficulties was always one of advantage
+for the Scots. An army was accordingly raised, with which James marched
+into England, carrying Perkin <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">{176}</a></span>with him with a train of about fourteen
+hundred followers, and hopes that the country would rise to greet and
+acknowledge their lost prince. But it is evident that the Northumbrians
+looked on without any response, and saw in the expedition but one of the
+many raids which they were always so ready to return on their side when
+occasion offered. The pretender, on whose behalf all this was done,
+shrank, it would appear, from the devastation, and with something like
+the generous compunction of a prince protested that he would rather lose
+the crown than gain it so&mdash;a protest which James must have thought a
+piece of affectation, for he replied with a jeer that his companion was
+too solicitous for the welfare of a country which would neither
+acknowledge him as prince nor receive him as citizen. Perkin must have
+begun to tire the patience of the finest gentleman in Christendom before
+James would have made such a contemptuous retort. He returned with the
+King, however, when this unsuccessful expedition&mdash;the only use of which
+was that it proved to James the fruitlessness of fighting on behalf of a
+pretender who had no hold upon the people over whom he claimed to
+reign&mdash;came to an end. It was followed by some slight reprisals on the
+part of the English, and after an interval by an embassy to make peace.
+Henry VII would seem to have been at all times most unwilling to have
+Scotland for an enemy, notwithstanding the strange motive suggested to
+him by the traitor Ramsay. "Sir," writes this false Scot, "King Edward
+had never fully the perfect love of his people till he had war with
+Scotland; and he made sic good diligence and provision therein that to
+this hour he is lovit; and your Grace may as well have as gude a tyme as
+he had." But the cunning old potentate at Westminster was not moved even
+by this argument. Instead of following the instructions of the virulent
+spy whose hatred of his native king and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">{177}</a></span>country reaches the height of
+passion, he sent a wise emissary, moderate like himself, the Bishop of
+Durham, to inquire into the reasons of the attack.</p>
+
+<p>And Edinburgh must have had another great sensational spectacle in the
+arrival not only of the English commissioners, but of such a great
+foreign personage as the Spanish envoy, one of the greatest grandees of
+the most splendid of continental kingdoms, who had come to England to
+negotiate the marriage of Catherine of Arragon with the Prince of Wales,
+and who continued his journey to Scotland with letters of amity from his
+sovereigns for James, and with the object of assisting in the
+peacemaking between the two Kings. Henry required James to give up the
+pretender into his hands&mdash;a thing which of course it was not consistent
+with honour to do&mdash;but it was evident that the King of Scots had already
+in his own mind given up the adventurer's cause. And after the
+negotiations had been concluded and peace made between England and
+Scotland, Perkin and his beautiful young wife and his train of followers
+set sail from Scotland in a little flotilla of three ships, intending it
+is said to go to Ireland, where he had been well received before coming
+to the Court of James. The imagination follows with irrestrainable pity
+the forlorn voyage of this youthful band of adventurers: the young
+husband trained to all the manners and ways of thinking of a prince,
+however little reality there might be in his claims; the young wife,
+mild and fair, the White Rose as she was called, with the best blood of
+Scotland in her veins; the few noble followers, knights, and a lady or
+two who shared their fortunes, setting out vaguely to sea, not knowing
+were to go, with the world before them where to choose. When they got to
+Ireland Prince Perkin heard of an insurrection in Cornwall, and hastened
+to put himself at the head of it, placing his wife for security in the
+quaint <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">{178}</a></span>fortress, among the waters, of St. Michael's Mount. But the
+insurrection came to nothing, and "the unfortunate prince or adventurer"
+was taken prisoner. He was pardoned it is said, but making a wild
+attempt at insurrection again, was this time tried and executed. His
+White Rose, most forlorn of ladies, was taken by King Henry from her
+refuge at the end of the world, placed in charge of the Queen, and never
+left the English Court again. There is no record that she and her
+husband were ever allowed to meet. So ends one of the saddest and most
+romantic of historical episodes.</p>
+
+<p>This story takes up a large part of the early reign of James, who no
+doubt saw his error at the last, but in the beginning threw himself into
+Perkin's fortunes with characteristic impetuosity, and thought nothing
+too good, not even his own fair kinswoman, for the rescued prince. It
+was an error, however, that James shared with many high and mighty
+potentates who gave their imprimatur at first to the adventurer's cause.
+But even for the most genuine prince, when only a pretender, the
+greatest sovereigns are but poor supporters in the long run. James had a
+hundred things to do to make him forget that unfortunate adventure of
+Perkin. It was in the year 1497 that this incident ended so far as the
+Scottish Court was concerned, and James returned to the natural course
+of his affairs, not without occasional tumults on the Border, but with
+no serious fighting anywhere for a course of pleasant years. The old
+traditional strife between the King and the nobles no longer tore the
+kingdom asunder. Perhaps the first great event of his life, the waking
+up of his boyish conscience to find himself in the camp of a faction
+pitted against his own father, influenced him throughout everything, and
+made the duty of conciliation and union seem the first and most
+necessary; perhaps it was but the natural revulsion from those methods<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">{179}</a></span>
+which his father had adopted to his hurt and downfall; or perhaps
+James's chivalrous temper, his love of magnificence and gaiety, made him
+feel doubly the advantage of courtiers who should be great nobles and
+his peers, not dependants made splendid by his bounty. At all events the
+King lived as no Stewart had yet lived, surrounded by all without
+exception who were most noble in the land, encouraging them to vie with
+him in splendour, in noble exercises and pastimes, and almost, it may be
+imagined&mdash;with a change of method, working by good example and genial
+comradeship what his predecessors had vainly tried to do by fire and
+sword&mdash;tempting them to emulate him also in preserving internal peace
+and a certain reign of justice throughout the country. There was no lack
+of barons in the Court of James. Angus and Home and Huntly, who had
+pursued his father to the death and placed himself upon the throne, were
+not turned into subservient courtiers by his gallantry and charm: but
+neither was there any one of these proud lords in the ascendant, or any
+withdrawn and sullen in his castle, taking no share in what was going
+on. The machinery of the State worked as it had never done before. There
+were few Parliaments, and not very much law-making. Enough laws had been
+made under his predecessors, "if they had but been kept," to form an
+ideal nation; the thing to do now was to charm, to persuade, to lead
+both populace and nobility into respecting them. It would be vain to
+imagine that this high purpose was always in James's mind, or that his
+splendour and gaieties were part of a plan for the better regulation of
+the kingdom. But that he was not without a wise policy in following his
+own character and impulses, and that the spontaneous good-fellowship and
+sympathy which his frank, genial, and easy nature called forth
+everywhere were not of admirable effect in the welding together of the
+nation, it would be unjust to say. If he had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">{180}</a></span>not the sterner nobility of
+purpose which made the first of his name conceive and partially carry
+into effect the ideal reign of justice which was the first want of his
+kingdom, he had yet a noble ambition for Scotland to make her honoured
+and feared and famous, and the success with which he seems to have
+carried out this object of his life for many years was great. He made
+the little northern kingdom known for a centre of chivalry, courtesy,
+courage, and, what was more wonderful, magnificence, as it had never
+been before. He penetrated that country with traditions and associations
+of himself in the character always attractive to the imagination, of
+that prince of good fellows, the wandering stranger, who came in unknown
+and sought the hospitality of farmer or ploughman, and made the humble
+board ring with wit and jest, and who thereafter was discovered by
+sudden gift, or grace, or unexpected justice, to be the King:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"He took a bugle from his side, and blew both loud and shrill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And four and twenty belted knights came trooping owre the hill;"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"Then he took out his little knife, let a' his duddies fa',<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he was the brawest gentleman that was among them a'."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The goodman of Ballangeich,<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> the jovial and delightful Gaberlunzie,
+the hero of many a homely ballad and adventure, some perhaps a trifle
+over free, yet none involving any tragic treachery or betrayal, James
+was the playfellow of his people, the Haroun al Raschid of Scotch
+history. "By this doing the King heard the common brute (bruit) of
+himself." Thus he won not only the confidence of the nobles but the
+genial sympathy and kindness of the poor. A minstrel, a poet too in his
+way a man curious about all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">{181}</a></span>handicrafts, famous in all exercises, "ane
+singular good chirurgian, so that there was none of that profession if
+they had any dangerous case in hand but would have craved his advice
+"&mdash;he had every gift that was most likely to commend him to the people,
+who were proud of a king so unlike other kings, the friend of all. And
+nothing could exceed the activity of the young monarch, always occupied
+for the glory of Scotland whatever he was doing. It was he who built the
+great ship, the <i>Michael</i>, which was the greatest wonder ever seen in
+the northern seas; a ship which took all the timber in Fife to build her
+(the windswept Kingdom of Fife has never recovered that deprivation)
+besides a great deal from Norway, with three hundred mariners to work
+her, and carrying "ane thousand men of warre" within those solid sides,
+which, all wooden as they were, could resist cannon shot. "This ship lay
+in the road, and the King took great pleasure every day to come down and
+see her," and would dine and sup in her, and show his lords all her
+order and provisions; No doubt there were many curious parties from
+Edinburgh who followed the King to see that new wonder, and that groups
+would gather on the ramparts of the castle to point out on the shining
+Firth the great and lofty vessel, rising like another castle out of the
+depths. James had also the other splendid taste, which his unfortunate
+father had shared, of building, and set in order the castle at Falkland
+in the heart of the green and wealthy Fife&mdash;where there was great
+hunting and coursing, and perhaps as yet not much high farming in those
+days&mdash;and continued the adornments of Stirling, already so richly if
+rudely decorated in the previous reign.</p>
+
+<p>But Edinburgh was the centre of all the feasting and splendour which
+distinguished his time. The lists were set before the castle gates, on
+that lofty and breezy plateau where all the winds blow. Sometimes there
+were bands of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">{182}</a></span>foreign chivalry breaking lances with the high Scottish
+nobles according to all the stately laws of that mimic war; sometimes
+warriors of other conditions, fighting Borderers or Highlanders, would
+meet for an encounter of arms, ending in deadly earnest, which was not
+discouraged, as we are told with grim humour, since it was again to the
+realm to be disembarrassed of these champions at any cost, and the best
+way was that they should kill each other amicably and have no rancour
+against Justiciar or King. Among the foreign guests who visited James
+was Bernard Stuart of Aubigny, Monsieur Derbine, as Pitscottie calls
+him, the representative of a branch of the royal race which had settled
+in France, whom James received, his kinsman being an old man, with even
+more than his usual grace, making him the judge in all feats of chivalry
+"at justing and tourney, and calling him father of warres, because he
+was well practised in the same." Another of the visitors, Don Pedro
+d'Ayala, the Spanish grandee who helped to conduct the quarrel over
+Perkin Warbeck to a great issue, wrote to his royal master a description
+of King James, which is highly interesting, and full of unconscious
+prophecy. The Spaniard describes the young monarch at twenty-five as one
+of the most accomplished and gallant of cavaliers, speaking Latin (very
+well), French, German, Flemish, Italian, and Spanish; a good Christian
+and Catholic, hearing two masses every morning; fond of priests&mdash;a
+somewhat singular quality unless such jovial priests and boon-companions
+as Dunbar, the poet-friar, were the subject of this preference; though
+perhaps the seriousness which mingled with his jollity, the band of iron
+under his silken vest, led him to seek by times the charm of graver
+company, the mild and learned Gavin Douglas and other scholars in the
+monasteries, where thought and learning had found refuge. The following
+details, which are highly characteristic, bring him before us with
+singular felicity, and, as afterwards turned out, with a curious
+foreseeing of those points in him which brought about his tragical end.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">{184}</a></span>"Rarely even in joking a word escapes him which is not the truth. He
+prides himself much upon it, and says it does not seem to him well
+for kings to swear their treaties as they do now. The oath of a king
+should be his royal word as was the case in bygone ages. He is
+courageous even more than a king should be. I have seen him even
+undertake most dangerous things in the late wars. I sometimes clung
+to his skirts and succeeded in keeping him back. On such occasions
+he does not take the least care of himself. He is not a good
+captain, because he begins to fight before he has given his orders.
+He said to me that his subjects serve him with their persons and
+goods, in just or unjust quarrels, exactly as he likes; and that
+therefore he does not think it right to begin any warlike
+undertaking without being himself the first in danger. His deeds are
+as good as his words. For this reason, and because he is a very
+humane prince, he is much loved."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183"></a></span></p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 339px;">
+<img src="images/illus_024.jpg" width="339" height="600" alt="BAKEHOUSE CLOSE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">BAKEHOUSE CLOSE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The perfect reason yet profound unreasonableness of this quality in
+James, so fatally proved in his after history, is very finely
+discriminated by the writer, who evidently had come under the spell of a
+most attractive personality in this young sovereign, so natural and
+manful, so generous and true. That James should acknowledge the penalty
+of the fatal power he had to draw a whole nation into his quarrel, just
+or unjust, by risking himself the first, is so entirely just according
+to every rule of personal honour, yet so wildly foolish according to all
+higher policy; exposing that very nation to evils so much greater than
+the worst battle. Flodden was still far off in the darkness of the
+unknown, but had this description been written after that catastrophe,
+it could not more clearly have disclosed the motives and magnanimity but
+tragic unwisdom of this prince of romance.</p>
+
+<p>The Spaniard adds much praise of James's temperance, a virtue
+indifferently practised by his subjects, and of his morality, which is
+still more remarkable. The amours and intrigues of his youth, Don Pedro
+informs his king, this young hero had entirely renounced, "or so at
+least it is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">{185}</a></span>believed," partly "from fear of God, and partly from fear of
+scandal," which latter "is thought very much of here"&mdash;a curious touch,
+which would seem to indicate a magnificent indifference to public
+opinion, not shared by the little northern Court, in the haughtier
+circles of Madrid. The picture is perhaps a little flattered; and it is
+hard to imagine how James could have picked up so many languages in the
+course of what some writers call a neglected education, confined to
+Scotland alone; but perhaps his father's fondness for clever artificers
+and musicians may have made him familiar in his childhood with foreign
+dependants, more amusing to a quick-witted boy than the familiar varlets
+who had no tongue but "braid Scots." "The King speaks besides," says
+Ayala, "the language of the savages who live in some parts of Scotland
+and in the islands"; clearly in every sense of the word a man of endless
+accomplishments and personal note, quite beyond the ordinary of kings.</p>
+
+<p>At no time, according to unanimous testimony, had Scotland attained so
+high a position of national wealth, comfort, and prosperity. The wild
+Highlands had been more or less subdued by the forfeiture of the
+traditionary Lord of the Isles, and the final subjection of that lawless
+region, nominally at least, to the King's authority, and with every
+precaution for the extension of justice and order to its farthest
+limits. A navy had suddenly sprung into being, signalising itself in its
+very birth by brilliant achievements and consisting of vessels few
+indeed, but of exceptional size and splendour, as great for their time
+as the great Italian ironclads are for this, and like them springing
+from something of the bravado as well as for the real uses of a rapidly
+growing power. And there had been peace, save for that little passage of
+arms on account of Perkin Warbeck, throughout all the reign of
+James&mdash;peace to which the warlike Scots seem to have accustomed
+themselves very <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">{186}</a></span>pleasantly, notwithstanding that on the one side of the
+Border as on the other there was nothing so popular as war between the
+neighbour nations; but the exploits of Sir Andrew Wood with his <i>Yellow
+Carvel</i>, and the <i>Great Michael</i> lying there proudly on the Firth, ready
+to sweep the seas, afforded compensation for the postponement of other
+struggles.</p>
+
+<p>It was in these circumstances that the negotiations for James's marriage
+with the little Margaret, Princess Royal of England, and in every way,
+as it turned out, a true Tudor, though then but an undeveloped child,
+took place. The gallant young King, then seven or eight and twenty, in
+the plenitude of his manhood, was not anxious for the bride of ten
+persistently offered to him by her royal father; and the negotiations
+lagged, and seemed to have gone on <i>&agrave; plusieurs reprises</i> for several
+years. But at length by the persistent efforts of Henry VII, who saw all
+the advantages of the union, and no doubt also of councillors on the
+Scots side, who felt that the continued prosperity of the country was
+best secured by peace, it was brought about in 1504, when James must
+have been just over thirty and Margaret was twelve&mdash;a very childish
+bride, but probably precocious, and not too simple or ignorant, as
+belonged to her violent Tudor blood. He "was married with her
+solemnedlie by the advice of the nobilitie of England and Scotland, and
+gatt great summes of money with her: and promise of peace and unity made
+and ordained to stand between the two realms," says Pitscottie. The
+great sums, however, seem problematical, as the dower of Margaret was
+not a very large one, and the sacrifices made for her were
+considerable&mdash;the town of Berwick being given up to England as one
+preliminary step. The event, however, was one of incalculable importance
+to both nations, securing as it did the eventual consolidation in one of
+the realm of Great Britain, though nobody as yet foresaw that great
+consequence that might <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">{187}</a></span>follow. Along with the marriage treaty was made
+one of perpetual peace between England and Scotland&mdash;a treaty indeed not
+worth the paper it was written upon, yet probably giving comfort to some
+sanguine spirits. Had the prudent old monarch remained on the throne of
+England as long as James ruled in Scotland it might indeed never have
+been broken; but Henry was already old, and his son as hot-headed as the
+cousin and traditionary adversary now turned into a brother. Margaret
+was conveyed into Scotland with the utmost pomp, and Edinburgh roused
+itself and put on decorations like a bride to receive the little maiden,
+so strangely young to be the centre of all these rejoicings: her lofty
+houses covered with flutterings of tapestries and banners and every kind
+of gay decoration, and her windows filled with bright faces, coifs, and
+veils, and embroideries of gold that shone in the sun. The dress worn by
+James, as he carried his young bride into Edinburgh seated on horseback
+behind him, is fully described for the benefit of after ages. He wore a
+jacket of cloth of gold bordered with purple velvet, over a doublet of
+purple satin, showing at the neck the collar of a shirt embroidered with
+pearls and gold, with scarlet hose to complete the resplendent costume.
+At his marriage he wore a jacket of crimson satin over a doublet of
+cloth of gold, with the same scarlet hose, and a gown of white damask
+brocaded with gold over all. No doubt the ladies were not behind in this
+contest of brave apparel. Grey Edinburgh, accustomed this long time to
+the dull tones of modern habiliments, sparkled and shone in those days
+of finery and splendour. The streets were meant for such fine shows; its
+stairheads and strong deep doorways to relieve the glories of sweet
+colour, plumes, and jewels. When the lists were set on the summit of the
+hill, the gates thrown up, the garrison in their steel caps and
+breastplates lining the bars, and perhaps the King himself tilting in
+the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">{188}</a></span>m&ecirc;l&eacute;e, while all the ladies were throned in their galleries like
+banks of flowers, what a magnificent spectacle! The half-empty streets
+below still humming with groups of gazers not able to squeeze among the
+throngs about the bars, but waiting the return of the splendid
+procession: and more and more banners and tapestries and guards of
+honour shining through the wide open gates of the port all the way down
+to Holyrood. There was nothing but holiday-making and pleasure while the
+feasting lasted and the bridal board was yet spread.</p>
+
+<p>While this heydey of life lasted and all was bright around and about the
+chivalrous James, there was a certain suitor of his Court, a merry and
+reckless priest, more daring in words and admixtures of the sacred and
+the profane than any mere layman would venture to be, whose familiar and
+often repeated addresses to the King afford us many glimpses into the
+royal surroundings and ways of living, as also many pictures of the
+noisy and cheerful medi&aelig;val town which was the centre of pleasures, of
+wit and gay conversation, and all that was delightful in Scotland.
+Dunbar's title of fame is not so light as this. He was one of the
+greatest of the followers of Chaucer, a master of melody, in some points
+scarcely inferior to the master himself whose praise he celebrates as</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Of oure Inglisch all the light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Surmounting every tong terrestrial<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Alls far as Mayis morrow dois mydnyght."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But it is unnecessary here to discuss the "Thrissil and the Rois," the
+fine music of the epithalamium with which he celebrated the coming of
+Margaret Tudor into Scotland, or the more visionary splendour of the
+"Golden Targe." The poet himself was not so dignified or harmonious as
+his verse. He possessed the large open-air relish of life, the broad
+humour, sometimes verging on coarseness, which from the time of James I.
+to that of Burns has been so singularly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">{189}</a></span>characteristic of Scots poetry:
+and found no scene of contemporary life too humble or too ludicrous for
+his genius&mdash;thus his more familiar poems are better for our purpose than
+his loftier productions, and show us the life and fashion of his town
+and time better than anything else can do. This is one, for example, in
+which he upbraids "the merchantis of renown" for allowing "Edinburgh
+their nobil town" to remain in the state in which he describes it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"May nane pass through your principall gates<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For stink of haddocks and of skates,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For cryin' of carlines and debates,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For fensome flytings of defame.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Think ye not shame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before strangers of all estates<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That sic dishonour hurt your name?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"Your stinkand schule that standis dirk<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Halds the light from your Parroche Kirk,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your forestairs makis your houses mirk<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like na country but here at hame<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Think ye not shame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sa little policie to work<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In hurt and sklander of your name?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"At your hie Croce, where gold and silk<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Should be, there is but curds and milk,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And at your Tron but cokill and wilk,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pansches, puddings, of Jok and Jame.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Think ye not shame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Kin as the world sayis that ilk<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In hurt and sklander of your name?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thus old Edinburgh rises before us, beautiful and brave as she is no
+longer, yet thronged about the Netherbow Port, and up towards the Tron,
+the weighing-place and centre of city life, with fishwives and their
+stalls, with rough booths for the sale of rougher food, and with country
+lasses singing curds and whey, as they still did when Allan Ramsay
+nearly four hundred years after succeeded Dunbar as laureate of
+Edinburgh. Notwithstanding, however, these defects the Scottish capital
+continued to be the home of all delights to the poet-priest. When his
+King was absent at Stirling, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">{190}</a></span>Dunbar in the pity of his heart sang an
+(exceedingly profane) litany for the exile that he might be brought
+back, prefacing it by the following compassionate strain:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"We that are here in Hevinis glory<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To you that are in Purgatory<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Commendis us on our hairtly wyiss,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I mean we folk in Paradyis,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In Edinburgh with all merriness<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To you in Strivilling in distress,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where neither pleasance nor delyt is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For pity thus ane Apostle wrytis.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"O ye Heremeitis and Hankersaidillis<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That takis your penance at your tabillis,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And eitis nocht meit restorative<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor drinkis no wyne comfortative<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bot aill, and that is thyn and small,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With few courses into your hall;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But (without) company of lordis or knights<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or any other goodly wightis,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Solitar walkand your allone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seeing no thing but stok and stone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of your powerfull Purgatory<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To bring you to the bliss of glory<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Edinburgh the merry toun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We sall begin ane cairfull soun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Dirige devout and meik<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Lord of bliss doing besiek<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You to delyvre out of your noy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bring you soon to Edinburgh joy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For to be merry among us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so the Dirige begynis thus."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Many are the poet's addresses to the King in happier circumstances when
+James is at home and in full enjoyment of these joys of Edinburgh. His
+prayers for a benefice are sometimes grave and sometimes comic, but
+never-failing. He describes solicitors (or suitors) at Court, all
+pushing their fortune. "Some singis, some dancis, some tells storyis."
+Some try to make friends by their devotion, some have their private
+advocates in the King's chamber, some flatter, some play the fool&mdash;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">{191}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"My simpleness among the lave<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wist of na way so God me save,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But with ane humble cheer and face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Referris me to the Kyngis grace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Methinks his gracious countenance<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In ryches is my sufficence."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Not always so patient, however, he jogs James's memory with a hundred
+remedies. "God gif ye war Johne Thomsounis man!" he cries with rueful
+glee through a lively set of verses&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"For war it so than weill were me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bot (without) benefice I wald not be;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My hard fortune war endit then<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">God gif ye war Johne Thomsounis man!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>John Thomson's man was, according to the popular saying, a man who did
+as his wife told him; and Dunbar was strong in the Queen's favour.
+Therefore happy had been his fate had James been of this character. We
+cannot, however, follow the poet through all his pleadings and witty
+appeals and remonstrances, until at last in despairing jest he commends
+"the gray horse Auld Dunbar" to his Majesty, and draws or seems to draw
+at last a consolatory reply, which is thus recorded at the end of the
+poem under the title of "Responsio Regis."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"Efter our writtingis, Treasurer<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tak in this gray horse, Auld Dunbar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which in my aucht with service trew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In lyart changit is his heu.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gar house him now against this Yuill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And busk him like ane Bischoppis muill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For with my hand I have indorst<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To pay whatever his trappouris cost."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Whether this response was really from James's hand or was but another
+wile of the eager suitor it is impossible to tell: but he did eventually
+have a pension granted him of twenty pounds Scots a year, until such
+time as a benefice of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">{192}</a></span>at least fifty pounds should fall to him; so that
+he was kept in hope. After this Dunbar tunes forth a song of welcome to
+"his ain Lord Thesaurair," in which terror at this functionary's
+inopportune absence&mdash;since quarterday we may suppose&mdash;is lost in
+gratulations over his return. "Welcome," he cries&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"Welcome my benefice and my rent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the lyflett to me lent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Welcome my pension most preclair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Welcome my awin Lord Thesaurair."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thus the reckless and jolly priest carols. A little while after he has
+received his money he sings "to the Lordes of the King's Chacker," or
+Exchequer&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"I cannot tell you how it is spendit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But weel I wat that it is ended."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>These peculiarities, however, it need not be said do not belong entirely
+to the sixteenth century. The reader will find a great deal of beautiful
+poetry among the works of Dunbar. These lighter verses serve our purpose
+in showing once more how perennial has been this vein of humorous
+criticism, and frank fun and satire, in Scotland, in all ages, and in
+throwing also a broad and amusing gleam of light upon Edinburgh in the
+early fifteen hundreds, the gayest and most splendid moment perhaps of
+her long history.</p>
+
+<p>All these splendours, however, were hard to keep up, and though
+Edinburgh and Scotland throve, the King's finances after a while seem to
+have begun to fail, and there was great talk of a pilgrimage to the Holy
+Land&mdash;it is supposed by the historians as a measure of securing that the
+King might not have the uncomfortable alternative of cutting short his
+splendours at home. This purpose, if it was gravely entertained at all,
+and not one of the proposals <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">{193}</a></span>of change with which, when need comes, the
+impecunious of all classes and ages amuse themselves to put off actual
+retrenchment, never came to anything. And very soon there arose
+complications of various natures which threw all Christendom into an
+uproar. Henry VIII, young, arrogant, and hot-headed, succeeded his
+prudent father in England, and the treaty with the Scots which made, or
+seemed to make, England safe on the Borders, gave the English greater
+freedom in dealing with the other hereditary foe on the opposite side of
+the Channel; while France on her side began to use all possible efforts
+to draw from the English alliance the faithful Scots, who had always
+been the means of a possible diversion, always ready to carry fire and
+flame across the Border, and call back the warring English to look after
+their own affairs. James, with perhaps his head slightly turned by his
+own magnificence and the prosperity that had attended him since the
+beginning of his career, seemed to have imagined that he was important
+enough to play the part of peacemaker among the nations of Europe. And
+there are many embassies recorded of a bustling bishop, Andrew Forman,
+who seems for some time to have pervaded Christendom, now at Rome, now
+at Paris, now in London, with various confused negotiations. It was a
+learned age, and the King himself, as has been seen, had very
+respectable pretensions in this way; but that there was another side to
+the picture, and that notwithstanding the translator of Virgil, the
+three Universities now established in Scotland, and many men of science
+and knowledge both in the priesthood and out of it, there remained a
+strong body of ignorance and rudeness, even among the dignified clergy
+of the time, the following story, which Pitscottie tells with much
+humour of Bishop Forman, James's chosen diplomatist, will show.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"This bishop made ane banquet to the Pope and all his cardinals in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">{194}</a></span>
+one of the Pope's own palaces, and when they were all set according
+to their custom, that he who ought (owned) the house for the time
+should say the grace, and he was not ane good scholar, nor had not
+good Latin, but begane ruchlie in the Scottise fashione, saying
+Benedicite, believing that they should have said Dominus, but they
+answered Deus in the Italian fashioun, which put the bishop by his
+intendment (beyond his understanding), that he wist not well how to
+proceed fordward but happened in good Scottis in this manner,
+saying, what they understood not, 'The devil I give you all false
+cardinals to, in nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.'
+Then all the bishop's men leuch, and all the cardinals themselves;
+and the Pope inquired whereat they leuch, and the bishop showed that
+he was not ane good clerk, and that the cardinals had put him by his
+text and intendment, therefore he gave them all to the devil in good
+Scottis, whereat the Pope himself leuch verrie earnestlie."</p></div>
+
+<p>This did not prevent his Holiness, probably delighted with such a racy
+visitor, from making Forman Legate of Scotland; and it is to be feared
+that the meddling diplomatist with his want of education, was perhaps a
+better example of the clergy of Scotland, who about this time began to
+be the mark of all assailants as illiterate, greedy, vicious, and
+rapacious, than such a gentle soul as the other poet of the age,
+afterwards bishop of Dunkeld, the one mild and tranquil possessor of the
+great Douglas name.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195"></a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 491px;">
+<img src="images/illus_025.jpg" width="491" height="600" alt="WHITE HORSE CLOSE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">WHITE HORSE CLOSE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The imbroglio of events into which it is unnecessary for us to enter
+grew more and more complicated year by year, until at length it came to
+be a struggle between France and England for the ally who could be of
+most assistance to the one in the special way of injuring the other, and
+whom it was of the first advantage to both to secure. James was bound by
+the treaty of permanent peace which he had made at his marriage, and by
+that marriage itself, and no doubt the strong inclination of his wife,
+to England; but he was bound to France by a traditionary bond of a much
+stronger kind, by the memory of long friendship and alliance, and the
+persistent policy of his kingdom and race. The question was modified
+besides by other circumstances. England was, as she had but too often
+been, but never <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">{196}</a></span>before in James's experience&mdash;harsh, overbearing, and
+unresponsive: while France, as was also her wont, was tender,
+flattering, and pertinacious. Henry refused or delayed to pay Queen
+Margaret a legacy of jewels and plate left to her by her father, and at
+the same time protected certain Borderers who had murdered a Scottish
+knight, and defended them against justice and James, while still
+summoning him to keep his word and treaty in respect to England; while
+on the other hand not only the King but the Queen of France appealed to
+James, he as to an ancient ally, she as to her sworn knight, to break
+that artificial alliance with his haughty brother-in-law. It may well
+have been that James in his own private soul had no more desire for such
+a tremendous step than the nobles who struggled to the last against it.
+But he had <i>les d&eacute;fauts de ses qualit&eacute;s</i> in a high degree. He was
+nothing if not a knight of romance. And though, as the poet has said&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"His own Queen Margaret, who in Lithgow's bower<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All silent sat, and wept the weary hour,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>might be more to him than the politic Anne of France, or any fair lady
+in his route, it was not in him, a paladin of chivalry, the finest of
+fine gentlemen, the knight-errant of Christendom, to withstand a lady's
+appeal. Perhaps, besides, he was weary of his inaction, the only prince
+in Europe who was not inevitably involved in the fray; weary of holding
+tourneys and building ships (some of which had been lately taken by the
+English, turning the tables upon him) and keeping quiet, indulging in
+the inglorious arts of peace, while everybody else was taking the field.
+And Henry was arrogant and exasperating, so that even his own sister was
+at the end of her brief Tudor patience; and Louis was flattering,
+caressing, eloquent. When that last embassage of chivalry came with the
+ring from Anne's own finger, and the charge to ride three miles on
+English ground for her honour, it was the climax of many arguments. "He
+loves war," the Spaniard had said. "War is profitable to him and to the
+country"&mdash;a curious and pregnant saying. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">{197}</a></span>James would seem to have
+struggled at least a little against all the impulses which were pushing
+him forward to his doom. He promised a fleet to his lady in France for
+her aid&mdash;a fleet foolishly if not treacherously handled by Arran, and
+altogether diverted from its intended end; finally, that having failed,
+James flung away all precaution and yielded to the tide of many
+influences which was carrying him away.</p>
+
+<p>It is needless to tell over again the tale that everybody knows: how
+both heaven and hell were stirred by this ill-omened undertaking; how an
+aged saint, venerable and stately, suddenly appeared out of the crowd
+when the King was at his prayers in the Cathedral of Linlithgow, with a
+message from on high; and how when James had gone back to Holyrood, the
+High Street of Edinburgh resounded in the dead of night with trumpet
+note and herald's call from the grim Hades of medi&aelig;val imagination,
+summoning by name a long list of the Scottish nobility, of whom one man
+defied the portent and refused the call and was saved. James paid no
+heed to these warnings, whether supernatural or otherwise, or perhaps
+was too far committed to give any heed to them, carried away by the wild
+and fatal stream which had caught his feet, with something of that
+extraordinary impetus of natural tendency long restrained which acts
+with tenfold force when at last yielded to. It is unnecessary either to
+tell the story of all the foolish fatal lingerings upon the ill-omened
+way: trifling with treacherous ladies for whom he cared nothing, cartels
+from Surrey; the abandonment of a strong position, lest it should give
+him an advantage, in ever greater and greater folly of chivalry: the
+refusal to attack, or let his artillery attack, till his foes were all
+safely over the bridge: all exhibitions of high honour gone mad with the
+intoxication of fate. The Spaniard's letter comes back in full
+significance as we watch with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">{198}</a></span>aching hearts the fatal fray. "He said to
+me that his subjects serve him with their persons and goods, in just or
+unjust quarrels, exactly as he wishes, and that therefore he does not
+think it right to begin any warlike undertaking without being himself
+the first in danger." The knight-errant kept his <i>consigne</i> of honour to
+the last. He betrayed his people to the most utter defeat they had ever
+encountered, but he was himself the first victim.</p>
+
+<p>Thus died the only Stewart king who ever seemed to have a fair prospect
+of escaping the fate of his unfortunate race. The worm in his
+conscience, the iron belt round his body, were perhaps only symptoms of
+a susceptible nature, of remorse which was excessive for the bewildered
+acquiescence in rebellion of an unawakened mind and an irresponsible
+age. And his life, if soiled by errors which were then and are now but
+lightly thought of in a prince, was in all public matters noble,
+honourable, and enlightened, with always the advantage of his country
+for its aim, even in the midst of the natural gaieties and extravagances
+of a happy temper and exuberant energy. He was extravagant,
+light-hearted, a lover of magnificence and display, all of which things,
+in the face of the political economist, sometimes prove themselves
+excellent for a country when the moment comes to press it forward into
+the ranks of high civilisation out of a ruder and more primitive
+development. The nobility with which his father struggled to the death
+he held in a leash of silk or of gold, often making them the instruments
+of the justice which they had so long resisted. There was peace in his
+time such as had never before been in Scotland, and redress of
+grievances, and extinction or suppression of mortal feuds and intestine
+struggles. It is sometimes given to a man in all light-heartedness, in
+what seems the spontaneous way of his own impulses and pleasures, to do
+what is best for his surroundings and his time, without any apparent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">{199}</a></span>
+strain of self sacrifice or gravity of duty. James Stewart, the fourth
+of his name, was one of these happy and beautiful natures: and though
+his life was one of almost unbroken prosperity and brightness, yet no
+man can say that his stewardry was not nobly held, and to the benefit of
+his kingdom and people. But not for this was the doom to pass by. The
+brightness and the prosperity came to an end in a sudden folly,
+infatuation, and madness, which belonged to him as his sunny nature did
+and his generosity of heart. And it was no evil chance, but the
+principle of his life, as we have seen, that in the calamity into which
+he drew his people he himself should be the first to fall.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> This name and assumed character is generally supposed to
+belong to James V: but all the accompanying circumstances seem to point
+so much more to what is recorded of James IV, that I venture to
+attribute them to him. If it is an error there is this, at least, to be
+said in favour of it, that the story is as applicable to one as to the
+other monarch.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">{200}</a></span></p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">JAMES V: THE LAST OF THE HEROIC AGE</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>The course of Scottish history during the fifteenth and beginning of the
+sixteenth century is like that of a ship on a long voyage, full of
+vicissitudes and adventures. The little barque amid all the wild
+commotions of the sea, sometimes driven before the wind, sometimes
+stripped of every rag of canvas, sometimes beating helpless in the
+trough of the waves, rights herself when the storm is over, repairs her
+masts, re-strings her cordage, puts forth again sail after sail; and
+with a sure hand at the helm and a moderate breeze in her canvas, rises
+white and strong against the blueness of sea and sky, triumphant over
+all the assaults of external nature, animated by human will and courage,
+the most indomitable of all created things, and affording perhaps the
+best example of the survival and unconquerable power of these masters of
+the world: till again there arises in the heavens another hurricane,
+furious, ungovernable, rousing the sea to madness, striking once more
+the canvas from the yards, the masts from the deck, and leaving a mere
+hulk at the mercy of the waves which rush on her and over her with the
+wild rage of beasts of prey. Again and again these storms overtook the
+vessel of the State in Scotland, returning after every period of calm,
+after every recovery of authority, as wild, as tumultuous, as
+destructive as ever. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">{201}</a></span>Again and again they were overcome, the power of
+resistance restored, the equilibrium regained, only to fall once more
+into the raging of the elements. Each successive king, with perhaps one
+exception, had seized the helm as soon as his hand was fit for the
+strain, or even before it was strong enough for that office, and had
+gallantly brought the ship round and re-established the reign of a
+rational will and a certain unity of command over all the forces of the
+storms; but when he fell, left the helpless vessel again to be balloted
+about by all the winds of Fate.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 314px;">
+<img src="images/illus_026.jpg" width="314" height="600" alt="SALISBURY CRAGS" title="" />
+<span class="caption">SALISBURY CRAGS</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">{202}</a></span>This was the case almost more wildly than ever when the fourth James
+Stewart died at Flodden. The heir, the helpless infant prince, was not
+two years old, and the flower of Scotland had been slain with their
+king. The mature warriors and statesmen, the wise counsellors, the men
+to whom the country might have looked in such an interregnum, were all
+gone. There remained only Churchmen and boys in the devastated country,
+a passionate English queen of Tudor blood, and no settled centre of
+government or reorganised power. Such lords as were left assembled
+hastily for that pathetic oft-repeated ceremony, the crowning of the
+child, taken out of his cradle to have the fatal circlet put upon his
+head&mdash;and committed some sort of regency, such as it was, to the Queen.
+And after a moment in which the country was paralysed with woe and every
+house full of mourning, Scotland plunged once more into the angry waves,
+among the lions of ever-recurring anarchy and strife.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing in all this turbulent and terrible history has ever been so
+tragic as Flodden. The nation which had lost the very flower and
+strength of its fighting men, its defenders and champions, the families
+which had lost their chiefs, their breadwinners&mdash;often father and son
+together, the master and his heir&mdash;were struck dumb with dismay and
+anguish. It <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">{203}</a></span>was only a long time after, when despair had sunk into a
+softened recollection, that it was possible even to breathe forth that
+wail over the Flowers of the Forest which all Scotland knows. In the
+first shock of such an appalling event there is no place for elegy.
+There was a broken cry of anguish throughout the country, echoed from
+castle and cottage, where the poor women clung together, mistress and
+maid equal in the flood of common loss: and there was at the same time a
+strained and terrible rallying of all the poor defenders left, the old
+men and rusty arms, those of every house upon the Border and every town
+upon the road who had been left behind, to meet as well as they could
+the no doubt inevitable march of the conquering English army, which
+everybody felt sure must follow. When the news reached Edinburgh the
+magistrates of the town put forth a proclamation calling upon the
+inhabitants to prepare for the defence of the capital, and forbidding
+the women&mdash;a most significant and heartrending order, perhaps unique in
+public documents&mdash;to spread dismay through the streets by their crying
+and lamentations. The condition into which the community must have
+fallen when this became a public danger it is unnecessary to remark
+upon. The wail that sounded through all the country must have risen to a
+passionate pitch in those crowded streets, where the gates were closed
+and all the defences set, and nothing looked for but the approach of the
+victorious English with swords still dripping with Scottish blood. While
+Edinburgh waited breathless for this possible attack an extension of the
+existing wall was begun to defend the southern suburb, then semi-rural,
+containing the country-houses of the wealthy burghers and lawyers, the
+great convent of the Greyfriars, that of St. Mary in the Field, and many
+other monastic houses. This additional wall greatly increased the
+breadth of the <i>enceinte</i>, which now included a considerable space of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">{204}</a></span>
+embowered and luxuriant fields on the south side. It was called the
+Flodden Wall, and kept the memory of that great catastrophe and disaster
+before the minds of the citizens for many a day.</p>
+
+<p>But for some reason or other the English army which had cut Scotland to
+pieces at Flodden went no farther. The victory was no doubt a very
+costly one, and perhaps Henry VIII did not wish to drive the kingdom of
+which his sister would now be Regent to extremity, or do anything more
+to increase the desperate hostility of a country which was capable of
+giving him so much trouble. At all events Surrey's army was disbanded,
+and Scotland was left to resume her struggle within herself: which
+proved the wildest and most miserable turmoil and anarchy which her
+troubled records had yet known.</p>
+
+<p>It would be at once hopeless and unnecessary to enter into any sketch of
+the endless tumults of this time of distress. There was a momentary lull
+in which, though all the old personal feuds arose again, the poor little
+King and his mother were left undisturbed&mdash;she in possession of a
+regency more or less nominal, and in a state of health which must have
+subdued her activities, for her second son was not born till several
+months after her husband's death. But this child was only a few months
+old when Margaret, young, beautiful, impassioned, and impetuous,
+compromised her position by a sudden marriage with the young Earl of
+Angus&mdash;still almost a boy, and with nothing but his good looks to
+recommend him&mdash;an event which at once aroused all sleeping enmities and
+precipitated the usual struggle for the possession of the infant king. I
+will attempt nothing but an indication of one or two scenes in Edinburgh
+which took place during this struggle. Undeterred by the evil
+associations which surrounded that name, the Scottish lords bethought
+themselves of the French Duke of Albany, the nearest member<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">{205}</a></span> of the royal
+family, the son of that duke who had been the terror of James III, who
+had conspired with England, and who finally had established himself in
+France and died there. His son was a French subject, the son of a French
+mother, inheriting through her great estates in France and a position
+which was little inferior in dignity, and much superior in comfort, to
+that of the harassed monarch of a most turbulent kingdom. But he was
+James Stewart, the nearest in blood to the crown, and his name seems,
+temporarily at least, to have united all parties, even the Queen, though
+his presence was fatal to her claims of regency, receiving him with
+courtesy and an apparent welcome. He had not been many months, however,
+in Scotland before, with the sanction of his council, he claimed from
+Margaret the possession of the King and his brother&mdash;sending four peers,
+appointed guardians, to the castle, to receive the children. It was in
+July 1515, two years after Flodden, when no doubt Edinburgh had regained
+that common cheerfulness and bustle of a great town which is so little
+interrupted even by the gravest public events. The deputation with their
+attendants proceeded from the Canongate, where they had been sitting in
+assembly, through the Netherbow Port and the bustling crowded High
+Street, to the castle, no doubt gathering with them on their way all the
+eager crowd which could free itself from shop or booth, all the
+passers-by in the streets, a continually-increasing throng. Who the four
+lords were we are not told. The whole incident is recorded in a letter
+of Lord Dacre to the English Council. No doubt he had his information
+either from the Queen herself or from members of her household. Of the
+four men chosen by Albany the Queen was at liberty to reject one, and no
+doubt they were men of weight and gravity, probably not unworthy of the
+trust.</p>
+
+<p>It is not difficult to realise the flying rumour which would <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">{206}</a></span>go like the
+wind before them announcing their errand, and how windows and doorways
+and stairheads would fill with eager spectators, and all the moving
+population would press up the hill after them to see what was to be
+seen. The high houses full on every story of eager heads thrust forth,
+relieving with unintentional yet lively decoration the many-windowed
+fronts, the shopkeepers crowding at their doors or seizing cap and
+halberd to follow, the hum and excitement of the roused town, surround
+the envoys like the background of a picture. Most probably they went on
+foot, the distance being so short, preceded by a glittering herald and
+pursuivant&mdash;perhaps David Lindsay, who can tell? still too young to wear
+the Lion of Scotland on his tabard, but keen and curious to see this
+scene&mdash;he who had seen the envoy of heaven in Linlithgow Church and so
+many other wonderful things. The crowd surged upwards, keeping a
+respectful space in the midst for the lords with their train, and filled
+with colour and movement and the murmuring of numbers that great square
+before the castle gates which had held the same excited throng so often.
+And before the heralds could summon the wardens or demand entrance in
+the name of the Regent, the great gates rolled back, and all who were
+near enough to see gazed in amazement at such a group in the gateway as
+must have filled many eyes with tears, and which gave at once the most
+astonishing climax to that wonderful picture. There Margaret stood, a
+young woman of twenty-five, not a noble type of beauty, perhaps, but
+with the fresh and florid Tudor good looks, and no doubt the imperious
+Tudor port imposing to the crowd, with her child in his little cloak and
+plumed bonnet, four years old, holding her hand. Among her little troop
+of attendants, the ladies of her subdued Court, and the cluster of
+cavaliers who surrounded her young husband, there might well be another
+name of gentler fame&mdash;the then Provost <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">{207}</a></span>of St. Giles, Gawin Douglas, poet
+and statesman, who was her counsellor and the negotiator of her many
+troubled affairs. But in this emergency it was the Queen herself who
+bade the startled lords stand and deliver their message. They stepped
+forward in some confusion, one would guess, not having calculated upon
+this sudden encounter with such an unexpected champion, difficult to
+silence&mdash;not only a queen with all the prestige both real and
+sentimental which surrounds such a position, but also a mother whose
+children were threatened. When they had finished their explanation, the
+crowd looking on, no doubt impatient of the pause and of the voices that
+could not reach their ears, Margaret stepped back and bade her
+attendants quickly to let down the portcullis. They must have been
+stationed ready with the intention, and no doubt the lords had no
+attendants with them who could have hindered any such step or forced an
+entrance. While the people looked on wondering, the iron bars came
+crashing down, and in a moment the Queen and her child were safe though
+visible within. Then Margaret addressed through that iron trellis the
+astonished deputation. She told them that she was the guardian of the
+castle, enfeoffed in it by her royal husband, and not minded to yield it
+to any man, but that she respected the Parliament and country, and would
+take six days to consider the demand made to her. The lords left outside
+had no alternative but to turn and go back, not we may be sure without a
+chorus of commentaries from the lively crowd, ever quick to note the
+discomfiture of its masters, and delighted with such a novel sensation:
+though the grave burghers would shake their heads at the boldness of the
+Englishwoman who had so confronted the Scots lords in their own city.</p>
+
+<p>The Queen transferred herself and her children to Stirling before the
+six days had expired, but, as might be supposed, her little triumph was
+short-lived. Her boyish husband <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">{208}</a></span>had already shown signs of deserting
+her, and probably enough her fancy for him was as short-lived as those
+other ephemeral and still more tragical passions which her brother had
+scarcely yet begun to indulge. The excuse which the Regent and his
+council put forth for taking the infant King from his mother was partly
+her second marriage, and partly a supposed plan for carrying off the two
+children to England, which did actually exist, King Henry being, as a
+matter of fact, their nearest of kin and most powerful possible
+guardian, though one who would have been vehemently rejected by all
+Scotland: while on the other hand the little James was as yet the most
+likely heir to the English crown. But this scheme had been opposed both
+by the Queen herself&mdash;whose statement that had she been a woman of
+humble condition she might have taken her children in her arms and gone
+unknown to her brother, but that, being a queen, she could not move
+anywhere without observation, is full of homely and natural dignity&mdash;and
+by Gawin Douglas, who repeats the same objection. Margaret, however, did
+not long continue to identify herself with the Douglases. The conduct of
+Angus gave her full reason for offence, if, perhaps, she was not
+altogether guiltless on her side; and they were in a state of absolute
+estrangement when the calling of a Parliament early in the year 1520
+brought Angus to Edinburgh, where with his party he had been sometimes
+master and sometimes proscribed man in the innumerable variations of
+politics or rather of personal quarrels and intrigues. Albany had by
+this time returned to France without however resigning his regency, and
+authority was more or less represented by the Earl of Arran, who was at
+the head of the opposite faction. The party of Arran were in possession
+of Edinburgh and of the little King, now eight years old, who was in the
+castle under charge of the peers who had been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">{209}</a></span>appointed his guardians,
+when Angus reappeared. Queen Margaret amid all these tumults, finding
+little encouragement from her brother, who was much more intent on
+securing a party in Scotland than on consulting her wishes, had also
+chosen to reside near her boy in the comparative safety of that
+stronghold. Accordingly when Earl Angus came to attend the Parliament he
+was confronted by his adversaries in possession of the town and of the
+castle, with his wife, the most violent adversary of all, in the
+fortress shut up from his access or approach. He was accompanied,
+Pitscottie tells us, "with all his kin and friends to the number of five
+hundred spears, weill accompanied and arrayed." But the city was
+hostile, and perhaps something in the sombre air of all about awakened
+the suspicions of the Douglases, especially as the gates were hastily
+shut behind them and more than usual precautions taken. Awakened thus to
+a sense of alarm, the threatened party sent scouts out into the streets
+during the night, to find out what mischief was brewing. While the
+humbler spies pursued their inquiries by wynd and changehouse, Maister
+Gawin Douglas, the bishop, went out to see what he could discover of the
+real state of affairs&mdash;if it was true that the westland lords had held a
+secret meeting and resolved that Angus should not leave Edinburgh now
+that he had put himself in their power&mdash;and "if he could find any gude
+way betwixt the two parties." In pursuance of this anxious quest he went
+in search of Archbishop James Beatoun, his brother of St. Andrews, whom
+he found in the church of the Black Friars, assisting, it is to be
+presumed, at some evening service.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The said Mr. Gawin desired him to take some pains to labour betwixt
+this two parties which was at ane sharp point, and meaning little
+less than that the bishop had most part the wyte (blame) thereof.
+But the bishop assured him again with ane oath, chopping on his
+breast, saying, 'By my conscience, my lord, I know not the matter.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">{210}</a></span>
+But when Mr. Gawin heard the bishop's purgation, and chopping on his
+breast, and perceived the plates of his jack clattering, he thought
+the bishop deceaved him, so Mr. Gawin said to him, 'My lord, your
+conscience is not good, for I hear it clattering.'"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211"></a></span></p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 389px;">
+<img src="images/illus_027.jpg" width="389" height="600" alt="REID&#39;S CLOSE, CANONGATE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">REID&#39;S CLOSE, CANONGATE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>After all these advertisements&mdash;the bishop's secret coat of mail, the
+angry discussion between two Hamiltons in the very presence of Arran the
+head of the house, when he was himself willing to grant licence to Angus
+"to speak with the Queen's Grace and thereafter depart out of the
+town"&mdash;and all the lesser evidences of danger and conspiracy, the Earl
+and his band prepared themselves for the worst. "This young lord haisted
+him to his armour, and caused his friends and servants to do the same,
+and went right peartlie to the gate, and stood above the Nether Bow in
+arrayed battle." The other party, when they were made aware that the
+Douglases were standing on their defence, came rushing together from
+kirk and market, hastily assembling without discipline or order, to find
+the little mail-clad line arranged in the strongest way against the
+background of the houses, where, no doubt, every shopkeeper had rushed
+to his bolts and bars, and every door clanged to in view of the sudden
+tumult. Sir Walter has given us in <i>The Abbot</i> a glimpse more
+picturesque and graphic than any we can attempt, of the sudden scuffle
+in the street between two passing groups, the armed attendants more
+dangerous and less prudent than their masters, whose strife as to which
+was to hold the centre of the street was enough to produce at once an
+encounter of arms ending in blood, and death for some of the band. The
+struggle known by the name of "Clear the Causeway" was more important,
+yet of a similar kind. Angus and his five hundred spears&mdash;in reality a
+much greater number since each spear was accompanied by certain
+men-at-arms&mdash;had much the advantage of the other party, hurriedly roused
+from their occupations, who had expected <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">{212}</a></span>to make an easy end of the
+Douglases, thus betrayed into a sort of ambush in a hostile city, where
+no man would lift a hand to help them. But the tables were completely
+turned upon the Hamiltons and their supporters, when rushing "out of
+their lodging rudlie to the gait in ane furious rage," the peaceable
+driven forward by the taunts of the others, they found Angus and his
+spears in full array of battle. "When the Earl of Angus saw them coming,
+and perceaved Sir Patrick Hamilton foremost, and with him the Maister of
+Montgomerie, and saw them in sic ane furie, he knew well there was
+nothing but fighting, and cryed to his men to save Sir Patrick Hamilton
+if they might; but he came so far before the rest that he was slain
+hastilie, and with him the Maister of Montgomerie, with sundry other
+gentlemen, to the number of twelve score and twelve persons." The end of
+the fray, which was "foughten very hardilie on both sides ane long
+space," was that Arran's men were driven down the side of the hill
+through the narrow wynds that led from the High Street towards the wall,
+and thence made their way out through some postern, or perhaps at the
+gate near the Well-house Tower, where the little well of St. Margaret
+now bubbles up unconsidered, and so across the Nor' Loch, by boat or
+ford. Bishop Beatoun, he whose conscience clattered beneath his robes,
+fled again to the Blackfriars Church, where Mr. Gawin had found him on
+the previous evening prepared for mischief, and took refuge there behind
+the altar, where he was pursued and "his rockit rivin aff him, and had
+been slain," but that Gawin Douglas, following the pursuers, perhaps
+with a sarcastic satisfaction in setting forth the virtues of a peaceful
+robe over the warlike covering that invited as well as preserved from
+danger, interposed, saying, "It was shame to put hand on ane consecreat
+bishop." The encounter of these two priests by evening and morning, the
+supercilious <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">{213}</a></span>refusal of the mail-clad bishop to interfere, and pretence
+of ignorance&mdash;and, as one may imagine, the watch over him from afar of
+his brother of Dunkeld with the full intention of peaceful yet effective
+reprisals, throw a light of grim humour upon the warlike scene. Maister
+Gawin had no mail-coat, and would not fight; but he must have kept an
+eye upon his natural foe through the fray, and it would be strange if he
+had not some pleasure in perceiving the rochet, which Beatoun must have
+donned hastily to save himself, pulled over his head by rude hands in
+scorn of the priestly pretence&mdash;and some satisfaction in interposing to
+preserve the "consecreat bishop," whose behaviour was so little saintly.</p>
+
+<p>"Thereafter the Earl of Angus passed to the castle and spoke with the
+Queen at his pleasure," says Pitscottie. It could not be a very gracious
+or affectionate interview. For Margaret and her husband had long before
+come to a complete breach, and the greatest desire in her mind was to
+divorce the young man whom she had married so hastily, who had treated
+her, indeed, with little consideration, and whom she had come to hate
+with a bitterness only possible to husbands and wives ill paired.</p>
+
+<p>After this the young King passed from hand to hand, from one guardian or
+captor to another, according to the custom of his predecessors, with
+many troubled vicissitudes in his life: but it is pleasant to believe
+that though the story leaves a painful impression as of a distracted
+childhood, continually dragged about and harassed between contending
+forces, yet that persistent placidity of nature which plants flowers
+upon the very edge of the fiercest precipices interposed to secure for
+little James as for other children the nursery calm, the infant
+happiness which is the right of childhood. No more delightful picture of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">{214}</a></span>
+tender infancy, the babbling of the first baby words, the sweet exigence
+and endless requirements of a child, was ever made than that which Sir
+David Lindsay, the future Lyon King, whom Sir Walter Scott in <i>gaiet&eacute; de
+c&oelig;ur</i> (that he should ever be wrong!) introduces in full panoply of
+heraldic splendour before Flodden, but who was but a youth in the new
+James's baby days, gives in his "Epistle to the King's Grace,"
+dedicatory to one of his poems. We will venture, though with
+compunction, once more as we have already done, to modernise the
+spelling as far as possible, so as to present no difficulty to the
+reader in the understanding of these delightful verses.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"When thou was young I bore thee in mine arme<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Full tenderlie till thou began to gang,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in thy bed oft happit thee full warme;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">With lute in hand then sweetly to thee sang.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Sometime in dancing wondrously I flang,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sometime playing farces on the floor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sometime on mine office taking cure.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"And sometime like a fiend transfigurate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And sometime like the grisly ghost of Gye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In divers forms oft times disfigurate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And sometime dissagyist full pleasantly.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">So since thy birth I have continually<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Been occupied and aye to thy pleasoure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sometime Server, Coppon, and Carvoure."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In another poem he adds, upon the same subject, returning to the
+pleasant memory, the following happy description:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"How, as a chapman bears his pack,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I bore thy Grace upon my back,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sometime stridling on my neck,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dancing with many a bend and beck.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The first syllables that thou didst moote<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was '<i>Pa, Da Lyn</i>' upon the lute.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And aye when thou camest from the school<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Then I behoved to play the fool."<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">{215}</a></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Play, Davy Lindsay:" the touch of nature brings the water to one's
+eyes. Davy Lindsay had yet to play many a spring before King James, and
+some that were not gay. But the gentle stripling with the infant on his
+shoulder, the pertinacity of the little babbling cry, the "homely
+springs" played offhand that it was pity to hear, but which the lad
+enjoyed almost as much in laughing at their dashing incorrectness as the
+baby who knew only that it was a pleasant sound&mdash;how bright and vivid is
+the picture! Thus while the lords and his mother stormed over him, the
+little King, perhaps in those small state-rooms in well-defended
+Edinburgh, perhaps in the sunshine at Holyrood with his poet, had
+pleasant days.</p>
+
+<p>James was already a growing boy when the last and worst of the tyrannies
+which oppressed his youth began. When the disastrous episode of Albany
+was well over the Douglases again made one last desperate struggle for
+the supreme power. Angus it would seem was not discouraged by the change
+in the Queen from love to hate, nor even by the efforts which she had
+begun to make to divorce and shake him off, and it is evident that he
+must have secured the liking of the little King, to whom in the close
+intimacy of the family as his mother's husband he must have been known
+from earliest childhood. The Earl was handsome and young, one of the
+finest cavaliers of the Court, and probably was kind to the infant who
+could not contradict or cross him, and whose favour it was so expedient
+to secure. It costs a young man little to make himself adored by a boy
+to whom he seems the incarnation of manly strength and splendour. And
+there is every appearance that James accepted Angus's rule at first with
+pleasure, no doubt looking up to him as a guide in the manly exercises
+which could be pursued in his following with more spirit and zeal than
+in the Queen's surroundings. The great power of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">{216}</a></span>Douglases, which it
+took so much bloodshed to break down, and which James II had spent all
+his life in contending with, extinguished in one branch of the family,
+seemed now to have developed in another with increased and extended
+force. Angus was as great, as potent, as universally feared as the Earls
+of Douglas had ever been; and almost as lawless, filling the country
+with his exactions and those of his dependants. He had attained this
+triumph after many drawbacks and downfalls and against the strongest
+opponents, and Scotland was overawed by the terror of that well-known
+name. It was scarcely to be supposed, however, that the young King,
+precociously aware of all the dangers of his position, could remain
+subject willingly as he grew up to the sway of a vassal of the Crown
+however great. There must have been private counsellors ever ready to
+whisper that Douglas was nothing save by the King's authority, and that
+James's favour alone could keep him in his usurped place. A few months
+after he had attained the age of sixteen, the boy over whom everybody
+had intrigued and plotted all his life long, who had been torn from one
+side to another since ever he could remember, and whom a Douglas had but
+recently threatened, at a moment of alarm, that rather than render him
+up they would tear him in two, took at last the matter into his own
+hands. Whether the suggestion was his own, or had in some way been
+breathed into his mind, there is no evidence; but it is clear that he
+had good reason to be very tired of his subjection. He had already
+attempted, we are told, several means of getting free of bondage, but
+had only succeeded in causing the destruction of various lords to whom
+he had appealed. All his friends had been alienated from him. His mother
+was powerless to help, and indeed on her own account in such evil case
+that she is said to have wandered over the country in disguise,
+friendless and out of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">{217}</a></span>favour with all. She had hastened into a third
+foolish marriage as soon as she had obtained her divorce from Angus, and
+thus lost all her supporters and champions. His uncle, Henry VIII, was
+more closely bound to Angus, who was strongly in the interest of England
+as against France, than to any other Scot, and the young King was thus
+surrounded by influences hostile to his freedom.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 203px;">
+<img src="images/illus_028.jpg" width="203" height="450" alt="DOORWAY, SIR A. AITCHESON&#39;S HOUSE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">DOORWAY, SIR A. AITCHESON&#39;S HOUSE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>There are moments, however, when the most vigilant watch relaxes, and it
+so happened that Angus left his young prisoner on one occasion at the
+Castle of Falkland, the hunting seat of the Scots kings, to all
+appearance fully occupied with hunting and hawking and thinking of
+nothing more important, in the charge of Archibald Douglas, the Earl's
+uncle, George his brother, and a certain James Douglas of Parkhead, who
+was the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">{218}</a></span>captain of the guard. When Angus had been gone a day or two, the
+elder of these guardians asked leave of the King, according to the
+formula, to go to Dundee upon personal business of his own; and George
+Douglas rode off to St. Andrews to see the Bishop on a question of
+taxes, leaving only the captain and his hundred guardsmen to be
+accounted for. Who can doubt that young James was well used to all
+devices for deceiving his gaolers, he who had been held by so many?
+There was nothing in his present expedient which could have offended the
+most tender conscience. He desired that preparations might be made for a
+great hunting, calling upon "the laird of Ferme, forester of the park of
+Falkland, and chamberlain of Fife," to warn everybody about and call all
+the surrounding gentlemen "that had speedie dogs" to hunt with him,
+appointing the meeting next morning at seven o'clock, "for he was
+determined to slay ane deare or two for his pleasure." Pitscottie is
+very particular in his description, and places the economy of the little
+castle before us, among its woods&mdash;with its simplicity, its precautions,
+the homeliness of the household. The King desired to have "his
+disjeuner" at four in the morning, and bade James Douglas "gang the
+sooner to his bed that night that he might rise the sooner in the
+morning," and after he had supped, called for a drink and drank to
+Douglas, saying that they should see good hunting on the morn, and
+warning him not to be late; from which it may be guessed that Captain
+James was not fond of early hours. The captain saw as he thought the
+King go to bed, and having set the watch, and arranged everything for
+the night, went to bed himself, as the boy had laughingly bidden him to
+do. As soon as all was quiet, eluding the watch without apparent
+difficulty, the King, attended only by "Jockie Hart, a yeoman of the
+stable," and another "secret servant," escaped in the stillness of the
+night into the freedom of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">{219}</a></span>sleeping country. It is said by one
+authority to have been in June that this evasion was made, but in June
+there is scarcely any night at all in Scotland, and the brief darkness
+could scarcely have served as a screen for the fugitives; probably it
+was earlier in the year, when the night was more to be calculated upon.
+One can imagine the breathless excitement and delight of the long ride,
+with the fresh breeze in his face, and one of the richest valleys in
+Scotland coming softly into sight in the midst of the morning, as the
+young King full of spirit, ambition, and all the rising impulses of
+manhood, left behind him the gentle shadow of the Lomond hills, and
+swept round the base of the Ochils towards the castle, high-standing on
+its rock, where freedom and his crown and all the privileges of royal
+life and independence were awaiting him. He reached Stirling in the
+breaking of the day, and galloping across the bridge, caused its gates
+to be closed after him, that no pursuer might cross the river; and was
+received with great rejoicing in the castle, where everything had been
+prepared for his coming, and where the captain, having let down the
+portcullis and made all secure, "laid the King in his bed, because he
+had ridden all that night." Probably there was no moment in the life of
+the young monarch, who had fallen upon such troubled times, more sweet
+than this when, after the wild excitement of the long night's riding, he
+closed his young eyes, at an hour so unaccustomed, in the clear radiance
+of the morning, feeling his life now free before him, as light and fair
+and unfettered as the rising day. But Pitscottie must continue the tale
+in his own admirable way. He says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"We will lat him sleep in his bed, and return to George Douglas, who
+came home to Falkland at eleven hours at night, and required at the
+porters what the King was doing, who answered that he was in his own
+chamber sleeping, who was to rise tymous to the hunting, and right
+so said the watchmen. George hearing this went to his bed, till on
+the morn that the sun rose. Then came Patrick Carmichael, baillie <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">{220}</a></span>of
+Abernethie, and knocked at George Douglas's chamber door, and
+inquired of him what the King was doing. George answered that he was
+not waked as yet in his own chamber. The baillie answered, 'Ye are
+deceaved; he is along the bridge of Stirling this night.' Then
+George Douglas gat up hastilie and went to the porters and watchmen
+and inquired for the King, who still answered that he was sleeping
+in his own chamber. Then George Douglas came to the King's chamber
+door and found it locked, and dang it up, but found no man in it.
+Then he cryed, 'Fye, treason, the King is gone!'"</p></div>
+
+<p>The confusion and dismay of the household were great. Some said that the
+King had gone to Bambriefe "to visit a gentlewoman," which explanation
+was received with relief, the question of morality being of small
+consequence in comparison. George Douglas immediately leaped on his
+horse to ascertain if this were true, but had not ridden more than two
+miles when he met the Earl of Rothes, who told him the King was not
+there. By this time the other Douglas who had gone to Dundee had
+returned also, and a hurried council was held what to do. Angus himself
+was immediately summoned from Tantallon by an express, "ane haistie
+post," and instantly answering, set out with his uncle and brother, and
+rode to Stirling with some forlorn hope it would appear of recovering
+their empire over the King. But James had already gathered counsellors
+round him, and was himself too strongly determined to maintain his
+liberty to allow any approach. The road to Stirling would no doubt be
+full of scouts, to give warning of what the discomfited but powerful
+family meant to do, and as soon as their approach was known a herald was
+sent to the town cross to proclaim by sound of trumpet a royal decree
+that neither Angus nor his companions should approach within six miles
+of where the King was under pain of death. It is curious to mark how in
+a moment the great power of the Douglases and their high courage
+collapsed in face of this proclamation. They paused on their hasty ride,
+and held another hasty council, and though some among them were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">{221}</a></span>for
+pressing forward and seizing once more the malapert boy who defied them,
+the Earl himself and his brother decided to obey the proclamation and
+withdraw. They fell back upon Linlithgow, where they paused a day or two
+hoping perhaps for better news. But by this time the other nobles were
+crowding round the King. Huntly, Argyle, Athole, Glencairn, Monteith,
+and Rothes, with a still larger company of barons, hastened to Stirling
+to protect and aid with their counsel the liberated prince. Archbishop
+Beatoun, the wily Churchman, who had done all he could to overthrow
+Angus,&mdash;who had been for a moment so worsted in the conflict that he
+skulked about his own Fife moors in the disguise of a shepherd, but who
+had lately made friends with the dominant family and entertained the
+King and his guardians together, calling them "to his pasche (Easter) at
+St. Andrews,"&mdash;and who had no doubt known of the momentous night
+journey, and probably detained George Douglas late that evening to make
+it more sure, had also joined the King.</p>
+
+<p>With this powerful escort James proceeded to Edinburgh, where for some
+time the lords around him kept watch night and day, keeping their little
+army of attendants under arms in case of any attack on the part of
+Angus. One night, we are told, James himself in full armour took the
+command of the guard, more probably, however, from a boyish desire to
+feel himself at the head of his defenders than for any other reason; and
+even his bedchamber was shared, after an unpleasant fashion of the time,
+by the bastard of Arran, "James Hamilton, that bloody butcherer," as
+Pitscottie calls him, who had precipitated the fray of "Clear the
+Causeway" and was Angus's most inveterate enemy. These extraordinary
+precautions, however, seem to have been unnecessary. The Douglases would
+appear to have accepted their defeat as complete, and to have been
+entirely cowed by it. Another proclamation was put forth on the arrival
+of the King in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">{222}</a></span>Edinburgh commanding all true subjects to refrain from
+intercourse of any kind with Angus, his brother, and uncle, not to
+receive them or succour them or hold any communication with them on
+peril of being considered sharers in their crime&mdash;in short, a sort of
+interdict after the papal fashion. The impromptu council sat for two
+days in the upper chamber of the Tolbooth, which was the recognised
+Parliament House, chiefly, it would seem, to hear the King's indictment
+against the family of Douglas. James set forth all his grievances, his
+subjection to the will of Angus, his separation from his own friends,
+the appearance he had been made to assume of enmity to his real
+champions, and vowed at the end, says Pitscottie, in the fervour of his
+indignation and resentment, that Scotland should not hold them both. He
+would receive nothing but support in that assembly where all had
+suffered from the supremacy of Angus, and where the too powerful race
+had no friends. The council appointed anew all the high officers of
+State, whose posts had been appropriated by the Douglases, and sent an
+envoy to England to announce that the government of Scotland was
+henceforward in the King's own hands. It was also ordained that a
+Parliament should be called in the month of September, to confirm in a
+more decorous and regular way the decisions of the present hasty
+assembly.</p>
+
+<p>When Parliament met these questions were accordingly discussed over
+again, with confirmation of what had been already done. It was decided
+that Angus should be summoned before them to answer for his misdeeds,
+under the penalty if he did not appear of being "put to the horn and
+banished during the King's will." Angus was not so rash as to trust
+himself within the power of his enemies, as his kinsmen of the house of
+Douglas had already done on two fatal occasions: and as neither he nor
+his retainers put in an appearance, they were accordingly attainted,
+their lands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">{223}</a></span> forfeited to the Crown, their name put under the public ban,
+their great castle of Tantallon seized, and themselves proclaimed
+through all the country as traitors whom no man should receive or
+succour.</p>
+
+<p>The complete downfall which overtook this great house after the young
+King's abandonment of it is very remarkable, and shows how important was
+the royal position, notwithstanding the manner in which it had been
+<i>exploit&eacute;</i>, and the mere nominal power of its actual possessor. The
+house of Angus crumbled into the dust as soon as their young prisoner
+escaped their hands. They took refuge in England, where they vainly
+attempted on various occasions to negotiate for their return, but with
+no success. The name continued obnoxious to James during his whole life.
+Sir Walter has done his best to rehabilitate that name in the noble
+Douglas of <i>The Lady of the Lake</i>, who has been identified with
+Archibald of Kilspindie, "the uncle of the banished Earl," the story of
+whose appearance at the games at Stirling is said to have some
+foundation of reality. But the historians of the house, who alone
+mention this, state the facts in a very different way.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the Angus branch of the Douglas family fell, as the Earls of
+Douglas had fallen, and for a generation there was little heard of it
+save in mutterings of treason in moments of difficulty, which never came
+to much&mdash;until in the following reign the indomitable race rose again in
+another branch and under another name, and furnished in the Regent
+Morton one of the strongest as well as the most questionable figures of
+a deeply disturbed time. Never was a race more difficult to subdue.</p>
+
+<p>The escape of James from Falkland took place between Easter and June in
+the year 1527. In 1528, the Douglases being clean swept out of the
+country, the young King went on a professed hunting expedition to the
+Borders, where, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">{224}</a></span>besides innumerable deer, its ostensible reason, his
+ride through the southern district carried punishment and death to many
+a Border reiver and especially to the famous John or Johnnie Armstrong,
+the Laird of Kilnokie, and chief or at least best-known representative
+of his name. Whether it was wise policy to hang the reiver who was the
+terror of the Borders, yet "never molested no Scottis man," it is not
+necessary to decide. He was a scourge to the English, of whom it was
+said that there was none from the Scottish Border to Newcastle who did
+not "pay ane tribute to be free of his cumber." Johnnie Armstrong had
+the folly to come into the King's presence with such a train, his men so
+completely armed and so many in number, as to compete with royal
+magnificence, not very great in Scotland in those days. "What wants yon
+knave that a king should have?" said the young James, who had certainly
+had enough of such powerful subjects: and he would not listen to either
+excuse or explanation from the Borderer, whose defiance as he was led to
+his execution, and the wail of his wild followers after him, sounds
+still in the stirring strains of song and ballad. No doubt it was
+justice that James did&mdash;but justice somewhat stern and out of time.</p>
+
+<p>The young Court now blazing out into full splendour, with a legitimate
+head and every prospect of prosperity, became again the resort of
+foreign chivalry and magnificent envoys, among them a legate from the
+Pope to assure the allegiance of James to the Holy See, which his uncle
+of England had deserted. Henry at the same time did not neglect by
+constant messengers and vague promises, now of the hand of the Princess
+Mary, now of an English dukedom, to secure his nephew to his side. After
+that princess, whom her father tried his utmost to put out of the
+succession by divorcing her mother, James was the next heir, and Henry
+did not forget that possibility. The hand of the young <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">{225}</a></span>princess had
+already been several times offered to the Scots King without any
+certainty either in the proposal or its acceptance. One cannot help
+wondering what might have been the issue had that unhappy Mary, to whom
+history has given so grim a nickname, been thus wedded in early youth to
+a gracious and gallant Stewart. In all history there occurs by times a
+gleam like this of possible deliverance from fate, an opening by which
+the subjects of tragedy might have secured an escape had they but known.
+One wonders had she thus escaped the wrongs and bitterness of her early
+career whether Mary would have got free from those traces of blood and
+madness which have left so dark a shadow upon her name; or whether, in
+the conflict that was to follow, her fierce Tudor passion would have
+embittered every strife. It is wonderful to think that she might have
+been the mother of that other Mary so different yet still more sadly
+fated, who in that case never could have been the Mary Stewart she was.
+We are led to something like a <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> by such
+speculations, very vain yet always attractive as they are. James was
+eager to marry at the earliest possible moment, and all would have
+welcomed the marriage with his kinswoman.</p>
+
+<p>In this respect, however, as in almost every other, Scotland was now at
+a turning-point of the utmost importance in her career. For the first
+time her politics had begun to be troubled by the possibility of an
+alliance with England more strong and lasting than the brief periods of
+truce which had hitherto existed between two nations whose principle and
+tradition were those of enmity. A perpetual peace had indeed been sworn
+and signed at the time of the marriage of Margaret Tudor with James IV,
+but how little lasting that had been is amply demonstrated by the fact
+that no such crushing defeat had ever been inflicted upon Scotland as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">{226}</a></span>
+that of Flodden, in which the King and the great part of his nobles
+perished. Perhaps it was the germ of the design to attract the lesser
+country into the arms of the greater by friendship rather than to set
+her desperately at bay against all peaceful influences, which had
+prevented the successful army from taking advantage of the victory; but
+certainly through all the distracted period of James's minority efforts
+had been made by constant envoys to acquire a share in the councils of
+the country, such as had hitherto been considered the right of France,
+who was the old and faithful ally as England was "the auld enemy" of the
+Scots. The alliance with France had been taken for granted on all sides.
+That Scotland should harass England in every war between that country
+and her continental neighbour was a foregone conclusion, and it was
+something still more sure, a proverb on the English side, that when
+France was to be assailed the right thing was to begin with Scotland.
+The position of Henry as brother of the Scottish Queen, and the nearest
+relative of James, who, under circumstances not at all unlikely to
+occur, might be his heir, gave the English king now a natural right to
+interfere; and it is conceivable that had this right been exercised more
+wisely it might have led to fortunate issues. But unhappily King Henry
+had associated his influence with that of Angus, taking the part of his
+sister's discarded husband with great determination, and apparently
+without any sympathy in those changes in Margaret's affections which so
+much resembled his own. Angus was to Scotland the representative of the
+English alliance, and as everything connected with Angus had now become
+hateful to James, it followed that his uncle's desire to obtain an
+influence over him, which was not accompanied by any substantial marks
+of kindness towards himself, did not meet with much success: though it
+might have been otherwise had the vaguely-proposed marriage been carried<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">{227}</a></span>
+out. But one can scarcely be sorry that the noble and graceful James
+should have escaped such an alliance.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illus_029.jpg" width="600" height="380" alt="LINLITHGOW PALACE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">LINLITHGOW PALACE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">{228}</a></span>Other and still more serious matters were now, however, surging upwards
+in both England and Scotland, which doubled the silent struggle between
+the old ally and the new. On the side of France was the old religion,
+the Church which at this period was the strongest of the Estates of
+Scotland, richer than any of the others, and possessing almost all the
+political ability of the time: on the side of England a new, scarcely
+recognised, but powerful influence, which was soon to attain almost
+complete mastery in Scotland and shatter that Church to pieces. In the
+beginning of James's reign this new power was but beginning to swell in
+the silent bosom of the country, showing here and there in a trial for
+heresy and in the startling fires of execution which cut off the first
+martyrs for the reformed faith. But there is no evidence to show that
+James, a young man full of affairs much more absorbing than religious
+controversy, with more confidence, politically at least, in the Church
+than in any other power of his realm, had ever been awakened to the
+importance of the struggle. The smoke of those fires which blew over all
+Scotland in potent fumes from St. Andrews, on the further side of the
+Firth; and from Edinburgh, where on the Castle Hill in the intervals of
+the tiltings and tourneys, the Vicar of Dollar for example, of whose
+examination we have a most vivid and admirable report, full of
+picturesque simplicity, not without humour even in the midst of the
+tragedy, was burnt&mdash;along with several gentlemen of his county: does not
+seem to have reached the young King, absorbed in some project of State,
+or busy with new laws and regulations, or inspecting the portraits of
+the great ladies among whom he had to choose his bride. There is a
+curious story communicated in a letter of one of the English envoys of
+the period of his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">{229}</a></span>conversation with a Scotch gentleman, in which we find
+a description of James listening to a play represented before the Court
+at the feast of the Epiphany, 1540, in the Castle of Linlithgow. This
+play is believed to have been Sir David Lindsay's <i>Satire on the Three
+Estates</i>, one of the most effective attacks upon the corruptions of the
+Church which had ever been made, and setting forth the exactions of the
+priests from the peasantry and the poor at every event of their lives,
+as well as the wealth and wickedness of the monastic communities, of
+which Scotland was full, and which had long been the recognised object
+of popular satire and objurgation. The performance would seem to have
+had as great an effect upon the young King as had the play in <i>Hamlet</i>
+upon the majesty of Denmark. James turned to Beatoun (the Cardinal,
+nephew and successor of Archbishop James) the Chancellor in indignant
+remonstrance. Were these things so? and if they were, would not the
+bishops and other powerful ecclesiastics join to repress them? Let them
+do so at once, cried the sovereign: or if not he should send half a
+dozen of the proudest of them to King Henry to be dealt with after his
+methods. Even Churchmen had occasionally to brook such threats from an
+excited prince. Beatoun answered with courtier-like submission that a
+word from the King was enough, upon which James, not wont to confine
+himself to words, and strong in the success with which he had overcome
+one of his Estates, the lords, now so quiet under his hand, replied that
+he would not spare many words for such an issue. This characteristic
+scene is very interesting. But probably when the memory of what he had
+heard faded from the busy King, and the tumult of public events gained
+possession again of his ear and mind, he forgot the sudden impression,
+or contented himself with the thought that Beatoun and the bishops must
+put order in their own affairs. Pitscottie tells us in respect to a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">{230}</a></span>
+projected visit to England, vaguely thought of and planned several years
+before this time, that "the wicked bishops of Scotland would not thole"
+a meeting between James and Henry. "For the bishops feared that if the
+King had met with King Henry that he would have moved him to casten down
+the abbeys, and to have altered the religion as the King of England had
+done before. Therefore the bishops bade him to bide at home, and gave
+him three thousand pounds of yearly rent out of their benefices." It is
+to be feared that history has no evidence of this voluntary munificence,
+but James found the ecclesiastical possessions in Scotland very useful
+for the purposes of taxation, and in this respect did not permit Beatoun
+to have his own way.</p>
+
+<p>When the young King was in his twenty-fourth year he found himself
+able&mdash;many previous negotiations on the subject having come to
+nothing&mdash;to pay a visit to the Continent in his own person in order to
+secure a wife. It is a greater testimony to the personal power and
+vigour of James than any mere details could give that, within eight
+years of the time when, a boy of sixteen, he had escaped from the power
+of the Douglas, it should be possible for him to leave, after all the
+wild anarchy of his minority, a pacificated and orderly kingdom behind
+him, in the care of a Council of Regency, while he went forth upon a
+mission so important to himself. He had altogether extinguished and
+expelled the house of Douglas; he had subdued and repressed other
+turbulent lords, and convinced them that his authority was neither to be
+neutralised nor made light of; he had settled and calmed the Border by
+the most decisive means; and he was now free to show himself in the
+society of kings, and win his princess, and see the world. He had been
+already the object of many overtures from contemporary Powers. The
+Emperor and the Pope had both sent him envoys and conciliated his
+friendship; and in the imperial <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">{231}</a></span>house itself as well as in many others
+of the highest rank there had been ladies proposed to share his crown.
+The one more immediately in view when he set out on his journey was a
+daughter of the Duke of Vend&ocirc;me. The defeat of Charles V before
+Marseilles took place almost simultaneously with James's arrival, and
+the Scotch chroniclers do not lose the opportunity of asserting that it
+was the coming of the King of the Scots with a supposed army of twenty
+thousand men to the succour of France which was the reason of the
+Emperor's precipitate withdrawal. Pitscottie narrates, with more evident
+truthfulness, how the Frenchmen on the Norman coast were alarmed by the
+ships, fearing it to be an enemy which hove in sight, "for there were
+many strangers in his companie, so that he appeared ane great army." But
+the sight of the red lion of Scotland changed their alarms into joy, and
+they welcomed the Scots King and party, "at the New Haven beside Diep,"
+with much rejoicing. He would seem to have pushed across France to the
+Court of Vend&ocirc;me without pausing to pay his respects to the King at
+Paris; and we find his movements recorded in a romantic tale, which is
+neither contradicted nor supported by other authorities, but likely
+enough to a romantic young prince upon a love-quest. According to this
+description James did not assume his proper character but appeared only
+as one among the many knights, who probably represented themselves, to
+make his feint successful, as merely a party of cavaliers seeking
+adventure and the exercises of chivalry. He intended thus to see, while
+himself unknown, "the gentlewoman who sould have been his spouse,
+thinking to spy her pulchritud and behaviour unkenned by her."</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Notwithstanding this fair ladie took suspition that the King of
+Scotland should be in the companie, wherefore she passed to her
+coffer and took out his picture, which she had gotten out of
+Scotland by ane <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">{232}</a></span>secret moyane, and as soon as she looked to the
+picture it made her know the King of Scotland incontinent where he
+stood among the rest of his companie, and past peartlie to him, and
+took him by the hand, and said, 'Sir, ye stand over far aside;
+therefore, if it please your Grace, you may show yourself to my
+father or me, and confer and pass the time ane while.'"</p></div>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was injudicious of the fair ladie to be so "peart." At all
+events, after much feasting, "nothing but merriness and banquetting and
+great cheer and lovelie communing betwixt the King's grace and the fair
+ladies, with great musick and playing on instruments, and all other
+kinds of pastime for the fields," as well as "jousting and running of
+great horses," the ungrateful James "thought it expedient to speak
+nothing of marriage at that time, till he had spoken with the King of
+France, considering," adds the chronicler, who perhaps sees an excuse to
+be necessary, "he was within his realm he would show him his mind and
+have his counsel thereto before he concluded the matter." Pitscottie
+thus saves the feelings of the lady of whom other historians say curtly
+that she did not please the King. But when the Scottish band reached the
+Court, though it was then in mourning for the Dauphin, recently dead,
+King James was received with open arms. The King of France, sick and sad
+for the loss of his son, was in the country at a hunting seat, and when
+James was suddenly introduced at the door of his chamber as "the King of
+Scotland, sire, come to comfort you," the arrival evidently made the
+best possible impression. The sorrowful father declared, as he embraced
+the young stranger, that it was as if another son had been given him
+from heaven; and after a little interval the royal party, increased by
+James's Scottish train, moved on to another palace. We may be allowed to
+imagine that the Queen and her ladies came out to meet them, as the
+first sight which James appears to have had of his future bride was
+while she was "ryding in ane chariot, because she <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">{233}</a></span>was sickly, and might
+not ryd upon hors." Magdalen, too, saw him as he rode to meet the fair
+cavalcade in her father's company, who looked so much happier and
+brighter from the encounter with this gallant young prince. The poor
+girl was already stricken for death, and had but a few months to live;
+but it is very likely that her malady was that fatal but deceitful one
+which leaves a more delicate beauty to its victims, and gives feverish
+brightness to the eyes and colour to the cheek. A tender creature, full
+of poetry and imagination, and most likely all unconscious of the fate
+that hung over her, she loved the gallant cavalier from the first moment
+of seeing him, and touched the heart of James by that fragile beauty and
+by the affection that shone in her soft eyes. It was a marriage that no
+one approved, for her days were known to be numbered. But perhaps some
+faint hope that happiness, that potent physician, might arrest disease,
+as it has been known to do, prevailed both with the anxious father and
+the young man beloved, in whom tender pity and gratitude replaced a
+warmer sentiment. At all events the marriage took place in Paris, in the
+noble church of Notre Dame, in the beginning of the year 1537. The King,
+we are told, sent to Scotland to invite a number of other noblemen and
+gentlemen to attend his wedding, which was performed with the greatest
+pomp and splendour. Not until May did the young couple set out for their
+home, and then they were laden with gifts, two ships being presented to
+them, a number of splendid horses fully caparisoned, and quantities of
+valuable tapestries, cloth of silver and gold, and jewels of every
+description. Perhaps the long delay was intended to make the journey
+more safe for the poor young Queen. The voyage from Dieppe to Leith
+lasted five days, and the bridal party was accompanied by an escort of
+"fiftie ships of Scottismen, Frenchmen, and strangers." "When the Queen
+was come <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">{234}</a></span>upon Scottis eard, she bowed her down to the same, and kissed
+the mould thereof, and thanked God that her husband and she were come
+safe through the seas." There could not be a more tender or attractive
+picture. How full of poetry and soft passion must the gentle creature
+have been who thus took possession of the land beloved for her young
+husband's sake! The Scottish eard indeed was all that she was to have of
+that inheritance, for in little more than a month the gentle Magdalen
+was dead. She was laid in the chapel of the palace which was to have
+been her home, with "ane dolorous lamentation; for triumph and merriness
+were all turned into dirges and soul-masses, which were very lamentable
+to behold."</p>
+
+<p>This sad story is crowned by Pitscottie with a brief note of the death
+of the Duc de Vend&ocirc;me's daughter, "who took sick displeasure at the King
+of Scotland's marriage that she deceased immediately thereafter; whereat
+the King of Scotland was highly displeased, thinking that he was the
+occasion of that gentlewoman's death." Other historians say that this
+tragical conclusion did not occur, but that the Princess of Vend&ocirc;me was
+married on the same day as James. Pitscottie's is the more romantic
+ending, and rounds the pathetic tale.</p>
+
+<p>After such a mournful and ineffectual attempt at married life all the
+negotiations had to be begun over again, and James was at last married,
+to the general satisfaction, to Mary of Guise, a woman, as it turned
+out, of many fine and noble qualities, to which but indifferent justice
+was ever done. It was before this event, however, and immediately after
+the death of the Queen, that a curious and tragical incident happened,
+which furnished another strange scene to the many associations of
+Edinburgh. This was the execution of Lady Glamis upon the Castle Hill
+for witchcraft and secret attempts upon the life of the King by means <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">{235}</a></span>of
+magic or of poison. No one seems to know what these attempts were.
+Pitscottie gives this extraordinary event a short paragraph. The grave
+Pinkerton fills a page or two with an apology or defence of James for
+permitting such an act. But we are not told what was the evidence, or
+how the sovereign's life was threatened. The supposed culprit was
+however&mdash;and the fact is significant&mdash;the only member of the family of
+Angus left in Scotland, the sister of the Earl. Once more the Castle
+Hill was covered with an awed or excited crowd, not unaccustomed to that
+sight, for the heretics had burnt there not long before, but at once
+more and less moved than usual, for the victim was a woman fair and
+dignified, such a sufferer as always calls forth the pity of the
+spectators, but her crime witchcraft, a thing held in universal horror,
+and with which there would be no sympathisers. Few, if any, in that
+crowd would be so advanced in sentiment as to regard the cruel
+exhibition with the horrified contempt of modern times. The throng that
+lined that great platform would have no doubt that it was right to burn
+a witch wherever she was found; and the beauty of the woman and the
+grandeur of her race would give a pang the more of painful satisfaction
+in her destruction. But it is strange that thus a last blow should have
+been aimed at that family, once so great and strong, which James's
+resentment had pursued to the end. A little while before, Archibald
+Douglas of Kilspindie had thrown himself upon James's mercy&mdash;the only
+member of the Douglas family who can be in any way identified with the
+noble Douglas of <i>The Lady of the Lake</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"'Tis James of Douglas, by St. Serle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The uncle of the banished Earl."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But Archibald of Kilspindie did not meet the same forgiveness with which
+his prototype in the poem was received. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">{236}</a></span>He was sent back into banishment
+unforgiven, the King's word having been passed to forgive no one
+condemned by the law. Perhaps the same stern fidelity to a stern promise
+was the reason why Lady Glamis was allowed to go to the stake unrescued.
+But we speculate in vain on subjects so veiled in ignorance and
+uncertainty. Perhaps his counsellors acted on their own authority in
+respect to a crime the reprobation and horror of which were universal,
+and did not disturb the King in the first shock of his mourning. In the
+same week the fair and fragile Magdalen of France was carried to her
+burial, and Lady Glamis was burned at the other extremity of Edinburgh.
+Perhaps it was supposed that something in the incantations of the one
+had a fatal influence upon the young existence of the other. At all
+events these two sensations fell to the populace of Edinburgh and all
+the strangers who were constantly passing through her gates, at the same
+time. Life in those days was full of pictorial circumstances which do
+not belong to ours. One is inclined to wonder sometimes whether the many
+additional comforts we possess make up for that perpetual movement in
+the air, the excitement, the communication of new ideas, the strange
+sights both pleasant and terrible. The burning of a witch or a heretic
+is perhaps too tremendous a sensation to be desired by the most heroic
+spectator; but the perpetual drama going on thus before the eyes of all
+the world, and giving to the poorest an absolute share in every new and
+strange thing, must have added a reality to national life which no
+newspapers can give. That the people remain always eager for this share
+in historical events, the crowds that never weary of gazing at passing
+princes, the innumerable audience of the picture papers, the endless
+reproduction of every insignificant public event, from a procession of
+aldermen to the simplest day's journey of a royal personage, abundantly
+testify. In the days of the Jameses few of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">{237}</a></span>crowd could read, and
+still fewer had the chance of reading. A ballad flying from voice to
+voice across the country, sung at the ingle-neuk, repeated from one to
+another in the little crowd at a "stairhead," in which the grossest
+humorous view was the best adapted for the people, represented popular
+literature. But most things that went on were visible to the crowding
+population. They saw the foreign visitors, the ambassadors, the knights,
+each with his distinguishable crest, who came to meet in encounter of
+arms the knights of the Scottish Court. All that went on they had their
+share in, and a kind of acquaintance with every notability. The public
+events were a species of large emblazoned history which he who ran could
+read.</p>
+
+<p>These ballads above referred to came to singular note, however, in one
+of the many discussions between England and Scotland which were carried
+on by means of the frequent envoys sent to James from his uncle. The
+Borders, it appears, were full of this flying literature sent forth by
+unknown writers, and spread probably by, here and there, a wandering
+friar, more glad of a merry rhyme than disconcerted by a satire against
+his own cloth, or with still more relish dispersing over the countryside
+reports of King Henry's amours and divorces, and of the plundering of
+abbeys and profane assumption of sacred rights by a monarch who was so
+far from sanctified. Popular prophecies of how a new believing king
+should be raised up to disconcert the heretics, and on the northern side
+of the Border of the speedy elevation of James to the throne of England,
+and final victorious triumph of the Scottish side, flew from village to
+village, exciting at last the alarm of Henry and his council, who made
+formal complaint of them at the Scottish Court, drawing from James a
+promise that if any of his subjects should be found to be the authors of
+such productions they should suffer death for it&mdash;a heavy penalty for
+literary <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">{238}</a></span>transgression. In Scotland farther north it was another kind of
+ballad which was said and sung, or whispered under the breath with many
+a peal of rude laughter, the Satires of "Davy Lindsay" and many a lesser
+poet&mdash;ludicrous stories of erring priests and friars, indecent but
+humorous, with lamentable tales of dues exacted and widows robbed, and
+all the sins of the Church, the proud bishop and his lemans, the
+avaricious priest and his exactions, the confessors who bullied a dying
+penitent into gifts which injured his family, and all the well-worn
+scandals by which in every time of reformation the coarser imagination
+of the populace is stirred. If James himself was startled into an angry
+demand how such things could be after he had witnessed the performance
+of David Lindsay's play, which was trimmed into comparative decency for
+courtly ears, it may be supposed what was the effect of that and still
+broader assaults, upon the unchastened imagination of the people. The
+Reformation progressed by great strides by such rude yet able help as
+well as by the purer methods of religion. The priests, however, do not
+seem to have made war on the balladmakers, as the great King of England
+would have had his nephew do. Buchanan, indeed, whose classic weapons
+had been brought into this literary crusade, and who also had his fling
+at the Franciscans as well as his coarser and more popular brethren, was
+imprisoned for a time, and had to withdraw from his country, but the
+poets of the people, far more effective, would seem to have escaped.</p>
+
+<p>All this, however, probably seemed of but little importance to James in
+comparison with the greater affairs of the kingdom of which his hands
+were full. When the episode of his marriages was over, and still more
+important an heir secured, he returned to that imperial track in which
+he had acquitted himself so well. All would seem to have been in order
+in the centre of the kingdom; the Borders were as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">{239}</a></span>quiet as it was
+possible for the Borders to be; and only the remote Highlands and
+islands remained still insubordinate, in merely nominal subjection to
+the laws of the kingdom. James, we are told, had long intended to make
+one of the royal raids so familiar to Scottish history among his
+doubtful subjects of these parts, and accordingly an expedition was very
+carefully prepared, twelve ships equipped both for comfort and for war,
+with every device known to the time for provisioning them and keeping
+them in full efficiency. We are told that the English authorities
+looking on, were exceedingly suspicious of this voyage, not knowing
+whither such preparations might tend, while all Scotland watched the
+setting out of the expedition almost as much in the dark as to its
+motive, and full of wonder as to where the King could be going. Bonfires
+were blazing on all the hilltops in rejoicing for the birth of a prince
+when James took his way with his fleet down the Firth. Pinkerton, who
+ought to have known better, talks of "the acclamations of numerous
+spectators on the adjacent hills and shores" as if the great estuary had
+been a little river. It might well be that both in Fife and Lothian
+there were eager lookers-on, as soon as it was seen that the fleet was
+in motion, to see the ships pass: but their acclaims must have been loud
+indeed to carry from Leith to Kinghorn. The King sailed early in June
+1540 towards the north. Many a yacht and pleasure ship still follows the
+same route round the Scottish coast towards the wild attractions of the
+islands.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"Merrily, merrily, bounds the bark,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She bounds before the gale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The mountain breeze from Ben-na-darch<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is joyous in her sail.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With fluttering sound like laughter hoarse<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The cords and canvas strain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The waves divided by her force<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In rippling eddies chased her course<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As if they laughed again."<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">{240}</a></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But it was on no pleasure voyage that James had set out. He had in his
+twelve ships two thousand armed men, led by the most trusted lords of
+Scotland, and his mission was to reduce to order the clans who knew so
+little what a king's dignity was, or the restraints of law, or the
+pursuits of industry. No stand would seem to have been anywhere made
+against him. Many of the chiefs of the more turbulent tribes were
+brought off to the ships, not so much as prisoners in consequence of
+their own misdoings, but as hostages for their clans: and the startled
+isles, overawed by the sight of the King and his great ships, and by the
+more generous motive of anxiety for their own chieftains in pledge for
+them, calmed down out of their wild ways, and ceased from troubling in a
+manner unprecedented in their turbulent history.</p>
+
+<p>An incidental consequence of this voyage sounds oddly modern, as if it
+might have been a transcript from the most recent records. James
+perceived, or more probably had his attention directed to the fact, that
+the fishermen of the north were much molested by fishing vessels from
+Holland, Flanders, and the Scandinavian coasts, who interfered with
+their fishing, sometimes even thrusting them by violence of arms out of
+their own waters. The King accordingly detached one or two of his
+vessels under the command of Maxwell, his admiral, to inquire into these
+high-handed proceedings, with the result that one of the foreign fisher
+pirate-ships was seized and brought to Leith to answer for their
+misdoings. There they were reprimanded and bound over to better
+behaviour, then dismissed without further penalty. How little effectual,
+however, this treatment was, is exemplified by the fact that the
+selfsame offence continues to be repeated until this very day.</p>
+
+<p>There would seem to have been a little pause of calm and comfort in
+James's life after this victorious expedition. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">{241}</a></span>Clouds already bigger
+than a man's hand were forming on his horizon; the country had begun to
+be agitated throughout its depths with the rising forces of the reform,
+and the priests who had always surrounded James were hurrying on in the
+truculence of terror to sterner and sterner enactments against heretics:
+while he, probably even yet but moderately interested, thinking of other
+things, and though adding to the new laws which he was persuaded to
+originate in this sense, conditions to the effect that corresponding
+reforms were to be wrought in the behaviour of the priesthood,&mdash;had not
+entered at all into the fierce current of theological strife. He
+followed the faith in which he had been bred, revolted rather than
+attracted by the proceedings and pretensions of his uncle of England,
+willing that the bishops, who probably knew best, and who were, as he
+complained to the English ambassador, the only men of sense and ability
+near him, should have their own way in their own concerns; but for
+himself much more intent on the temporal welfare of his kingdom than on
+its belief, or the waves of opinion which might blow over it. He had
+just been very successful in what no doubt seemed to him an enterprise
+much more kingly and important&mdash;the subjugation of the islands. He was
+happy and prosperous in his private life, his Queen having performed the
+high duty expected of her in providing the kingdom with an heir, indeed
+with two sons, to make, as appeared, assurance doubly sure; and though
+the burning of a heretic was not a pleasant circumstance, Beatoun and
+the rest of the brotherhood were too clever and helpful as men of the
+world to be easily dispensed with. James had, there can be no doubt,
+much reason to be discontented and dissatisfied, as almost all his
+predecessors had been, with the nobility of his kingdom. Apart from some
+of those young companions-in-arms who were delightful in the camp and
+field but useless in the council chamber, his state of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">{242}</a></span>mind would seem
+to have resembled more the modern mood which is represented by the word
+"bored" than any other more dignified expression. The priests might be
+fierce (as indeed were the lords, still more) but they were able, and
+knew something of the necessities of government. The barons disgusted
+him with their petty jealousies, their want of instruction, their
+incapacity for any broad or statesmanlike view, and there would seem
+little doubt that he dispensed with their services as much as possible,
+and turned to those persons who comprehended him with a natural movement
+which unfortunately, however, is never fortunate in a king. Something of
+the severance between himself and those who were nearest to him in rank,
+which had ruined his grandfather, showed itself as he advanced towards
+the gravity of manhood: and the fatal name of favourite began to be
+attached to one man at least in the Court, who would seem to have
+understood better than the others the ways and intentions of James. But
+in the meantime the clouds were only gathering; the darkness had not
+begun. A year or two before, the King had given to the legal faculty of
+Scotland a form and constitution which it has retained to this day. He
+had instituted the Court of Session, the "Feifteen," the law lords in
+their grave if short-lived dignity. He had begun to build and repair and
+decorate at Holyrood and Linlithgow. "He sent to Denmark," says
+Pitscottie, "and brought home great horss and meares and put them in
+parks that their offspring might be gotten to sustein the warres when
+need was. Also he sent and furnished the country with all kinds of
+craftsmen such as Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Dutchmen, which ever was the
+first of their profession that could be had." He went even so far in his
+desire to develop the natural wealth of his kingdom that he brought over
+certain German wise men to see if gold could be found in the mines, of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">{243}</a></span>
+which there has always been a tradition, as probably in most countries.
+All these pacific enterprises occupied James's time and helped on the
+prosperity of the country. But evil times were close at hand.</p>
+
+<p>One of the first indications that the dreadful round of misfortune was
+about to begin was the sudden denunciation of James Hamilton, the
+bastard of Arran, as a conspirator against the King, an event which
+Pitscottie narrates as happening in the year 1541. He had been a
+favourite of the King in his youth, and a great champion against the
+Douglas faction, and it was indeed his intemperate and imprudent rage
+which determined the fight called Clear the Causeway, and wrought much
+harm to his own party. He had been high in favour for a time, probably
+on the ground of his enmity to the house of Angus, then had fallen into
+discredit, but had lately been employed in certain public offices, and
+if we may trust Pitscottie, had been put into some such position by the
+priests as that which Saul of Tarsus held in the service of the
+persecuting ecclesiastics of Jerusalem. At all events his sudden
+accusation as plotting against the King's life, and especially as doing
+so in the interests of the Douglases, was evidently as startling and
+extraordinary to the great officials to whom the communication was made
+as it would be to the reader who has heard of this personage only as the
+infuriated opponent of Angus and his party. No credence seems to have
+been given to the story at first, though it was told by another
+Hamilton, a cousin of the culprit. As this happened, however, in the
+King's absence from Edinburgh, the lords thought it a wise precaution to
+secure Sir James, and, according to Pitscottie, proceeded in their own
+dignified persons&mdash;the Lord Treasurer, Secretary, and "Mr. Household,"
+preceded by Lyon King-of-Arms&mdash;to his lodging in Edinburgh, whence they
+conveyed him to the castle. Such arrestations <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">{244}</a></span>would probably cause but
+little excitement, only a momentary rush and gazing of the crowd as the
+group with its little band of attendants and defenders passed upward
+along the High Street, the herald's tabard alone betraying its
+character. Sir James Hamilton, however, was very well known and little
+loved, and small would be the sympathy in the looks of the citizens, and
+many the stern nods and whispers of satisfaction that vengeance had
+seized him at length. The King, like his representatives, was astonished
+by the accusation, but when he heard of the terrible "dittay" which had
+been brought against Hamilton "he came suddenly out of Falkland, where
+His Grace was for the time, and brought the said Sir James out of the
+castle to the Tolbooth, and gave him fair assize of the lords and
+barons, who convicted him of sundry points of treason; and thereafter he
+was headed and quartered, and his lands annexed to the Crown."</p>
+
+<p>It is a curious question, which however none of the historians think of
+asking, whether there could be any connection between the scheme, if
+any, for which the Lady Glamis suffered, and this wholly unexpected
+outbreak of murderous intention on the part of Hamilton. The Hamiltons
+and Douglases were sworn enemies, yet greater wonders have been seen
+than the union of two feudal foes to compass the destruction of the
+enemy of both. Angus and his brothers banished, but little forgetful of
+all that had happened, and trusting in the favour of King Henry, were
+soon to show themselves at the head of expeditions hostile to Scotland
+across the Border. Were these two sudden disclosures of unexpected
+treachery the manifestations of a deep-laid plot which might have
+further developments&mdash;if with the bastard of Arran also perhaps in still
+more unlikely quarters? It is but a conjecture, yet it is one that might
+seem justified by two isolated events so <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">{245}</a></span>extraordinary, and by the state
+of discouragement and misery into which James seems soon to have fallen.
+Pitscottie relates that the King "took ane great suspition of his
+nobles, thinking that either one or other of them would deceive him;"
+and then there began to appear to him "visions in his bed." He thought
+he saw Sir James Hamilton, fierce and vengeful, appearing to him in the
+darkness with a drawn sword, with which he cut off the King's right arm.
+Next time the cruel spectre appeared it upbraided him with an unjust
+sentence and struck off the other arm: "Now therefore thou sall want
+both thy armes, and sall remain in sorrow ane while, and then I will
+come and stryk thy head from thee," said the angry ghost. Whatever may
+be the reader's opinion about the reality of these visions, there can be
+little doubt that they show deep depression in the mind of James to whom
+they came. He woke out of his sleep in great excitement and terror, and
+told his attendants what he had dreamed, who were very "discontent of
+his visioun, thinking that they would hear hastily tidings of the same."</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"On the morning word came to the King that the prince was very sick
+and like to die. When the King heard thereof he hasted to Sanct
+Andros, but, or he could come there the prince was depairted,
+whereat the King was verrie sad and dolorous. Notwithstanding
+immediately thereafter the post came out of Stirling to the King
+showing him that his second son, the Duke of Albany, could not live;
+and or the King could be in Stirling he was depairted. Whose
+departures were both within fortie-eight hours, which caused great
+lamentations to be in Scotland and in especial by the Queen, their
+mother. But the Queen comforted the King, saying they were young
+enough, and God would send them more succession."</p></div>
+
+<p>There is no suggestion, such as might have been natural enough at that
+age, of poison or foul play in the death of the two infants&mdash;nothing but
+misfortune and fatality and the dark shadows closing over a life
+hitherto so bright. James was the last of his name: the childless Albany
+in France, whom Scotland did not love, was the only man <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">{246}</a></span>surviving of his
+kindred, and it is not wonderful if the King's heart failed him in such
+a catastrophe, or if he thought himself doomed of heaven. When this
+great domestic affliction came to him he was on the eve of a breach with
+England, brought about not only by the usual mutual aggravations upon
+the Border, but by other matters of graver importance. King Henry had
+made many efforts to draw the Scottish King to his side. He had
+discoursed to him himself by letter, he had sent him not only
+ambassadors but preachers, he had done everything that could be done to
+detach the young monarch from the band of sovereigns who were against
+England, and the allegiance of the Pope. Latterly the correspondence had
+become very eager and passionate on Henry's side. He had repeatedly
+invited his nephew to visit him, and many negotiations had passed
+between them on the subject. The project was so far advanced that Henry
+came to York to meet James, and waited there for nearly a week for his
+arrival. But there was great reluctance on the Scottish side to risk
+their King so far on the other side of the Border. They had suggested
+Newcastle as a more safe place of meeting, but this had been rejected on
+the part of the English king. Finally, Henry left York in great
+resentment, which was aggravated by a defeat upon the Border. Pitscottie
+tells us that he sent a herald to James declaring that he considered the
+truce between them broken; that "he should take such order with him as
+he took with his father before him; for he had yet that same wand to
+ding him with that dang his father; that is to say, the Duke of Norfolk
+living that strak the field of Flodden, who slew his father with many of
+the nobles of Scotland." The King of Scotland thought, the chronicler
+adds, that these were "uncouth and sharp words"&mdash;an opinion in which the
+reader will agree. But whether Pitscottie is verbally correct or not it
+is very <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">{247}</a></span>evident that Henry did not hesitate to rate his nephew in
+exceedingly sharp and discourteous terms, as for instance bidding him
+not to make a brute of himself by listening to the priests who would
+lead any man by the nose who gave them credence. The negotiations
+altogether were carried on from the English side in a very arrogant
+manner as comported with Henry's character, made all the more
+overbearing towards James by their relationship, which gave him a
+certain natural title to bully his sister's son.</p>
+
+<p>And everything in Scotland was now tending to the miseries of a divided
+council and a nation rent asunder by internal differences. The new
+opinions were making further progress day by day, the priests becoming
+more fierce in their attempts to crush by violence the force of the
+Reformation&mdash;attempts which in their very cruelty and ferocity betrayed
+a certain growing despair. When Norfolk came to Scotland from Henry&mdash;an
+ill-omened messenger if what is said above of Henry's threat was
+true&mdash;the Scottish gentlemen sought him secretly with confessions of
+their altered faith; and the ambassador made the startling report to
+Henry that James's own mind was in so wavering and uncertain a state
+that if the priests did not drive him into war during the current summer
+he would confiscate the possessions of the Church before the year was
+out. But Norfolk's mission, which was in itself a threat, and the
+presence of the Douglases over the Border, who had never ceased to be
+upheld by Henry, and whose secret machinations, of which Lady Glamis and
+James Hamilton had been victims, were now about to culminate in open
+mischief, all contributed to exasperate the mind of James. That he was
+not supported as his father had been by the nobility, who alone had the
+power of giving effect to his call for a general armament, is evident
+from the first. His priestly counsellors could support him by the
+imposts which he made freely upon <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">{248}</a></span>the revenues of the Church, not always
+without complaint on their part; but they were of comparatively little
+influence in bringing together the hosts who had to do the fighting; and
+from the first the nobility,&mdash;half of which or more was leavened with
+Reformation doctrines and felt that their best support was in
+England&mdash;while the whole, almost without exception, resented the
+prominence of the Church in the national councils, hating and scorning
+her interference in secular and especially in warlike matters, as is the
+case in every age,&mdash;showed itself hostile. After various incursions on
+the part of England, made with much bravado and considerable damage, one
+of which was headed by Angus and his brother George Douglas (this
+latter, however, being promptly punished and defeated on the spot by the
+brave Borderers), James made the usual call for a general assembly of
+forces on the Boroughmuir: but he had advanced only a little way on his
+march to the Borders when he was stopped by the declaration of the lords
+that they would only act on the defensive, and would on no account go
+out of Scotland. The fathers of these same lords had followed James IV,
+though with the strongest disapproval, to the fatal field of Flodden,
+their loyalty triumphing over their judgment: but the sons on either
+side had no such bond between them. James disbanded in disgust the
+reluctant host, which considered less the honour of Scotland than their
+own safety; but got together afterwards a smaller army under the
+leadership of Lord Maxwell, with which to try over again the old issue.
+Pitscottie's account of the discussions and dissensions, and of all the
+scorns which subdued James's spirit, is very graphic. Norfolk had led a
+great body of men into Scotland, who though not advancing very far had
+done great harm burning and ravaging; but, checked by a smaller force,
+which held him back without giving battle, had finally retired across<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">{249}</a></span>
+the Border, where James was very anxious to have followed him.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The King's mind was very ardent on battel on English ground, which
+when the lords perceived they passed again to the council, and
+concluded that they would not follow the Duke of Norfolk at that
+time for the King's pleasure, because they said that it was not
+grounded upon no good cause or reasone, and that he was ane better
+priests' king nor he was theirs, and used more of priests' counsel
+nor theirs. Therefore they had the less will to fight with him, and
+said it was more meritoriously done to hang all such as gave counsel
+to the King to break his promises to the King of England, whereof
+they perceived great inconvenients to befall. When they had thus
+concluded, and the King being advertised thereof, the King departed
+with his familiar servants to Edinburgh; but the army and council
+remained still at Lauder."</p></div>
+
+<p>It was a fatal spot for such a controversy, the spot where, two
+generations before, the favourite friends and counsellors of James III,
+whether guilty or not guilty&mdash;who can say?&mdash;were hanged over the bridge
+as an example to all common men who should pretend to serve a king whose
+peers and the nobles of his realm were shut out from the first of his
+favour. James V had in his train some familiar servants, confidants of
+his many public undertakings, who were not of noble blood or, at least,
+of distinguished rank, and his angry withdrawal might well be explained
+by his determination to save them, if indeed any explanations beyond his
+vexed and miserable sense of humiliation and desertion were necessary to
+account for it. He left the lords, whom he would seem to have had no
+longer either the means or the heart to confront, saying in his rage and
+shame that he would "either make them fight or flee, or else Scotland
+should not keep him and them both," and returned to Edinburgh sick at
+heart to his Queen, who was not in very good health to cheer
+him&mdash;passing, no doubt, with a deepened sense of humiliation through the
+crowds which would throng about for news, and to whom the spectacle of
+their King thus returning discomfited was no pleasant <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">{250}</a></span>sight; if it were
+not, perhaps, that many among them had now begun to think all failures
+and disappointments were so many proofs of the displeasure of heaven
+against one who would not take upon him the office of reformer.</p>
+
+<p>When James heard soon after that his rebellious lords had disbanded
+their host, he collected a smaller army to revenge the ravages of
+Norfolk, issuing, according to Pitscottie, a proclamation bidding all
+who loved him be ready within twenty-four hours "to follow the King
+wherever he pleased to pass"; but even this new levy was little
+subordinate. After it had penetrated a little way into England a fatal
+mistake arose&mdash;an idea that Oliver Sinclair, the King's "minion," whom
+he had sent to read a manifesto to the army, had been appointed its
+general&mdash;upon which the new bands, disgusted in their turn, fell into a
+forced retreat, and getting involved in the broken ground of Solway Moss
+were there pursued and surrounded by the English, miserably defeated and
+put to flight. "There was but ane small number slain in the field," says
+Pitscottie, "to wit, there was slain on both sides but twenty-four,
+whereof was nine Scottishmen and fifteen Englishmen"; a very great
+number, however, were taken prisoners, many of the gentlemen, it is
+suggested, preferring captivity to the encounter of the King after such
+an inexcusable catastrophe. We are not told why it was that James had
+not himself taken the command of his army. He does not even seem to have
+accompanied it, perhaps fearing that personal opposition which was an
+insult to a king in those days.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"When these news came to the King of Scotland where he was for the
+time, how his lords were taken and had in England, and his army
+defaitt, he grew wondrous dollorous and pensive, seeing no good
+success to chance him over his enemies. Then he began to remord his
+conscience, and thought his misgovernance towards God had the wyte
+therof and was the principal cause of his misfortune; calling to
+mind how he had broken his promise to his uncle the King of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">{251}</a></span> England,
+and had lost the hearts of his nobles throw evil counsel and false
+flattery of his bishops, and those private counsellors and his
+courtiers, not regarding his wyse lords' counsels."</p></div>
+
+<p>"He passed to Edinburgh," adds the chronicler, "and there remained eight
+days with great dollour and lamentation for the tinsell (loss) of his
+lieges and shame to himself." Discouragement beyond the reach of mortal
+help or hope seemed to have taken hold of the unfortunate King. He saw
+himself alone, no one standing by him, his nobles hostile, his people
+indifferent; he had vowed that Scotland should not be broad enough to
+hold both them and him, but he had no power to carry out this angry
+threat. His life had been threatened in mysterious ways; he had lost his
+children, his confidence in himself and his fortunes; last and worst of
+all, he was dishonoured in the eyes of the world. His army had refused
+to advance, his soldiers to fight. He was the King, but able to give
+effect to none of a king's wishes&mdash;neither to punish his enemies nor to
+carry out his promises. He who had done so much for his realm could do
+no more. He who had ridden the Border further and swifter than any
+man-at-arms to carry the terror of justice and the sway of law&mdash;who had
+daunted the dauntless Highlands and held the fiercest chiefs in
+check&mdash;who had been courted by pope and emperor, and admired and feasted
+at the splendid Courts of France&mdash;he who had been the King of the
+Commons, the idol of the people&mdash;was now cast down and miserable, the
+most shamed and helpless of kings.</p>
+
+<p>There seems no reason why James should have so entirely lost heart.
+There had already been moments in his life when he had suffered sore
+discouragement and overthrow, yet never had been overcome. But now it is
+clear he felt himself at the end of his resources. How could he ever
+hold up his head again? a man who could not keep his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">{252}</a></span>own kingdom from
+invasion, or avenge himself upon his enemies! After he had lingered a
+little in Edinburgh, where the Queen was now near the moment which
+should give another heir to Scotland, he left the capital&mdash;perhaps to
+save her at such a time from the sight and the contagion of his
+despair&mdash;and crossed the Firth to Falkland, a place so associated with
+stirring passages in his career. But there his sickness of heart turned
+to illness of body; he became so "vehement sick" that his life was
+despaired of; he was "very near strangled to death by extreme
+melancholie." One hope remained, that the Queen might restore some
+confidence to his failing strength and mind by an heir to the crown,
+another James, for whom it might be worth while to live. James sent for
+some of his friends, "certain of his lords, both spiritual and
+temporal," to help him to bear this time of suspense, and advise him
+what might yet be done to set matters right, who surrounded him, as may
+be imagined, very anxiously, fearing the issue.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"By this the post came out of Linlithgow showing the King good
+tidings that the Queen was delivered. The King inquired whether it
+was man or woman. The messenger said it was ane fair dochter. The
+King answered and said, 'Farewell! it came with ane lass, and it
+will pass with ane lass,' and so commended himself to Almighty God,
+and spoke little from thereforth, but turned his back to his lords
+and his face to the wall."</p></div>
+
+<p>Even at this bitter moment, however, the dying Prince was not left alone
+with his last disappointment. Cardinal Beatoun, whose influence had been
+so inauspicious in his life, pressed forward, "seeing him begin to fail
+of his strength and natural speech," and thrust upon him a paper for his
+signature, "wherein the Cardinal had writ what he pleased for his own
+particular weill," evidently with some directions about the regency,
+that ordeal which Scotland, unhappily, had now again to go through. When
+James had put his dying hand to this authority, wrested from him in his
+last weakness, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">{253}</a></span>a faint light of peace seems to have fallen across his
+death-bed.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illus_030.jpg" width="600" height="381" alt="FALKLAND PALACE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">FALKLAND PALACE</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">{254}</a></span>"As I have shown you, he turned him upon his back, and looked and
+beheld his lords around about, and gave ane little lauchter, syne
+kissed his hand and gave it to all his lords about him, and
+thereafter held up his hands to God and yielded the spirit."</p></div>
+
+<p>There are many pathetic death scenes in history, but few more touching.
+His father, after a splendid and prosperous life, had fallen "in the
+lost battle, borne down by the flying;" he, after a career almost as
+chivalrous and splendid and full of noble work for his country, in a
+still more forlorn overthrow; his hopes all gone from him, his strength
+broken in his youth. Nothing, it would seem, could save these princes,
+so noble and so unfortunate. It was enough to bear the name of James
+Stewart to be weighed down by cruel Fate. But before his spirit shook
+off the mortal coil a ray of peace had shot through the clouds; he
+looked upon the anxious faces of his friends, some of whom at least must
+surely have been true friends, bound to him by comradeship and
+brotherhood, with that low laugh which is one of the most touching
+expressions of weakened and failing humanity&mdash;love and kindness in it,
+and a certain pleasure to see them round him; and yet to be free of it
+all&mdash;the heavy kingship, the hopes that ever failed, the friends that so
+rarely were true. The lips that touched that cold hand which he kissed
+before he gave to them must have trembled, perhaps with compunction, let
+us hope with some vow of fidelity to his memory and trust.</p>
+
+<p>Thus died the last of the five Jameses&mdash;the last in one sense of that
+unfortunate but gallant line. A life more swept by storms, more rent
+asunder by conflicting passions and influences, more tragic still and
+passionate than theirs, was to part them from the singularly changed,
+modified, and modernised successors who, with a difference, were to wear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">{255}</a></span>
+yet drop this ancient crown. The Stewarts after Mary are no longer like
+those that went before. James's dying words came in some curious fashion
+true, though not as he thought. It came with a lass and it went with a
+lass that ancient crown. When another James reached the throne Scotland
+was no more as it had been.</p>
+
+<p>It may seem a fantastic chronology to end here the records of the
+Stewards of Scotland: but it is I think justified by this change, which
+altered altogether the character of the history and the circumstances of
+the monarchs. Henceforward new agencies, new powers, were at work in the
+little proud and self-contained kingdom, which had maintained its
+independence and individuality so long. Torn asunder by rival
+influences, by intrigues incessant and profound, by that struggle
+between the old and the new which was never more desperate than in her
+bosom, and which, being a religious change chiefly, was one of life and
+death: and with a monarch no longer native, but of foreign training and
+thoughts, even if she had not been a woman and half a Tudor, the little
+ship of State, the gallant little nation, plunged amid waves and
+billows, not unfamiliar, indeed, but fiercer and wilder than ever
+before, with winds so much increased in force as they raged over wider
+seas.</p>
+
+<p>The Stewards of Scotland here ended their special trust and gave in
+their account. No race was ever more unfortunate, but I think we may say
+that none more nobly endeavoured to discharge that high commission. With
+one exception, and that doubtful&mdash;for a man may be weak and may not be
+brave without being a bad man or even king&mdash;every bearer of this fated
+name laboured with courage and constancy at the great work of elevating
+his country. "Another for Hector!" cried the Highland warrior when his
+young chief was in danger, and all the world has read the story with
+moistened eyes. Another for Scotland! had been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">{256}</a></span>the cry of the house of
+Stewart throughout more than a century. As one man fell he handed the
+sword to another; to an infant hand trained amid feuds and anarchy, but
+always clasping, as soon as it had force enough, the royal weapon with
+royal courage and meaning. None of the Jameses lived beyond the earliest
+chapter of middle age; all of them succeeded in early youth, most of
+them in childhood; and, with but that uncertain exception of James III,
+every one of them was actuated by a noble patriotism, and did his
+<i>devoir</i> manfully for the improvement and development of his country.
+They were noble gentlemen one and all: the bigotry, the egotism, the
+obstinacy of the later Stewarts were not in them. Knights and paladins
+of an age of romance, they were also stern executors of justice, bold
+innovators, with eyes ever open to every expedient of progress and
+prosperity. Their faults were those faults of a light heart and genial
+temperament, which are the most easily understood and pardoned. Under
+their sway their country and their little capital came to be known over
+Christendom as not unworthy to hold place among the reigning kingdoms
+and cities through which the stream of chivalry flowed. They invented
+the trade, the shipping, the laws and civic order of Scotland. Among her
+heroes there are none more worthy of everlasting remembrance. They
+fulfilled their stewardry with a unity of purpose and a steadfastness of
+aim which, when we take into account the continually recurring lapses of
+long minorities, is one of the wonders of the time. Edinburgh grew under
+their sway from an angry village, lying between a fierce castle and a
+rich monastery, little distinguished above its peers, less favoured than
+Stirling, less wealthy than the town of St. John, to one of the most
+noted of cities, picturesque and splendid, full of noble houses, the
+centre of national life and government. And it is curious to record that
+no one of the monarchs who brought it such <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">{257}</a></span>nobility and fame left any
+sadness of death to the associations of Edinburgh. They lived and were
+wedded and filled with the brightness of their happier moments the town
+which afforded so beautiful a scene for all rejoicings: they died on the
+field of battle or in other places in conflict or violence or despair.
+But Edinburgh only retains the brighter memories, the triumphal
+processions, the bridal finery, the jousts and the feasts, the
+Parliaments and proclamations of laws and high alliances. The reigns of
+the Jameses contain the history of her rise, her splendour, her climax
+of beauty and stateliness, without any association of downfall or decay.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">{258}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_III" id="PART_III"></a>PART III<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">THE TIME OF THE PROPHETS</span></h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I_II" id="CHAPTER_I_II"></a>CHAPTER I<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">UNDER THE QUEEN REGENT</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>There is perhaps among the many historical personages attached by close
+association to Edinburgh no one so living, so vigorous, so present, as
+the great figure of the Reformer and Prophet, who once filled the air
+with echoes of his vehement and impassioned oratory, who led both Lords
+and Commons, and mated with princes on more than equal terms, the
+headstrong, powerful, passionate Preacher, who was at once the leading
+spirit of his time and its most vigorous chronicler. To fill the circle
+of association, he alone, of all the animated groups who withstood or
+who followed him, has left us not only a number of books which disclose
+his mind with all its powers and imperfections, but the very dwelling in
+which he passed at least the latter part of his life, intact and
+authentic, a memorial more striking and attractive than any "storied urn
+or animated bust." Nor are even the associations of burial wanting; for
+though it is no longer within the solemn enclosure of a churchyard, and
+there is no certainty that the stone which is supposed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">{259}</a></span>to mark the
+position of the Reformer's grave is historically exact, it is yet sure
+enough that near by, within reach of the doors of his ancient church,
+beneath the pavement trodden by so many feet, his remains repose in the
+centre of the life of the Scottish capital, a position more appropriate
+than any other that could be imagined. Thus by life and by death this
+singular and most evident and unmistakable man, still alive in every
+lineament, is connected with the city in which his life was passed, and
+in the history of which he can never be forgotten. There may be doubts
+about other localities, and it may be difficult to identify the houses
+which have been inhabited and the floors that have been trod by other
+distinguished personages. Crowding footsteps of the poor have
+obliterated the record in many a noble house abandoned by history; even
+the fated steps of the Queen save in one bloodstained closet have left
+but little authentic trace. But Knox is still present with all the force
+of an indestructible individuality&mdash;in the existing life of the country
+which took so strong an impression from him, and in the absolutely
+personal facts of the church in which he preached, the house in which he
+lived, the stone under which he lies.</p>
+
+<p>To estimate the share he had in the foundations of that modern Scotland
+which has so increased and thriven since his day, is perhaps more hard
+now than it was even eighty years ago, when his biography was written by
+Dr. M'Crie to the great interest and enthusiasm of the country. The laws
+of historical judgment are subject to perpetual change, and the general
+estimate of the great personages of the past has undergone various
+modifications since that time. Perhaps even the Church is less sure of
+her share in the record, less certain of the doom once so unhesitatingly
+denounced against "the Paip that Pagan fu' of pride"; less confident of
+her own superiority to all other developments of Christianity. The least
+enlightened are no longer able to feel with a good <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">{260}</a></span>conscience, as our
+best instructed fathers did, that an important part of religious liberty
+was freedom to curse and pull down every tenet other than their own. No
+belief has been more obstinate or is more time-honoured: but in theory
+at least it has been much subdued in recent times, so that few of us are
+able to hold by our own side with the perfect confidence which once we
+felt. And in these changing views, and in the impulse towards a greater
+catholicity of feeling which has sprung up in Scotland, the influence of
+that uncompromising teacher to whom reform was everything, who had no
+prepossession in favour of what was old and venerable, but desired with
+all the fervour of his fiery soul to make everything new, has doubtless
+waned, save to that sacred simplicity of ignorance which forms no
+judgment. But nothing can obliterate the person and strenuous being of
+John Knox, or make him a less interesting figure on the crowded and
+tragic stage of that epoch which he dominated and chronicled. And
+nothing can unlink the associations which make him ever present and
+living in Edinburgh, which was the capital and centre of his kingdom as
+much as of any king who ever breathed.</p>
+
+<p>John Knox was in every sense of the words a son of the soil, yet came of
+a not unknown family, "kent folk" of East Lothian: if not lairds of any
+great heritage, yet possessing lands and living sufficient to entitle
+them to consideration. They were able to give him the best education of
+the time, which he completed at the University of Glasgow under the
+teaching of Major or Mair, the same whom George Buchanan accompanied to
+France; so that both these great men, as well as various nobles and
+ecclesiastics of the time, were his fellow-students, trained under the
+same influence. Whether Knox followed Major to St. Andrews as Buchanan
+followed him to Paris is not known; but he would seem to have lectured
+on philosophy in St. Andrews at the beginning of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">{261}</a></span>his career. It might be
+that he was himself present, and heard some of the bold and familiar
+addresses of the wandering friars, the first rude champions of Reform,
+whose protest against the wickedness of the bishops and the extortions
+of the clergy he quotes with so much enjoyment of their rough humour, in
+the beginning of his history; or even might have witnessed the lighted
+pile and felt across his face the breath of that "reek" which carried
+spiritual contagion with it, as it flew upon the keen breeze from the
+sea over that little centre of life, full of scholars and wits, and keen
+cynical spectators little likely to be convinced by any such means. It
+is curious to hear of Major for instance, one of the Sorbonne, a doctor
+of Paris and man of the world, as present at all those proceedings,
+listening to Friar William's denunciation of the priests, to which he
+gave his assent as "a doctrine that might weill be defended, for it
+contayned no heresye"&mdash;and in very different circumstances to the
+sermons of Rough, addressed to the slayers of the Cardinal, and to the
+calling of Knox himself, a crisis of popular emotion and vehement
+feeling. Such a man as Major, a son of the Renaissance, no Reformer nor
+careful of any of these things, must have looked on with strange
+feelings at all the revolutions accomplished before him, the rude jests
+and songs, the half-jocular broadly humorous assaults, the cry of
+heresy, the horror of the burnings, the deadly earnest of both preacher
+and people after Beatoun's well-deserved but terrible end which cut all
+compromises short. One wonders what thoughts were going on in the mind
+of the old scholar who kept his place in his stall as well when mass was
+sung as when every trace of that "idolatrous sacrifice" had been trodden
+under foot. Would it be more or less the same to him whatever they
+preached, those wild religionists, who tore each other in pieces? did he
+look on with a secret smile at the turmoil they made, as if <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">{262}</a></span>it mattered
+which was uppermost, with a natural horror at the fierce flames of the
+human sacrifice, yet consent in his mind that if they could so stamp the
+heresy out which would otherwise destroy them, the bishops were only
+logical to do it? while on the other side there was not much in point of
+natural justice to be said against Norman Leslie and his men who slew
+the Cardinal. Such spectators there must have been in no small number,
+affording a curious rim and edge of observers to all that the more
+active and violent might do or say. But these lookers-on have said
+nothing on the subject, or their mild voices have been lost in the
+clangour of actors vehement and earnest. It has been reserved for our
+age to bring these dispassionate or, as we are apt to think, cynical
+observers into the front rank.</p>
+
+<p>The first scene in which John Knox comes prominently into sight of the
+world occurs in the midst of that small but urgent and much-agitated
+society on the fierce little headland by the sea, in the great and noble
+cathedral which for most of the intervening time has been nothing but
+ruins. We must in imagination rebuild these lofty walls, throw up again
+the noble piers and clustered pillars, and see the townsfolk streaming
+in&mdash;a crowd more picturesque in garb than any Scots assembly nowadays,
+with its provost and councillors in their municipal finery: and the
+grave representatives of the colleges filing in to their stalls&mdash;very
+grave now, we may well believe, with many a look at the group of gentry,
+among whom were half a dozen men whose hands were stained with the blood
+of the Cardinal. No doubt to these spectators, beyond even the great
+volume of sound which pealed upward from that vast company, in some
+popular hymn or ancient war-cry of a psalm, the stir of the languid
+besieging army outside, and the guns of the French Fleet, already on its
+way to avenge Beatoun and crush this nest of heretics out, sounded
+ominous in the background. Among <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">{263}</a></span>the congregation was a dark, vehement
+man, full of repressed fervour and energy, with two or three lads by his
+side, of whom he had charge&mdash;strange tutor! flames of zeal and
+earnestness burning in his deep-set eyes; the mark of the tonsure (if it
+was ever there, which is a doubtful question) obliterated by long
+disuse; a man known by the congregation as a zealous instructor of
+youth, catechising his boys publicly of afternoons in the cathedral,
+vacant then of the many services, the vespers and benedictions, of the
+superseded faith.</p>
+
+<p>Knox's gifts and qualities were already well known; he had been a
+devoted friend and follower of Wishart, the martyr whose memory was
+still fresh in the minds of all men; and these public examinations of
+the three boys, and the expositions he addressed to them, but which many
+of mature age also gathered to hear, had given the many competent judges
+then assembled in the beleaguered city a practical knowledge of his
+gifts and endowments. And Rough, who filled the post of preacher in St.
+Andrews, was not a man of learning, and in consequence would seem to
+have been troubled by disputatious members of the priesthood, eager, not
+unnaturally, to defend their own tenets, and with all the authorities at
+their fingers' ends. In this strait John Knox was entreated to accept
+the charge of the congregation, but in vain. Perhaps the memory of
+Wishart's charge to him, "Return to your bairns," was still in his ears;
+perhaps the reluctance and hesitation of a man who felt himself
+incompetent for so great a responsibility&mdash;though it is strange to
+associate any idea of shrinking from responsibility with such a
+dauntless spirit, and he was by this time a man of forty-two, with a
+matured mind and some experience of life. At all events he "utterlie
+refused": he "would not run where God had not called him." This being
+so, there was no alternative but to take him by surprise and force him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">{264}</a></span>
+into the position which all desired him to assume. And this was the step
+which was accordingly taken by the assembly of the Reformers in St.
+Andrews, an assembly in which were many well-known and distinguished
+men, so illustrious a councillor as Sir David Lindsay, the poet and
+Lyon-King of Scotland, being one of the gentlemen and commoners who
+decided upon this dramatic and picturesque call.</p>
+
+<p>They were all met to the preaching upon a certain day, the date of which
+is not given, but which was presumably in the summer of 1547, Knox
+having arrived with his pupils in St. Andrews in the Easter of that
+year. The principal persons present were aware of what was coming, and
+probably the mass of the congregation knew that some event more than
+ordinary was preparing, which would quicken the eagerness of their
+attention. The sermon was upon the right of the congregation to the
+services of "any man in whom they espied the gifts of God," and the risk
+on his part of refusing their call. Mair, sitting by in his doctor's
+gown, though he had committed himself to no religious heresy, had
+discoursed much to his students upon the rights of the people as the
+source of power&mdash;a doctrine, indeed, which Knox did not hold in that
+naked form, though most probably he had been influenced by these
+teachings towards the still more tremendous form of doctrine which sets
+forth the voice of the Christian people as representing the voice of
+God. And no doubt up to this point he gave his adhesion to the words of
+the preacher. But when Rough had reached the crown of his argument he
+suddenly turned to where Knox sat and addressed him individually, while
+the people held their breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Brother," he said, "ye shall not be offended albeit that I speak unto
+you that which I have in charge even from all those that are here
+present: which is this. In the name of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">{265}</a></span>God and of His Son Jesus Christ,
+and in the name of those that presently call you by my mouth, I charge
+you that ye refuse not this holy vocation, but that as you tender the
+glory of God, the increase of Christ His kingdom, the edification of
+your brethren, and the comfort of me, whom ye understand well enough to
+be oppressed by the multitude of labours, that you take upon you the
+public office and charge of preaching even as ye look to avoid God's
+heavy displeasure and desire that He shall multiply His grace with you."
+And in the end he said to those present, "Was not this your charge to
+me? and do ye not approve this vocation?" They answered, "It was, and we
+approve it." "Whereat the said John, abashed, burst forth in most
+abundant tears and withdrew himself to his chamber."</p>
+
+<p>It would be difficult to find a more striking scene. Any sudden incident
+of an individual character thus occurring in a public assembly calls
+forth a thrill of interest, and gives at once to the most disconnected
+crowd a pictorial unity. The interest and excitement in those roused and
+eager eyes, the crowd all turned towards the astonished subject of this
+appeal, the soft young faces making a little circle round him, half
+terrified, half flattered by the sudden consciousness that all eyes were
+turned towards them, would make a fine theme for a historical painter.
+And "the said John, abashed," finding no refuge in the great excitement
+and surprise of the moment, he so stern and so strong, but in tears! It
+was thus that the ministry of the great Reformer began.</p>
+
+<p>It is unnecessary to follow in detail a career so well known. Every
+particular of it, and even the sermons with all their heads, may be
+found in the <i>Historie of the Reformation in Scotland</i>, which yields in
+interest, in picturesqueness and the most living and graphic power of
+narrative, to none of the primitive chronicles. No professional
+word-painter has ever put a dramatic scene, a contention, a battle, such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">{266}</a></span>
+as those which were everyday occurrences in Scotland at that time, upon
+paper with more pictorial force, or with half the fervour of life and
+reality. The writer goes through all the gamut of popular passion. He
+exults sometimes fiercely, laughs sometimes coarsely, throws in "a merry
+jest," which is often grim with savage humour; but throughout all is
+always real, always genuine, writing not impartially, but with the
+strong conviction and sentiment of a man elucidating matters in which he
+has been himself a prominent actor. The arguments of his adversaries
+when he enters upon a public controversy are unaccountably feeble, which
+perhaps may be explained by the fact that the friars were not much
+accustomed to controversy, perhaps by the natural bias of a
+controversialist to lessen the force of his antagonists' arguments; and
+he does not pretend to contemplate his adversaries, either spiritual or
+political, with any tolerance, or permit any possibility that they too
+might perhaps mean well and have a righteous intention, even though it
+was entirely opposed to that of John Knox: such ideas had no currency in
+his day. That Mary of Guise might really mean and wish to avoid
+bloodshed, to strike no blow that was not inevitable, to keep the breach
+from being widened by actual civil war; and that the policy of
+temporising as long as that was possible was anything but wicked wiles
+and intentions of betrayal, was an idea which he would seem to have been
+incapable of conceiving. This is a drawback perhaps common to every
+struggle so important and fundamental as was the strife which began to
+rage in Scotland. Had we a history compiled by the spectators to whom we
+have referred it would probably, unless nature gave them an exceptional
+keenness of vision, be wanting in those qualities of animation and force
+which he who is confident of having every good influence on his side,
+and nothing but the powers of evil against him, is likely to possess.
+Major indeed was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">{267}</a></span>a historian, but he did not meddle with the history of
+his own time; and Buchanan, while separated from the reader by the bonds
+and cerements of his Latin, and therefore shut out from a popular
+audience, is as great a partisan as Knox.</p>
+
+<p>The little garrison of St. Andrews was taken, as everybody knows, by the
+French, and carried away to prison and the galleys; but no blood was
+shed to avenge the blood of Beatoun, a point which ought to be put to
+their credit. John Knox suffered all these misfortunes with a steadfast
+soul, still declaring to all who surrounded him, in the extremity of
+suffering, hardship, and sickness, that he should again preach in that
+Church of St. Andrews from which he had been taken. This is the first of
+the many prophecies completely verified afterwards with which he is
+credited. He escaped after about three years of captivity and misery in
+France, during which he would seem to have been actually employed in the
+galleys, and came to England, where it is to be supposed the story of
+his influence and power with the Scotch Reformers had preceded him,
+otherwise the advancement to which he reached, and which might have been
+greater but for his dissatisfaction with the imperfectly Reformed Church
+there, and the bondage of ceremonials and traditions still left in it,
+would have been still more extraordinary. He was one of the chaplains to
+the boy-king Edward, for whom he had the amiable prejudice common to
+those who secure the favour of very young princes, expecting from him
+everything that was great and good. At the death of the young King,
+however, Knox removed hurriedly to the Continent with many others,
+knowing that under the reign of Mary there would be little acceptance
+for men of his views. During his stay in England he had met with a pair
+of ladies who were henceforward to be very closely connected with his
+life&mdash;Marjory <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">{268}</a></span>Bowes, his future wife, and to all appearance still more
+important her mother, Mrs. Bowes, to whom, contrary to the ordinary idea
+of that relationship, he seems to have given much regard and affection,
+notwithstanding that she was a melancholy woman, depressed and
+despondent, sometimes overwhelmed with religious terrors, and requiring
+continued support and encouragement in the faith. One cannot help
+feeling a sort of compassion for the silent Marjory, of whom nothing is
+ever heard, between her solemn lover of fifty and her sad mother. But
+she is voiceless, and though there are letters of religious counsel
+addressed to her under the title of "weill belovit sister," there is not
+among them all, so strange is the abstract effect of religious
+exhortation thus applied, one gleam of anything like individual
+character, or which can throw any light upon what she was; which,
+considering the marked individuality of the writer, is curious
+exceedingly. We must hope that on other occasions, notwithstanding his
+mature years, there were letters calculated to give more satisfaction to
+a young woman than these expositions and addresses.</p>
+
+<p>For the next two years Knox, now it is evident universally known
+wherever the Reformation had penetrated, filled the place of minister to
+a congregation of exiles assembled at Geneva, most of them refugees from
+England, who had fled, as he himself had done, at the accession of Mary.
+But his heart was in his own land, where in the meantime the progress of
+the new Reformed faith was arrested, and silence and discouragement had
+fallen over the country. The leaders were dispersed or destroyed, the
+preachers silenced, and there was no one to gather together the many
+groups of believers all over the country in whose hearts the seed had
+sprung up strongly, but who as yet had made no public profession. In
+1555 Knox suddenly reappeared in Scotland, brought thither at once by
+urgent letters and by the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">{269}</a></span>eagerness of his own heart. When he arrived in
+Edinburgh he found that many who "had a zeal to godliness" still
+attended mass, probably finding it more difficult to break the continual
+habit of their lives than the bonds of doctrine&mdash;and that the outer
+structure of the Church remained much as it had been, without any such
+shattering and falling asunder as had taken place in regions more
+advanced. That this arose from no want of zeal was proved as soon as the
+preacher appeared: for his arrival was no sooner known than the house in
+which he had alighted from his journey was filled by a stream of
+inquirers, whom he "began to exhort secretly." One night he was called
+to supper with the Laird of Dun, the well-known John Erskine, who was
+one of the most earnest of the Reforming party, and in the grave company
+he found there&mdash;among whom were one or two ministers and the young but
+already promising and eminent William Maitland of Lethington&mdash;the
+question was fully discussed, Was it lawful to conform while holding a
+faith not only different but hostile? was it permissible to bow down in
+the house of Rimmon? To this Knox answered No, with all the
+uncompromising and stern sincerity of his soul. "Nowise was it lawful."
+The question was very fully defended from the other point of view.
+"Nothing was omitted that might make for the temporiser"; even the
+example of Paul, who went up into the Temple to pay his vow by the
+advice of the Apostle James, which step, however, Knox pronounced at
+once, notwithstanding his absolute reverence for Holy Writ, to have been
+wrong, and not of God&mdash;a mistake of both the Apostles, and manifestly
+bringing no blessing with it. His bold and assured argument cut the
+ground from under the feet of the hesitating Reformers, to whom no doubt
+it was very difficult thus to break away from all the traditions of
+their lives.</p>
+
+<p>This scene throws a strange and in some respects new <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">{270}</a></span>light upon the more
+human side of the great movement. It is easier perhaps to us who are
+acquainted with all that followed to understand the fiery zeal which
+flamed against every accessory of what they conceived to be
+idolatry&mdash;the saintly image, which was nothing but a painted board, and
+the "round clipped god" upon the altar which was blasphemously asserted
+to be the very Lord Himself&mdash;than to remember that these men had also
+many links of use and wont, of attachment and habit, to the churches in
+which they had been christened, and the position, with all its needs and
+simple duties, to which they had been born. To see them standing there
+for a moment reluctant, with the tremendous breach that must be made in
+life gaping before them, and the sense of universal disruption and
+tearing asunder which must follow, is to me more touching than the stern
+conviction which never pauses nor fears. They were so thoroughly
+convinced, however, of the necessity which he reasoned out with such
+remorseless logic, that Erskine first, and after him many gentlemen
+through Scotland, craved the help of the preacher to put the crown upon
+their convictions, and spread in their halls and private chambers, no
+church being attainable, what was now for the first time called the
+Table of the Lord. Knox went to Dun in Forfarshire across the great
+firths of Forth and Tay, and to Calder, the house of Sir James
+Sandilands, afterwards Lord Torphichen, in Lothian, where many gathered
+to hear him. But it would seem to have been in the West, always the most
+strenuous in doctrine, that he first celebrated the new rite, the holy
+feast as yet unknown in Scotland. During the eventful winter of 1555-56
+he pervaded the country thus, setting forth the special bond of
+evangelical religion, uniting those different groups by the sacred seal
+of the bread and wine&mdash;who can doubt received with a profound and
+tremulous awe by lips to which the wafer had been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">{271}</a></span>hitherto the only
+symbol of that act of closest communion?</p>
+
+<p>This would seem to have been the chief work of Knox during the visit
+which, in the midst of his Geneva ministry, he paid to his native land:
+and it is easy to perceive that it was of supreme importance as
+identifying and separating the converts into a definite community, bound
+together by that sacrament of fealty, an oath more binding than any
+expressed only in words. Hitherto the preaching and teaching of the
+Word, which was itself a discovery, and came with all the freshness of a
+new revelation, had been the only sacred office carried on by the
+Reformers. The Sacraments were all in the hands of ecclesiastics, who
+had been for generations past losing the confidence and respect of the
+nation&mdash;though one cannot but believe there must still have been here
+and there a humble curate, a parish priest like Chaucer's Parsoune, to
+strengthen the hold of the accustomed ordinances upon men's minds, who,
+however strongly they might turn against the miracle of
+transubstantiation, could not cast aside the only means of partaking in
+the great mystery of the body and blood of Christ. To all such here was
+now the answer set forth, and the hope&mdash;the holy Table, the communion of
+saints, the bread and wine of the great and ceaseless commemoration. It
+would be doing the greatest wrong to these small devout assemblies, and
+to the fervent preacher, devoured with eagerness to make them all, not
+almost but altogether such men as himself, to call this an act of
+policy. Yet that it was so, and that a bond was thus established to
+consolidate the party, more sacred, more binding than any other, there
+can be no reasonable doubt.</p>
+
+<p>While travelling on this solemn mission from place to place and house to
+house of the religious gentry of Scotland, Knox would seem to have made
+Edinburgh his headquarters, and preached there from time to time, not
+always <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">{272}</a></span>secretly. He had here "a greater audience than ever before" in
+"the Bishop of Dunkeld's great lodging," that ancient habitation from
+which Gawin Douglas, the poet-bishop, had watched and waited while the
+fight went on within the gates of the Nether Bow, and from which he
+rushed out to rescue the other prelate whose corslet rang under his
+rochet. Strange association, yet not inappropriate; for the mild Bishop
+of Dunkeld had also found many potent words to say against the abuses of
+the Church, though the new presbyter who now took his place was rather
+of Beatoun's warlike mettle than of Douglas's. The nobles who came
+thither to hear the preacher were so "weill contented" with his
+doctrine&mdash;which is his own moderate version of what was no doubt an
+enthusiasm of grave approbation&mdash;that they seem to have imagined, in
+that solemn simplicity which belongs to fresh conviction, that he might
+perchance, could she but hear him, move the Regent Queen herself, Mary
+of Guise, an unlikely convert no doubt. He was accordingly exhorted by
+three gentlemen, specified as the Earl of Glencairn, the Earl Marischal,
+and Harye Drummond, to write a letter to the Queen, which Knox, always
+eager for the pen, and full of matter boiling to have utterance,
+immediately did. It is difficult not to think of the <i>sancta
+simpilicitas</i>, which rarely belongs to such a group of men, when we
+think of the grave trio of advisers, and the still graver but fiery
+prophet-preacher, making this wonderful appeal. It was less wonderful in
+him who loved nothing so much as to write when he could not be
+preaching, to set forth those high-handed arraignments before the
+visionary tribunal of the one true and only faith, of whomsoever he
+could address, queen or peasant; but it is strange that men of the
+world, and of the society of their time, should have thus thought it
+possible to convert a lady so full of policy and cares of government, so
+entirely occupied with the most important <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">{273}</a></span>matters of statesmanship, not
+to say so determined a Catholic, as the daughter of the Guises, the
+sister of the Cardinal.</p>
+
+<p>The attempt, as was natural, failed completely. "Which letter," resumes
+Knox, "when she had read within a day or two she delivered it to the
+proud prelate, Beatoun, Bishop of Glasgow, and said in mockage, 'Please
+you, my lord, to read a pasquill?'" It is against the perfection of the
+prophet, but not the character of the man, that this scorn stung him as
+no persecution could have done. He made certain additions to the letter,
+and published it in Geneva on his return there. We are not told which
+part of the letter these additions are, but what he tells us seems to
+indicate that the threatening prophesies, of which he says in his
+<i>Historie</i>, "lett those very flatterers see what hath failed," had been
+added to the original text. We forgive him his ready wrath, and even the
+"threatenings" which he always considered himself at liberty to launch
+at those who, in his own language, "withstood the truth": but we could
+have wished that Knox had been more magnanimous, and could have
+forgotten the offence after the passage of years. Mary's careless speech
+would have been but "ane merry boord" had it been directed against one
+of his enemies.</p>
+
+<p>When Knox went back to Geneva after this winter's work to resume his
+pastorate there, he left the growing cause of Reform in Scotland with a
+constitution and organisation sanctified by the most sacred rites of
+religion, an advantage quite inestimable in the circumstances, and
+placing the cause as in an ark of safety. And when he returned to
+Edinburgh two years later, the scattered groups to whom in country
+houses and castles he had administered the Lord's Supper had become the
+Congregation, an army existing in all quarters of Scotland, ready to
+rally to the aid of any portion of the body, or eminent individual, who
+might be attacked: and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">{274}</a></span>headed by a phalanx of Scots nobility, Lords of
+the Congregation, the heads of a new party in the State, as well as of a
+new Church, an altogether novel development of national life. It would
+have been difficult to have spoken more boldly than Knox had done in his
+letter to the Queen Regent three years before, but the Congregation in
+its established position as a national party took stronger ground, and
+pressed their claims to a hearing with a force of petitioners too strong
+to be gainsaid. Knox had called upon Mary herself in her own person to
+hear the Word and abjure her errors, but the body of Reformers asked for
+measures more comprehensive and still more subversive of the established
+order of things. In their first address to Mary they upbraided
+themselves, with a manly penitence which must have been bewildering to
+royal ears, that they had permitted their brethren in the faith to be
+destroyed by "faggot fyre and sword" without resistance. "We acknowledge
+it," said these strange petitioners, "to have been our bounden duty
+before God either to have defended our brethren from those cruel
+murtherers (seeing we are a part of that power which God hath
+established in this realm) or else to have given open testification of
+our faith with them." This, however, being no longer in their power,
+they besought the Queen to make such horrible accidents impossible in
+the future, and to grant to them permission to establish their worship;
+to meet publicly or privately to make their common prayer, and read the
+Scriptures in the vulgar tongue; to have the assistance of "qualified
+persons in knowledge" to expound to them "any hard places of Scripture,"
+and to have the Sacraments administered "in the vulgar tongue," and the
+Lord's Supper in both kinds. Last of all they desired of the Queen that
+"the wicked, scandalous, and detestable life of prelates and of the
+State Ecclesiastical" should be reformed, stating at the same time <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">{275}</a></span>their
+wish to have the case between themselves and the priests tried not only
+by the rules of the New Testament, but by the writings of the ancient
+Fathers. In all this there was no intolerance, but a wholly just and
+reasonable prayer, suggesting harm to no one, not even the persecutors
+from whom they had suffered; altogether a claim of justice and native
+right magnanimously as well as forcibly made, with dignified
+recollection of their own position as "a part of that power which God
+hath established in this realm," to which it would have been difficult
+for any reasonable sovereign to return a discourteous or imperious
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>Mary of Guise did no such thing. She did not receive the address of the
+Congregation as she had done the letter of Knox. But she did what was
+worse, she gave no answer at all save fair words and delay. It would
+have been perhaps too much to expect that even those moderate and manly
+petitioners should have taken into consideration the complicated
+circumstances by which she was surrounded, or the difficulties of her
+position, with the "State Ecclesiastical" so strong and wealthy,
+arbiters for the moment of her faith, and France and her kindred
+expectant of impossible things from her, and Rome itself regarding with
+a watchful eye what a Princess of so Catholic a family&mdash;defender of the
+faith in a distant but at this moment exceedingly important
+field&mdash;should do. Mary temporised, which was perhaps the best thing
+possible for the Reformers if not for herself, and promised to take
+order, to regulate matters for their advantage so soon as it was
+possible, when she should have concluded various matters of more
+importance that were in hand, such, for instance, as that of awarding
+the crown matrimonial to her daughter's husband the young King of
+France, to whom all earthly distinctions were soon to matter so little.
+During this period of delay the Reformers were left unmolested to
+multiply and mature, so that when her other business was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">{276}</a></span>despatched, and
+the Queen could no longer avoid some action in the matter, the
+Congregation had attained both numbers and power. When the preachers
+were summoned to appear before her to plead their own cause "it was
+concluded by the whole brethren that the gentlemen of every county
+should accompany their preachers to the day and place appointed." This
+was a proceeding entirely sanctioned by Scotch custom, of which there
+were many historical examples, but it was not perhaps calculated to
+promote the ends of peaceful discussion; for the gentlemen thus
+described were accompanied by their households at least, if not by a
+stout following of retainers, and the result was the assemblage of "such
+a multitude" that even the leaders considered it likely to have "given
+fear" to the Queen, although this multitude was, as the record says,
+with a gleam of grim humour, "without armour as peciable men, minding
+only to give confession with their preachers." Mary wisely interposed
+another period of delay when she was warned what the "peaceable" escort
+was with which the preachers were obeying her call.</p>
+
+<p>It was, however, as little safe to let loose such an army of confessors
+through the country which had to be traversed before they could reach
+their homes, as to receive them in Stirling where the appointment had
+been. For, mild as was their purpose and godly their intentions, it
+proved too much for the sense and moderation even of that religious
+crowd when they found themselves on their way northward masters of St.
+Johnstone (or Perth, as moderns call it) with the fumes of a sermon of
+Knox's still in their brain, and a report about that the Queen meant to
+put the preachers "to the horn," for all so softly spoken as she was.
+Knox's sermon had been "vehement against idolatrie," though preached in
+a church still wealthy and bright with all the adornments of the ancient
+faith, and in which, as the crowd dispersed, a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">{277}</a></span>priest appeared in his
+vestments to say his mass. It gives us a curious impression of the chaos
+that reigned, to hear that in the town, which was full to overflowing of
+this Protestant crowd, and in the very church which still rang with the
+echoes of Knox's vehement oratory, he who had no words strong enough to
+denounce that idolatrous rite&mdash;there should come forth in the calm of
+use and wont a nameless humble priest with his acolyte to say the mass,
+which was his bounden duty whatever obstacles might be in his way. The
+manner in which it is recorded, with the violent antagonism of the time,
+is this&mdash;"That a priest in contempt would go to the masse; and to
+declare his malignant presumption he would open up ane glorious
+tabernacle which stood upon the Hie altar." On the other side no doubt
+the tale would be, that with the faith and courage of a holy martyr this
+venerable confessor ascended the steps of the altar to give his life, if
+needful, for the holy mysteries, and fulfil his sacred office whoever
+might oppose. And which was the more true version who can tell? On
+neither side would it be believed, what was probably the fact, that it
+was a simple brother taking little thought of the commotions round him,
+who, as soon as the clamour of the preaching was over, concerned with
+nothing but his mass which had to be said during canonical hours, had
+come in without other intention to perform his daily duty.</p>
+
+<p>But in any case, the sight of the glorious tabernacle filled with a fury
+of excitement the dregs of the crowd who still lingered there. A child's
+outcry, more "malapert" than the priest, called the attention of the
+lingerers, and before any one knew, the passion of destruction had
+seized like a frenzy upon the people. They flung themselves upon the
+"glorious tabernacle," and all the statues and adornments, and laid them
+in swift and sudden ruin. The rumour flew through the town, along with
+the shouts and crash of metal and stone; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">{278}</a></span>and the remainder of the
+lately-dispersed multitude came rushing back to the church which was the
+scene of the outbreak, a mob "not of the gentlemen, neither of them that
+were earnest professors, but of the rasckall multitude," which finding
+nothing to do in the stripped walls and chapels, hurried on, led, no
+doubt, by the first of the iconoclasts, who had become intoxicated with
+the frenzy of destruction, to the convents of the Grey and the Black
+Friars. Their violence grew as they passed on, from one scene of
+destruction to another, many of them finding substantial inducements in
+the shape of booty, in the well-filled meal-girnels and puncheons of
+salt beef in the larders of the monks. By the time they came to these it
+may be presumed that the special rage against idolatry had been
+assuaged; but the demon of destruction had taken its place. And when the
+excited multitude reached the noble Charterhouse with all its
+picturesque buildings, "the fairest abbaye and best biggit of any within
+the realm of Scotland," surrounded by pleasant gardens and noble trees,
+every restraint was thrown aside. It had been founded by James I., and
+there lay the remains of his murdered body along with those of many
+other royal victims of the stormy and tumultuous past. So much
+conscience was left that the terrified monks, or at least the Prior who
+is specially mentioned, was allowed to take away with him as much silver
+and gold as he was able to carry. The rest was beaten down into
+indiscriminating ruin, and "within two days these three great places,
+monuments of idolatrie, to wit the Grey and Black thieves and
+Charterhouse monks (a building of a wondrous cost and greatness), were
+so destroyed that the walls only did remain of all these great
+edifications."</p>
+
+<p>That this was in no way the doing of Knox and his colleagues is evident;
+but it is equally evident that they treated it as a mere accident and
+outrage of the mob, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">{279}</a></span>without consequence so far as the greater question
+was concerned. When the Queen, exasperated, threatened in her anger on
+the receipt of the news to destroy St. Johnstone, and began to collect
+an army to march upon the offenders, the Congregation assembled in Perth
+professed astonishment and incredulity, treating her threats as the mere
+utterances of passion, and thinking "such cruelty" impossible. There is
+not a word in the letters to the Queen's Majestie, to the Nobilitie of
+Scotland, and the fierce address to the priests in which they afterwards
+stated their case, of any wrong on their own side or provocation given.
+The Congregation takes at once the highest tone. They declare that,
+faithful servants of the realm as they have always been, if this unjust
+tyranny is carried out they will be constrained to take up the sword of
+just defence, notifying at the same time their innocence not only to
+"the King of France, to our Mistress and to her husband, but also to the
+Princes and Council of everie Christian realm, declaring unto them that
+this cruel, unjust, and most tyrannical murther intended against towns
+and multitudes, was and is the only cause of our revolt from our
+accustomed obedience." Thus they treat the threatened attack throughout
+as wholly directed against their religion and religious freedom, without
+the least reference to the just cause of offence given by riots so
+alarming and destructive, and by the ruin of a national monument so
+important as the Charterhouse. All these are as completely ignored as if
+the population of St. Johnstone had been the most tranquil and
+law-abiding in the world. And they do this with such evident good faith
+that it is impossible not to believe that what had happened was to
+themselves an unimportant incident: though it was something like what
+the destruction of Westminster Abbey would have been in England. In
+these respects, however, the state of feeling produced by the
+Reformation followed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">{280}</a></span>no ordinary laws; the fervour of hatred and
+contempt which the priesthood called forth in Scotland being beyond all
+example or comparison, except, indeed, in some parts of France, where
+Farel and his followers had set the example of destruction.</p>
+
+<p>The Queen, however, did little more than threaten. Before she could move
+at all, the Westland lords, who had gone home, had heard the news and
+turned back in hot haste to succour their brethren. Even without that
+reinforcement the French general had hesitated to approach too near the
+town occupied by so many resolute men, no longer "peaceable," but
+determined to defend themselves. It is very apparent that Mary wished
+above all things to avoid bloodshed and any step which would precipitate
+the beginning of a civil war: and she sent embassy after embassy,
+selected sometimes from her own side, sometimes from that of the
+Reformers, to exhort them to submission. If her part in the matter was
+that of an anxious and in many ways considerate ruler, bent, so far as
+in her lay, upon keeping the peace, the attitude of the Congregation
+was, at the same time, a perfectly manly and moderate one, granting
+their dulness of conscience in respect to the real outrage. "If the
+Queen's grace would suffer the religion then begun to proceed, and not
+trouble their brethren and sisters that had professed Christ Jesus with
+them," they declared themselves ready to submit in any way to the
+Queen's commandment; but without this promise they would not stir. Knox
+himself, however, who was the soul of the party, was, according to his
+wont, less self-controlled. He considered it his duty to make a special
+statement to Argyle and the Lord James, the future Earl of Murray, who
+were the Queen's first envoys, and to send a message to the Regent in
+his own name, with a curious assumption of the prophet's office, which
+is exceedingly remarkable so near the beginning of his career, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">{281}</a></span>is at
+once an evidence of the enormous influence which he had acquired, and of
+the astonishing confidence in his own mission and powers which must have
+helped him to acquire it. "Say to the Queen's Grace Regent," he required
+them, "in my name, that we whom she in her blind rage doth persecute are
+God's servants, faithful and obedient subjects to the authority of this
+realm: that that religion which she pretendeth to maintain by fire and
+sword is not the religion of Christ Jesus, but is express contrarie to
+the same, ane superstition devised by the brain of man: which I offer
+myself to prove against all that within Scotland will maintain the
+contrarie&mdash;liberty of tongue being granted to me, and God's written word
+being admitted for judge."</p>
+
+<p>Thus the preacher flung down his glove like a knight of the old
+chivalry, with a fiery and eager hardihood which we could the better
+admire had he done more justice to his adversaries, especially the
+Queen, whose good intentions it seems so difficult to misconstrue. He
+warns her also, in the same high tone, that her enterprise will not
+succeed, and that the end shall be her confusion, "onless betimes she
+repent and desist," with all the stern certainty of an inspired prophet.
+Whether the serious emissaries, who, though they were Protestants, "had
+begun to muse," and perhaps could not keep their eyes from remarking the
+smoke and dust of the ruins behind the energetic figure of the Reformer,
+conveyed this message in full we may be permitted to doubt. They were
+both young men, and it is unlikely they would prejudice their own career
+by repeating to the Queen's Grace anything about her blind rage or the
+confusion which would follow. Lord Sempill, who accompanied them, and
+who was of the Queen's party&mdash;"a man sold under sin," says Knox&mdash;perhaps
+did more justice to the message; but Knox's sole desire was that it
+should be repeated word by word.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">{282}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We need not, however, follow the advances and retreats, the always
+imminent encounter for which the Congregation was fully ready, but from
+which the Queen and her general constantly retired at the last moment,
+before the gates of Perth, on Cupar Muir, and other places, making
+agreement after agreement of which nothing came. In the course of this
+curious dance of the two powers confronting each other much ink was
+shed, however, if no blood, and the representations, letters, bonds, and
+assurances must have kept the scribes on either side in constant
+occupation. The Congregation was certainly the more argumentative and
+long-winded of the correspondents, and never seems to have lost an
+opportunity of a letter. They pervaded the country, an ever-increasing
+band, which, whenever an emergency occurred, was multiplied from every
+quarter at the raising of a finger on the part of the reforming lords.
+That the violent beginning made in Perth had given to the populace a
+taste for the pleasures of destruction, however, is very fully evident,
+and it soon became clear that when the preachers and their protectors
+moved "to make reformation," the mob who followed them would leave
+nothing but ruins behind. This and the method of it is very well set
+forth in the case of Scone, a place of great historical interest, where
+the ancient kings of Scotland had been crowned. It would seem to have
+been a raid of private vengeance which directed the operations, "four
+zealous men," irrestrainable, it would seem, by the leaders, having set
+out from Perth, "to take order with that place," considering how
+obstinately proud and despiteful the Bishop of Murray had been. The
+lords had already sent a letter of warning to the Bishop, who was housed
+in some abbey near, advertising him that unless he would come and join
+them they could neither spare nor save his place. But while the answer
+lingered the town of Dundee took up the quarrel and set forth to carry
+out the work.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">{283}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"To stay them was first sent the Provost of Dundee and his brother
+Alexander Halliburton Capitain, who little prevailing was sent unto
+them John Knox; but before his coming they were entered to the
+pulling down of the idols and dortour (dormitory). And albeit the
+said Maister James Halliburton, Alexander his brother, and the said
+John, did what in them lay to have stayed the fury of the multitude,
+yet were they not able to put order universalie; and therefore they
+sent for the lords, Earl of Argyle and Lord James, who coming with
+all diligence laboured to have saved the palace and the kirk. But
+because the multitude had found buried in the kirk a great number of
+idols, hid of purpose to have reserved them for a better day (as the
+Papists speak) the towns of Dundee and St. Johnstone could not be
+satisfied till that the whole reparation and ornaments of the church
+(as they term it) were destroyed. And yet did the lords so travel
+that they saved the Bishop's palace with the church and place for
+that night; for the two lords did not depart till they brought with
+them the whole number of those who most sought the Bishop's
+displeasure. The Bishop, greatly offended that anything should have
+been enterprised in reformation of his place, asked of the lords his
+bond and handwriting, which not two hours before he had sent to them
+(this was a promise to come immediately to arrange for the safety of
+his see, and also to support them in Parliament in gratitude for the
+warning they had given him); Which delivered to his messenger, Sir
+Adam Brown, advertisement was given that if any further displeasure
+chanced unto him that he should not blame them. The Bishop's
+servants that same night began to fortify the place again, and began
+to do violence to some that were carrying away such baggage as they
+could come by. The Bishop's girnel was kept the first night by the
+labours of John Knox, who by exhortation removed such as would
+violentlie have made irruption. The morrow following, some of the
+poor in hope of spoil, and some of Dundee to consider what was done,
+passed up to the said Abbey of Scone; whereat the Bishop's servants
+offended began to threaten and speak proudly, and as it was
+constantly affirmed one of the Bishop's sons stogged through with a
+rapier one of Dundee because he was looking in at the girnel door.
+This bruit noised abroad, the town of Dundee was more enraged than
+before, who putting themselves in armour sent word to the
+inhabitants of St. Johnstone, 'That unless they should support them
+to avenge that injury, that they should never from that day concur
+with them in any action.' They, easilie inflambed, gave the alarm,
+and so was that abbey and palace appointed to the saccage; in doing
+whereof they took no long deliberation, but committed the whole to
+the merriment of fire; whereat no small number of us was so
+offended, that patientlie we could not speak to any that were of
+Dundee or Saint Johnstone."</p></div>
+
+<p>The reader will see in this frank narrative how many elements were
+conjoined to bring about the outrage. Local <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">{284}</a></span>jealousy and despite, the
+rage against the Bishop and his priests, the eagerness of the needy in
+hope of spoil, the excitement of a fray in which the first blow had been
+struck by the adversary with just the crown of a supposed religious
+motive to give the courage of a great cause to the rioters: while on the
+other hand the Bishop's rashness in taking the defence upon himself and
+slighting the assistance offered him is equally apparent. It is evident
+enough, however, that the lords themselves had no urgent interest in the
+preservation of the ancient buildings, and that Knox cared little for
+any of these things. The watch of the preacher at the door of the
+Bishop's girnel or storehouse, keeping back the rioters by his
+exhortations, is a curious illustration of this point. He would not have
+the people soil their souls with thieving, with the Bishop's meal and
+malt; as for the historical walls, the altar where the old kings had
+been anointed or the sanctuary where their ashes lay, what were they?
+Knox was too much intent on setting Scotland loose from all previous
+traditions&mdash;from the past which was idolatrous and corrupt, and in which
+till it reached to the age of the Apostles he recognised no good
+thing&mdash;to be concerned about the temples of Baal. What he wanted was to
+cut all these dark ages away, and affiliate himself and his country
+direct to Jud&aelig;a and Jerusalem, to the Jewish church, not the Gothic or
+the papal, or any perverted image of what he believed primitive
+Christianity to have been. He served himself heir to Peter and Paul, to
+Elijah and Ezekiel, and perhaps in the strong prepossession of his soul
+against contemporary monks and ecclesiastics did not even know that the
+Church which was so corrupt, and the religious orders which had fallen
+so low, had ever brought or preserved light and blessing to the world.
+Scottish history, Scottish art, were corrupted too, and woven about with
+associations of these hated priests and their system which was not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">{285}</a></span>true
+religion, but "devised by the brain of man"; and though he was himself
+the most complete incarnation of Scotch vehemence, dogmatism, national
+pride, and fiery feeling, he was indifferent to their national records.
+His pride was involved in making his country stand, alone if need was,
+or if not alone, then first, in passionate perfection in the new order
+of things in the kingdom of Christ: not to keep her a place in the unity
+of nations by preserving the traces of an old civilisation and
+institutions as venerable and noteworthy as any in Christendom, but to
+make of her a chosen nation like that people, long ago dispersed by a
+sufficiently miserable catastrophe, to whom was given of old the mission
+of showing forth the will of God before the world. Whether what he
+gained for his country was not much more important than what he thus
+deliberately sacrificed is a question that will never be answered with
+any unanimity. He gained for his race a great freedom, which cannot be
+justly called religious freedom, because it was, in his intention at
+least, freedom to follow their own way, with none at all for those who
+differed from them. He set up a high standard of piety and probity, and
+for once made the business of the soul, the worship of God and study of
+His laws, the most absorbing of public interests. He thrilled the whole
+country through and through with the inspiration of a fervent spirit,
+uncompromising in its devotion to the truth, asking no indulgence if
+also, perhaps, giving none, serving God in his own way with a fidelity
+above every bribe, scornful of every compromise. But he cut Scotland
+adrift so far as in him lay from the brotherhood of habit and tradition,
+from the communion, if not of saints, yet of many saintly uses, and much
+that is beautiful in Christian life. He made his country eminent, and
+secured for her one great chapter in the history of the world; but he
+imprinted upon her a certain narrowness uncongenial to her character <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">{286}</a></span>and
+to her past, which has undervalued her to many superficial observers,
+and done perhaps a little, but a permanent, harm to her national ideal
+ever since. A small evil for so much good, but yet not to be left
+unacknowledged.</p>
+
+<p>More interesting in its human aspect is Knox's appearance in St.
+Andrews, whither the Congregation now crowded to "make reformation,"
+though doubtful if even the populace were on their side. The Bishop
+"hearing of reformation to be made in his cathedral church, thought time
+to stir, or else never"&mdash;which was very natural. He was accompanied by a
+hundred spears, which must have meant a company at least of four or five
+hundred armed men, while the Lords of the Congregation had "their quiet
+households," no doubt a very adequate escort. The Bishop threatened that
+if John Knox showed his face in the cathedral he should be saluted with
+a dozen of culverins, and the gentlemen with him hesitated much to
+expose him to such a risk: but their doubts were not shared by the
+preacher. He had himself given forth, when in the galley labouring at
+the oar in sight of the beloved town and sanctuary, a prophecy that he
+should yet preach there, unlikely as it looked; and to recoil from any
+danger, when such an opportunity arose, was not in him. "To delay to
+preach the morrow (unless the bodie be violentlie witholden) I cannot,"
+he said. He preached upon the casting out of the money-changers from the
+Temple&mdash;a very dangerous subject for such an occasion, and "applied the
+corruption that was there to the corruption that is in the Papestrie" so
+well that the magistrates of the town, and also the commonalty "for the
+most part, did agree to remove all monuments of idolatrie, which also
+they did with expedition." But it was not on that day that the great
+church shining from afar on its rocky headland, a splendid landmark over
+the dangerous bay, was reduced to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">{287}</a></span>the condition in which it now remains,
+with a few forlorn but graceful pinnacles rising against the misty blue
+of sea and sky. No harm would seem to have been done except to the
+altars and the decorations; and according to all evidence it is more to
+the careless brutality of the eighteenth century, which found an
+excellent storehouse of materials for building in the abandoned shrine,
+than to any absolute outrage that its present state of utter ruin is
+due.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">{288}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 360px;">
+<img src="images/illus_031.jpg" width="360" height="600" alt="ST. ANDREWS" title="" />
+<span class="caption">ST. ANDREWS</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">{289}</a></span>The Congregation set forth on its march to Stirling, and thence to
+Edinburgh in June, and so great was the commotion which had been raised
+by the rumour of the "reformation" wrought in the north in Scone and St.
+Johnstone that the mere news of their approach roused "the rasckall
+multitude" to the mood of destruction. They had cleared out and
+destroyed the convents in Stirling, and those of the Black and Grey
+Friars in Edinburgh, before the Reformers came&mdash;a result which Knox at
+least in no way pauses to deplore: they had left nothing, he says, "but
+bare walls, yea, not so much as door or windok: wherthrou we were the
+less troubled in putting order in such places." Thus the flood of
+Revolution, of Reformation, of fundamental, universal change flowed on.
+The victory was not assured, however, as perhaps they had hoped when
+they entered Edinburgh, for though for a time everything went well, and
+the preaching seems to have been followed by the greater part of the
+city, the Queen, ever active, though never striking any decisive blow,
+had received reinforcements from France, and to the great alarm of the
+Congregation had begun to fortify Leith, forming a strong garrison there
+of French soldiers, and making a new stronghold near enough to be a
+perpetual menace to Edinburgh almost at her door. The position of
+affairs at this moment was curious in the extreme. The Queen in Leith,
+surrounded by the newly arrived forces of France, with Frenchmen placed
+in all the great offices, fulminated forth decrees, commands,
+explanations, orders, from within the walls that were being quickly
+raised to make the fort a strong place, and from amidst the garrison of
+her own countrymen, in whose fidelity she could fully trust. In
+Edinburgh the Congregation were virtually supreme, but very uneasy;
+their substantial adversaries quieted, but ever on the watch; the
+populace ready to pull down and destroy at their indication, but not to
+change their life or character&mdash;an unstable support should trouble come;
+while in the castle Lord Erskine sat impartial, a sort of silent umpire,
+taking neither side, though ready to intervene with a great gun on
+either as occasion moved him. The fire of words which was kept up
+between the two parties is one of the most amazing features of the
+conflict. For every page the Queen's secretaries wrote, John Knox was
+ready with ten to demonstrate her errors, her falsehood, the
+impossibility that any good could come from an idolater such as she.
+Other persons take part in the great wrangle, but he is clearly the
+scribe and moving spirit. He writes to her in his own person, in that of
+the Lord James, in that of the Congregation. She accuses them of
+rebellion and treasonable intentions against herself&mdash;and they her of
+her Frenchmen and her fortifications. She summons them to leave
+Edinburgh on peril of all the penalties that attend high treason; they
+demand from her that the Frenchmen should be sent away and the
+proceedings stopped. She accuses the Duke Chatelherault&mdash;the head of the
+Hamiltons, the next heir to the throne&mdash;of treasonable proceedings, and
+he vindicates himself by sound of trumpet at the Cross of Edinburgh. The
+correspondence grows to such a pitch that when she loses patience and
+bids them be gone before a certain day, they meet in solemn conclave, to
+which the preachers are called to give their advice, to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">{290}</a></span>discuss whether
+it is lawful to depose her from her regency: and all consent with one
+voice to her deprivation. The excitement of this continual exchange of
+correspondence, the messages coming and going, from the Queen's side the
+Lyon King himself, all glorious among his pursuivants, advancing from
+Leith with his brief letter and his "credit" as spokesman, the others
+replying and re-replying, scarcely ever without a response or a
+denunciation to read over and talk over, must have kept the nerves and
+intelligence of all at a perpetual strain. At St. Giles's and the
+Tolbooth close by, which were the double centre of life in the city,
+there was a perpetual alternation of preachings, to which Lords and
+Commons would crowd together to listen to Knox's trumpet peals of fiery
+eloquence, always upon some appropriate text, always instinct with the
+most vehement energy, and consultations upon public affairs and how to
+promote the triumph of religion; the lords pondering and sometimes
+doubtful, the preacher ever uncompromising and absolute. A question of
+public honesty had arisen in the midst of the struggle for the faith,
+and the Reformers had seized the Mint to prevent the coining of base
+money, which the Regent was carrying on for her necessities, and which
+the Congregation, no doubt justly, considered ruinous to the trade of
+the country; and the determined struggle with the Queen in respect to
+her scheme for fortifying Leith and establishing a French garrison
+there,&mdash;a continual check upon and menace to the freedom of the
+capital,&mdash;was at least as much a question of politics as religion.</p>
+
+<p>The Congregation, however, was not yet strong enough to be able to meet
+the French forces, and when they attempted to besiege Leith and put a
+forcible stop to the building they were defeated with shame and loss. A
+curious sign of the inevitable "rift within the lute," which up to this
+time had been avoided by the concentration of all men's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">{291}</a></span>thoughts upon
+the first necessity of securing the freedom of the preachings, becomes
+visible before this futile attempt at a siege. When the leaders of the
+Congregation, among whom on this occasion the contingent from the towns,
+and especially from Dundee, seems foremost, began to prepare for their
+expedition, they chose St. Giles's Church as the most convenient for the
+preparation of the scaling ladders, a practical evidence that sacredness
+had departed from the church as a building, not at all to the mind of
+the preachers, who probably saw no logical succession between the
+hammers of the destroyers pulling down the "glorious tabernacles" and
+those of the craftsmen occupied with secular work. They did not, indeed,
+put their objections on this ground, but on that of the neglect of the
+"preaching," a name now characteristically applied to the public worship
+of God. "The Preachers spared not openly to say that they feared the
+success of that enterpryse should not be prosperous because the
+beginning appeyred to bring with it some contempt of God and of His
+word. Other places, said they, had been more apt for such preparations
+than where the people convened to common prayer and unto preaching, and
+they did not hesitate to affirm that God would not suffer such contempt
+of His word." Whether these objections stole the heart out of the
+fighting men, who had hitherto felt themselves emphatically the soldiers
+of God, it is impossible to say. They had hitherto overawed the Queen's
+party by their numbers, and had never outwardly made proof of their
+powers or sustained the attack of regular soldiers. And the assault of
+Leith ended in a disastrous defeat. The expedition set out rashly
+without leaders, while the lords and gentlemen "were gone to the
+preaching," and had consequently no accompanying cavalry, and few, if
+any, experienced soldiers. They were driven back with loss, and pursued
+into the very Canongate, to the foot of Leith Wynd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">{292}</a></span>&mdash;that is, into the
+cross-roads and narrow wynds which were immediately outside the city
+walls. Argyle and the rest, as soon as they were aware of what had
+happened, got hastily to horse, and did all they could to stop the
+flight, but even this turned to harm, since the horsemen coming out to
+the aid of their friends proved an additional danger to the fugitives,
+and "over-rode their poor brethren at the entrance of the Nether Bow."</p>
+
+<p>After this all was confusion and trouble in Edinburgh. The castle fired
+one solitary gun, which stopped with a note of sudden protest the French
+pursuit, coming with extraordinary dramatic effect into the always
+graphic and picturesque narrative, over the heads of the flying,
+discomfited crowd which was struggling among the horses' hoofs at the
+narrow gate, and the Frenchmen straggling behind, up all the narrow
+passages into the Canongate, snatching a piece of plunder where they
+could find it, "one a kietill, ane other ane pettycoat, the third a pote
+or a pan." "Je pense que vous l'avez achet&eacute; sans argent," the Queen is
+reported to have said with a laugh as the pursuers came back to Leith
+with their not very important booty. "This was the great and motherlie
+care she took for the truth of the poor subjects of this realm," says
+Knox bitterly; and yet it was very natural that she should have been
+overjoyed, after all these controversies, to feel herself the stronger,
+if not in argument at least in actual fight.</p>
+
+<p>This defeat told greatly upon the spirits of the Congregation which had
+hitherto been kept together by success, and which was in fact a mere
+horde of men hastily collected, untrained in actual warfare, and in no
+position for taking the offensive though strong in defence of their
+rights. And money had failed. It was determined that each gentleman
+should give his plate to be made into coin to supply the needs of the
+Congregation, as they had the Mint in their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">{293}</a></span>hands: but the officials
+stole away with the "irons" and this was made impracticable. They then
+sent for a supply to the English envoys who were anxiously watching the
+progress of events at Berwick: but the sum sent to them in answer to
+their application was intercepted by the Earl of Bothwell&mdash;his first
+appearance in history, on which he was to leave thereafter such traces
+of disaster. And other encounters with the Frenchmen took the heart
+entirely out of the Congregation; the party began to dissolve, stealing
+away on every side. "Our soldiers" (mercenaries it is to be supposed in
+distinction from the retainers of the lords and gentlemen) "could
+skarslie be dang out of the town" to meet a sally from Leith. In
+Edinburgh itself the rasckall multitude, which had been so ready to
+destroy and ravage, began to throw stones at the Reformers and call them
+traitors and heretics. Finally with hearts penetrated by disappointment
+and the misery of defeat the Congregation abandoned Edinburgh altogether
+and marched to Stirling with drooping arms and hearts.</p>
+
+<p>"The said day at nine in the night," says a contemporary authority, "the
+Congregation departed forth of Edinburgh to Linlithgow and left their
+artillerie void upon the causeway lying, and the town desolate." It was
+November, and the darkness of the night could not have been more dark
+than the prospects and thoughts of that dejected band, a little while
+before so triumphant. As the tramp of the half-seen procession went
+heavily down the tortuous streets at the back of the castle, probably by
+the West Bow and West Port, diving down into the darkness under that
+black shadow where the garrison sat grimly impartial taking no part, the
+populace, perhaps frightened by the too great success of their own
+fickle and cruel desertion of the cause, and hoping little from the
+return of the priests, would seem to have beheld with silent dismay the
+departure of the Congregation. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">{294}</a></span>guns which had done them so little
+service which they left on the road, as the preachers would have had
+them leave all the devices and aid of men, were gathered in by the
+soldiers from the castle with little demonstration, and the town was
+left desolate. The anonymous writer of the <i>Diurnal of Occurrents</i> is
+curiously impartial and puts down his brief records without any
+expression of feeling: but a certain thrill is in these words as of
+something too impressive and significant to be passed by.</p>
+
+<p>It is at this miserable moment that John Knox shows himself at his best.
+Hitherto his vehemence, his fierce oratory, his interminable letters and
+addresses, though instinct with all the reality of a most vigorous, even
+restless nature, represent to us rather a man who would if he could have
+done everything,&mdash;the fighting and the protocolling as well as the
+preaching, a man to whom repose was impossible, ever ready to draw forth
+his pen, to mount his pulpit, to add his eager word to every
+consultation, and enjoying nothing so much as to press the most
+unpleasant truths upon his correspondents and hearers,&mdash;than one of
+sustaining power and wisdom. The uncompromising fidelity with which he
+pointed out the shortcomings of those about him, and the terrible
+penalties laid up for them; and the stern denunciations in his letters,
+even those which he intended to be conciliatory, make his appearance in
+general more alarming than reassuring. An instance which almost tempts a
+smile, grave as are all the circumstances and surroundings, is his
+letter (written some time before the point at which we have now arrived)
+to Cecil whom he had known in England, and whose favour he desired to
+secure and indeed was confident of securing. For once he had something
+to ask for himself, permission to land in England on his way back to his
+native country; and greatly desired that a favourable representation of
+his case might be made to Queen Elizabeth, who was naturally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">{295}</a></span> prejudiced
+against him by his famous Blast against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.
+The following letter was written from Dieppe in April 1559 with the hope
+of procuring these favours from the great statesman.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"As I have no plaisure with long writing to trouble you, Rycht
+Honourable, whose mind I know to be occupied with most grave
+matters, so mind I not greatly to labour by long preface to
+conciliate your favour, which I suppose I have already (howsomever
+rumours bruit the contrarie) as it becometh one member of Christ's
+body to have of another. The contents, therefore, of these my
+presents shall be absolved in two points. In the former I purpose to
+discharge in brief words my conscience towards you, and in the other
+somewhat I must speik in my own defence and in defence of that poor
+flock of lait assembled in the most godly Reformed church and city
+of the world Geneva. To you Sir, I say, that as from God ye have
+received life, wisdom, honours and this present estate in which ye
+stand, so ought you wholly to employ the same to the advancement of
+His glory, who only is the Author of life, the fountain of wisdom,
+and who, most assuredly, doth and will honour those that with simple
+hearts do glorify Him; which, alas, in times past ye have not done;
+but being overcome with common iniquity ye have followed the world
+in the way of perdition. For to the suppressing of Christ's true
+Evangell, to the erecting of idolatrie, and to the shedding of the
+blood of God's dear children, have you by silence consented and
+subscribed. This, your most horrible defection from the truth known
+and once professed, hath God to this day mercifully spared; yea, to
+man's judgement He hath utterly forgotten and pardoned the same. He
+hath not entreated you as He hath done others (of like knowledge),
+whom in His anger (but yet most justly according to their deserts)
+He did shortly strike after their defection. But you, guilty in the
+same offences, He hath fostered and preserved as it were in His own
+bosom. As the benefit which ye have received is great, so must God's
+justice require of you a thankful heart; for seeing that His mercy
+hath spared you being traitor to His Majesty; seeing, further, that
+among your enemies He hath preserved you; and last, seeing that
+although worthy of Hell He hath promoted you to honour and dignity,
+of you must He require (because He is just) earnest repentance for
+your former defection, a heart mindful of His merciful providence,
+and a will so ready to advance His glory that evidently it may
+appear that in vain ye have not received these graces of God&mdash;to
+performance whereof of necessity it is that carnal wisdom and
+worldly policy (to the which both ye are bruited too much inclined)
+give place to God's simple and naked truth&mdash;very love compelleth me
+to say that except the Spirit of God purge your heart from that
+venom which your eyes have seen to be destruction to others, that ye
+shall not long escape the reward of dissemblers. Call to mind what
+you ever heard proclaimed in the chapel of Saint James, when this
+verse of the first Psalm was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">{296}</a></span>entreated, 'Not so, oh wicked, not so;
+but as the dust which the wind hath tossed, etc.' ... And this is
+the conclusion of that which to yourself I say. Except that in the
+cause of Christ's Evangel ye be found simple, sincere, fervent and
+unfeigned, ye shall taste of the same cup which politic heads have
+drunken before you."</p></div>
+
+<p>This manner of approaching a powerful statesman whose good offices might
+be of the uttermost consequence both to the writer and his party, is
+highly characteristic. There is something almost comic, if we dared to
+interpose such a view between two such personages, in the warning
+against "carnal wisdom and worldly policy to the which both ye are
+bruited too much inclined," addressed to the great Burleigh. It is
+difficult to imagine the outburst of a laugh between such a pair, yet
+grave Cecil surely must have smiled.</p>
+
+<p>The man who wrote this epistle and many another, leagues of letters in
+no one of which does he ever mince matters, or refrain to deliver his
+conscience before conveying the message of State with which he is
+charged&mdash;is often wordy, sometimes tedious, now and then narrow as a
+village gossip, always supremely and absolutely dogmatic, seeing no way
+but his own and acknowledging no possibility of error; and the extreme
+and perpetual movement of his ever-active mind, his high-blooded
+intolerance, the restless force about him which never pauses to take
+breath, is the chief impression produced upon the reader by his own
+unfolding of himself in his wonderful history. Though he is too great
+and important to be called a busybody, we still feel sympathetically
+something of the suppressed irritation and sense of hindrance and
+interruption with which the lords must have regarded this companion with
+his "devout imaginations," whom they dared not neglect, and who was sure
+to get the better in every argument, generally by reason, but at all
+events by the innate force of his persistence and daring. But when they
+came to Stirling, after "that dusk and dolorous night wherein all ye my
+lords with shame and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">{297}</a></span>fear left the town", the eager nervous form, the
+dark keen face of the preacher, rose before the melancholy bands like
+those of the hero-leader, the standard-bearer of God. It was Wednesday
+the 7th of November 1559 when the dispirited Congregation met for the
+preaching and to consider afterwards "what was the next remedy in so
+desperate a case." Knox took for his text certain verses of the
+eightieth Psalm. "How long wilt thou be angry against the prayers of thy
+people? Thou hast fed us with the bread of tears; and hast given us
+tears to drink in great measure. O God of hosts, turn us again, make thy
+face to shine; and we shall be saved." He began by asking, Why were the
+people of God thus oppressed?</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Our faces are this day confounded, our enemies triumph, our hearts
+have quaked for fear, and yet they remain oppressed with sorrow and
+shame. But what shall we think to be the very cause that God hath
+thus dejected us? If I shall say our sins and former unthankfulness
+to God, I speak the truth. But yet I spake more generallie than
+necessity required: for when the sins of men are rebuked in general,
+seldom it is that man descendeth within himself, accusing and
+damning in himself that which most displeaseth God."</p></div>
+
+<p>To this particular self-examination he then leads his hearers in order
+that they may not take refuge in generalities, but that each man may
+examine himself. "I will divide our whole company," he says, "into two
+sorts of men. The one, those who have been attached to the cause from
+the beginning; the other, recent converts."</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Let us begin at ourselves who longest has continued in this battle.
+When we were a few in number, in comparison with our enemies, when
+we had neither Erle nor Lord (a few excepted) to comfort us, we
+called upon God, we took Him for our protector, defence, and onlie
+refuge. Among us was heard no bragging of multitude or of our
+strength or policy, we did only sob to God, to have respect to the
+equity of our cause and to the cruel pursuit of the tyraneful enemy.
+But since that our number has been multiplied, and chiefly since my
+Lord Duke his Grace with his friends have been joined with us, there
+was nothing heard but 'This Lord will bring these many hundred<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">{298}</a></span>
+spears: if this Earl be ours no man in such and such a bounds will
+trouble us.' And thus the best of us all, that before felt God's
+potent hand to be our defence, hath of late days put flesh to be our
+arm."</p></div>
+
+<p>This proved, which was an evil he had struggled against with might and
+main, forbidding all compromises, all concessions that might have served
+to attract the help of the powerful, and conciliate lukewarm supporters,
+he turns to the other side.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"But wherein hath my Lord Duik his Grace and his friends offended?
+It may be that as we have trusted in them so have they put too much
+confidence in their own strength. But granting so be or not, I see a
+cause most just why the duke and his friends should thus be
+confounded among the rest of their brethren. I have not yet
+forgotten what was the dolour and anguish of my own heart when at
+St. Johnstone, Cupar Muir, and Edinburgh Crags, those cruel
+murderers, that now hath put us to this dishonour, threatened our
+present destruction. My Lord Duke his Grace, and his friends at all
+the three jornayes, was to them a great comfort and unto us a great
+discourage; for his name and authority did more affray and astonish
+us, than did the force of the other: yea, without his assistance
+they would not have compelled us to appoint with the Queen upon
+unequal conditions. I am uncertain if my Lord's Grace hath
+unfeignedly repented of his assistance to those murderers unjustly
+pursuing us. Yea, I am uncertain if he hath repented of that
+innocent blood of Christ's blessed martyrs which was shed in his
+default. But let it be that so he hath done, as I hear that he hath
+confessed his offence before the Lords and brethren of the
+Congregation, yet I am assured that neither he, nor yet his friends,
+did feel before this time the anguish and grieving of heart which we
+felt when they in their blind fury pursued us. And therefore hath
+God justly permitted both them and us to fall in this confusion at
+once; us for that we put our trust and confidence in man, and them
+because that they should feel in their own hearts how bitter was the
+cup which they had made others to drink before them. Rests that both
+they and we turn to the Eternal, our God (who beats down to death to
+the intent that He may raise up again, to leave the remembrance of
+His wondrous deliverance to the praise of His own name), which if we
+do unfeignedly, I no more doubt that this our dolour, confusion, and
+fear, shall be turned into joy, honour, and boldness, than that I
+doubt that God gave the victory to the Israelites over the
+Benjaminites after that twice with ignominy they were repulsed and
+dang back. Yea, whatsoever shall come of us and our mortal
+carcasses, I doubt not but this cause in despite of Satan shall
+prevail in the realm of Scotland. For as it is the eternal truth of
+the eternal God, so shall it once prevail, however <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">{299}</a></span>for a time it may
+be hindered. It may be that God shall plague some, for that they
+delight not in the truth, albeit for worldly respects they seem to
+favour it. Yea, God may take some of His devout children away before
+their eyes see greater troubles. But neither shall the one or the
+other so hinder this action but in the end it shall triumph."</p></div>
+
+<p>When the sermon was ended, Knox adds, "The minds of men began
+wonderfully to be erected." "The voice of one man," as Randolph
+afterwards said, was "able in an hour to put more life in us than six
+hundred trumpets continually blustering in our ears." The boldness with
+which Knox thus exposed that elation in their own temporary success, and
+in the adhesion of the Duke of Hamilton, which had led the leaders of
+the Congregation into self-confidence and slackened their watchfulness,
+was made solemn and authoritative by the force with which he pressed his
+personal responsibility into every man's bosom. No turn of fortune, no
+evil fate, but God's check upon an army enlisted in His name yet not
+serving Him with a true heart, was this momentary downfall; the cause of
+which was one that every man could remove in his degree; not inherent
+weakness or hopeless fate, but a matter remediable, nay, which must be
+remedied and cast from among them&mdash;a matter which might quench their
+personal hopes and destroy them, but could not affect the divine cause,
+which should surely, triumph whatever man or Satan might do. More than
+six hundred trumpets, more than the tramp of a succouring army, it rang
+into the men's hearts. Their spirit and their courage rose; the dolorous
+night, the fear and shame, dissolved and disappeared; and the question
+what to do was met not with dejection and despair but with a rising of
+new hope.</p>
+
+<p>The decision of the Congregation in the Senate which was held after this
+stirring address was, in the first place, to address an appeal for help
+to England, the sister-nation <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">{300}</a></span>which had already made reformation, though
+not in their way, and to fight the matter out with full confidence in a
+happy issue. About this appeal to England, however, there were
+difficulties; for Knox who suggested it, and whose name could not but
+appear in the matter, had given forth, as all the world and especially
+the persons chiefly attacked were aware, a tremendous "blast" against
+the right of women to reign, particularly well or ill timed in a
+generation subject to so many queens; and it was necessary for him to
+excuse or defend himself to the greatest of the female sovereigns whom
+he had attacked. Of course it was easy for him to say that he had no
+great Protestant Elizabeth in his eye when he wrote, but only a bigoted
+and sanguinary Mary, of whom no one knew at the time that her reign was
+to be short, and her power of doing evil so small. It is almost
+impossible to discuss gravely nowadays a treatise which, even in its
+name (which is all that most people know of it), has the air of a
+whimsical ebullition of passion, leaning towards the ridiculous, rather
+than a serious protest calculated to move the minds of men. But this was
+not the aspect under which it appeared to the Queens who were assailed,
+not as individuals, but as a class intolerable and not to be suffered;
+and it was considered necessary that Knox should write to excuse
+himself, and apologise as much as was in him to the Queen, who was now
+the only person on earth to whom the Congregation could look for help.
+Knox's letter to Queen Elizabeth, whom he addressed indeed more as a
+lesser prince, respectful but more or less equal, might do, than as a
+private individual, is very characteristic. He has to apologise, but he
+will not withdraw from the position he had taken. "I cannot deny the
+writing," he says, "neither yet am I minded to retreat or call back any
+principal point or proposition of the same." But he is surprised that
+subject of offence should be found <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">{301}</a></span>in it by her for whose accession he
+renders thanks to God, declaring himself willing to be judged by
+moderate and indifferent men which of the parties do most harm to the
+liberty of England, he who affirms that no woman may be exalted above
+any realm to make the liberty of the same thrall to any stranger nation,
+"or they that approve whatsoever pleaseth Princes for the time." Leaving
+thus the ticklish argument which he cannot withdraw, but finds it
+impolitic to bring forward, he turns to the Queen's individual behaviour
+in her position as being the thing most important at the present moment,
+now that she has effectively attained her unlawful elevation.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Therefore, Madam, the only way to retain and keep those benefits of
+God abundantly poured now of late days upon you and upon your realm,
+is unfeignedly to render unto God, to His mercy and undeserved
+grace, the glory of your exaltation. Forget your birth, and all
+title which thereupon doth hing: and consider deeply how for fear of
+your life ye did decline from God and bow till idolatrie. Let it not
+appear ane small offence in your eyes that ye have declined from
+Christ in the day of His battle. Neither would I that you should
+esteem that mercy to be vulgar and common which ye have received: to
+wit that God hath covered your former offence, hath preserved you
+when you were most unthankful, and in the end hath exalted and
+raised you up, not only from the dust, but also from the ports of
+death, to rule above His people for the comfort of His kirk. It
+appertaineth to you, therefore, to ground the justice of your
+authority, not upon that law which from year to year doth change,
+but upon the eternal providence of Him who contraire to nature and
+without your deserving hath thus exalted your head. If then, in
+God's presence ye humble yourself, as in my heart I glorify God for
+that rest granted to His afflicted flock within England under you a
+weik instrument: so will I with tongue and pen justify your
+authority and regiment as the Holy Ghost hath justified the same in
+Debora that blessed mother in Israel. But if the premisses (as God
+forbid) neglected, ye shall begin to brag of your birth and to build
+your authority and regiment upon your own law, flatter you who so
+list your felicity shall be short. Interpret my rude words in the
+best part as written by him who is no enemy to your Grace."</p></div>
+
+<p>It must have been new to Queen Elizabeth to hear herself called "a weik
+instrument," and it is doubtful whether the first offence would be much
+softened by such an address. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">{302}</a></span>Neither was Elizabeth a person to be amused
+by the incongruity or impressed by the uncompromising boldness of the
+Reformer to whom the language of apology was so hard. Policy, however,
+has little to do with personal offences, although to some readers, as we
+confess to ourselves, it may be more interesting to see the prophet thus
+arrested, hampered by his own trumpet-blast, and making amends as much
+as he can permit himself to make, though so awkwardly and with so bold a
+return upon the original offence, to the offended Queen. It was far more
+easy for him to warn her of what would happen did she fail in her duty
+than to soothe the affront with gentle words; and his attempt at the
+latter is but halting and feeble. But when he promises with tongue and
+pen to justify her if she does well, Knox is once more on his own
+ground&mdash;that of a man whose office is superior to all the paltry
+distinctions of kingship or lordship, a servant of God commissioned to
+declare His divine will, endowed with an insight beyond that of ordinary
+men, and declaring with boundless certainty and confidence the things
+which are to be.</p>
+
+<p>We may, however, pass very shortly over the coming struggle. The English
+army marched into Scotland in April 1560, and addressed itself at once
+to the siege of Leith, the headquarters of the French whom the Queen
+Regent had brought into Scotland, and whom it was the chief aim of the
+Congregation and of their allies to drive out of the country. The siege
+went on for about six weeks, during which little effect seems to have
+been made, though Knox bears testimony that "the patience and stout
+courage of the Englishmen, but principally of the horsemen, was worthy
+of all praise." These proceedings, however, were brought to a pause by
+an event which changed the position of affairs. The Queen Regent, who,
+for some time, had been in declining health, harassed and beaten down by
+many cares, had left Leith and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">{303}</a></span>taken up her abode in Edinburgh Castle
+while the Reformers were absent from the capital. In that fortress, held
+neutral by its captain, in the small rooms where, some seven years
+after, her daughter's child was to be born, Mary lingered out the early
+days of summer: and in June, while still the English guns were
+thundering against Leith, her new fortifications resisting with
+diminished strength, and her garrison in danger&mdash;died, escaping from her
+uneasy burden of royalty when everything looked dark for her policy and
+cause. Many anecdotes of her sayings and doings were current during her
+lingering illness, such as might easily be reported between the two
+camps with more or less truth. When she heard of the "Band" made by the
+leaders of the army before Leith for the expulsion of the strangers she
+is said to have called the maledictions of God upon them who counselled
+her to persecute the preachers and to refuse the petitions of the best
+part of the subjects of the realm. Shut out from the countrymen and
+advisers in whom she had trusted, with the hitherto impartial Lord
+Erskine alone at her ear, adding his word concerning the "unjust
+possessors" who were to be driven "forth of this land," and overcome by
+sickness, sadness, and loneliness, this lady, who had done her best to
+hold the balance even and to refrain from bloodshed, though she had
+little credit for it, seems to have lost courage. She saw from her
+altitude on the castle rock the great fire in Leith, which probably
+looked at first like the beginning of its destruction, and all the
+martial bands of England, and the Scots lords and their followers, lying
+between her and her friends. After some ineffectual efforts to
+communicate with them otherwise, she sent for the Lords Argyle,
+Glencairn, and the Earl Marischal, with the Lord James, who visited her
+separately, "not all together, lest that some part of the Guysian
+practice had lurked under the colour of friendship." Knox's heart was
+not softened by the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">{304}</a></span>illness and isolation, nor even by the regrets and
+repentance, of the dying Queen. She consented to see John Willock, his
+colleague, and after hearing him "openly confessed that there was no
+salvation but in and by the death of Jesus Christ." "But of the Mass we
+had not her confession," says the implacable preacher. She died on the
+9th of June, worsted, overthrown, all that she had aimed at ending in
+failure, all her efforts foiled, leaving those who had been her enemies
+triumphant, and the future fate of her daughter's kingdom in the hands
+of "the auld enemy," the ever-dangerous neighbour of Scotland. "God, for
+His good mercy's sake, rid us from the rest of the Guysian blood," was
+the prayer Knox made over her grave.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, so far as can be judged, Mary of Guise was no persecutor and no
+tyrant. To all appearance she had honestly intended to keep peace in the
+kingdom, to permit as much as she could without committing herself to
+views which she did not share. And nothing could be more touching than
+such an end to a life never too brilliant or happy. She had gone through
+many alternations of gladness and of despair, had stood bravely by her
+sensitive husband when the infant sons who were his hope had been taken
+one after another, had discharged, as faithfully as circumstances and
+the accidents of a tremendous crisis would let her, her duties as
+Regent. Her death, lonely, desolate, and defeated, with no one near whom
+she loved, to smooth her passage to the grave, might have gained her a
+more gentle word of dismissal.</p>
+
+<p>Within little more than a month after her death peace was signed; the
+French forces departed, and the English army, not much more loved in its
+help than the others in their hostility, was escorted back to the Border
+and safely got rid of. On the 19th of July, all being thus happily
+settled, St. Giles's was once more filled with a crowd of eager<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">{305}</a></span>
+worshippers, "the haill nobilitie and the greatest part of the
+Congregation,"&mdash;a number which must have tried the capacity of the great
+church, large as it is. Knox does not give his sermon on the occasion,
+but we have a very noble and devout prayer, or rather thanksgiving,
+which was used at this service, and in which, though there is one
+reference to "proud tyrants overthrown," the spirit of devout
+thankfulness is predominant. He tells us, however, that the subject of
+his discourses, delivered daily, were the prophecies of Haggai, which he
+found to be "proper for the time." Some of his hearers, he informs us,
+spoke jestingly of having now to "bear the barrow to build the house of
+God." "God be merciful to the speaker," cries the stern prophet, "for we
+fear he shall have experience that the building of his ain house, the
+house of God being despised, shall not be so prosperous or of such
+firmity as we desire it were"&mdash;so dangerous was it to jest in the
+presence of one so tremendously in earnest. The speaker referred to, of
+this, as of most of the other caustic sayings of the time, is said to
+have been Lethington.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing done by the Parliament was the distribution of the
+handful of ministers then existing among the districts which most needed
+them; the second, the verification and establishment of the Confession
+of Faith. No more curious scene could have been than this momentous
+ceremony. The Parliament consisted of all the nobility of Scotland,
+including among them the bishops and peers of the Church, and the
+delegates from the boroughs. The Confession was read article by article,
+and a vote taken upon each. Three only of the lords voted against it.
+The bishops said nothing. What their feelings must have been, as they
+sat in their places looking on, while the long array of the Congregation
+voted, it is vain to attempt to imagine. There was nothing the Reformers
+would have liked better <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">{306}</a></span>than that discussion to which Knox had vainly
+bidden his opponents, throwing down his glove as to mortal combat. "Some
+of our ministers were present," he says, "standing upon their feet ready
+to have answered in case any would have defended the Papistrie and
+impugned our affirmations." But no one of all the ecclesiastics present
+said a word. The Earl Marischal, when he rose in his turn to vote,
+commented upon this remarkable abstinence with the straightforwardness
+of a practical man. "It is long since I have had some favour to the
+truth," he said, "and since I have had a suspicion of the Papistical
+religion; but I praise my God this day has fully resolved me in the one
+and the other. For, seeing that my Lord Bishops here present, who for
+their learning can, and for the zeal they should bear to the veritie
+would, I suppose, gainsay anything that directly repugns to the veritie
+of God, speaks nothing in the contraire of the doctrine proposed, I
+cannot but hold it to be the very truth of God." Even this speech moved
+the bishops to no reply. They sat silent, perhaps too much astonished at
+such an extraordinary revolution to say anything; perhaps alarmed at the
+strength of the party against them. It might be that there was little
+learning among them, though they had the credit of it; certainly the
+arguments which Knox reports on several occasions are inconceivably
+feeble on the side of the old faith. But whatever was the meaning there
+they sat dumb, and looked on bewildered, confounded, while the new
+Confession was voted paragraph by paragraph, and the whole scope of the
+Scottish constitution changed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">{307}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 375px;">
+<img src="images/illus_032.jpg" width="375" height="600" alt="KNOX&#39;S HOUSE, HIGH STREET" title="" />
+<span class="caption">KNOX&#39;S HOUSE, HIGH STREET</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">{308}</a></span>The next step was the abolition of the mass, an act by which it was
+forbidden that any should either hear or say that office "or be present
+thereat, under the pain of confiscation of all their goods movable and
+immovable, and punishing of their bodies at the discretion of the
+Magistrates." Another edict followed abolishing the jurisdiction of the
+Pope under pain of "proscription, banishment, and never to brook honour,
+office, or dignity within this realm." "These and other things," says
+the Reformer, "were orderly done in lawful and free Parliament," with
+the bishops and all spiritual lords in their places sitting dumb and
+making no sign. The Queen was at liberty to say afterwards, as was done,
+that a Parliament where she was not represented in any way, either by
+viceroy or regent, where there was no exhibition of sceptre, sword, or
+crown, and in short where the monarch was left out altogether, was not a
+lawful Parliament. But the most remarkable feature of this strange
+assembly amid all the voting and "bruit" is the dramatic silence of the
+State ecclesiastical. It is curious that no fervent brother should have
+been found to maintain the cause of his faith. But probably it was
+better policy to refrain. The extraordinary absence of logic as well as
+toleration which made the Reformers unable to see what a lame conclusion
+this was after their own struggle for freedom, and that they were
+exactly following the example of their adversaries, need not be
+remarked. John Knox thought it a quite sufficient answer to say that the
+mass was idolatry and his own ways of thinking absolutely and certainly
+true; but so of course has the Roman Catholic Church done when the
+impulse of persecution was strongest in her. There is one only thing to
+be said in favour of the Reformers, and that is, that while a number of
+good men had been sacrificed at the stake for the Reformed doctrines, no
+one was burned for saying mass; the worst that happened, notwithstanding
+their fierce enactments, being the exposure in the pillory of a priest.
+Rotten eggs and stones are bad arguments either in religion or
+metaphysics, but not so violently bad as fire and flame.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the Reformed religion was established in Scotland, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">{309}</a></span>and Knox settled
+in St. Giles's for the remainder of his life. Whether he was at once
+placed in the picturesque house with its panelled rooms and
+old-fashioned comfort and gracefulness which still bears his name,
+standing out in a far-seeing angle from which he could contemplate the
+abounding life of the High Street, the great parish in which half his
+life was spent, is not certain; but it was a most fit and natural
+lodging for the minister of St. Giles's. And for the rest of his life,
+with very few intervals, all the stream of public life in Scotland
+flowed about this dwelling. His importance in every national question,
+the continual references made to him, the appeals addressed to him by
+monarch and noble, as well as by burghers and retainers, show better
+than any statement the unique position he held. He was at this time a
+man of fifty-five. His Marjory Bowes, never I think mentioned but by
+this name, the "weill belovit sister" who is associated with so much of
+his life without one trace of human identity ever stealing through the
+mist that envelops her, was dead; disappearing noiseless into the grave,
+where it would seem her mother, Mrs. Bowes, the religious hypochondriac
+who had required so many solemn treatises in the shape of letters to
+comfort her, had preceded her daughter. Two boys, the sons of Marjory,
+were with their father in these panelled rooms. They both grew up, but
+not to any distinction; he did not spare the rod as appears in an after
+statement, but loved not to see them in tears, and probably was a fond
+father enough. All these things, however, are too petty to find any
+record in what he says of himself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">{310}</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II_II" id="CHAPTER_II_II"></a>CHAPTER II<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">UNDER QUEEN MARY</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>When the Parliament which did these great things was over, the
+newly-established Kirk began to labour at its own development, supplying
+as far as was possible ministers to the more important centres. There
+were but thirteen available in all according to the lists of those
+appointed to independent charges: and though they no doubt were
+supplemented by various of the laymen who had already been authorised to
+read prayers and preach in the absence of other qualified persons&mdash;one
+of whom, Erskine of Dun, became one of the superintendents of the new
+organisation&mdash;the clerical element must have been very small in
+comparison with the number of the faithful and the power and influence
+accorded to the preachers. When these indispensable arrangements had
+been made the chiefs of the Reformers began to draw up the Book of
+Discipline,&mdash;a compendium of the Constitution of the Church establishing
+her internal order, the provisions to be made for her, her powers in
+dealing with the people in general, and special sinners in
+particular,&mdash;as the Confession of Faith was of her doctrines and belief.
+But this was a much harder morsel for the lords to swallow. Many a stout
+spirit of the Congregation had held manfully for the Reformed faith and
+escaped with delight from the exactions and corruptions of the Romish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">{312}</a></span>
+clergy who yet had not schooled his mind to give up the half of his
+living, the fat commendatorship or priory which had been obtained for
+him by the highest influence, and upon which he had calculated as a
+lawful provision for himself and his family. One would have supposed
+that the meddling and keen supervision of every act of life, which was
+involved in the Church's stern claim of discipline, would also have
+alarmed and revolted a body of men not all conformed to the purest
+models of morality. But this seems to have troubled them little in
+comparison with the necessity of giving up their share of Church lands
+and ecclesiastical wealth generally, in order to provide for the
+preachers, and the needs of education and charity. "Everything that
+repugned to their corrupt affections was termed in their mockage 'devout
+imaginations,'" says Knox: and it was no doubt Lethington from whose
+quiver this winged word came, with so many more.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311"></a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illus_033.jpg" width="600" height="358" alt="HOLYROOD PALACE AND ARTHUR&#39;S SEAT" title="" />
+<span class="caption">HOLYROOD PALACE AND ARTHUR&#39;S SEAT</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>A number of the lords, however, subscribed to the Book of Discipline
+though with reluctance, but some, and among them several of the most
+staunch supporters of the Reformation, held back. Knox had himself been
+placed in an independent position by his congregation, the citizens of
+Edinburgh, and he was therefore more free to press stipulations which in
+no way could be supposed to be for his own interest: but he evidently
+had not taken into account the strong human disposition to keep what has
+been acquired and the extreme practical difficulty of persuading men to
+a sacrifice of property. In other matters too there were drawbacks not
+sufficiently realised. There can be no grander ideal than that of a
+theocracy, a commonwealth entirely ruled and guided by sacred law: but
+when it is brought to practice even by the most enlightened, and men's
+lives are subjected to the keen inspection of an ecclesiastical board
+new to its functions, and eager for perfection, which does <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">{313}</a></span>not disdain
+the most minute detail, nor to listen to the wildest rumours, the high
+ideal is apt to fall into the most intolerable petty tyranny. And
+notwithstanding the high exaltation of many minds, and the wonderful
+intellectual and emotional force which was expended every day in that
+pulpit of St. Giles's, swaying as with great blasts and currents of
+religious feeling the minds of the great congregation that filled the
+aisles of the cathedral, it is to be doubted whether Edinburgh was a
+very agreeable habitation in those days of early fervour, when the
+Congregation occupied the chief place everywhere, and men's thoughts
+were not as yet distracted by the coming of the Queen. During this
+period there occurs a curious and most significant story of an Edinburgh
+mob and riot, which might be placed by the side of the famous Porteous
+mob of later days, and which throws a somewhat lurid light upon the
+record of this most triumphant moment of the early Reformation. The
+Papists and bishops, Knox says, had stirred up the rasckall multitude to
+"make a Robin Hood." We may remark that he never changes his name for
+the mob, of which he is always sternly contemptuous. When it destroys
+convents and altars he flatters it (though he acknowledges sometimes a
+certain ease in finding the matter thus settled for him) with no better
+a title. He was no democrat though the most independent of citizens. The
+vulgar crowd had at no time any attraction for him.</p>
+
+<p>It seems no very great offence to "make a Robin Hood": but it is evident
+this popular festival had been always an occasion of rioting and
+disorderly behaviour since it was condemned by various acts of previous
+Parliaments. It will strike the reader, however, with dismay and horror
+to find that one of the ringleaders having been taken, he was condemned
+to be hanged, and a gibbet erected near the Cross to carry this sentence
+into execution. The <i>Diurnal of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">{314}</a></span>Occurrents</i> gives by far the fullest and
+most graphic account of what followed. The trades rose in anxious
+tumult, at once angry and terrified.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The craftsmen made great solicitations at the hands of the provost,
+John Knox minister, and the baillie, to have gotten him relieved,
+promising that he would do anything possible to be done saving his
+life&mdash;who would do nothing but have him hanged. And when the time of
+the poor man's hanging approached, and that the poor man was come to
+the gibbet with the ladder upon which the said cordwainer should
+have been hanged, the craftsman's children (apprentices?) and
+servants past to armour; and first they housed Alexander Guthrie and
+the provost and baillies in the said Alexander's writing booth, and
+syne come down again to the Cross, and dang down the gibbet and
+brake it in pieces, and thereafter past to the tolbooth which was
+then steekit: and when they could not apprehend the keys thereof
+they brought hammers and dang up the said tolbooth door perforce,
+the provost, baillies, and others looking thereupon; and when the
+said door was broken up ane part of them passed in the same, and not
+only brought the said condemned cordwainer forth of the said
+tolbooth, but also all the remaining persons being thereintill: and
+this done they passed up the Hie gate, to have past forth at the
+Nether Bow."</p></div>
+
+<p>The shutting up of the provost and bailie in the "writing booth"&mdash;one of
+the wooden structures, no doubt, which hung about St. Giles's, as round
+so many other cathedrals, where a crowd of little industries were
+collected about the skirts of the great church, the universal centre of
+life&mdash;has something grimly comic in it, worthy of an Edinburgh mob.
+Guthrie's booth must have been at the west end, facing the Tolbooth, and
+the impotence of the authorities, thus compelled to look on while the
+apprentices and young men in their leather aprons, armed with the long
+spears which were kept ready in all the shops for immediate use, broke
+down the prison doors with their hammers and let the prisoners go
+free&mdash;must have added a delightful zest to the triumph of the rebels,
+who had so lately pleaded humbly before them for the victim's life, but
+in vain. The provost was Archibald Douglas of Kilspindie, a name little
+suitable for such a dilemma. When the rude mob, with their shouts and
+cries, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">{315}</a></span>had turned their backs, the imprisoned authorities were able to
+break out and take shelter in the empty Tolbooth; but when the crowd
+surged up again, finding the gates closed at the Nether Bow, into the
+High Street, a scuffle arose, a new "Clear the Causeway," though the
+defenders of order kept within the walls of the Tolbooth, and thence
+shot at the rioters, who returned their fire with hagbuts and
+stones&mdash;from three in the afternoon till eight o'clock in the evening,
+"and never ane man of the town stirred to defend their provost and
+baillies." Finally the Constable of the Castle was sent for, who made
+peace, the craftsmen only laying down their arms on condition not only
+of absolute immunity from punishment for the day's doings, but with an
+undertaking that all previous actions against them should be stopped,
+and their masters made to receive them again without grudge or
+punishment&mdash;clearly a complete victory for the rioters. This extorted
+guarantee was proclaimed at the Cross at nine o'clock on the lingering
+July night, in the soft twilight which departs so unwillingly from
+northern skies; and a curious scene it must have been, with the
+magistrates still cooped up behind the barred windows of the Tolbooth,
+the triumph of the mob filling the streets with uproar, and spectators
+no doubt at all the windows, story upon story, looking on, glad, can we
+doubt? of something to see which was riot without being bloodshed. John
+Knox adds an explanation of his conduct in his narrative of the
+occurrence, which somewhat softens our feeling towards him. He refused
+to ask for the life of the unlucky reveller not without a reason, such
+as it was.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Who did answer that he had so oft solicited in their favour that
+his own conscience accused him that they used his labours for no
+other end but to be a patron to their impiety. For he had before
+made intercession for William Harlow, James Fussell, and others that
+were convict of the former tumult. They proudly said 'that if it was
+not stayed both he and the Baillies should repent it.' Whereto <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">{316}</a></span>he
+answered 'He would not hurt his conscience for any fear of man.'"</p></div>
+
+<p>It was not perhaps the fault of Knox or his influence that a man should
+be sentenced to be hanged for the rough horseplay of a Robin Hood
+performance, or because he was "Lord of Inobedience" or "Abbot of
+Unreason," like Adam Woodcock; but the extraordinary exaggeration of a
+society which could think such a punishment reasonable is very curious.</p>
+
+<p>Equally curious is the incidental description of how "the Papists"
+crowded into Edinburgh after this, apparently swaggering about the
+streets, "and began to brag as that they would have defaced the
+Protestants." When the Reformers perceived the audacity of their
+opponents, they replied by a similar demonstration: "the brethren
+assembled together and went in such companies, and that in peaceable
+manner, that the Bishops and their bands forsook the causeway." Many a
+strange sight must the spectators at the high windows, the old women at
+their "stairheads," from which they inspected everything, have seen&mdash;the
+bishops one day, the ministers another, and John Knox, were it shade or
+shine, crossing the High Street with his staff every day to St. Giles's,
+and seeing everything, whatever occurred on either side of him, with
+those keen eyes.</p>
+
+<p>This tumult, however, was almost the end of the undisturbed reign of the
+Congregation. In August, Mary Stewart, with all the pomp that her poor
+country could muster for her, arrived in a fog, as so many lesser people
+have done, on her native shores; and henceforward the balance of power
+was strangely disturbed. The gravest of the lords owned a certain
+divergence from the hitherto unbroken claims of religious duty, and a
+hundred softnesses and forbearances stole in, which were far from being
+according <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">{317}</a></span>to the Reformer's views. The new reign began with a startling
+test of loyalty to conviction, which apparently had not been
+anticipated, and which came with a shock upon the feelings even of those
+who loved the Queen most. The first Sunday which Mary spent in Holyrood,
+preparations were made for mass in the chapel, probably with no
+foresight of the effect likely to be produced. Upon this a sudden tumult
+arose in the very ante-chambers. "Shall that idol be suffered again to
+take its place in this realm? It shall not," even the courtiers said to
+each other. The Master of Lindsay, that grim Lindsay of the Byres, so
+well known among Mary's adversaries, standing with some gentlemen of
+Fife in the courtyard, declared that "the idolatrous priests should die
+the death." In this situation of danger the Lord James, afterwards so
+well known as Murray, the Queen's brother, put himself in the breach. He
+"took upon him to keep the door of the chapel." There was no man in
+Scotland more true to the faith, and none more esteemed in the
+Congregation. He excused himself after for this act of true charity by
+saying that his object was to prevent any Scot from entering while the
+mass was proceeding: but Knox divined that it was to protect the priest,
+and preserve silence and sanctity for the service, though he disapproved
+it, that Murray thus intervened. The Reformers did not appreciate the
+good brother's devotion. Knox declared that he was more afraid of one
+mass than of ten thousand armed men, and the arches of St. Giles's rang
+with his alarm, his denunciation, his solemn warning. He recounts,
+however, how by degrees this feeling softened among those who frequented
+the Court. "There were Protestants found," he says, "that were not
+ashamed at tables and other open places to ask 'Why may not the Queen
+have her mass, and the form of her religion? What can that hurt us, or
+our religion?' <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">{318}</a></span>until by degrees this indulgence rose to a warmer and
+stronger sentiment. 'The Queen's mass and her priests will we maintain:
+this hand and this rapier shall fight in their defence.'" One can well
+imagine the chivalrous youth or even the grave baron, with generous
+blood in his veins, who, with hand upon the hilt of the too ready sword,
+would dare even Knox's frown with this outcry; and in these days it is
+the champion of the Queen and of her conscience who secures our
+sympathy. But the Reformer had at least the cruel force of logic on his
+side, the severe logic which decreed the St. Bartholomew. To stamp out
+the previous faith was the only policy on either side.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as now, we think, there are few even of those who are forced to
+believe that the after-accusations against Queen Mary were but too
+clearly proved, who will not look back with a compunctious tenderness
+upon that early and bright beginning of her career. So strong a sense of
+remorseful pity, and the intolerableness of such a fate, overcomes the
+spectator, that he who stands by and looks on, knowing all that is
+coming, can scarcely help feeling that even he, unborn, might send a
+shout from out the dim futurity to warn her. She came with so much hope,
+so eagerly, to her new kingdom, so full of pleasure and interest and
+readiness to hear and see, and to be pleased with everything&mdash;even John
+Knox, that pestilent preacher, of whom she must have heard so much; he
+who had written the book against women which naturally made every woman
+indignant yet curious, keenly desirous to see him, to question him, to
+put him on his defence. I think great injustice has been done to both in
+the repeated interviews in which the sentimentalist perceives nothing
+but a harsh priest upbraiding a lovely woman and making her weep; and
+the sage of sterner mettle sees an almost sublime sight, a prophet
+unmoved by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">{319}</a></span>the meretricious charms of a queen of hearts. Neither of
+these exaggerated views will survive, we believe, a simple reading of
+the interviews themselves, especially in Knox's account of them. He is
+not merciless nor Mary silly. One would almost fancy that she liked the
+encounter which matched her own quick wit against the tremendous old man
+with his "blast against women," his deep-set fiery eyes, his sovereign
+power to move and influence the people. He was absolutely a novel
+personage to Mary: their conversations are like a quick glancing of
+polished weapons&mdash;his, too heavy for her young brilliancy of speech and
+nature, crushing with ponderous force the light-flashing darts of
+question; but she, no way daunted, comprehending him, meeting full in
+the face the prodigious thrust. A brave young creature of twenty
+confronting the great Reformer, in single combat so to speak, and
+retiring from the field, not triumphant indeed, but with all the honours
+of war, and a blessing half extorted from him at the end, she secures a
+sympathy which the weaker in such a fight does not always obtain, but
+which we cannot deny to her in her bright intelligence and brave defence
+of her faith. When his friends asked him, after this first interview,
+what he thought of the Queen, he gave her credit for "a proud mind, a
+crafty wit, and an indurate heart." But curiously enough, though the
+effect is not unprecedented, the faithfulness of genius baulks the
+prejudices of the writer, and there is nowhere a brighter or more genial
+representation of Mary than that which is to be found in a history full
+of abuse of her and vehement vituperation. She is "mischievous Marie," a
+vile woman, a shameless deceiver; every bad name that can be coined by a
+medi&aelig;val fancy, not unlearned in such violences; but when he is face to
+face with this woman of sin it is not in Knox to give other than a true
+picture, and that&mdash;apart from the grudging acknowledgment of her
+qualities and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">{320}</a></span>indication of evil intentions divined&mdash;is almost always an
+attractive one.</p>
+
+<p>He, too, shows far from badly in the encounter. In this case, as in so
+many others, the simple record denuded of all gloss gives at once a much
+better and we do not doubt much more true representation of the two
+remarkable persons involved, than when loaded with explanations, either
+from other people or from themselves. It cannot be said that Knox is
+just to Mary in the opinions he expresses of her, as he is in the
+involuntary picture which his inalienable truthfulness to fact forces
+from him. It must be remembered, however, that his history was written
+after the disastrous story had advanced nearly to its end, and when the
+stamp of crime (as Knox and so many more believed) had thrown a sinister
+shade upon all her previous life. Looking back upon the preliminaries
+which led to such wild confusion and misery, it was not unnatural that a
+man so absolute in judgment should perceive in the most innocent bygone
+details indications of depravity. It is one (whether good or bad we will
+not say) consequence of the use and practice of what may, to use a
+modern word, be called society, that men are less disposed to believe in
+the existence of monstrous and hideous evil, that they do not attach an
+undue importance to trifles nor take levity for vice. Knox had all the
+limitations of mind natural to his humble origin, and his profession,
+and the special disadvantage which must attach to the habit of
+investigating by means of popular accusation and gossip, problematical
+cases of immorality. He was able to believe that the Queen, when retired
+into her private apartments with her ladies, indulged in "skipping not
+very comelie for honest women," and that all kinds of brutal orgies went
+on at court&mdash;incidents certainly unnecessary to prove her after-guilt,
+and entirely out of keeping with all the surrounding associations, as if
+Holyrood had been a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">{321}</a></span>changehouse in "Christ Kirk on the green." It did
+not offend his sense of the probable or likely that such insinuations
+should be made, and he recorded them accordingly not as insinuations but
+as facts, in a manner only possible to that conjoint force of ignorance
+and scorn which continually makes people of one class misconceive and
+condemn those of another. Dancing was in those days the most decorous of
+performances: but if Mary had been proved to have danced a stately <i>pas
+seul</i> in a minuet, it was to Knox, who knew no better, as if she had
+indulged in the wildest bobbing of a country fair&mdash;nay, he would
+probably have thought the high-skipping rural performer by far the more
+innocent of the two.</p>
+
+<p>This is but an instance of many similar misconceptions with which the
+colour of the picture is heightened. An impassioned spectator looking on
+with a foregone conclusion in his mind, never apparently able to
+convince himself that vice does not always wear her trappings, but is
+probably much more dangerous when she observes the ordinary modesties of
+outward life, is always apt to be misled in this way. The state of
+affairs in which a great body of public men, not only ministers, but
+noble men and worthy persons of every degree, could personally address
+the Queen, and that almost in the form of an accusation couched in the
+most vehement terms, because of a libertine raid made by a few young
+gallants in the night, on a house supposed to be inhabited by a woman of
+damaged character, is inconceivable to us&mdash;a certain parochial
+character, a pettiness as of a village, thus comes into the great
+national struggle. The Queen's uncle, who had accompanied her to
+Scotland, was one of the young men concerned, along with Earl Bothwell
+and another. "The horror of this fact and the raretie of it commoved all
+godlie hearts," said Knox&mdash;and yet there was no lack of scandals in that
+age notwithstanding the zeal of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">{322}</a></span>purification. When the courtiers,
+alarmed by this commination (in which every kind of spiritual vengeance
+upon the realm and its rulers was denounced), asked, "Who durst avow
+it?" the grim Lindsay replied, "A thousand gentlemen within Edinburgh."
+Yet if Edinburgh was free from disorders of this kind, it was certainly
+far from free of other contentions. The proclamations from the Cross
+during Mary's brief reign give us the impression of being almost
+ceaseless. The Queen's Majestie proclaimed by the heralds now one
+decree, now another, with a crowd hastily forming to every blast of the
+trumpet: and the little procession in their tabards, carrying a moving
+patch of bright colour and shining ornament up all the long picturesque
+line of street, both without and within the city gates, was of almost
+daily occurrence. It was some compensation at least for the evils of an
+uncertain rule to have that delightful pageant going on for ever.
+Sometimes there would arise a protest, and one of the lords, all
+splendid in his jewelled bonnet, would step forward to the Lord Lyon and
+"take instruments and crave extracts," according to the time-honoured
+jargon of law; while from his corner window perhaps John Knox looked
+out, his eager pen already drawn to answer, the tumultuous impassioned
+sentences rushing to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>When it was found that no punishment was to follow that "enormitie and
+fearful attemptal," but that "nightly masking" and riotous behaviour
+continued, some of the lords took the matter in their own hands, and a
+great band known as "my Lord Duke his friends" took the causeway to keep
+order in the town. When the news was brought to Earl Bothwell that the
+Hamiltons were "upon the gait," there were vows made on his side that
+"the Hamiltons should be driven not only out of the town but out of the
+country." The result, however, of this sudden surging up of personal
+feud to strengthen the bitterness of the quarrel between <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">{323}</a></span>licence and
+repression, was that the final authorities were roused to make the fray
+an affair of State; and Murray and Huntly were sent from the abbey with
+their companies to stop the impending struggle. These sudden night
+tumults, the din of the struggle and clashing of the swords, the
+gleaming torches of the force who came to keep order, were sights very
+familiar to Edinburgh. But this fray brings upon us, prominent in the
+midst of the nightly brawls, the dark and ominous figure whose trace in
+history is so black, so brief, and so disastrous&mdash;once only had he
+appeared clearly before, when he intercepted in the interest of the
+Queen Regent the money sent from England to the Congregation. Now it is
+in a very different guise. Bothwell, as probably the ringleader in the
+disorders of the young nobles, was apparently the only person punished.
+He was confined to his own lodging, and it was apparently at this time
+that he sought the intervention of Knox, who seems to have been the
+universal referee. Knox gladly granted his prayer for an interview,
+which was brought him by a citizen of Edinburgh, with whom the riotous
+Earl had dealings. No doubt the Reformer expected a new convert; and
+indeed Bothwell had his preliminary shrift to make, and confessed his
+repentance of his previous action against the Congregation, which he
+said was done "by the entysements of the Queen Regent." But the Earl's
+object was not entirely of this pious kind. He informed Knox that he had
+offended the Earl of Arran, and that he was most anxious to recover that
+gentleman's favour, on the ground, apparently, that a feud with so great
+a personage compelled him to maintain a great retinue, "a number of
+wicked and unprofitable men, to the utter destruction of my living."</p>
+
+<p>Knox received with unusual favour this petition for his intervention,
+and for (to the reader) an unexpected reason: "Albeit to this hour," he
+said, "it hath not chanced me to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">{324}</a></span>speak to your lordship face to face,
+yet have I borne a good mind to your honour, and have been sorry in my
+heart of the troubles that I have heard you to be involved in. For, my
+lord, my grandfather, goodsire and father, have served your lordship's
+predecessors, and some of them have died under their standards; and this
+is part of the obligation of our Scottish kindness." He goes on
+naturally to exhort his visitor to complete repentance and "perfyte
+reconciliation with God;" but ends by promising his good offices for the
+wished-for reconciliation with man. In this mediation Knox was
+successful: and as the extraordinary chance would have it, it was at the
+Kirk of Field, doomed to such dismal association for ever with
+Bothwell's name, that the meeting with Arran, under the auspices of
+Knox&mdash;strange conjunction!&mdash;took place, and friendship was made between
+the two enemies. Knox made them a little oration as they embraced each
+other, exhorting them to "study that amitie may ensure all former
+offences being forgotten."</p>
+
+<p>This is strange enough when one remembers the terrible tragedy which was
+soon to burst these walls asunder; but stranger still was to follow. The
+two adversaries thus reconciled came to the sermon together next day,
+and there was much rejoicing over the new penitent. But four days after,
+Arran, with a distracted countenance, followed Knox home after the
+preaching, and calling out "I am treacherously betrayed," burst into
+tears. He then narrated with many expressions of horror the cause of his
+distress. Bothwell had made a proposal to him to carry off the Queen and
+place her in Dunkeld Castle in Arran's hands (who was known to be half
+distraught with love of Mary), and to kill Murray, Lethington, and the
+others that now misguided her, so that he and Arran should rule alone.
+The agitation of the unfortunate young man, his wild looks, his
+conviction that he was himself ruined and shamed for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">{325}</a></span>ever, seem to have
+enlightened Knox at once as to the state of his mind. Arran sent letters
+all over the country&mdash;to his father, to the Queen, to Murray&mdash;repeating
+this strange tale, but soon betrayed by the endless delusions which took
+possession of him that his mind was entirely disordered. The story
+remains one of those historical puzzles which it is impossible to solve.
+Was there truth in it&mdash;a premature betrayal of the scheme which
+afterwards made Bothwell infamous? did this wild suggestion drive
+Arran's mind, never too strong, off the balance? or was it some strange
+insight of madness into the other's dark spirit? These are questions
+which no one will ever be able to answer. It seems to have caused much
+perturbation in the Court and its surroundings for the moment, but is
+not, strangely enough, ever referred to when events quicken and Bothwell
+shows himself as he was in the madman's dream.</p>
+
+<p>The chief practical question on which Knox's mind and his vigorous pen
+were engaged during this early period of Mary's reign was the
+all-important question to the country and Church of the provision for
+the maintenance of ministers, for education, and for the poor&mdash;the
+revenues, in short, of the newly-established Church, these three objects
+being conjoined together as belonging to the spiritual dominion. The
+proposal made in the Book of Discipline, ratified and confirmed by the
+subscription of the lords, was that the tithes and other revenues of the
+old Church, apart from all the tyrannical additions which had ground the
+poor (the Uppermost Cloth, Corpse present, Pasch offerings, etc.),
+should be given over to the Congregation for the combined uses above
+described. This in principle had been conceded, though in practice it
+was extremely hard to extract those revenues from the strong secular
+hands into which in many cases they had fallen, and which had not even
+ceased to exact the Corpse present, etc. The Reformers had strongly
+urged the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">{326}</a></span>necessity of having the Book of Discipline ratified by the
+Queen on her arrival; but this suggestion had been set aside even by the
+severest of the lords as out of place for the moment. To such
+enlightened critics as Lethington the whole book was a devout
+imagination, a dream of theorists never to be realised. The Church,
+however, with Knox at her head, was bent upon securing this
+indispensable provision, though it may well be supposed that now, with
+not only the commendators and pensioners but the bishops themselves and
+other ecclesiastical functionaries, inspirited and encouraged by the
+Queen's favour, and hoping that the good old times might yet come back,
+it was more difficult than ever to get a hearing for their claim. And
+great as was the importance of a matter involving the very existence of
+the new ecclesiastical economy, it was, even in the opinion of the
+wisest, scarcely so exciting as the mass in the Queen's chapel, against
+which the ministers preached, and every careful burgher shook his head;
+although the lords who came within the circle of the Court were greatly
+troubled, knowing not how to take her religious observances from the
+Queen, they who had just at the cost of years of conflict gained freedom
+for their own. On one occasion when a party of those who had so toiled
+and struggled together during all the troubled past were met in the
+house of one of the clerk registers, the question was discussed between
+them whether subjects might interfere to put down the idolatry of their
+prince&mdash;when all the nobles took one side, and John Knox, his
+colleagues, and a humble official or two were all that stood on the
+other. As a manner of reconciling the conflicting opinions Knox was
+commissioned to put the question to the Church of Geneva, and to ask
+what in the circumstances described the Church there would recommend to
+be done. But the question was never put, being transferred to
+Lethington's hands, then back again to those of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">{327}</a></span>Knox, perhaps a mere
+expedient to still an unprofitable discussion rather than a serious
+proposal.</p>
+
+<p>While these questions were being hotly and angrily discussed on all
+sides, the preachers and their party growing more and more pertinacious,
+the lords impatient, angry, chafed and fretted beyond bearing by the
+ever-recurring question in which they were no doubt conscious, with an
+additional prick of irritation, that they were abandoning their own
+side, Mary, still fearing no evil, very conciliatory to all about her,
+and entirely convinced no doubt of winning the day, went lightly upon
+her way, hunting, hawking, riding, making long journeys about the
+kingdom, enjoying a life which, if more sombre and poor outwardly, was
+far more original, unusual, and diverting than the luxurious life of the
+French Court under the shadow of a malign and powerful mother-in-law. It
+did not seem perhaps of great importance to her that the preachers
+should breathe anathemas against every one who tolerated the mass in her
+private chapel, or that the lords and their most brilliant spokesman,
+her secretary Lethington, should threaten to stop the Assemblies of the
+Church in retaliation. The war of letters, addresses, proclamations,
+which arose once more between the contending parties is wonderful in an
+age which might have been thought more given to the sword than the pen.
+But it at last became evident that something must be done in one way or
+the other to stop the mouth of the indomitable Knox, with whom were all
+the central mass of the people, not high enough to be moved by the
+influences of the Court, not low enough to fluctuate with every fickle
+popular fancy. Finally it was decided that the Queen should issue a
+decree for a valuation of all ecclesiastical possessions in Scotland&mdash;a
+necessary preliminary measure, but turned into foolishness by the
+stipulation that these possessions should be divided into three parts,
+two to remain with the present possessors, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">{328}</a></span>while the remaining portion
+should be divided between the ministers and herself. This proposed
+arrangement, with which naturally every one was discontented, called
+forth a flight of furious jests. "Good-morrow, my lords of the
+Twa-pairts," said Huntly to the array, spiritual and secular, who were
+to retain the lion's share; while, on the other hand, Knox in the pulpit
+denounced the division. "I see twa parts partly given to the Devil, and
+the third maun be divided between God and the Devil," he cried. "Bear
+witness to me that this day I say it: ere it be long the Devil shall
+have three parts of the third; and judge you then what God's portion
+shall be."&mdash;"The Queen will not have enough for a pair of shoes at the
+year's end after the ministers are sustained," said Lethington; and Knox
+records the "dicton or proverb" which arose, as such sayings do, out of
+the crowd, in respect to the official, the Comptroller, who had charge
+of this hated partition&mdash;"The Laird of Pitarrow," cried the popular
+voice, "was ane earnest professor of Christ; but the meikle Deil receive
+the Controller."</p>
+
+<p>About this time Knox had the opportunity he had long coveted of a public
+disputation upon the mass; but it was held far from the centre of
+affairs, at the little town of Maybole in Ayrshire, where Quentin
+Kennedy of the house of Cassilis, Abbot of Crossraguel (upon whose death
+George Buchanan secured his appointment as pensioner), announced himself
+as ready to meet all comers on this subject. Knox would seem to have
+attached little importance to it, as he does no more than mention it in
+his History; but a full report exists of the controversy, which has much
+more the air of a personal wrangle than of a grave and solemn
+discussion. "Ye said," cries the abbot, "ye did abhor all chiding and
+railing, but nature passes nurture with you."&mdash;"I will neither change
+nature nor nurture with you for all the profits of Crossraguel," says
+the preacher. These amenities<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">{329}</a></span> belonged to the period. But the arguments
+seem singularly feeble on both sides. The plea of the abbot rested upon
+the statement in the Old Testament that Melchizedec offered bread and
+wine to God. On the other side a simple denial of this, and reassertion
+that the mass is an idolatrous rite, seems to have sufficed for Knox. It
+is almost impossible to believe that they did not say something better
+worth remembering on both sides. What they seem to have done is to have
+completely wearied out their auditors, who sat for three days to listen
+to the altercation, and then broke up in disgust. It is curious that
+Knox, so unanswerable in personal controversy, should have been so
+little effectual (so far as we can judge) in this. There is a discussion
+in another part of the History upon baptism, in which he denounces the
+Romish ceremonies attached to that rite as unscriptural, precisely as if
+the Apostles had described in full the method to be employed.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that it was the progress of Knox through the West on this
+occasion which encouraged and stimulated the gentlemen of that district,
+always the most strenuous of Reformers, the descendants of the Lollards,
+the forefathers of the Whigs, to take the law into their own hands in
+respect to those wandering and dispossessed priests who, encouraged by
+the example and support of the Queen, began to appear here and there in
+half-ruined chapels or parish churches to set up a furtive altar and say
+a mass, at peril if not of their lives at least of their liberty. When
+Knox returned to Edinburgh the Queen was at Lochleven, not then a prison
+but a cheerful seclusion, with the air blowing fresh from the pleasant
+loch, and the plains of Kinross and Fife all broad and peaceful before
+her, for the open-air exercises in which she delighted. She sent for
+Knox to this retirement and threw herself upon his aid and charity to
+stop these proceedings. It was not the first time they had met. Two
+previous interviews had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">{330}</a></span>taken place, in the first of which Mary gaily
+encountered the Stern author of the "Blast" upon that general subject,
+and won from him a blessing at the end of the brief duel in which there
+was no bitterness. The second had been on the occasion when Knox, in the
+pulpit, objected to the dancing and festivities of Holyrood; but still
+was of no very formidable character. I cannot doubt that Mary found
+something very humorous and original in the obstinate and dauntless
+prophet whom she desired to come to her and tell her privately when he
+objected to her conduct, and not to make it the subject of his
+sermons&mdash;a very natural and apparently gracious request: from which Knox
+excused himself, however, as having no time to come to her chamber door
+and whisper in her ear. "I cannot tell even what other men will judge of
+me," he said, "that at this time of day am absent from my buke, and
+waiting upon the Court."&mdash;"Ye will not always be at your buke," said the
+Queen. And it was on this second interview that as he left the presence
+with a composed countenance some foolish courtier remarked of Knox that
+he was not afraid, and elicited the answer, noble and dignified if a
+little truculent and exaggerated after an encounter not at all solemn,
+"Why should the pleasing face of a gentlewoman afray me? I have looked
+in the faces of many angry men and yet have not been affrayed above
+measour"&mdash;a most characteristic reply.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">{331}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 412px;">
+<img src="images/illus_034.jpg" width="412" height="600" alt="LOCHLEVEN" title="" />
+<span class="caption">LOCHLEVEN</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Mary, however, had another purpose when she sent for Knox to Lochleven,
+to help her in a strait. "She travailed with him earnestly two hours
+before her supper that he would be the instrument to persuade the people
+and principally the gentlemen of the West not to put hands to punish
+(the priests) any more for the using of themselves in their religion as
+pleased them." The Reformer perceiving her intention assured her that if
+she would herself punish these malefactors, no one would interfere; but
+he was immovable to any argument founded on the patent fact <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">{332}</a></span>that he and
+his party had lately called that the persecution of God's saints which
+now they termed the execution of the law. Mary did not enter into this
+controversy; she kept to her point&mdash;the vindication of her own
+authority. "Will you," she said, "allow that they should take my sword
+in their hand?" a question to which Knox had his answer plain and very
+full, that the sword was God's, and that Jezebel's priests were not
+spared by Elijah nor Agag by Samuel because the royal authority was in
+their favour. It would be difficult to conceive anything more
+exasperating than such an immovable front of dogmatism; and it was a
+wonder of self-control that Mary should only have shown herself
+"somewhat offended" when she broke off this hopeless argument, and
+withdrew to supper. The Reformer thought he was dismissed; but before
+sunrise next morning two several messengers came to his chamber to bid
+him speak with the Queen before he took his departure. It was a May
+morning, and no doubt there was soon much cheerful commotion in the air,
+boats pushed forward to the landing steps with all that tinkle of water
+and din and jar of the oars which is so pleasant to those who love the
+lochs and streams&mdash;for Mary was bound upon a hawking expedition, and the
+preacher's second audience was to be upon the mainland. The Queen must
+have been up betimes while the mists still lay on the soft Lomonds, and
+the pearly grey of the northern skies had scarcely turned to the glory
+of the day: and probably the preacher who was growing old was little
+disposed to join the gay party whose young voices and laughter he could
+hear in his chamber, where he lay "before the sun"&mdash;setting out for the
+farther shore with a day's pleasure before them. It would be interesting
+to penetrate what were his thoughts as he was rowed across the loch at a
+more reasonable hour, when the sunshine shone on every ripple of the
+water, and the green hills lay basking in the light. Did he look with
+jealous eyes, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">{333}</a></span>and wonder whether the grey walls among the trees on St.
+Serf's isle were giving shelter to some idolatrous priest? or was his
+heart invaded by the beauty of the morning, the heavenly quiet, the
+murmur of soft sound? His mind was heavy we know with cares for the
+Church, fears for the stability of the Reformation itself, forebodings
+of punishment and cursings more habitual to his thoughts, and perhaps
+more congenial to the time, than prosperity and blessing. It might be
+even that a faint apprehension (not fear, for in his own person Knox had
+little occasion for fear even had he been of a timorous nature) of
+further trouble with the Queen overclouded his aspect: and if he caught
+a glimpse of the ladies and their cavaliers on the mainland, the joyous
+cavalcade would rouse no sympathetic pleasure, so sure was he that their
+frolics and youthful pleasure were leading to misery and doom&mdash;in which,
+alas! he was too sooth a prophet.</p>
+
+<p>But when Knox met the Queen's Majestie "be-west Kinross," Mary all
+bright with exercise and pleasure had forgotten, or else had no mind to
+remember, the offence of the previous night. She began to talk to him of
+ordinary matters, of Ruthven who had (save the mark!)&mdash;dark Ruthven not
+many years removed from that dreadful scene in the closet at
+Holyrood&mdash;offered her a ring, and other such lively trifles. She then
+turned to more serious discourse, warning Knox against Alexander Gordon,
+titular Bishop of Athens, "who was most familiar with the said John in
+his house and at his table," and whose professions of faith seemed so
+genuine that he was about to be made Superintendent of Dumfries. "If you
+knew him as well as I do, you would never promote him to that office nor
+to any other within your Kirk," she said. "Thereintil was not the Queen
+deceived," says Knox, though without any acknowledgment of the service
+she did the Church: for on her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">{334}</a></span>hint he caused further inquiries to be
+made, and foiled the Bishop. Again, as so often, a picture arises before
+our eyes most significant and full of interest. Mary upon her horse,
+perhaps pausing now and then to glance afar into the wide space, where
+her hawk hung suspended a dark speck in the blue, or whirled and circled
+downward to strike its prey, while the preacher on his hackney paused
+reluctant, often essaying to take his leave, retained always by a new
+subject. Suddenly she broached another and more private matter, turning
+aside from the attendants to tell Knox of the new troubles which had
+broken out in the house of Argyle between the Earl and his wife, who was
+Mary's illegitimate sister. The Reformer had already settled a quarrel
+between this pair, and the Queen begged him to interfere again, to write
+to Argyle and smooth the matter over if possible. Then, the time having
+now arrived when she must dismiss him, the field waiting for her and the
+sport suspended, Mary turned again for a parting word.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"And now," said she, "as touching our reasoning yesternight I
+promise to do as ye required. I sall cause summon the offenders, and
+ye shall know that I shall minister justice."</p>
+
+<p>"I am assured then," said he, "that ye shall please God and enjoy
+rest and prosperity within your realm; which to your Majesty is more
+profitable than all the Pope's power can be."</p></div>
+
+<p>We have heard enough and to spare about Mary's tears and the severity of
+Knox&mdash;here is a scene in which for once there is no severity, but
+everything cheerful, radiant, and full of hope. Was there in all
+Christendom a more hopeful princess, more gifted, more understanding,
+more wise? for it was not only that she had the heart to take (or seem
+to take) in a very hard matter the advice of the exasperating Reformer,
+entirely inaccessible to reason on that point at least as he was&mdash;but to
+give it, and that in a matter of real use to himself and his party. Was
+it all dissembling as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">{336}</a></span>Knox believed? or was there any possibility of
+public service and national advantage, and as happy and prosperous a
+life as was possible to a queen, before her when she turned smiling upon
+the strand and waved her hand to him as he rode away? Who can tell? That
+little tower of Lochleven, that dark water between its pastoral hills,
+had soon so different a tale to tell.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335"></a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 369px;">
+<img src="images/illus_035.jpg" width="369" height="600" alt="QUEEN MARY&#39;S BATH" title="" />
+<span class="caption">QUEEN MARY&#39;S BATH</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Had Mary deserted her faith as it would have been such admirable policy
+to do; had she said, like the great Henry, that Scotland was well worth
+a mass or the sacrifice of a mass; had she turned round and persecuted
+the priests of her own Church as she now was about, for their safety and
+with a subterfuge excusable if ever subterfuge was, to pretend to
+do&mdash;would posterity have thought the better of her? Certainly it would
+not; but Knox would, and her path would have been a thousand times more
+clear. Only it has to be said at the end of all, that religion had
+little part in the woes of Mary. Had there been no Darnley or Bothwell
+in her path, had it been in her nature to take that wise resolution of
+Elizabeth's, wise for every woman who has great duties and position of
+her own, how wonderfully everything might have been changed! Such
+reflections, however, are very futile, though they are strangely
+fascinating.</p>
+
+<p>Knox wrote to Argyle immediately after with that plain speaking in which
+he delighted, and made the Earl very angry. It might well have been part
+of Mary's "craft," knowing that he was sure to do this, to embroil him
+with her brother-in-law. And she prosecuted her bishops to save them
+from the Westland lords, and imprisoned them gently to keep them out of
+harm's way. Neither of these acts was very successful, and it would seem
+that the mollifying impression that had been made upon Knox soon died
+away; for when the Queen opened the next Parliament he speaks <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">{337}</a></span>of her
+splendour and that of her train in words more like those of a peevish
+scold than of a prophet and statesman. "All things mislyking the
+preachers," he says with candour, "they spoke boldly against the
+tarjatting of their tails, and against the rest of their vanity, which
+they affirmed should provoke God's vengeance not only against those
+foolish women, but against the whole Realm." God's vengeance was freely
+dealt out on all hands against those who disagreed with the speakers;
+but the silken trains that swept the ground, the wonderful clear
+starching of the delicate ruffs, the embroidered work of pearls and gems
+which the fashion of the time demanded, were but slight causes to draw
+forth the flaming sword. And that Parliament was very unsatisfactory to
+Knox and his friends; they tried to bring in a sumptuary law; they
+endeavoured to have immorality recognised as crime, and subjected to
+penalties as such; and above all, they attempted to obtain the
+ratification of various matters of discipline upon which Knox so pressed
+that the quarrel rose high between him and Murray, and there ensued a
+breach and lasting coolness&mdash;Murray being as unwilling to press Queen
+Mary into measures she disliked, as Knox was determined that only by
+doing so was God's vengeance to be averted. When the Parliament was over
+the preacher made his usual commentary upon it in the pulpit; warning
+the lords what miseries were sure to follow from their carelessness, and
+discussing the chances of the Queen's marriage with much freedom and
+boldness. Once more, though with more reason, was God's vengeance
+invoked. "This, my lords, will I say (note the day and bear witness
+after), whensoever the Nobilities of Scotland, professing the Lord
+Jesus, consents that ane infidel (and all Papists are infidels) shall be
+head to your Soverane, ye do so far as in ye lieth to banish Christ
+Jesus from this realm." This sermon was reported to Mary with
+aggravations,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">{338}</a></span> though it was offensive enough without any aggravations;
+and once more he was summoned to the presence. The Queen was "in a
+vehement furie," deeply offended, and in her nervous exasperation unable
+to refrain from tears, a penalty of weakness which is one of the most
+painful disabilities of women. "What have ye to do with my marriage?"
+she cried again and again, with that outburst which Knox describes
+somewhat brutally as "owling." His own bearing was manly though dogged.
+Naturally he did not withdraw an inch, but repeated to her the scope of
+his sermon with amplifications, while the gentler Erskine of Dun who
+accompanied him endeavoured to soothe the paroxysm of exasperated
+impatience and pain which Mary could not subdue, and for which no doubt
+she scorned herself.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The said John stood still without any alteration of countenance,
+while that the Queen gave place to her inordinate passion; and in
+the end he said, 'Madam, in God's presence I speak, I never
+delighted in the weeping of any of God's creatures; yea, I can
+scarcely well abide the tears of my own boys whom my own hand
+corrects, much less can I rejoice in your Majestie's weeping. But
+seeing that I have offered you no just occasion to be offended, but
+have spoken the truth as my vocation craves of me, I must sustain,
+albeit unwillingly, your Majesty's tears rather than I dare hurt my
+conscience or betray my Commonwealth through my silence.'"</p></div>
+
+<p>He was ordered to withdraw after this, and retired proud and silent to
+the ante-room where he had immediate proof what it was to lose the royal
+favour. Hitherto he had been, it is clear, a not unwelcome visitor: to
+Mary an original, something new in prickly opposition and eloquence,
+holding head against all her seductions, yet haply, at Lochleven at
+least, not altogether unmoved by them, and always interesting to her
+quick wit and intelligence; and Maister John had many friends among the
+courtiers. But now while he waited the Queen's pleasure, not knowing
+perhaps if she might not send him to the Castle or the Tolbooth in her
+wrath, all his fine acquaintances forsook him. He stood, "the said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">{339}</a></span>
+John," for an hour in that bustling ante-room, "as one whom men had
+never seen," only Lord Ochiltree who had come to Holyrood with him, and
+whose daughter he was about to marry, giving any sign of acquaintance to
+the disgraced preacher. And Knox was human: he loved the cold shade as
+little as any man, and the impertinences of all those butterfly
+courtiers moved him as such a man ought not to have been moved. He burst
+out suddenly upon the ladies who sat and whispered and tittered among
+themselves (no doubt) at his discomfiture. He would not have us think
+even then that his mind was disturbed; he merely said&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Oh fayr Ladies, how pleasant were this life of yours if it should
+ever abide, and then in the end that we might pass to heaven with
+all this gay gear! But fie upon that Knave Death that will come
+whether we will or not. And when he has laid on his arrest the foul
+worms will be busy with this flesh be it never so fayre and so
+tender, and the silly soul, I fear, shall be so feeble that it can
+neither carry with it gold garnissing, tarjetting, pearls, nor
+precious stones!"</p></div>
+
+<p>Knox was never called to the royal presence more, nor did Mary ever
+forgive him the exhibition of feminine weakness into which his severity
+had driven her. It was intolerable, no doubt, to her pride to have been
+betrayed into those tears, to have seen through them the same immovable
+countenance which had yielded to none of her arguments and cared nothing
+for her anger, and to have him finally compare her to his own boys whom
+his own hands corrected&mdash;the blubbering of schoolboys to the tears of a
+queen! There is perhaps always a mixture of the tragi-comic in every
+such scene, and this humiliating comparison, obtusely intended as a sort
+of blundering apology, but which brought the Queen's exasperation and
+mortification to a climax, and Knox's bitter assault upon the ladies in
+their fine dresses outside, give a humiliating poignancy to the
+exasperated feeling on both sides such as delights a cynic. It was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">{340}</a></span>the
+end of all personal encounter between the Queen and the preacher. She
+did not forgive him, and did her best to punish: but in their last and
+only subsequent meeting, Knox once more had the better of his royal
+adversary.</p>
+
+<p>He had never been during all his career in such stormy waters as now
+threatened to overwhelm him. Hitherto his bold proceedings had been
+justified by the support of the first men in the kingdom. The Lords of
+the Congregation, as well as that Congregation itself, the statesmen and
+"natural counsellors," as they call themselves, of Scotland, had been at
+his back: but now one by one they had fallen away. The Lord James, now
+called Murray, the greatest of all both in influence and character, had
+been the last to leave his side. The preachers, the great assembly that
+filled St. Giles's almost daily, the irreconcilables with whom it was a
+crime to temporise, and who would have all things settled their own way,
+formed, it is true, a large though much agitated backing; but the solid
+force of men who knew the world better than those absolute spirits, had
+for the moment abandoned the impracticable prophet, and the party of the
+Queen was eagerly on the watch to find some opportunity of crushing him
+if possible. It was not long before this occurred. While Mary was absent
+on one of those journeys through the kingdom which had been the constant
+habit of Scottish monarchs, the usual mass was celebrated in the Chapel
+of Holyrood, the priests who officiated there evidently feeling
+themselves authorised to continue their usual service even in the
+Queen's absence, for whose sake alone it was tolerated. But they were
+interrupted by "a zealous brother," and some little tumult rose, just of
+importance enough to justify the seizure of two offenders, who were
+bound under sureties to "underlie the law" at a given date, within three
+weeks of the offence. In the excited state of feeling which existed in
+the town this arrest was magnified into something serious, and "the
+brethren," consulting over the matter <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">{342}</a></span>with perhaps involuntary
+exaggeration, as if the two rioters were in danger of their lives,
+concluded that Knox should write a circular letter to the Congregation
+at a distance, as had been done with such effect in the early days under
+the Queen Regent, bidding them assemble in Edinburgh upon the day fixed
+for the trial. A copy of this letter was carried to the Court then at
+Stirling and afforded the very occasion required. Murray returned in
+haste from the north, and all the nobility were called to Edinburgh to
+inquire into this bold semi-royal summons issued to the Queen's lieges
+without her authority and in resistance to her will. "The Queen was not
+a little rejoiced," says Knox, "for she thought once to be revenged of
+that her great enemy." And it was evident that Mary did look forward to
+the satisfaction of crushing this arrogant priest and achieving a final
+triumph over the man whom she could neither awe nor charm out of his own
+determined way.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341"></a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 415px;">
+<img src="images/illus_036.jpg" width="415" height="600" alt="WEST DOORWAY, HOLYROOD CHAPEL" title="" />
+<span class="caption">WEST DOORWAY, HOLYROOD CHAPEL</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The commotion produced by these proceedings was unexampled. One after
+another of the men who had by Knox's side led the entire movement of the
+Reformation and to whom he had been spokesman, secretary, and
+counsellor, came with grave looks and anxious urgency to do what they
+could to procure his submission. The Master of Maxwell, hitherto his
+great friend, but who now broke off from him entirely, was the first to
+appear; Then Speirs of Condie (whom he convinced), then Murray and
+Lethington with whom he held one of those long arguments which were of
+frequent recurrence, and which are always highly dramatic&mdash;the dour
+preacher holding his own like a stone wall before all the assaults,
+light, brilliant, and varied, of the accomplished secretary, whose smile
+of contempt at the unconquerable personage before him and his "devout
+imaginations" is often mingled with that same exasperation which drove
+Mary to the womanish refuge of tears. But no one <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">{343}</a></span>could move him. And at
+last the day, or rather night, of the trial came.</p>
+
+<p>It was in December, the darkest moment of the year, between six and
+seven in the evening, when the Lords assembled at Holyrood, and the
+formidable culprit was introduced to their presence. The rumour had
+spread in the town that Knox was to be put on his trial, and the whole
+Congregation came with him down the Canongate, filling the court of
+Holyrood with a dark surging mass of men, who crowded the very stairs
+towards the room in which the council was held. The lords were "talking
+ane with another" in the preliminary moment before the council was
+formed, when Knox entered the room. They were then told to take their
+places, headed on one side by "the Duke" Chatelherault, and on the other
+by Argyle. Murray, Glencairn, Ruthven, the Earl Marischal, Knox's tried
+companions in arms, who had stood with him through many a dark day, took
+their seats with averted looks, his judges now, and judges offended,
+repulsed, their old sympathies aggravating the breach. Then came the
+Queen "with no little worldly pomp," and took the chair between those
+two rows of troubled counsellors, Lethington at one side, Maxwell at the
+other. She gave an angry laugh as she took her place. "Wat ye<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> whereat
+I laugh?" she said (or is reported to have said) to one of these
+intimate supporters. "Yon man gart me greit, and grat never tear
+himself: I will see if I can gar him greit."</p>
+
+<p>The proceedings being opened, Knox's letter was read. It was not a
+conciliatory letter, being in reality a call if not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">{344}</a></span>to arms yet to that
+intervention of an army of resolute men which had overawed the
+authorities again and again in earlier times. It contained the usual
+vehement statements about that crime of saying mass which, or even to
+permit it, was the most desperate of public offences in Knox's eyes: and
+there is little doubt that it exaggerated the danger of the crisis, and
+contained at least one misleading statement as to matters of which there
+was no proof. When it was read a moment of silence ensued, and then
+Lethington spoke:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Maister Knox, are ye not sorry from your heart, and do ye not
+repent that sic ane letter has passed your pen, and from you is come
+to the knowledge of others?"</p>
+
+<p>John Knox answered, "My Lord Secretaire, before I repent I must be
+taught my offence."</p>
+
+<p>"Offence!" said Lethington; "if there were no more but the
+convocation of the Queen's lieges the offence cannot be denied."</p>
+
+<p>"Remember yourself, my lord," said the other, "there is a difference
+between ane lawful convocation and ane unlawful. If I have been
+guilty in this, I have often offended since I came last in Scotland;
+for what convocation of the brethren has ever been to this day with
+which my pen served not? Before this no man laid it to my charge as
+a crime."</p>
+
+<p>"Then was then," said Lethington, "and now is now. We have no need
+of such convocations as sometime we have had."</p>
+
+<p>John Knox answered, "The time that has been is even now before my
+eyes; for I see the poor flock in no less danger now than it has
+been at any time before, except that the Devil has gotten a vissoure
+upon his face. Before he came in with his own face discovered by
+open tyranny, seeking the destruction of all that has refused
+idolatrie; and then I think ye will confess the brethren lawfully
+assembled themselves for defence of their lives. And now the Devil
+comes under the cloke of justice to do that which God would not
+suffer him to do by strength."</p>
+
+<p>"What is this?" said the Queen. "Methinks ye trifle with him. Who
+gave him authoritie to make convocation of my lieges? Is not that
+treason?"</p>
+
+<p>"Na, Madam," said the Lord Ruthven, "for he makes convocation of the
+people to hear prayer and sermon almost daily, and whatever your
+Grace or others will think thereof, we think it no treason."</p>
+
+<p>"Hold your peace," said the Queen, "and let him answer for himself."</p>
+
+<p>"I began, Madam," said John Knox, "to reason with the Secretare,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">{345}</a></span>
+whom I take to be ane far better dialectician than your Grace is,
+that all convocations are not unlawful; and now my Lord Ruthven has
+given the instance, which, if your Grace will deny, I shall address
+me for the proof."</p>
+
+<p>"I will say nothing," said the Queen, "against your religion, nor
+against your convening to your sermons. But what authority have ye
+to convocate my subjects when you will, without my commandment?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have no pleasure," said John Knox, "to decline from the former
+purpose. And yet, Madam, to satisfy your Grace's two questions I
+answer, that at my will I never convened four persons in Scotland;
+but at the order that the brethren has appointed I have given divers
+advertisements and great multitudes have assembled thereupon. And if
+your Grace complain that this was done without your Grace's
+commandment, I answer, so has all that God has blessed within this
+Realm, from the beginning of this action. And therefore, Madam, I
+must be convicted by ane just law, that I have done against the
+duties of God's messenger in writing this letter, before that either
+I be sorry or yet repent for the doing of it, as my Lord Secretare
+would persuade me; for what I have done I have done at the
+commandment of the general Kirk of this realm; and therefore I think
+I have done no wrong."</p></div>
+
+<p>This detailed report is in the form of an addendum to Knox's original
+manuscript, written hurriedly as if from dictation, as though in the
+leisure of his later days the Reformer had thought it well to enrich the
+story with so lifelike and well-remembered a scene. Nothing could be
+more animated than the introduction of the different personages of this
+grave tribunal. The long argument with Lethington which might have been
+carried on indefinitely till now, the hasty interruption of the Queen,
+not disposed to be troubled with metaphysics, to bring it back to the
+practical question, the quibble of Ruthven of which Knox makes use, but
+only in passing, are all as real as though we had been present at the
+council. The Queen, with feminine persistence holding to her question,
+is the only one of the assembly who has any heart to the inquiry. The
+heat of a woman and a monarch personally offended is in all she says, as
+well as a keen practical power of keeping to her point. It is she who
+refers to the <i>corpus delicti</i>, carrying the question out of mere vague
+discussion distinctly to the act complained of. Knox <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">{346}</a></span>had said in his
+letter that the prosecution of the men who had interrupted the service
+at Holyrood was the opening of a door "to execute cruelty upon a greater
+multitude." "So," said the Queen, "what say ye to that?" She received in
+full front the tremendous charge which followed:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"While many doubit what the said John should answer he said to the
+Queen, 'Is it lawful for me, Madam, to answer for myself? Or shall I
+be dampned before I be heard?'</p>
+
+<p>'Say what ye can,' said she, 'for I think ye have enough ado.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will first then desire this of your Grace, Madam, and of this
+maist honourable audience, whether if your Grace knows not, that the
+obstinate Papists are deadly enemies to all such as profess the
+evangel of Jesus Christ, and that they most earnestly desire the
+extermination of them and of the true doctrine that is taught in
+this realm?'</p>
+
+<p>The Queen held her peace; but all the lords with common voice said,
+'God forbid that either the lives of the faithful or yet the staying
+of the doctrine stood in the power of the Papists; for just
+experience tells us what cruelty lies in their hearts.'"</p></div>
+
+<p>This sudden turn of opinion, coming from her council itself, and which
+already constituted a startling verdict against her, Mary seems to have
+sustained with the splendid courage and self-control which she displayed
+on great occasions: no tear now, no outburst of impatience. She did not
+even attempt to deny the tremendous indictment, but allowed Knox to
+resume his pleading. And when she spoke again it was with a complete
+change of subject. Apparently her quick intelligence perceived that
+after that remarkable incident the less said to recall the first object
+of the council the better. She went back to her original grievance,
+accusing Knox though he spoke fair before my lords (which indeed it was
+a strain of forbearance to say) that he had caused her "to weep many
+salt tears" at their previous meeting. His reply has much homely
+dignity.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Madam," he said, "because now the second time your Grace has
+branded me with that crime I must answer, lest for my silence I be
+holden guilty. If your Grace be ripely remembered, the Laird of Dun,
+yet living to testify the truth, was present at that time whereof
+your <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">{347}</a></span>Grace complains. Your Grace accused me that I had irreverently
+handled you in the pulpit; that I denied. Ye said, what ado had I
+with your marriage? What was I that I should mell with such matters?
+I answered as touching nature I was ane worm of this earth, and ane
+subject of this Commonwealth, but as touching the office whereintil
+it has pleased God to place me, I was ane watchman both over the
+Realm, and over the Kirk of God gathered within the same, by reason
+whereof I was bound in conscience to blow the trumpet publicly as
+oft as ever I saw any upfall, any appearing danger either of the one
+or of the other. But so it was that ane certain bruit appeared that
+traffic of marriage was betwixt your Grace and the Spanish Ally;
+whereunto I said that if your nobilitie and your Estates did agree,
+unless that both you and your husband shall be so directly bound
+that neither of you might hurt this Commonwealth nor yet the poor
+Kirk of God within the same, that in that case I would pronounce
+that the consenters were troublers of this Commonwealth and enemies
+to God and to His promise planted within the same. At those words I
+grant your Grace stormed and burst forth into an unreasonable
+weeping. What mitigation the Laird of Dun would have made I suppose
+your Grace has not forgot. But while that nothing was able to stay
+your weeping I was compelled to say, I take God to witness that I
+never took pleasure to see any creature weep (yea, not my own
+children when my own hand bett them), meikle less can I rejoice to
+see your Grace make such regret. But seeing I have offered your
+Grace no such occasion, I must rather suffer your Grace to take your
+own pleasure than that I dare to conceal the truth and so betray
+both the Kirk of God and my Commonwealth. These were the most
+extreme words I said."</p></div>
+
+<p>Having thus repeated his offence (even to the tears of the schoolboys)
+the Reformer's shrift was ended and he was told that he might return to
+his house "for that night." No doubt what he himself said is more
+clearly set forth than what others replied, but that he distinctly
+carried the honours of the discussion with him, and that his mien and
+bearing, as here depicted, are manly, grave, and dignified as could be
+desired, will not be denied by any reasonable reader. That they
+impressed the council in the same way is equally evident; that council
+was composed of his ancient companions in arms, the comrades of many an
+anxious day and of many a triumphant moment. That he had offended and
+broken with several of them would not affect the consideration that to
+condemn John Knox was not a light <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">{348}</a></span>matter; that through all the hours of
+that winter evening half Edinburgh had been filling the Court of
+Holyrood and keeping up a murmur of anxiety at its gates; and that it
+was a dangerous crowd to whom my lords would have to give account if a
+hair of his head was touched. The conclusion apparently came with the
+force of a surprise upon the Queen's Majestie, and perhaps shook her
+certainty of the sway over her nobility, which she had been gradually
+acquiring, which was sufficient to make them defend her personal freedom
+and tolerate her faith, but not to pronounce a sentence which they felt
+to be unjust.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"John Knox being departed, the Table of the Lords, and others that
+were present were demanded every man by his vote, if John Knox had
+not offended the Queen's Majestie. The lords voted uniformly they
+could find no offence. The Queen had past to her cabinet, the
+flatterers of the Court, and Lethington principally, raged. The
+Queen was brought again and placed in her chair, and they commanded
+to vote over again, which thing highly offended the haill nobilitie
+so that they began to speak in open audience&mdash;'What! shall the Laird
+of Lethington have power to control us? or shall the presence of ane
+woman cause us to offend God and to dampen ane innocent, against our
+conscience for pleasure of any creature?' And so the haill nobilitie
+absolved John Knox again."</p></div>
+
+<p>The Queen was naturally enraged at this decision, and taunted bitterly
+the Bishop of Ross, who joined in the acquittal, with following the
+multitude, to which he answered with much dignity, "Your Grace may
+consider that it is neither affection to the man nor yet love to his
+profession that moved me to absolve him, but the simple truth"&mdash;a noble
+answer, which shows that the entire body of prelates in Scotland were
+not deserving of the abuse which Knox everywhere and on all occasions
+pours upon them.</p>
+
+<p>This was his last meeting with Mary. The part he played in public
+affairs was as great, and the standing quarrel with the Court, and all
+those who favoured it, more acrimonious than ever, every slanderous tale
+that came on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">{349}</a></span> the idle winds of gossip being taken for granted, and the
+most hideous accusations made in the pulpit as well as in private places
+against the Queen and her lighthearted company. The principles, of such
+profound importance to the nation, which were undoubtedly involved, are
+discredited by the fierce denunciations and miserable personal gossip
+with which they were mingled. That judgment should follow the exhibition
+of "tarjetted tails," <i>i.e.</i> embroidered or highly decorated trains, and
+loom black over a Court ball; and that Scotland should be punished
+because the Queen and her Maries loved dancing, were threats in no way
+inconsistent with the temper of the time; but they must have filled the
+minds of reasonable men with many revoltings of impatience and disgust.
+It says much for the real soundness of purpose and truth of intention
+among the exclusive Church party that they did not permanently injure
+the great cause which they had at bottom honestly at heart.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 225px;">
+<img src="images/illus_037.jpg" width="225" height="300" alt="DOORWAY, HOLYROOD PALACE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">DOORWAY, HOLYROOD PALACE</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> It would be curious to know what language Mary spoke when
+she is reported to have made these very characteristic utterances. It is
+one of the points in the discussion about the famous Casket letters that
+she could not write Scots. Did she make love and make war, and hold
+courts and councils of this grave description, in French or in a broken
+version of her native tongue? No one ever says so, and it is surely a
+thing that could not be passed without remark.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">{350}</a></span></p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III_II" id="CHAPTER_III_II"></a>CHAPTER III<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">THE TRIUMPH AND END</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>When the Assembly of the Church met in December shortly after these
+stirring incidents it was remarked that Knox took no part at first in
+the deliberations, an unexampled event. After the first burst of
+discussion, however, on the subject of the provision for the Church, he
+disclosed the reason of his unusual silence, which was that he had of
+late been accused of being a seditious man, and usurping power to
+himself&mdash;and that some had said of him, "What can the Pope do more than
+send forth his letters, and require them to be obeyed?" When one of the
+great officials present, no less a person than the Lord Justice-Clerk,
+took upon him to reply, Knox silenced him with a few emphatic words&mdash;"Of
+you I ask nothing," he said, "but if the Kirk that is here present do
+not either absolve me or else condemn me, never shall I, in public or in
+private, as ane public minister, open my mouth in doctrine or in
+reasoning." It is needless to say that the Kirk decided that it was his
+duty to advertise the brethren of danger whenever it might appear&mdash;but
+not without "long contention," probably moved by the party of the Court.
+At this period all the members of the nobility had been so universally
+acknowledged as having a right to be present at the Assembly sittings,
+that messengers were sent to advertise them of their guilt in absenting
+themselves when <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">{351}</a></span>in the extremely strained character of the relations
+between Church and State they stayed away. There ensued, some time
+after, a singular conference between the leading ministers and the lords
+upon various matters, chiefly touching the conduct of John Knox, whose
+constant attacks upon the mass, his manner of praying for the Queen, and
+the views he had advanced upon obedience to princes, had given great
+offence not only at Court but among the moderate men who found Mary's
+sway, so far, a gentle and just one. This conference took the form of a
+sort of duel between Knox and Lethington, the only antagonist who was at
+all qualified to confront the Reformer. The comparison we have already
+employed returns involuntarily to our lips; the assault of Lethington is
+like that of a brilliant and chivalrous knight against some immovable
+tower, from the strong walls of which he is perpetually thrown back,
+while they stand invulnerable, untouched by the flashing sword which
+only turns and loses its edge against those stones. His satire, his wit,
+his keen perception of a weak point, are all lost upon the immovable
+preacher, whose determined conviction that he himself is right in every
+act and word is as a triple defence around him. This conviction keeps
+Knox from perceiving what he is by no means incapable by nature of
+seeing, the grotesque conceit, for instance, which is in his prayer for
+the Queen. During the course of the controversy he repeats the form of
+prayer which he is in the habit of using&mdash;being far too courageous a
+soul to veil any supposed fault. And this is the <i>salvam fac</i> employed
+by Knox:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Oh Lord! if Thy pleasure be, purge the heart of the Queen's Majesty
+from the venom of idolatry, and deliver her from the bondage and
+thraldom of Satan in the which she has been brought up and yet
+remains, for the lack of true doctrine; that she may avoid that
+eternal damnation which abides all obstinate and impenitent unto the
+end, and that this poor realm may also escape that plague and
+vengeance which inevitably follow idolatrie maintained against Thy
+manifest Word and the open light thereof." "This," Knox adds, "is
+the form of my <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">{352}</a></span>common prayer as yourselves were witness. Now what is
+worthy of reprehension in it I would hear?"</p>
+
+<p>"There are three things," said Lethington, "that never liked me; but
+the first is, 'To pray for the Queen's Majestie with ane condition
+saying, "Illumine her heart if Thy good pleasure be," whereby it may
+appear that ye doubt of her conversion.' Where have ye the example
+of such prayer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wheresoever the examples are," said the other, "I am assured of the
+rule which is this, 'If we ask anything according to His will He
+will hear us'; and our Maister Christ Jesus commanded us to pray
+unto our Father 'Thy will be done.'"</p></div>
+
+<p>After this discussion has gone on for some time, Lethington, impatient,
+returns to the original question.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"But yet," said Lethington, "why pray ye not for her without moving
+any doubt?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because," said the other, "I have learnt to pray in heaven. Now
+faith, as ye know, depends upon the words of God, and so it is that
+the word teaches me that prayers profit the sons and dochters of
+God's election, of which number whether she be ane or not I have
+just cause to doubt; and therefore I pray God illuminate her heart
+if His good pleasure be."</p>
+
+<p>"But yet," said Lethington, "ye can produce the example of none that
+has so prayed before you."</p>
+
+<p>"Thereto I have already answered," said John Knox, "but yet for
+further declaration I will demand ane question, which is
+this&mdash;Whether ye think that the Apostles prayed themselves as they
+commanded others to pray?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who doubts of that?" said the haill company that were present.</p>
+
+<p>"Weil then," said John Knox, "I am assured that Peter said these
+words to Simon Magus, 'Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and
+pray to God that if it be possible the thought of your heart may be
+forgiven thee.' Here we may clearly see that Peter joins ane
+condition with his commandment."</p></div>
+
+<p>With such extraordinary arguments, unconscious it would seem of the
+absolute incongruity of his illustrations, obtusely perverse in the
+dogmatism which destroys both Christian charity and sound perception,
+though he was as far from obtuse as ever man was by nature&mdash;the preacher
+stood immovable, nay, unassailable. The perception which defines and
+sets apart things that differ was as much beyond his great intellectual
+abilities, at least in those personal questions, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">{353}</a></span>as was the charity
+which thinketh no evil. The tongues of angels could not have convinced
+him that what was said to Simon Magus had no fitness to be applied to
+Mary Stewart. Such distinctions might be for the profane, they were not
+for him, to whom one example of Scripture was like another, always
+applicable, of equal authority in every case. It is not difficult to
+understand the exasperation of so modern a mind as that of Lethington,
+while he attempted in vain to bring this astounding debate to a
+conclusion. For Knox always, so to speak, proves his case. Granting the
+twist in all his logic, the confusion of things between which there was
+no just comparison&mdash;and this twist and confusion belonged to his period
+as well as to himself&mdash;his grotesque argument has an appearance of
+reality which carried away those who agreed with him, and confounded in
+their inability to come to any ground of comprehension those who did
+not.</p>
+
+<p>The debate was long and minute, and Knox was no more shaken from his
+determination that the mass was idolatry and that every idolater should
+die the death, than from his conviction that he did his utmost for the
+Queen in praying that God might convert her, if it were possible. The
+argument as to resisting princes is still longer and more elaborate, but
+as it involves only large and general questions is argued out with much
+more justice and perception. It was one of the subjects most continually
+under discussion among all who held the Reformed faith, and Lethington
+himself and all his audience had both in profession and practice held
+the popular view in the time of Mary of Guise. It is like enough,
+indeed, that somewhere among the crowd of faces turned towards the
+disputants there was that long head and saturnine countenance, still one
+of the best-known effigies of his time, of the scholar who was at that
+period proud to be Queen Mary's tutor, reading Livy with her in the
+afternoons, and who upon this question had views as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">{354}</a></span>clear as a crystal,
+waiting for the moment when they could be set forth. But George
+Buchanan, though he held office in the Assembly, had no warrant to claim
+a hearing between such men as the learned and lively Lord Secretary and
+the great prophet and preacher John Knox.</p>
+
+<p>The discussion ended in nothing, as may be supposed, except a deepened
+offence on the part of the Court with the impracticable Reformer, and an
+additional bitterness of criticism on the part of the Congregation
+touching all that went on at the abbey&mdash;the gaieties, and the beautiful
+dresses, as well as the mass, and now and then a whisper of scandal,
+unproved but taken for granted with that miserable eagerness which such
+opposition brings. Edinburgh, between these two conflicting powers, was
+no doubt able, with the wonderful impartiality of common life, to carry
+on its usual existence much less affected than we could imagine possible
+by any of the disorders, which almost reached the height of civil war
+when Murray and the other lords were banished, and the tide of Mary's
+fate began to rise darkly between the unhappy fool she had chosen for
+her husband, and all the wild conflicting elements which had been enough
+to tax her strength without that aggravation. Even Knox acknowledges
+that "the threatenings of the preachers were fearful," though he himself
+had been the first to warn the people of national judgments to be looked
+for because of the offences in costume and other matters of their Queen.
+We lose, however, here the picturesque and dramatic scenes which added
+so much interest to the history during the brief period when she and he
+were friends. The debate with Lethington, indeed, is the conclusion of
+the brilliant and vivid piece of history in which we have been made to
+see all that was going on in the centre of Scottish life&mdash;the continual
+tumults, the great gatherings in the Church, the sermons, daily orations
+full of burning eloquence and earnestness in which every occurrence <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">{355}</a></span>of
+the moment was discussed, as well as the sacred subjects which were
+familiar in the mouths of all. That vigorous and trenchant pen falls
+from the hand of the preacher. The fifth book of his History is prepared
+it is said from his notes and under his eyes, but it is no longer the
+same as when the very diction was his own, and his vivid memory, to
+which all these incidents were present as when he acted in them, was the
+storehouse upon which he drew. He himself appears but on one occasion
+after the marriage of Mary. Darnley, with perhaps an effort to hold the
+balance even and propitiate the Church, attended the service at St.
+Giles's, or, as the writer now calls it, the High Kirk of Edinburgh,
+where Knox was preaching in his ordinary course unprepared for such an
+honour. In the course of his sermon it chanced that he characterised as
+one of the punishments with which God follows national sins, that boys
+and women should rule over the nations. The young King (as he was
+called) was passionately offended, and Knox was called next day to the
+council to answer for himself, and at the same time forbidden to preach
+for a stipulated time. He replied that he had spoken only according to
+his text, and that if the Church commanded him to abstain from preaching
+he would obey. This is all the formal record; but the following marginal
+note is added which gives a faint but not altogether ineffective glimpse
+of the Knox we know:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"In answering he said more than he preached, for he added, that as
+the King had, to pleasure the Queen, gone to mass and dishonoured
+the Lord God, so should God in His justice make her an instrument of
+his ruin; and so it fell out in a very short time; but the Queen
+being incensed with these words fell out in tears, and to please her
+John Knox must abstain from preaching for a time."</p></div>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact this penalty meant nothing. Knox was enjoined to
+silence as long only as the Queen and Darnley were in Edinburgh; and as
+they took their departure that week, his work was scarcely interrupted
+at all.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">{356}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>During several eventful years after this Knox remained in the shade,
+separated from his friends, the enemy of the Court, and much denuded of
+his national importance. It was at this period that he married for the
+second time. He was nearly sixty, in shattered health and worn with many
+fatigues, and it was scarcely wonderful that his enemies should have
+said that nothing but witchcraft could have induced a noble young lady,
+Lord Ochiltree's daughter, a Stewart not far from the blood royal, to
+bestow her youth upon the old preacher. So it was, however, whether
+seemly or not. The lady must at least have known him well, for her
+father had long been his faithful friend; and no doubt domestic comfort
+and care were doubly necessary to a man whose labours were unending, and
+who had never spared himself during his whole public life.</p>
+
+<p>It is doubly unfortunate that we should have no record from himself of
+the first chapter of that tragedy which was soon to make Scotland the
+centre of curiosity and horror to Christendom, and which came into the
+already troubled national life like a thunderbolt. Nothing, perhaps,
+will ever fully clear up the dark death-scene of Rizzio, the darker
+conspiracies and plots that led to it. The fact that the return of the
+banished lords was simultaneous with his murder, and that Murray and the
+rest had bound themselves in a covenant of duty and service to Darnley
+for his good offices in procuring their recall, of the same date with
+the other and darker bond which bound that wretched boy to the
+executioners of the favourite, will always make it possible for the
+partisans of the Queen to make out a certain case against the lords. And
+that Knox should have left Edinburgh suddenly and without a word when
+that dark deed was accomplished is once more a painful presumption
+against him. But there seems no absolute evidence that either one or the
+other were involved. It is extremely possible, since <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">{357}</a></span>the English envoy
+knew beforehand of some such dark purpose, that they too may have known.
+But it is also evident that so summary a conclusion to the matter was
+not in the mind even of Ruthven when he first presented himself like a
+ghost in the Queen's closet. Persistent tradition will have it still, in
+spite of demonstration to the contrary, that Signor Davie was killed in
+Mary's presence at her feet; but the evidence would seem to prove that
+immediate execution had not even been determined on, and that but for
+the fury of the party among whom the struggling Italian was flung, and
+who could not wait for their vengeance, there might have been some
+pretence at legality, some sort of impeachment and condemnation, to
+justify the deed, in which proceedings had they been taken both Knox and
+Murray would have concurred. It is satisfactory, however, to see that
+Sir James Melville, Mary's trusted and faithful friend, who was in
+Holyrood during the night of the murder, and who had previously urged
+upon the Queen, with all the zeal and earnestness of a man who felt his
+mistress's dearest interests to be at stake, to recall and pardon Murray
+(which had been done also in the strongest terms by Sir N. Throgmorton,
+the English envoy), had evidently not the slightest suspicion of any
+complicity on his part, and even recorded the disappointment of Ruthven
+and the rest to find that the returned exiles looked coldly on them.
+Melville does not even mention Knox, nor is there any further proof of
+guilt on his part than is involved in the fact that he left Edinburgh on
+the afternoon of the day which saw the flight, early in the morning, of
+Ruthven and his band. This hurried departure must always be to the
+prejudice of the Reformer; for he had been in circumstances more
+apparently dangerous before and had never flinched. He had the town of
+Edinburgh at his back and all the Congregation. Murray, with whom his
+friendship had been renewed, was again in Edinburgh, and for the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">{358}</a></span>moment
+at least in favour with the Queen, who had need of all the supporters
+she could find. Why should Knox have fled? He promises in his History to
+write one day a full account of the death of Davie, but never did so.
+Evidence, indeed, either of one kind or other, is entirely wanting; but
+why did he fly?</p>
+
+<p>Whatever was the reason, Knox at this period disappeared entirely from
+the scene where so long he had occupied the very foreground of affairs;
+and until that cruel and terrible chapter of history was completed, he
+was not again visible in Scotland. We cannot help feeling that though
+inexplicable on other grounds, this was well for his fame. His violent
+tongue and pen, no doubt, would have been in the heat of the endless
+controversy. As it is, he was not only absent from the scene, but, what
+is still more singular, took no part whatever in it. The veil of age was
+falling over the prophet, and the penalties of a weak constitution
+overstrained. Perhaps the comparative calm of England, where, strangely
+enough, he chose this time to visit his boys (brought up in a manner
+extraordinary for the sons of such a father, in the obscure and
+comfortable quiet of English life, and evidently quite
+insignificant&mdash;one of them dying unknown, a fellow of his college, the
+other a country clergyman), had something to do in taming his fiery
+spirit. To see the two lads with such blood in their veins in the tame
+security and insignificance of an existence so different from his own,
+looking at their famous father with wonder, perhaps not unmixed with
+youthful disapproval, as a Presbyterian and a firebrand, must have given
+that absolute soul a curious lesson. And how strange is his appearance
+altogether, first and last, in the midst of that substantial,
+respectable county family of Bowes&mdash;carrying off the two ladies in his
+wild train: the mother to whom he was spiritual physician, director, and
+guide; the gentle and silent daughter who was his wife; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359"></a></span>flaming over the
+Continent and through all the troubles in Scotland with these
+incongruous followers behind him, then coming back to drop the two tame
+sparrows in the quiet nest which their mother had left for love of him!
+All we know of them is that in their early childhood he did not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">{360}</a></span>spare
+the rod; yet was grieved to see them weep. It would be strange if it
+were not a disappointment to him, if perhaps a relief as well, to find
+no sympathy in his sons for his own career. The daughters whom the young
+wife of his old age brought him lived to be like him; which it is said
+is the only good fortune in paternity likely to so great a man.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 444px;">
+<img src="images/illus_038.jpg" width="444" height="600" alt="MORAY HOUSE, CANONGATE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">MORAY HOUSE, CANONGATE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>When Knox emerged out of the silence which here falls so strangely upon
+his life (broken but by one energetic protest and appeal to the
+community against the re-erection of the bishopric of St. Andrews, which
+is full of all his old force) he was a weakened and ailing man, not less
+ready in spirit to perform all his ancient offices as standard-bearer
+and champion, but sadly unable in body to bear the fatigues and
+excitement of such an agitated life. He reappeared in public for the
+first time when the infant James was crowned in Stirling, preaching the
+sermon which preceded that melancholy ceremony. He then returned to
+Edinburgh, where for a brief period he saw the accomplishment of all his
+desires under the Regent Murray's government: the mass banished; the
+Kirk re-established; a provision, though still limited to a third of the
+old ecclesiastical property, securely settled for the maintenance of
+religion, and every precaution taken for the stability of the
+settlement. He was no longer able to take the part he had done in the
+affairs of the time and the guidance of the Assemblies, but he was still
+able to conduct, at least, the Sunday services at St. Giles's, and to
+give his strenuous advice and help in all the difficulties of
+government. It must have seemed to him that the light which comes at
+eventide had been fully granted to his prayers. But the death of Murray
+changed all this like the end of a happy dream. His sermon in St.
+Giles's, after that terrible event, is a wail of impassioned
+lamentation. "He is at rest, O Lord! but we are left in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">{361}</a></span>extreme misery,"
+he cries, his grief redoubled by the thought that it was he who had
+procured from Murray the pardon of the assassin. St. Giles's was full of
+the sound of weeping when the old man, worn with labour and trouble,
+pronounced those beautiful words which have breathed like the tone of
+the silver trumpets over so many a grave: "Blessed are the dead that die
+in the Lord." It was one of the last of his appearances in that great
+cathedral which he had made his own, and to which he had given the only
+compensation and adornment which could make up for its old sanctities
+and decoration sacrificed&mdash;the prodigious crowd of eager and sympathetic
+listeners, the great voice not without discords and broken notes, but
+full of natural eloquence and high religious feeling, of an orator and
+prophet.</p>
+
+<p>A few months after Knox was prostrated by a fit of apoplexy, it is said;
+but it would rather seem of paralysis, since his speech was affected. He
+recovered and partially resumed preaching, but never was the same again;
+and the renewed troubles into which Scotland and Edinburgh were plunged
+found the old leader of the Church unequal to the task of making head
+against them. The curious complication of affairs which had already
+existed on several occasions in the capital when the castle and its
+garrison were hostile to the city at their feet, ready to discharge a
+gun into the midst of the crowded streets or threaten a sally from the
+gates which opened directly upon the very centre of the town, was now
+accentuated to the highest degree by the adoption of the Queen's cause
+by its Captain, Kirkaldy of Grange. We cannot pause now to give any
+sketch of that misplaced hero and knight of romance, the Quixote of
+Scotland, who took up Mary's quarrel when others deserted her, and for
+much the same reasons, because, if not guilty, she was at least supposed
+to be so, and at all events was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">{362}</a></span>tragically unfortunate and in
+circumstances wellnigh hopeless. These views brought him into desperate
+opposition to Knox, once his friend and leader; and though it is
+impossible to believe that a man so chivalrous and honourable would have
+injured the old Reformer, yet there were many partisans of less repute
+who would no doubt have willingly struck a blow at Knox under shelter of
+the Captain's name. As was natural to him, however, the preacher in
+these circumstances redoubled his boldness, and the more dangerous it
+was to denounce Mary under the guns of the fortress held in her name,
+was the more anxious with his enfeebled voice to proclaim, over and over
+again, his opinion of her, and of the punishment which, had there been
+justice in the world or faith in Zion, she must have undergone. Knox's
+failing life was assailed at this agitated period by a kind of
+persecution much more trying to him than anything he had undergone in
+the past. He was assailed by anonymous libels, placards affixed to the
+church doors, and thrown into the Assembly, charging him over again with
+railing against the Queen, refusing to pray for her, seeking the support
+of England against his native country, and so forth. These accusations
+had no doubt a foundation of truth. But whatever one may think of the
+matter as a question of fact, there can be no doubt that the very air
+must have rung with the old man's words when he got up under those lofty
+vaults of St. Giles's, and, with his grey hair streaming and his deep
+eyes, deeper sunk with age and care than nature, blazing from under
+their shaggy eyebrows, gave "the lie in his throat to him that either
+dare or will say that ever I sought support against my native country."
+"What I have been to my country," he went on, with a courage and dignity
+that calls forth all our sympathies, "albeit this unthankful age will
+not know, yet the ages to come will be compelled to bear witness to the
+truth. And <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">{363}</a></span>thus I cease, requiring of all men that have to oppose
+anything against me that he will do it so plainly as I make myself and
+all my doings manifest to the world; for to me it seems a thing most
+unreasonable that in my decrepit age I should be compelled to fight
+against shadows and howlets that dare not abide the light."</p>
+
+<p>These flying accusations against him, to which, however, he was well
+accustomed, were followed, it is said, by more startling warnings, such
+as that of a musket ball which came through his window one evening, and
+had he been seated in his usual place would have killed him; a thing
+which might have been accidental, though no one believed so. He was
+persuaded at last to leave Edinburgh only by the representations of the
+citizens that were he attacked they were resolved to defend him, and
+their blood would consequently be on his head. On this argument he moved
+to St. Andrews, the scene of his first ministry, and always a place
+beloved; leaving Edinburgh at the darkest moment of her history, the
+Church silenced with him, and all the order and peace of ordinary life
+suspended. At this crisis of the struggle, when Kirkaldy's garrison was
+reinforced by all the party of the Hamiltons, and the city lay, overawed
+and helpless, at the mercy of the fortress, the life of the Edinburgh
+citizens underwent an extraordinary change. The churches were closed,
+and all the pious habits of the time suspended: "neither was there any
+sound of bell heard in the town, except the ringing of the cannon." How
+strange this was among a population which had crowded daily to the
+sermon and found the chief excitement of its life in the orations of the
+preacher, it is scarcely necessary to point out.</p>
+
+<p>The picture of Knox in St. Andrews, where he went in May 1571, after all
+these agitations, is wonderfully soothing and subdued. He was far from
+being without agitation even there. The new institution of "Tulchan"
+bishops<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">{364}</a></span>&mdash;called so by the popular wit, men who bore the title alone of
+their supposed bishopric, transferring the revenue to the lay patron,
+and who officiated, it would appear, much as pleased them, according to
+the old rule, or to the form of the Reformed service&mdash;had just been
+invented; and Knox was called upon to instal the nominal bishop of St.
+Andrews, a thing which he refused to do. He was in consequence accused
+by some foolish person of himself desiring to have the bishopric (such
+as it was), an accusation of which it is extraordinary that he
+condescended to take any notice. But apart from these rags and remnants
+of familiar conflict, his life in the little city by the sea has a
+pleasant repose and calm. "He ever spoke but sparingly against the mock
+bishop, because he loved the man." This softer note is carried out in
+the two glimpses of him which appear to us chiefly through the
+recollections of the gentle James Melville, then a youth studying at St.
+Andrews. The old man seems to have taken pleasure in the sight of the
+boys about, who were carrying on their education in the place where he
+himself had taught those "bairns," whom Wishart had sent him back to in
+his fervid manhood. "He would sometimes come in and repose him in our
+college yard, and call us scholars to him, and bless us and exhort us to
+know God and His work in our country, and stand by the good cause&mdash;to
+use our time well and learn the guid instructions and follow the guid
+examples of our maisters. Our haill college (St. Leonard's) maister and
+scholars were sound and zealous for the good cause, the other two
+colleges not so." Nor did he disdain the amusements of the young men,
+for when one of the professors made a play at the marriage of Mr. John
+Colvin, it was performed in Mr. Knox's presence. Alas! truth compels us
+to add that the subject of the play was grim and not so peaceful as the
+occasion, for it represented the imaginary siege and taking of the
+Castle of Edinburgh<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">{366}</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365"></a></span>&mdash;then in full activity, and carrying fire and flame
+to the houses of the Edinburgh burghers&mdash;and "the Captain with ane or
+twa with him hanged in effigies." It would seem, however, that Knox
+loved the young scholars better than their instructors, for in one of
+his few letters written from St. Andrews, to the Assembly meeting at
+Perth, he charges the brethren above all things "to preserve the Kirke
+from the bondage of Universities," neither to subject the pulpit to
+them, nor to exempt them from its jurisdiction.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 390px;">
+<img src="images/illus_039.jpg" width="390" height="600" alt="THE PENDS, ST. ANDREWS" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE PENDS, ST. ANDREWS</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Knox was lodged in the abbey of which there now remains nothing but a
+portion of the enclosing wall, and it was but an old man's saunter in
+the sunny morning, with his staff and his servant's arm, through the
+noble gateway of the Pends to where St. Leonard's stood, looking away to
+the East Neuk over the ripening fields. St. Leonard's, however, has
+shared the fate of the abbey and exists no more.</p>
+
+<p>Still more characteristic is the description given by the same pen of
+Knox's public appearances. It was young Melville's greatest privilege,
+the best of all the benefits he received during that year, to hear "that
+maist notable prophet and apostle of our nation preach."</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I had my pen and my little book and took away such things as I
+could comprehend. In the opening of his text he was moderate for the
+space of half an hour, but when he entered to application he made me
+so to grew and tremble that I could not hold a pen to write. In St.
+Andrews he was very weak. I saw him every day of his doctrine go
+hulie and fear (hooley and fairly, gently and with caution), with a
+furring of martins about his neck, a staff in the ane hand, and gude
+godlie Richart Ballenden holding up the other oxter, from the Abbey
+to the Parish Kirk; and by the same Richart and another servant
+lifted up to the pulpit, where he behoved to lean at his first
+entry; but ere he had dome his sermon, he was sae active and
+vigorous that he was like to ding the pulpit in blads and flie out
+of it."</p></div>
+
+<p>Melville says much, as indeed most of the narratives of the time do, of
+Knox's prophecies, especially in respect to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">{367}</a></span>the Castle of Edinburgh,
+which he said would run like a sand-glass&mdash;a prediction supposed to be
+fulfilled by a shower of sand pouring from some portion of the rock; and
+its Captain, Kirkaldy, who was to escape over the walls, but to be taken
+and to hang against the sun. All of which things, and many more,
+occurred precisely as the seer said, after his death, striking great awe
+to the hearts of those to whom the predictions were made. The special
+prophecy in respect to Grange was softened by the announcement that "God
+assures me there is mercy for his soul." And it is at once pathetic and
+impressive to read of the consolation which this assurance gave to the
+chivalrous Kirkaldy on the verge of the scaffold; and the awe-inspiring
+spectacle presented to the believers, who after his execution saw his
+body slowly turn and hang against the western sun, as it poured over the
+Churchyard of St. Giles's, "west, about off the northward neuk of the
+steeple." But this was after the prophet himself had passed into the
+unseen.</p>
+
+<p>Knox returned to Edinburgh in 1572, in August, the horrors of the
+struggle between the Queen's party and the King's, as it was called, or
+Regent's, being for the moment quieted, and the banished citizens
+returning, although no permanent pacification had yet taken place. He
+had but a few months remaining of life, and was very weary of the long
+struggle and longing for rest. "Weary of the world, and daily looking
+for the resolution of this my earthly tabernacle," he says. And in his
+last publication dated from St. Andrews, whither the printer Lekprevik
+had followed him, he heartily salutes and takes good-night of all the
+faithful, earnestly desiring the assistance of their prayers, "that
+without any notable scandal to the evangel of Jesus Christ I may end my
+battle: for," he adds, "as the world is weary of me, so am I of it." He
+lived long enough to welcome his successor in St. Giles's, to whom, to
+hasten his arrival, he wrote the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">{368}</a></span>following touching letter, one of the
+last compositions of his life:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"All worldlie strength, yea even in things spiritual, decayes, and
+yet shall never the work of God decay. Belovit brother, seeing that
+God of His mercy, far above my expectation, has callit me over again
+to Edinburgh, and yet that I feel nature so decayed, and daylie to
+decay, that I look not for a long continuance of my battle, I would
+gladly ance discharge my conscience into your bosom, and into the
+bosom of others in whom I think the fear of God remains. Gif I had
+the abilitie of bodie, I suld not have put you to the pain to the
+whilk I now requyre you, that is, ance to visit me that we may
+confer together on heavenly things; for into earth there is no
+stability except the Kirk of Jesus Christ, ever fighting under the
+cross; to whose myghtie protection I heartilie commit you. Of
+Edinburgh the VII. of September 1572.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right;">
+<span class="smcap">Jhone Knox.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"Haist lest ye come too lait."</p></div>
+
+<p>He lived to induct this successor, and to hear the terrible news of that
+massacre in France, which horrified all Christendom, but was of signal
+good to Scotland by procuring the almost instantaneous collapse of the
+party which fought for the Queen, and held the restoration of Roman
+Catholic worship to be still possible. That hope died out with the first
+sound of the terrible news which proved so abundantly Knox's old
+assertion that in the hands of the Papists there was no safety for his
+life, or the life of any who believed with him. Almost, however, before
+this grain of good in the midst of so much evil became apparent the
+prophet had taken his departure from this world. After the simple
+ceremonial at which he had officiated, of his successor's installation,
+John Knox returned home in the light of the brief November day, as
+Melville had seen him, supported by the arm of his faithful servant. The
+crowd which had filled St. Giles's hurrying out before him lined the
+street, and watched the old man as he crept along down the hill to his
+house, with many a shaken head and many a murmured blessing. In this
+last scene all were unanimous; there was no one to cast a gibe or an
+unkindly look upon that slow aged progress from the scene of his
+greatest labours to the death-bed which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">{370}</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369"></a></span>awaited him. When the spectators
+saw him disappear within his own door, they all knew that it was for the
+last time. He lay for about a fortnight dying, seeing everybody, leaving
+a charge with one, a prophecy with another, with a certain dignified
+consciousness that his death should not be merely as other men's, and
+that to show the reverential company of friends who went and came how to
+die was the one part of his mission which had yet to be accomplished. He
+ended his career on the 24th November 1572, having thus held a sort of
+court of death in his chamber and said everything he had to say&mdash;dying a
+teacher and prophet to men, as he had lived.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 332px;">
+<img src="images/illus_040.jpg" width="332" height="600" alt="INTERIOR OF ST. GILES&#39;S" title="" />
+<span class="caption">INTERIOR OF ST. GILES&#39;S</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>No man has been more splendidly applauded, and none more bitterly
+dispraised. It is in one sense the misfortune of our age that it is
+little able to do either. If steadfast adherence to what he thought the
+perfect way, if the most earnest purpose, the most unwearying labour,
+the profoundest devotion to his God and his country are enough to
+constitute greatness, John Knox is great. He was at the same time a man
+all faults, bristling with prejudices, violent in speech, often
+merciless in judgment, narrow, dogmatic, fiercely intolerant. He was
+incapable of that crowning grace of the imagination and heart which
+enables a man to put himself in another's place and do as he would be
+done by. But even this we must take with a qualification; for Knox would
+no doubt have replied to such an objection that had he been a miserable
+idolater, as he considered the upholders of the mass to be, he could not
+but have been grateful to any man who had dragged him by whatever means
+from that superstition. He was so strong in the certainty of being right
+that he was incapable even of considering the possibility that he might
+be wrong. And there was in him none of those reluctances to give pain,
+none of those softening expedients of charity which veil such a harsh
+conviction and make men hesitate <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">{371}</a></span>to condemn. He knew not what hesitation
+was, and scorned a compromise as if it had been a lie, nor would he
+suffer that others should do what was impossible to himself. His
+determination to have his own way was indeed justified by the conviction
+that it was the way of God, but his incapability of waiting or having
+patience, or considering the wishes and convictions of others, or
+contenting himself with a gradual advance and progression, have no such
+excuse.</p>
+
+<p>These were, however, of the very essence of his character. A perfectly
+dauntless nature fearing nothing, the self-confidence of an inspired
+prophet, the high tyrannical impulse of a swift and fiery genius
+impatient of lesser spirits, were all in him, making of him the
+imperative, absolute, arrogant autocrat he was; but yet no higher
+ambition, no more noble purpose, ever inspired a man. He desired for his
+countrymen that they should be a chosen people like those of old whom
+God had selected to receive His revelation; his ambition was to make
+Scotland the most pure, the most godlike, of all countries of the earth.
+In many things he was intolerable, in some he was wrong and
+self-deceived. He was too eager, too restless, too intent upon doing
+everything, forcing the wheels of the great universe and clutching at
+his aim whatever conditions of nature might oppose&mdash;to be wholly heroic.
+Yet there are none of the smoother or even more lovable figures of
+history whom it would be less possible to strike from off the list of
+heroes. The impression which he left upon the religion and character of
+Scotland remains to this day; and if we think, as many have done during
+all these ages, that that development of national life is the highest
+that could be aimed at, John Knox was one of the greatest of men. But if
+he transmitted many great qualities to his country, he also transmitted
+the defects of these qualities. He cut Scotland adrift in many respects
+from the community of Christendom. He cut her off from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">{372}</a></span>her ancestors and
+from those hallowing traditions of many ages which are the inheritance
+of the universal Church. He taught her to exult in that disruption, not
+to regret it; and he left an almost ineradicable conviction of
+self-superiority to a world lying in wickedness, in the innermost heart
+of the nation. It is a wonderful testimony to a man that he should have
+thus been able to imprint his own characteristics upon his race: and no
+doubt it is because he was himself of the very quintessence of its
+national character to start with, that he has maintained this prodigious
+power through these three hundred years.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 199px;">
+<img src="images/illus_041.jpg" width="199" height="350" alt="KNOX&#39;S PULPIT. In the Antiquarian Society&#39;s Museum,
+Edinburgh." title="" />
+<span class="caption">KNOX&#39;S PULPIT. In the Antiquarian Society&#39;s Museum,
+Edinburgh.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>He lies, it is thought, if not within the walls of St. Giles's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">{373}</a></span>under the
+flags between the Cathedral and the Parliament House, with all the busy
+life of modern Edinburgh, the feet of generations of men treading out
+the hours and years over his head; a more appropriate bed for him than
+green mound or marble monument. That stony square is consecrated ground
+blessed near a thousand years ago by ancient priests who cared little
+more for Rome than do their modern successors now. But little heeded
+Knox for priestly blessing or consecrated soil. "The earth is the Lord's
+and the fulness thereof" was the only consecration of which he thought.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">{374}</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV_II" id="CHAPTER_IV_II"></a>CHAPTER IV<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">THE SCHOLAR OF THE REFORMATION</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>The age of Mary Stewart is in many ways the climax of Scottish national
+history, as well as one of the most interesting and exciting chapters in
+the history of the world. The Stewarts of Scotland had been up to this
+point a native race entirely Scots in training as in birth, and bent
+above all things upon the progress and consolidation of their own
+ancient kingdom, the poor but proud; a speck all but lost in the
+distance of the seas, yet known all over Christendom wherever errant
+squires or chivalrous pretensions were known. But the new sovereign of
+Scotland was one whose heart and pride were elsewhere, whose favourite
+ambitions were directed beyond the limits of that ancient kingdom with
+which she had none of the associations of youth, and to which she came a
+stranger from another Court far more dazzling and splendid, with hopes
+and prospects incapable of being concentrated within the boundary of the
+Tweed. There is no indication that the much-contested history of Mary
+Stewart has lost any of its interest during the progress of the
+intermediate centuries; on the contrary, some of its questions are
+almost more hotly contested now than they were at the moment when they
+arose. Her chivalrous defenders are more bold than once they were, and
+though the tone of her assailants is subdued, it is from a natural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">{375}</a></span>
+softening of sentiment towards the past, and still more from the fashion
+of our time, which finds an absorbing interest in the manifestations of
+individual character and the discussion of individual motives, rather
+than from any change of opinion. I do not venture to enter into that
+long-continued conflict, or to attempt to decide for the hundredth time
+whether a woman so gifted and unfortunate was more or less guilty. Both
+parties have gone, and still go, too far in that discussion; and Mary
+would not have thanked (I imagine) those partisans who would prove her
+innocence at the cost of all those vigorous and splendid qualities which
+made her remarkable. She could scarcely be at once an unoffending victim
+and one of the ablest women of her time.</p>
+
+<p>As this is the most interesting of all the epochs of Scottish
+history&mdash;and that not for Mary's sake alone, but for the wonderful
+conflict going on apart from her, and in which her tragic career is but
+an episode&mdash;so it is the most exciting and picturesque period in the
+records of Edinburgh, which was then in its fullest splendour of
+architectural beauty and social life; its noble streets more crowded,
+more gay, more tumultuous and tragical; its inhabitants more
+characteristic and individual; the scenes taking place within it more
+dramatic and exciting than at any other part of its history. Fine
+foreign ambassadors, grave English diplomates trained in the school of
+the great Cecil, and bound to the subtle and tortuous policy of the
+powerful Elizabeth; besides a new unusual crowd of lighter import but
+not less difficult governance, the foreign artists, musicians, courtiers
+of all kinds, who hung about the palace, had come in to add a hundred
+complicating interests and pursuits to the simpler if fiercer
+contentions of feudal lords and protesting citizens: not to speak of the
+greatest change of all, the substitution for the ambitious Churchman of
+old, with a coat of mail under his rochet, of the absolute and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">{376}</a></span>
+impracticable preacher who gave no dispensations or indulgences, and
+permitted no compromise. All these new elements, complicated by the
+tremendous question of the English succession, and the introduction of
+many problems of foreign politics into a crisis bristling with
+difficulties of its own, made the epoch extraordinary; while the very
+streets were continually filled by exciting spectacles, by processions,
+by sudden fights and deadly struggles, by pageants and splendours, one
+succeeding another, in which the whole population had their share. The
+decree of the town council that "lang weapons," spears, lances, and
+Jedburgh axes, should be provided in every shop&mdash;so that when the town
+bell rang every man might be ready to throw down his tools or his
+merchandise and grip the ready weapon&mdash;affords the most striking
+suggestion of those sudden tumults which might rise in a moment, and
+which were too common to demand any special record, but kept the town in
+perpetual agitation and excitement&mdash;an agitation, it is true, by no
+means peculiar to Edinburgh. No painter has ever done justice to the
+scene which must have been common as the day, when the beautiful young
+Queen, so little accustomed to the restraints and comparative poverty of
+her northern kingdom, and able to surround herself with the splendour
+she loved out of her French dowry, rode out in all her bravery up the
+Canongate, where every outside stair and high window would be crowded
+with spectators, and through the turreted and battlemented gate to the
+grim fortress on the crown of the hill, making everything splendid with
+the glitter of her cortege and her own smiles and unrivalled charm.
+Sadder spectacles that same beautiful Queen provided too&mdash;miserable
+journeys up and down from the unhappy palace, sometimes through a stern
+suppressed tumult of hostile faces, sometimes stealthily under cover of
+night which alone could <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">{377}</a></span>protect her. Everything in Edinburgh is
+associated more or less with Mary's name. There is scarcely an old house
+existing, with any authentic traces of antiquity, in which she is not
+reported to have taken refuge in her trouble or visited in her pleasure.
+The more vulgar enthusiasts of the causeways are content to abolish all
+the other associations of old Edinburgh for Mary's name.</p>
+
+<p>But I will not attempt to revive those pageants either of joy or sorrow.
+There are other recollections which may be evoked with less historical
+responsibility and at least a little more freshness and novelty. No
+figure can be introduced out of that age who has not some connection one
+way or other with the Queen; and the great scholar, whose reputation has
+remained unique in Scotland, had some share in her earlier and happier
+life, as well as a link, supposed of treachery, with her later career.
+George Buchanan was the Queen's reader and master in her studies when
+all was well with her. He is considered by some of her defenders to be
+the forger of the wonderful letters which, if true, are the most
+undeniable proof of her guilt. But these things were but incidents in
+his career, and he is in himself one of the most illustrious and
+memorable figures among the throngs that surrounded her in that brief
+period of sovereignty which has taken more hold of the imagination of
+Scotland, and indeed of the world, than many a longer and, in point of
+fact, more important reign.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to understand how it is that in later days, and when
+established peace and tranquillity of living might have been supposed to
+give greater encouragement to study, accurate and fine scholarship
+should have ceased to be prized or cultivated in Scotland. Perhaps,
+however, the very advantages upon which we have plumed ourselves so
+long, the general diffusion of education and higher standard of
+knowledge, is one of the causes of this failure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">{378}</a></span>&mdash;not only the poverty of
+Scotch universities and want of endowments, but the broader and simpler
+scale on which our educational systems were founded, and which have made
+it more important to train men for the practical uses of teaching than
+permit to them the waywardness and independence of a scholar. These
+results show the "<i>d&eacute;fauts de nos qualit&eacute;s</i>," though we are not very
+willing to admit the fact. But in the earlier centuries no such reproach
+rested upon us. Although perhaps, then as now, the Scotch intelligence
+had a special leaning towards philosophy, there was still many a learned
+Scot whose reputation was in all the universities, whose Latinity was
+unexceptionable, and his erudition immense, and to whom verses were
+addressed and books dedicated in every centre of letters. One of the
+most distinguished of these scholars was George Buchanan, and there
+could be no better type of the man of letters of his time, in whom the
+liberality of the cosmopolitan was united with the exclusiveness of the
+member of a very strait and limited caste. He had his correspondents in
+all the cities of the Continent, and at home his closest associates were
+among the highest in his own land. Yet he was the son of a very poor
+man, born almost a peasant and dying nearly as poor as he was born. From
+wandering scholar and pedagogue he became the preceptor of a King and
+the associate of princes; but he was not less independent, and he was
+scarcely more rich in the one position than the other. His pride was not
+in the high consultations he shared or the national movements in which
+he had his part, but in his fine Latinity and the elegant turn of those
+classical lines which all his learned compeers admired and applauded.
+The part that he played in history has been made to look odious by
+skilled critics; and the great book in which he recorded the deeds of
+his contemporaries and predecessors has been assailed violently and
+bitterly as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">{379}</a></span>prejudiced, partial, and untrue. But nobody has been able to
+attack his Latin or impair the renown of his scholarship; and perhaps
+had he himself chosen the foundation on which to build his fame, this is
+what he would have preferred above all. History may come and politics
+go, and the principles of both may change with the generations, but
+Latin verse goes on for ever: no false ingenuity of criticism can pick
+holes in the deathless structure of an art with which living principles
+have had nothing to do for a thousand years and more.</p>
+
+<p>Buchanan was born in a farmhouse, "a lowly cottage thatched with straw,"
+in the year 1506, in Killearn in the county of Stirling; but not without
+gentle blood in his veins, the gentility so much prized in Scotland,
+which makes a traceable descent even from the roughest of country lairds
+a matter of distinction. His mother was a Heriot, and one wonders
+whether there might not be some connection between the great scholar and
+the worthy goldsmith of the next generation, who did so much for the
+boys of Edinburgh. Buchanan's best and most trustworthy biographer, Dr.
+Irving,<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> pictures to his readers the sturdy young rustic trudging two
+miles in all weathers to the parish school, with his "piece" in his
+pocket, and already the sonorous harmonies of the great classic tongues
+beginning to sound in his ears&mdash;a familiar picture which so many country
+lads born to a more modest fame have emulated. In the parish school of
+Killearn, in that ancient far-away Scotland before the Reformation,
+which it is hard to realise, so different must it have been from the
+characteristic Scotch school of all our traditions, the foundations of
+Buchanan's great scholarship and power were laid. His father died while
+he was still a mere <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">{380}</a></span>child, and the future man of letters had plenty of
+rough rustic work, helping his mother about the farm on the holidays,
+which must have been more frequent while all the saints of the calendar
+were still honoured. Trees of his planting, his biographer says, writing
+in the beginning of this century, still grow upon the banks of the
+little stream which runs by the beautiful ruins of Dunblane, and which
+watered his mother's fields. When he had reached the age of fourteen an
+uncle Heriot seeing his aptitude for study sent him off, it would seem
+alone, in all his rusticity and homeliness, to Paris&mdash;a curious sign of
+the close connection between Scotland and France&mdash;where he carried on
+his studies or, a phrase more appropriate to his age, learned his
+lessons amid the throngs of the French schools. Before he was sixteen,
+however, his uncle died, leaving him desolate and unprovided for amongst
+strangers; and the boy had to make his way home as best he could, half
+begging, half working his passage, stopping perhaps here and there to
+help a schoolboy or to write a letter for the unlearned, and earning a
+bed and a meal as poor scholars were used to do. He remained a year in
+his mother's house, but probably was no longer wanted for the uses of
+the farm, since his next move was to the wars. He himself informs us in
+the sketch of his life which he wrote in his old age that he was "moved
+with a desire to study military matters," a desire by no means unusual
+at seventeen. These were the days when the fantastic French Albany was
+at the head of affairs in Scotland, during the childhood of James V, and
+the country was in great disorder, torn with private quarrels and
+dissensions. It is evident that, the kind uncle being dead and affairs
+in general so little propitious, there would be little chance in the
+resources of the farm of securing further university training for the
+boy who had his own way to make somehow in the world; and perhaps his
+experience of Paris <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381"></a></span>and possession of the French language (no
+inconsiderable advantage when there were so many French adventurers and
+hangers on about the Court) might be expected to give him chances of
+promotion; while his service perhaps exempted an elder brother, of more
+use than he upon the farm, from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">{382}</a></span>needful service, when his feudal lord
+called out his men on the summons of the Regent.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 381px;">
+<img src="images/illus_042.jpg" width="381" height="500" alt="NORTH DOORWAY, HERIOT&#39;S HOSPITAL" title="" />
+<span class="caption">NORTH DOORWAY, HERIOT&#39;S HOSPITAL</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>George Buchanan accordingly followed the Laird's flag upon one of the
+wildest and most fruitless of Albany's expeditions to the Border, for
+the siege of Wark. The great Border stronghold, the size and wonderful
+proportions of which astonished the Scots army, stands forth again,
+clear as when it first struck his boyish imagination, in the description
+which Buchanan gives of it nearly half a century later in his history of
+that time&mdash;where the reader can still see the discomfited army with its
+distracted captains and councils, and futile leader, straggling back
+through the deep snow, each gloomy band finding its way as best it could
+to its own district. Buchanan would seem to have had enough of fighting;
+and perhaps he had succeeded in proving to his relatives that neither
+arms nor agriculture were his vocation; for we next find him on his way
+to St. Andrews, "to hear John Major who was then teaching dialectics or
+rather sophistry." Here he would seem to have studied for two years;
+taking his degree in 1525 at the age of nineteen. After this he followed
+Major to France, whether for love of his master, or with the idea that
+Major's interest as a doctor of the Sorbonne might help him to find
+employment in Paris, we are not told. One of the many stories to his
+prejudice which were current in his after-career describes Buchanan as
+dependent on Major and ungrateful to him, repaying with a cruel epigram
+the kindness shown him. But there seems absolutely no foundation for
+this accusation which was probably suggested to after-detractors anxious
+for evidence that ingratitude, as one of them says, "was the great and
+unpardonable blemish of his life"&mdash;by the epigram in question, in which
+he distinguishes his professor as "solo cognomine Major." It might very
+well be, however, that Buchanan expected a kind recommendation from his
+St.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">{383}</a></span> Andrews master, such as the habit of the kindly Scots was apt to
+give, and some help perhaps in procuring employment, and that the
+failure of any aid of this description betrayed the youth into the
+national tendency to harshness of speech and the bitter jeer at one who
+was great only in his name.</p>
+
+<p>A stranger with nothing but his learning and his Latin epigrams (though
+these last were a more marketable commodity then than now) would no
+doubt be forlorn enough, struggling to find himself standing-ground and
+a living, subsisting hardly on what chance employment might fall in his
+way, and reflecting, as most adventurers are apt to do, how easy it
+would be for his prosperous countryman to befriend him. Paris, always
+full of stir and commotion, had at this moment a new source of agitation
+in the rising force of the Reformation principles or, as Buchanan calls
+it, "the Lutheran controversy, which was already spreading far and
+wide," and into the midst of which he fell on his return. Whether his
+interest in the new creed did him harm in his search for an
+establishment we are not told: and probably the "struggle with adverse
+fortune for about two years" which he records was merely the difficulty
+in making himself known which affects every young man. At the end of
+that time he got an appointment in the College of St. Barbe as Professor
+of Grammar, and was henceforward exempted at least from the
+heart-sickening conflict with absolute poverty.</p>
+
+<p>Buchanan would seem to have had already high ambitions and a certainty
+that he was fit for something better than the post of schoolmaster in a
+French college&mdash;for notwithstanding his eagerness to get this post we
+soon find him lamenting, in the abstract indeed, but in a manner too
+particular to be without special meaning, the small profit of
+intellectual labour and the weariness of a continual toil which was so
+little rewarded. His plaint of the long night's work, the burning of the
+midnight oil, the hunt through dusty and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">{384}</a></span>rotting manuscripts, seems
+touched with a tone of bitterness unusual in the student's murmurs over
+a lot which after all brings him as much pleasure as weariness. The
+ambitious lad was already, it is evident, longing for more brilliant
+scenes.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"Pervigil in lucem lecta atque relecta revolves<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Et putri excuties scripta sepulta situ:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">S&aelig;pe caput scalpes, et vivos roseris ungues,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Irata feries pulpita s&aelig;pe manu."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>At St. Barbe, however, he secured a noble young pupil of his own
+country, the future Earl of Cassilis, who opened to him a brighter way,
+and finally led him back to his own country and for a time to higher
+fortune. When young King James came to Paris to meet Magdalen of
+France&mdash;with the sudden pathetic result of a hasty romantic marriage
+soon followed by the poor young lady's death&mdash;young Cassilis was still
+there with his tutor, who was himself but little advanced in life beyond
+his patron. And it was presumably in the train of the royal pair that
+the young men returned home. In that case Buchanan must have witnessed
+the touching scene that took place at the poor young Queen's
+disembarkation when she kissed the soil of her new country, the land
+which was to afford her only a grave. Whether dreams of Court favour and
+advancement were beginning to germinate in the young scholar's brain as
+he was thus suddenly swept into the train of royalty there is nothing to
+say; but at all events he observed everything with keen attentive eyes,
+unconsciously collecting the best materials for the history he was yet
+to write. And it is clear that this accidental connection with the King
+bore after-fruit. Buchanan went to Ayrshire with his young patron who
+had come of age, and whose studies were over it is to be supposed: and
+in the leisure of that relaxation from former duties amused himself with
+compositions of various sorts, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">{385}</a></span>and in particular with the <i>Somnium</i>, a
+lively poetical satire upon the Franciscans. The monks, who had been the
+favourite butt of all the ages, were more than ever open to the assaults
+of the wits now that the general sentiment had turned so strongly
+against them, and Buchanan said no more than Dunbar with full
+permission, before any controversy arose, had said, nor half so much as
+David Lindsay was privileged to say. And Lord Cassilis' tutor had all
+the freedom of a private individual responsible to no one while he
+lingered at his young patron's castle, pleased to make as many as
+comprehended his Latin laugh, though probably there were few capable of
+appreciating its classical beauty. This, however, was but a pastime, and
+his mind again began to turn towards Paris, where alone perhaps there
+was to be found the kind of work for which he was most fit and the
+literary applause and emulation which were dear to his soul.</p>
+
+<p>He was about to set out when the King, who doubtless had owed some
+entertainment to Buchanan on the lingering homeward journey, and who
+must have been well aware of his character and gifts, made him pause by
+offering him the tutorship of his illegitimate son, one among several
+for whom James, so young as he was, not more than twenty-five, was
+already responsible, another James Stewart, though not the notable James
+who was afterwards the Regent Murray. This appointment brought Buchanan
+at once within the charmed circle of the Court, and probably prepared
+the way for all his after-honours. But his career in Edinburgh at this
+moment was not especially glorious. Delighted by the <i>Somnium</i>, which
+had been read to him and applauded by all the obsequious audience round,
+James, who though a good Catholic liked a clever assault upon the
+priests as much as any one, recommended the new member of his household
+to resume the subject. It is supposed that the Grey Friars <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">{386}</a></span>from their
+great lodgment so near the Court had found fault with the appointment of
+Buchanan and assailed himself as a profane and scoffing heretic. It was
+certainly strange that a man who had adopted the heresies of Luther
+should be appointed to the care of the son of a Catholic King, but
+Buchanan it is probable kept his religious opinions to himself, and it
+was not necessary to be a Protestant to give vent to the broadest
+satires against the monks and friars who had been for so long the least
+defensible portion of the Catholic establishment. Buchanan, however, was
+not bold enough to fall upon his enemies as Sir David Lindsay did. A
+poor man and a dependant, had he the highest spirit in the world, must
+still bear traces of the yoke to which circumstances have accustomed
+him, and a scholar is not necessarily brave. He shrank from encountering
+the great and powerful community of the Grey Friars in the eye of day,
+and instead of the lively assault expected from him, temporised and
+wrote something which was neither satisfactory to the King who wanted a
+laugh at the expense of the monks, nor to the monks who were more
+enraged by the covert character of a satire which could be read both
+ways, than they would have been by straightforward abuse. The
+dissatisfaction of James moved Buchanan to bolder measures, and after
+his halfhearted attempt to compromise himself as little as possible, he
+was goaded into the most virulent use of his pen, and cut down his
+adversaries with the sharp shafts of his <i>Franciscanus</i> with a vigour
+and malice which left nothing to be desired. The Court had its laugh
+which was resounding and long, but neither King nor courtiers had any
+penalty to pay for the pranks which the classical Samson wrought for
+their pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>Though they were thus mocked in high places, the Churchmen, however, had
+lost none of their power, and even the protection of the royal household
+did not avail the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">{387}</a></span>audacious poet. In the raid upon heretics which was
+made in the beginning of the year 1539 Buchanan's name was included
+among the guilty. He himself tells us that "Cardinal Beatoun bought his
+life from the King with money": making it probably the price of some
+concession that this audacious assailant should be delivered into the
+hands of the Church. At all events the terrified scholar had no
+confidence in the power or will of his Sovereign to protect him, and,
+scared by the flames of various burnings which had taken place
+throughout the kingdom, directed his best wits to finding a way of
+safety. He escaped through a window while his keepers were asleep, some
+say from the Castle of St. Andrews, some from that of Edinburgh. His own
+account is more simple and goes into no detail. "He made his way into
+England, eluding the guards set for him." But England was not more
+secure than Scotland. The quick-witted fugitive found Henry VIII
+impartially burning victims from both sides, on the same day at the same
+stake, and considered this sublime indifference as still more dangerous
+than the strife of Scotch affairs. "His old familiarity with the French,
+and the singular hospitality of that nation," led him back to the city
+which was then the favourite resort of all the Muses. When, however,
+Buchanan arrived in Paris he found that his special enemy, Cardinal
+Beatoun, had preceded him there as ambassador from King James, and,
+alarmed by so dangerous a vicinity, he accepted at once an offer made to
+him by Andrew Govra, one of his colleagues of former times, who had been
+appointed to the charge of a college in Bordeaux, and removed thither
+with the greatest expedition before his foe could be made aware of his
+presence in Paris.</p>
+
+<p>This was in the end of the year 1539, when Buchanan had attained the age
+of thirty-three. His residence in the capital of the famous province of
+Gascony seems to have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">{388}</a></span>been active and happy. He was Professor of Latin
+in the college; perhaps the terms would be more just if we said he was
+Latin master in one of the most flourishing and successful of French
+schools; but our neighbours still prefer the more high-sounding
+nomenclature. The great Garonne was not full of ships and trade at that
+period as it is now; but Bordeaux was one of the old capital cities of
+France, possessing a rank which now belongs to no French provincial
+town, and had its own characteristic society, its scholars and
+provincial statesmen. But the most important and notable human being of
+all whom Buchanan found in his new sphere was a certain small seigneur
+of Gascony, six years old, and already an accomplished Latinist, having
+learned no other language from his cradle, bearing the name of Michel de
+Montaigne and already a little philosopher as well as scholar. The great
+essayist speaks afterwards of "George Buchanan, the celebrated Scotch
+poet," as one of his masters, but he does not say whether Buchanan was
+the enlightened pedagogue who connived at his endless reading and let
+him off as much as was possible from other less congenial studies.</p>
+
+<p>Buchanan, however, must have found the cheerful southern city, with its
+Parliament and its colleges, and all the teeming life and restless
+energies of the Gascon race, not unlike a kind of warmer and more
+brilliant Scotland, full of national brag and gallantry, a congenial
+sphere. He had been for a long time shedding complimentary verses,
+sonnets, dedications, about him after the manner of the time, serving
+out to everybody who was kind to him a little immortality in the shape
+of classic thanks or compliment: but in Bordeaux he began to produce
+works of more apparent importance, "four tragedies" intended primarily
+for the use of his college, where it was the custom to represent yearly
+a play, generally of an allegorical character&mdash;one of the fantastical
+miracle <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">{389}</a></span>plays which delighted the time, and which were often as profane
+in reality as they were religious in pretence. The great classicist
+considered his boys to be wasting their faculties in representing such
+inferior performances, but humoured the prevailing taste so much as to
+choose two Scriptural subjects, Jephthah and John the Baptist,
+alternately with the Medea and Alcestis. He "was successful beyond his
+hopes," he says, in these efforts. In all of the plays the little
+Montaigne was one of the chief performers. "Before a fit age, <i>Alter ab
+undecimo tum me vix ceperat annus</i>," says that great writer, "I
+sustained the first parts in the Latin tragedies of Buchanan, which were
+played in our College de Guienne, with dignity." The little scene is
+pleasant to think of, not too long out of date to recall the scholastic
+pastimes of to-day, though there is no Buchanan to produce plays for
+Eton or Harrow, and probably no young Montaigne to play the hero. The
+learned Scot, with his peasant breeding no doubt making him still more
+conscious of the strain of gentle blood in his veins, a little rough,
+irascible, and impatient in nature, notwithstanding the elegance of his
+Latin speech, and the little noble, gentilhomme to his fingers' end,
+half respectful, half contemptuous of the pedagogue, make a picturesque
+contrast.</p>
+
+<p>Buchanan, however, did not feel himself safe even in Bordeaux, where he
+remained only three years. It is said that Cardinal Beatoun wrote to the
+Archbishop recommending his arrest, and the Franciscan community in the
+Gascon city, which had heard from their brethren of his offences against
+the Order, kept an unfriendly eye upon him, ready to take advantage of
+any hostile opportunity. He therefore returned to Paris, where in a
+similar but apparently more obscure position he spent some years. In
+1547 he was very glad to accompany Govra, who had brought him to
+Bordeaux, and whom Montaigne describes as "beyond <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">{390}</a></span>comparison the
+greatest Principal in France," to his native country Portugal, whither
+his King had summoned him in order that his talents might be of use to
+his own nation as the head of the new University of Coimbra. It would
+seem that Govra carried his whole staff along with him to Portugal.
+"Most of them," Buchanan says, "were men bound to him (Buchanan) for
+many years in the ties of closest friendship, men who were renowned for
+their works all over the world," and in whose society the Scottish
+scholar felt that he would be not among strangers but among kinsmen and
+friends. A still stronger inducement was, that while all Europe was
+ablaze with wars and religious controversies, that one little kingdom
+was at peace. The band of scholars thus removed together to their new
+sphere, like a hive of bees, and at first all went well with them; but
+they had not been long in Portugal when Govra died, leaving them without
+any powerful patronage or protection, a band of strangers, no doubt
+appearing in the aspect of supplanters of native talent to many hostile
+lookers-on. Men of their pursuits and modes of thought, aliens in an
+unknown country, perhaps sufficiently free of speech to alarm the
+narrow-minded, no great observers of ritual or ceremony, were too likely
+under any circumstances to attract the notice of the Inquisition in a
+place so wholly given over to its sway.</p>
+
+<p>Buchanan was probably the most distinguished among this band of
+scholars; and a vague report that he had written something against the
+Franciscans attached to him a special prejudice. As nobody knew what
+this work was, it could not be brought formally against him, but lesser
+crimes were found, such as that of eating meat in Lent and speaking
+disrespectfully of monks, sins which even in Portugal most people were
+more or less guilty of. Buchanan, however, had no very dreadful penalty
+to bear. He was imprisoned for some months in a monastery, that he might
+be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">{391}</a></span>brought by the monks' instruction to a better way of thinking. The
+prisoner was fair enough to admit that he found his jailors by no means
+bad men or unkindly in their treatment of him&mdash;an acknowledgment which
+is greatly to his credit, since prejudice was equally strong on both
+sides and a persecuted scholar was as little apt to see the good
+qualities of his persecutors as they were to accept his satires. It
+would be interesting to know what the homely fathers thought of him,
+this dreadful freethinker and satirist committed to their care for
+instruction. He found them "entirely ignorant of religious questions,"
+though evidently so much less hostile than he had expected, and occupied
+his enforced leisure in making his translation of the Psalms, a monument
+of elegant verse and fine Latinity, for which the quiet of the convent
+and the absence of interruptions must have been most favourable. He
+would seem to have corrected the bad impression he had at first made, by
+these devout studies and his behaviour generally; for when he was
+released the King would not let him go, but gave him a daily allowance
+for his expenses until some fit position could be found for him. But
+there was evidently nothing in Lisbon which tempted Buchanan to stay. He
+languished in the little capital separated from all congenial society,
+and sighed for his beloved Paris which he addressed as his mistress,
+writing a poem, <i>Desiderium Luteti&aelig;</i>, in praise of and longing for the
+presence of that nymph whom so many have wooed.</p>
+
+<p>At last he contrived to escape in a ship bound for England, which,
+however, he found as little congenial as Portugal, and with as short a
+delay as possible he returned to that Lutetia which he loved. Arrived
+there, he would seem to have resumed his old work as schoolmaster in one
+of the colleges, no way advanced, despite his fame and adventures, from
+the first post he had held when little more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">{392}</a></span>than a boy, though he was
+now between forty and fifty, and one of the best-known scholars of his
+time. A few years later he became a member of the household of the
+Mar&eacute;chal de Brissac as tutor to his son, and with him spent five years,
+partly in Italy in the province of Liguria where the Mar&eacute;chal was
+governor. For the first time he would seem to have been treated with
+honour, and his advice taken in affairs of state and public business
+generally, and here he tells us he devoted much of his time to the study
+of sacred literature, so that he might be able to form a matured
+judgment as to the controversies which were tearing the world asunder.
+In the year 1560, his services being no longer required by his pupil,
+Buchanan at last decided upon returning to his native country. "The
+despotism of the Guises," he says, "was over, and the religious
+excitement had begun to calm down." It would appear that though his
+convictions had so long been on the side of the Reform, he had not yet
+publicly made himself known as a member of that party. And his return to
+Scotland was made with the full intention so to do.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the wandering and uncertain career of the scholar and man of
+letters of the sixteenth century. Perhaps Buchanan's temper was less
+compliant, his character less easily adaptable to the society in which
+he found himself, than most; but it may be doubted whether this was the
+cause of the very small advancement in life to which he had come, since
+he was complaisant enough to indite many fine verses in praise of people
+who gave him a banquet or a shelter, and he seems to have gone nowhere
+without making friends. He had got abundant reputation, however, if not
+much else, and was known wherever he went as the celebrated poet, which
+doubtless was agreeable to him if not very profitable. But it gives us a
+certain insight into the life of the literary class in his time to see
+so notable a man <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">{393}</a></span>wandering from one place to another, professor or
+regent or private tutor as it happened, never well off, never secure,
+often in the position of a dependant. When Milton speaks of the
+"others," poets whom he thus adopts into a kind of equality, who "use"</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or with the tangles of Ne&aelig;ra's hair,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>it is supposed to be Buchanan whom he refers to, which is perhaps honour
+enough for a modern classicist; though Amaryllis, the critics say, was
+no more individual a love than the Lutetia before mentioned, for whom he
+pined. Yet though all the scholars of his time admired and followed him,
+he had to return again and again to his Latin grammar, and to small boys
+not so wonderful as Michel of Montaigne; and when he returned to
+Edinburgh at the age of fifty-five his worldly position was scarcely
+better than when he got his first appointment at twenty-one to the
+College of St. Barbe. His life was now, however, to take another form.</p>
+
+<p>Buchanan's return to Scotland "after the despotism of the Guises was
+over" corresponded very nearly with the return of Queen Mary. It is
+surmised that he may have travelled in the suite of "the Lord James,"
+the future Earl of Murray, who paid his sister a visit very soon after
+the death of her husband, King Francis: certainly nothing could be more
+probable than that the Scotch scholar, seeking an opportunity to return
+to his native country, should have joined himself to the train of the
+prince, who probably had been acquainted in his childhood with his
+brother's tutor, and who was himself a man of education and a patron of
+literature. If this guess should be correct it would account for
+Buchanan's rapid promotion to Court favour. Edinburgh was in a state of
+happy expectation when the poet came back. What <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">{394}</a></span>was virtually a new
+reign, though Mary had been the nominal possessor of the throne from her
+birth, was about to begin; the fame of the young Queen had no doubt been
+blown far and wide about the country on every breeze&mdash;that fame of
+beauty, sweetness, and grace which is the most universally attractive of
+all reputations, and which made the proud Scots prouder still in the
+possession of such a prodigy. That there were graver thoughts among the
+very serious and important party, who felt the safety of their
+newly-established and severely-reformed Church to be in doubt if not in
+danger, and who hated and feared "the mass" and the priests who
+performed it as they did the devil (with whom indeed they were more
+amiably familiar), does not alter the fact that the anticipation of
+Mary's return was a happy one, and her welcome cordial and without
+drawback. Nobody knew that there had been a project of a landing at
+Aberdeen, where Huntly and the other northern lords had proposed to meet
+her with twenty thousand men, thus enabling her to march upon her
+capital as a conquering heroine of the old faith, putting Satan, in the
+shape of John Knox, under her feet. Had she accepted this proposal how
+strangely might the face of history have been changed! But there is no
+reason to suppose that Mary desired to come to Scotland with fire and
+flame, any more than there is that her destruction was a foregone
+conclusion. She came with many prognostics of success, though also with
+a continual possibility that "terrible tragedies" might come of it; and
+for some time it would appear that her Court was as seemly and pleasant
+as any Court could be, full of youthful pleasure and delight as became
+her years and the gay youthful company that surrounded her, but also of
+graver matters and thoughts and purposes becoming a noble Queen.</p>
+
+<p>The first notice we have of Buchanan after his return to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">{395}</a></span>Scotland is
+conveyed in a letter from Randolph, the English envoy in Edinburgh, in
+which the question, "Who is fittest to be sent from this Queen to
+attende upon the Queen's Majesty (Elizabeth) for the better continuance
+of intelligence with her Highness?" is discussed. "Of any that I know,"
+says the representative of England, "David Forrest is likeliest, and
+most desireth it. There is with the Queen one called Mr. George
+Buchanan, a Scottishe man very well learned that was schollemaster unto
+Monsieur de Brissac's son, very godly and honest, whom I have always
+judged fitter than any other I know." This was written in January 1562,
+and shows that Buchanan was at that time about the Court and in the way
+of employment, though he was not then chosen as confidential messenger
+between the two queens. A little later he is visible in the exercise of
+his old vocation as the tutor of Mary herself. "The Queen readeth daily
+after her dinner," says the same careful narrator, "instructed by a
+learned man, Mr. George Buchanan, somewhat of Lyvie." These few words
+set before us a curious scene. Mary at the height of her good
+resolutions and good beginning, keeping up her literature as well as all
+her pleasures, her hunting, her riding, her music, her embroideries, all
+the accomplishments of her royal training&mdash;makes a delightful picture.
+She had the habit of working with her needle like any innocent lady in
+her bower, while the lords of her Council, grim lords whom it is strange
+to associate with this pretty pose of royal simplicity, discussed around
+her the troublous affairs of the most turbulent kingdom in Christendom:
+and after her dinner, in the languor of the afternoon, one wonders if
+the lovely lady was diligent over her Livy or rather seduced her
+preceptor to talk about Paris, that much-desired Lutetia which he had so
+longed for, as no doubt in the bottom of her heart she too was sometimes
+doing. The two so unlike each other&mdash;the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">{396}</a></span>beautiful young princess not
+quite twenty, the old scholar and schoolmaster though a poet withal,
+drawing near the extreme boundaries of middle age, and worn with much
+struggling against the world and poverty&mdash;would yet find a subject and
+mutual interest far apart from the book, which made endless conversation
+possible, and many a pleasant comparison of experiences so different.
+Buchanan had dedicated a book to one of those fair and famous Margarets
+who adorned Paris at that epoch, and presumably knew her or something of
+her state, and could understand her Majesty of Scotland's allusions, and
+knew something of the gossip of the Court, or at least could pretend to
+do so, as a man who was aware what was expected of a courtier. It is
+possible indeed that Mary was truly studious, and liked her Livy as her
+contemporary did, the gentle Lady Jane who had so sad a fate; but it is
+much more likely, we think, that the big volume lay open, while the
+scholar's eyes glowed and shone with cherished reminiscences of that
+enchanting city in which his best days had flown, and Mary Stewart
+responded to his recollections with all her gay wit and charm of
+pleasant speech. Many are the tragic associations of Holyrood: it is
+well to note that other companions more sober than Signor Davie, more
+calm than Chastelar, shared now and then the Queen's leisure. Grave
+commentators conclude that it spoke well for her Majesty's Latinity that
+Buchanan put her on Livy; for my part I have no doubt that these two
+unlikely gossips, after perhaps a sentence or two, forgot about Livy,
+and talked of their Paris all the time.</p>
+
+<p>Buchanan took the opportunity of this quiet and prosperous period, when
+all was hopeful in the nation as well as in his own prospects, to
+publish the poetical version of the Psalms which had occupied his
+enforced leisure in the Portuguese monastery years before. They had not
+yet seen the light in a complete form, although several of them <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">{397}</a></span>had been
+included by the well-known printer Etienne, or Stephanus as he is more
+generally called, in a collection of similar translations by several
+learned hands, among which he gives in a flattering preface by far the
+highest place to Buchanan. The terms of laudation in which he speaks,
+and which it was the fashion of the time to employ, may be judged from
+the following extracts quoted by Irving. After commenting upon the
+general excellence of his friend's work, superior to all others, he
+adds,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"There is nothing more honourable, nothing more splendid, than after
+excelling all others, at length to excel one's self; so in my
+judgment you have most happily attained to this praise in your
+version of these psalms. For in translating the other odes of this
+sacred poet, you have been Buchanan, that is, you have been as
+conspicuous among the other paraphrasists as the moon among the
+smaller luminaries; but when you come to the hundred and fourth
+psalm you surpass Buchanan; so that you do not now shine like the
+moon among the lesser luminaries but like the sun you seem to
+obscure all the stars by your brilliant rays."</p></div>
+
+<p>The community of letters in these days was in the habit of expressing
+the intensest mutual admiration, except when a contrary feeling not less
+strong animated their minds and pens. Buchanan dedicated his psalms to
+his beautiful pupil and patron in terms as highflown but more elegant,
+and with a justifiable wealth of hyperbolical adulation. It would be an
+undue demand upon humanity to require nothing more than plain fact in a
+poetical address to a young Sovereign so gracious, so accomplished, and
+so fair. And yet in the extraordinary circumstances, so soon to be
+swallowed up in the abyss of a catastrophe still more extraordinary,
+there is little extravagance in Buchanan's address, of which we shall
+attempt a translation though most unworthy.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"Lady, who bears the sceptre of this land<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">By endless forefathers transmitted down,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose worth exceeds thy fortune far, as stand<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Thy virtues o'er thy years, and the renown<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">{398}</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Of noble gifts over thy noble line,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And spirit o'er thy sex:&mdash;without a frown<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Accept in this poor Latin garb of mine<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The noble songs of Israel's prophet king.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Far from Parnassus and the classic shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">From under northern stars my gift I bring;<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Nor had I ventured such an ill-born thing<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To lay before thee, but for fearing more<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To miss the little chance of pleasing thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose understanding gives a merit not in me."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Buchanan followed this publication by various others, and strangely
+enough, while still enjoying the royal favour brought out his
+<i>Franciscanus</i>, his <i>Fratres Fraterrimi</i>, and other satires specially
+directed against the monks: which, however, seem to have done him no
+harm, for he talks in 1567 of "the occupations of a court," which kept
+him from bestowing the time and trouble he wished on the preparation of
+his various books for the press. Whether the readings from Livy went on
+all this time we have no record; but when Queen Mary married Darnley,
+and when her son was born, Buchanan would still seem to have occupied
+the position of Court poet, and celebrated both events by copies of
+verses as flattering, as well as elegant, as the dedication. From the
+first of these we may quote the lines in which Buchanan proves,
+notwithstanding his long absence and cosmopolitan training, that the
+native brag of the Scot was as strong in him as if he had never left his
+native shores. It could scarcely be to flatter either of the bridal pair
+that he burst forth into this celebration of "the ancient Kingdom."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"For herein lies the glory of the Scot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To fill the woods with clamour of the chase;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To swim the stream, and cold and heat defy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hunger and fatigue. To guard their land<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not with deep trench or wall, but with the force<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of arms, contemning life for honour's sake;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To keep their troth, to reverence the bonds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of friendship, to love virtue and not gifts.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">{399}</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Such acts as these secured throughout the land<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Freedom and peace, when war raged o'er the world,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And every other nation was constrained<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To change its native laws for foreign yoke,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fury of the Goth stopped here; the onslaught fierce<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the strong Saxon, and the tribes more strong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Dane and Norman, who had conquered him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, in our ancient annals live the tales<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Roman victory stayed&mdash;the Latin tide<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which neither south wind checked, nor Parthia bleak,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor waves of Meroi, nor the rushing Rhine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was here arrested by this only race<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before whose face the Roman paused and held<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The frontier of his empire, not by lines<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of hill and river, but by walls and towns,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By Caledonian axes oft assailed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laying all hope of further gain aside."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the meantime, while these poetical performances went on, and the
+scholar occupied his leisure in preparing for publication his scattered
+works&mdash;an occupation which of itself proved the quiet and good hope in
+which he was living&mdash;more serious labours also occupied his mind.
+Notwithstanding his tutorship at Court, Buchanan took advantage of the
+moment to declare himself an adherent of the newly formed and very
+belligerent Church, now settled and accepted on the basis of the
+Reformation, but with little favour at Court as has been seen. He not
+only put himself and his erudition at once on that side in the most open
+and public way, but sat in the General Assembly, or at least in one of
+the Assemblies which preceded the formal creation of that great
+ecclesiastical parliament, in 1563, less than two years after his
+arrival in Scotland. Nor was his position that of a simple member taking
+part in the debates; he seems to have sat upon various special
+committees, and to have been entrusted, along with several others, to
+revise the Book of Discipline, the standard of order and governance: and
+this while he was still a courtier, Mary's tutor and gossip, holding his
+place in her presence, and celebrating <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">{400}</a></span>the events of the time in courtly
+and scholarly verse&mdash;a curious instance of toleration in a time which
+scarcely knew its name.</p>
+
+<p>To recompense Buchanan's services Queen Mary granted him, in the year
+1564, an allowance from the forfeited Church property, making him
+pensioner of the Abbey of Crossraguel, with an income of five hundred
+pounds Scots&mdash;a sum very different, it need not be said, from the same
+sum in English money. The abbey had been held by a Kennedy, the brother
+of Buchanan's first pupil, the Earl of Cassilis, and very probably he
+had thus some knowledge of and connection with the locality, where he
+had gone with Cassilis many years before. The grant would seem for some
+years to have profited him little, the then Earl of Cassilis, son of his
+gentler Gilbert, having little inclination to let go his hold of the
+rents which his uncle had drawn, either in favour of a new abbot or of
+the pensioner; and the cruelties with which this fierce Ayrshire lord
+treated the functionary who succeeded his uncle seem incredible to hear
+of. George Buchanan kept out of his clutches; but it was not till some
+years afterwards that we find the local tyrant bound over in sureties to
+leave the two lawful proprietors of these funds alone. So far as can be
+made out, Mary's grant to Buchanan was almost identical in date with the
+publication of the Psalms and the sonnet which he placed at their head:
+a graceful and royal return for the compliment, quite in harmony with
+the customs of the time. Both events occurred, as would appear, in the
+year 1564, when all was still well with the unfortunate Queen.</p>
+
+<p>Buchanan has been accused of great ingratitude to Mary, because at one
+time he served and flattered her, and received as a recompense for the
+incense he offered, a substantial benefit: but afterwards turned from
+her party to that of her brother, and condemned her with unsparing blame<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">{401}</a></span>
+in his History, as well as acted against her after her downfall. But the
+ingratitude is quite incapable of proof. To be devoted to a royal
+personage in his or her youth, and to maintain unbroken, however he or
+she may change, this early devotion through evil and through good
+report, is a romantic grace which is given to few. It was given to very
+few of those who received with enthusiasm the young Queen of Scotland,
+when she came unsullied, with all her natural fascination and charm,
+into the country which hoped everything from her, yet knew nothing of
+her. After the half-dozen years of disaster and tragedy, of which a much
+greater number of her people believed her the guilty cause than the
+innocent victim, there were few indeed who maintained their faith. And
+Buchanan was neither romantic nor young; he had none of the elements of
+an enthusiast in him. A caustic man of the world, a self-absorbed
+scholar without domestic ties or usage in the art of loving, it would
+have been wonderful indeed had he constituted himself the champion of
+his beautiful pupil in her terrible adversity because she had shown him
+a little favour and he had laid poetical homages at her feet in a
+brighter time. It would be hard indeed if such a passage of mutual good
+offices were to bind a man's judgment for ever, and prevent him from
+exercising the right of choosing whom he will serve to all time. Mary's
+bounty would suffice to give to her tutor the independence which he had
+struggled for all his life, if it had been paid; but it was not paid for
+several years; and it was a bounty which cost the giver nothing, so that
+the claim for eternal gratitude is overweening in any case.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, both then and ever, Buchanan's patron and backer was
+the Lord James, a man with whom he was very much more likely to find
+himself in sympathy than with the young Queen. A grave temper and some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">{402}</a></span>
+learning, and also the charm of early association, would naturally
+attract the elderly scholar more than Mary's feminine gifts, however
+great their charm. It was Murray, no doubt, who presented him to the
+Queen, and procured him his position at Court; and just as the tragic
+moment approached, when Mary's brilliant life was about to plunge into
+darkness, Murray bestowed on Buchanan the place of all others best
+suited for him, and to which his whole previous existence tended&mdash;that
+of Principal of the College of St. Leonard's in the University of St.
+Andrews. A more fit position, as the best field for his great gifts and
+dignified retirement for his old age, could not be imagined. Buchanan
+was sixty; he was of all the scholars of his time <i>facile princeps</i>,
+according to the opinion of the great French printer and scholar, whose
+expressions were adopted in the register of the University as describing
+the qualifications of the new Principal. It might well have been
+supposed that in the reconstitution and improvement of that old
+University, in the supervision of his students, in the periodical visit
+to Edinburgh for Church matters or educational duties, which has
+afforded the necessary relaxation to many a succeeding principal, the
+peaceful days of the greatest scholar in Europe would now have passed
+tranquilly, until he found his resting-place, like so many others, under
+the soft green mantle of the turf which, broken only by solemn
+mounds&mdash;the last traces of individuality&mdash;encircled the great Cathedral
+of St. Andrews as it now encircles the ruins of that once splendid
+shrine.</p>
+
+<p>The events of the time, however, permitted no such dignified and calm
+conclusion. One can imagine the horror and dismay with which the little
+community at St. Andrews heard the dreadful news, carried far and wide
+on every breeze, with every kind of whispered comment and
+suggestion&mdash;soon to be no longer whispered <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">{403}</a></span>with pale face and bated
+breath, but proclaimed from the housetops&mdash;of Darnley's murder. Buchanan
+had poured forth his celebrations of Mary's marriage and of the birth of
+the heir while still a member of her household. And no doubt he had
+become aware of the dissensions in that royal house, of Darnley's
+ingratitude and folly and the Queen's impatience, before he escaped from
+all the talk and endless gossip to the quiet of his college. But it
+would seem equally clear that when the action of the sombre tragedy
+quickened he was absent from the scene and knew of it only by the
+rumours and reports that came across the Firth. First Rizzio's murder,
+which the distant spectators would discuss, no doubt, with a thrill not
+entirely of horror, a stern sense that justice had been done, a
+satisfied prejudice&mdash;and no doubt some patriotic, if still prejudiced,
+hope that now the Italian was removed there would be less of foreign
+policy, and a more entire regard for the welfare of affairs at home.
+Then would come the rumours of the Queen's vengeance, lightly held at
+first, of Bothwell always in the foreground, her chief supporter and
+partisan&mdash;Bothwell who, though loved by nobody, was yet a Protestant,
+and therefore not altogether beyond hope. And then with ever-quickening
+haste event after event&mdash;the murder of the King, for whom no one would
+have mourned much had it been attended by circumstances less terrible;
+the mad proceedings of the Queen, whether constrained or free, her
+captivity, outrage, or conspiracy, whichever it was, her insane and
+incomprehensible marriage, which no force or persuasion could account
+for. As the posts arrived at uncertain intervals, delayed by weather,
+strong winds and heavy seas, by breaking down of conveyances, by the
+very agitations and tumults in the capital which made them so terribly
+interesting, the eager spectators in Fife must have congregated to await
+their arrival with an intensity of excitement, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">{404}</a></span>of which, with our
+endless sources of information and constant communication, we can form
+little idea now.</p>
+
+<p>And there would seem to be no doubt of the strong immediate feeling
+which arose against the Queen, the instant conclusion of the bystanders
+as to her guilt. There have been no greater fluctuations in historical
+opinion than those that have arisen around the facts of Mary's life.
+Historians of the eighteenth century considered it as a test of a man's
+moral sanity whether he persisted in believing in Mary's innocence or
+not. Among her contemporaries the progress of time which softened
+impression, and the many pathetic situations of her later history, the
+terrible misfortunes under which she fell, her endless miseries and
+troubles, and the brave spirit with which she met them, turned some
+hearts again towards her, an ever-troubled but ever-devoted body of
+partisans. But at the moment when these terrible events occurred there
+can be little doubt that the horror and condemnation were almost
+unanimous. No reasoning could explain away those wild and mad acts, no
+discussion of probability come in. The mob in Edinburgh which raged
+against her was checked in its fierceness and subdued to pity at sight
+of the wretched lady in her despair, at that awful moment when she
+appeared at the window of the Provost's lodging in the High Street, and
+made her wild appeal, in all the force of impassioned and terrible
+emotion, to the overawed and excited crowd. They saw her in the
+carelessness of misery half-dressed, unadorned, disenchanted, and
+delivered from the maddening delusion which had carried her away,
+recognising in its full extent the horrors of the result&mdash;and their
+hearts were rent with pity. But notwithstanding that pity and all the
+innate chivalry which her sufferings called forth, Edinburgh and
+Scotland, the whole alarmed and terrified nation, believed at first the
+evidence of their senses. There seems nothing more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">{405}</a></span>distinct than this
+fact throughout all the trouble and tumult of the moment. It is not to
+be taken as an absolute proof of Mary's guilt. Such impressions have
+existed in other though less conspicuous cases and have been proved
+untrue. But that it did exist universally there can be little doubt.</p>
+
+<p>The scene at the window of the Provost's lodging where the unfortunate
+Queen was lodged, near the Nether Bow of Edinburgh, when brought back
+from Dunbar after the flight of Bothwell by the angry lords, with the
+mob clamouring underneath, and her enemies holding her fate in their
+hands, seems to me one of the most significant in her history. No woman
+was ever in circumstances more terrible. The situation is stronger if we
+suppose her guilt, and that what we see before us is a great spirit
+carried away by passion&mdash;that something beyond reason, beyond all human
+power to restrain, which sometimes binds an angelic woman to a villain,
+and sometimes a man of the highest power and wisdom to a lovely trifler
+or a fool. It seems to me as at once more consistent with the facts and
+with human nature to realise the position of the unhappy Queen as
+transported by that overwhelming sentiment, and wrought on the other
+side to an impatience almost maddening, by the injuries, follies,
+treacheries, and universal provocation of her unworthy husband, until
+the force of the bewildering current carried her in a disastrous moment
+over a precipice worse than any Niagara, in a headlong course of mingled
+misery, exasperation, love, and despair. Before she had even
+accomplished the terrible circle of events, and become Bothwell's wife,
+it requires no strong effort of the imagination to perceive that the
+despair might well have come uppermost, and that Mary fully recognised,
+not only the horror, but the futility and wretched failure into which
+she had plunged. We do not pretend to believe that there was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">{406}</a></span>much to
+cause remorse in the mind of such a woman in such an age in the death,
+however brought about, of the miserable Darnley. Mary could have brushed
+him from her memory like a fly, had that been all. But the rage of
+despair and failure was in her soul when she raved like a caged lion
+from door to window, imprisoned, trapped, and betrayed, expressing her
+incoherent transport of pain to the mob which would have had her blood,
+but which, overcome by the spectacle of that supreme and awful passion,
+became silent with awe or hushed by a spasm of pity and tears.</p>
+
+<p>So it has remained, a spectacle to all the earth, which the fiercest
+assailant and the most rigid judge cannot long contemplate without
+yielding to a painful compassion which rends the heart. Why should all
+that faculty and force, all that wonderful being, with every capacity
+for happiness and making happy, for wise action and beneficent dealing,
+for boundless influence and power&mdash;why such youth, such strength, such
+spirit, equal to every enterprise, should they have been swept away by
+that remorseless fate? We can still see the trapped and ruined
+Queen&mdash;exasperated still further by the consciousness that many of the
+men now holding her in bonds were at least as guilty as she, guilty of
+Darnley's blood, guilty if not of favouring yet of fearing Bothwell and
+yielding their countenance to his plans&mdash;pacing that chamber, appearing
+at that window, her loveliness, her adornments, and all the wiles of
+triumphant beauty forgotten, throwing forth to the earth that was as
+brass and the skies that were as iron, like a wild animal in its
+torment, her hoarse inarticulate cry. And, whatever we may think of her
+merits, that terrible spectacle is more than flesh and blood can bear.
+Pity takes the place of wrath and indignation that she alone should
+suffer: why not Lethington, Huntly, Athole, and the rest, all those
+stern peers who <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">{407}</a></span>counselled with her upon the most effectual way of
+having Darnley removed, the thankless fool who disturbed every man's
+peace&mdash;why were not they tried along with her, they who took such high
+ground as her judges? Why should she bear the brunt of all? Even
+Bothwell had escaped, and Mary stood at the bar of the world alone.</p>
+
+<p>But such thoughts would not seem to have moved the first spectators, to
+whom all that damning sequence of events, one precipitated on the heels
+of another, came fresh as they occurred day by day. As for Buchanan, he
+would be less prone to doubt than any. He knew something of the Court of
+France and of the atmosphere in which Mary had received her training. He
+was acquainted with many a royal scandal, and had much experience of a
+world in which vice was the rule and good behaviour a mere exception,
+due to a cold temperament, or a wariness uncongenial to generous youth.
+Such an old man of the world is slow to believe in innocence at all, and
+it is very likely that to him who knew her so well it was impossible to
+conceive of Mary as an example of weak but spotless virtue. The
+Principal of St. Leonard's went over to Edinburgh a few days after the
+completion of that tragic chapter, when Mary had been consigned to
+Lochleven, and Murray had assumed the Regency. The city was still
+agitated by much discussion of the dreadful questions which occupied all
+minds yet was slowly calming down like an angry sea, with long seethings
+and swellings of excitement. The object of Buchanan's visit was not
+curiosity or desire to be in the centre of that excitement, but a
+simpler matter, which has drawn many a Principal of St. Andrews since to
+the capital of Scotland, an Assembly of the Church, which opened "in the
+Nether Tolbooth" on the 25th of June. Of this Assembly he, though a
+layman, was appointed Moderator "for eschewing of confusion in
+reasoning"&mdash;a curious motive, which proves at least that his
+contemporaries <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">{408}</a></span>had great confidence in his judgment, and also that the
+passion of this excited and tumultuous time ran so high in the Church
+that a stronger authority than usual was wanted to keep it within
+bounds. The sentiment of the Church, or at least of the dominant party
+in it, would seem to have been rather satisfaction that the Sovereign,
+foreign alike in training and religion, had been set aside than any
+distress at the cause. The Assembly congratulates itself that "this
+present has offered some better occasion than in times bygane, and has
+begun to tread down Satan under foot," which is not a very amiable
+deliverance: but kindness and charity were not the Christian virtues
+most approved in those days.</p>
+
+<p>From this time Buchanan took up with vehemence, and indeed with
+violence, the prosecution of Mary, acting often as her accuser, and
+always as an active agent, secretary, or commissioner, in the conduct of
+the indictment against her. He has been subject on this account to very
+hard treatment especially from the recent defenders of the Queen. Mr.
+Hosack, in his able book <i>Mary Queen of Scots and her Accusers</i>,
+denounces him as having offered verses and adulations to the Queen at a
+time when, according to his own after-statement, everybody knew her to
+be living in shameless vice and corruption. This, however, is not at all
+a necessary inference. It might, on the contrary, very well have lent
+bitterness to Buchanan's historical record, written after the dreadful
+catastrophe which so many accepted as a revelation of Mary's real
+character, that he had himself been one of the deceived, who for years
+had entertained no suspicion, but accepted the fair seeming as truth.
+Such a sentiment is one of the most common in human nature. The friend
+deceived becomes the bitterest enemy; and he who has been seduced into
+undeserved approval is apt to go farther than the fiercest adversary
+when he learns that his own utterances have helped to veil the crime
+which he had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">{409}</a></span>never suspected the existence of. This motive is enough, we
+think, to account for the special virulence with which Buchanan
+certainly does assail the Queen, and the passion which thrills through
+the <i>Detectio</i>, a sort of fury and abhorrence which makes every
+paragraph tingle. She had done nothing to Buchanan to rouse any desire
+for individual vengeance; and it is more rational, certainly, to believe
+that the horror of the discovery inspired with a sort of rage the bosom
+of the scholar&mdash;rage which was perfectly genuine in its beginning,
+though it might, no doubt, be raised to whiter heat by the continually
+increasing fervour of partisanship. The curious description of him given
+by Sir James Melville (the courtier, not the divine) that "he was easily
+abused, and so facile that he was led with any company that he haunted
+for the time, which made him factious in his old days; for he spoke and
+writ as they that were about him for the time informed him," would, if
+accepted, give a still easier solution to this question. But it is a
+little difficult to accept such a character of Buchanan, who does not
+seem to have been a man easily put off from his own way, especially when
+taken in conjunction with the Assembly's minute, recording his election
+as president "for eschewing of confusion in reasoning." It is more easy
+to believe the statement that he was "extreme vengeable against any man
+that offended him, which was his greatest fault."</p>
+
+<p>The much darker accusation against Buchanan, that he was a party to, or
+indeed the most active agent in, the forging of certain letters reported
+to have been sent by Mary to Bothwell before Darnley's murder, and known
+far and wide as the Casket Letters, seems to rest upon nothing but
+conjecture. He was one of the few members of the party who possessed the
+literary gift, the only one, perhaps, except Lethington, whom Mr.
+Skelton has presented to us as not only a very enlightened statesman,
+but at all times the faithful <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">{410}</a></span>servant of Mary, but who is accused by
+earlier writers of much tergiversation and falsehood. He it was,
+according to Chalmers, who was the forger, reaching the summit of
+wickedness "in forging his mistress's handwriting for the odious purpose
+of convicting her of the crime of aggravated murder." Chalmers was as
+sturdy a champion of Mary's innocence in the eighteenth as Mr. Skelton
+is in the nineteenth century, but the conduct of historical research has
+very much altered in the meantime. The changes have been rung between
+Lethington and Buchanan by various critics, but the last light upon the
+subject seems to be that there is none, and that if the letters were
+forged the forger at least cannot be identified by any art known to
+history.</p>
+
+<p>It is unnecessary to pursue the question, or to bring further arguments
+to prove that nothing else in Buchanan's writings indicates the
+possession of such dramatic and constructive power as would be necessary
+for the production of such a letter as that professedly written from
+Glasgow, which is by far the most important of the contents of the
+Casket. A woman's distracted soul, divided between passion and shame,
+the very exaltation of guilty self-abandonment and the horror of
+conscious depravity and despair, is not a thing which can be imagined or
+embodied by the first ready pen, or even able intellect. No one of all
+the tumultuous band that directed affairs in Scotland has given us any
+reason to suppose that he was capable of it. Its very contradictions,
+those changes of mood and feeling which the most ignorant reader can
+perceive, are quite beyond the mark of ordinary invention. Mr. Froude
+has said that only Shakespeare or Mary Stewart could have written it&mdash;at
+all events the writer, supposing it to be forged, must have been of
+unquestionable imaginative genius. It is one of the most wonderful
+compositions ever given to the world. We look on with awe while those
+dark secrets of the heart are unfolded. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">{411}</a></span> revelation is too
+tremendous, too overwhelming, and far too true to nature, to call forth
+mere horror and condemnation. It is a proof of the often-repeated
+statement that could we but see into the heart of the greatest criminal
+pity would mingle with our judgment. Nothing could be more criminal and
+horrible than the acts therein anticipated, yet we think it would be
+impossible for any unbiassed mind to read this letter for the first time
+without an increase at least of interest in the writer, so transported
+by her love, ready almost to brag of the falsehood and treachery into
+which it leads her, till sick shame and horror of herself breathes over
+her changing mood, and she feels that even he for whose love all is
+undertaken must loathe her as she loathes herself. To imagine Buchanan,
+an old man of the world, somewhat coarse, fond of a rough jest, little
+used to women, and past the age of passion, as producing that tragical
+and terrible revelation, is almost more than impossible, it is an insult
+to the reader's intelligence. And accordingly the latest writers on this
+subject have relinquished that accusation; they no longer charge the old
+pedagogue with such an effort of genius; they confine themselves to
+accusing him of ingratitude towards his benefactress, which is as much
+as to say that a little personal favour, even when well earned, is to
+compel a man to shut his eyes henceforward to the character and conduct
+of the person who has conferred it, and that both patriotic feeling and
+political policy are to be quenched by a pension, which is a strange
+view.</p>
+
+<p>There can be no doubt, however, that Buchanan made out the case against
+the Queen with all the rhetorical force of which he was capable; that
+the accusation was bitter, as of a man who had been personally deceived
+and injured, as indeed it is quite possible that he may have felt
+himself to be; and that there was no pity, no mercy, nor compunction
+towards her, such as arose in many men's bosoms after a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">{412}</a></span>little time, and
+have been rife ever since both in writers and readers. The <i>Detection</i>
+is without ruth, and assumes the most criminal and degrading motives
+throughout. Its intention clearly is to convince Scotland, England, and
+the world of Mary's utter depravity, and the impossibility of any excuse
+for her or argument in her favour. The strong and fiery indignation in
+it is indeed lessened in effect, at least to us in these latter days, by
+the over strength of the indictment; and the reader who turns from the
+perusal of the Glasgow letter&mdash;which damns indeed yet rouses a world of
+conflicting feelings, awe and terror and pity for the lost soul thus
+tragically self-condemned&mdash;to the historical document in which the
+charges against the Queen are authoritatively set forth, cannot fail to
+be struck by the difference. It is far from being simple abhorrence with
+which we regard the revelation of the one, but in the other there is no
+light; the picture is inhuman and impossible in its utter blackness, the
+guilt imputed to the Queen is systematic, unimpassioned, the mere
+commonplace of an utterly depraved nature. The wild emotion and terrible
+impulse in her becomes mere vulgar vice in her accuser's hands. In this
+there is nothing wonderful, nothing out of the common course of nature,
+which is prone to make every indictment more bitter than the facts that
+prove it.</p>
+
+<p>But it may well be believed that it was something of a fierce
+consolation to the high-tempered and strong-speaking Scots, in the rush
+of universal popular condemnation, to believe and assert that the Queen,
+who had so disappointed and disenchanted all her well-wishers, had been
+bad through and through, indecent and shameless. The inclination, almost
+the wish, to think the worst of every fallen idol has not died out with
+the generation which condemned Mary Stewart; and Buchanan was the
+spokesman, the advocate of the other party, whose conduct could only be
+justified by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">{413}</a></span>the establishment of her guilt. If she were not guilty,
+they were traitors. If all the proof against her was but a mass of
+distorted facts and false swearing, nothing in the way of punishment was
+too bad for her unfaithful subjects. A mistake was impossible, the
+struggle was one of life and death. The spokesman in such a tremendous
+issue, the narrator and setter forth of the terrible question,
+especially if he is a person whose trade it is to write, and who can be
+accused of doing his work for hire, is always at a disadvantage. It can
+never be proved to the vulgar mind that he has not formed his opinions
+to order, that he does not give them out to the world according as they
+may best benefit and satisfy his employers. His masters may be hated,
+but he is both hated and despised. If it could be proved that Murray was
+solely actuated by ambition and the hope of getting the throne for
+himself, he would still be a belligerent with the honours of war due to
+him; but the scribe, the hireling who is employed to state the whole
+matter, has no position but that of a venal dependant ready to set forth
+whatever is for his master's interests. Thus the historian of a party,
+who makes money by his work, the literary advocate whose office it is to
+make the strongest statement possible of his employer's case, is
+subject&mdash;or at least was subject in more primitive times&mdash;to the worst
+reproaches. His testimony was seldom taken as conscientious or true.</p>
+
+<p>Buchanan's <i>Detection</i> was peculiarly subject to this reproach. It was
+written for the purpose of proving the case of the lords by demolishing
+entirely that of the Queen&mdash;before England and the commissioners of
+England first, seated in session to investigate the subject, and after
+them before the world in general. The inquiry which was opened at York
+in October 1568, six months after Mary's escape to England, was the most
+like a trial of anything in which her history was discussed. She was
+represented by commissioners,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">{414}</a></span> while Murray and several of his colleagues
+were present in person, along with Buchanan and other secretaries or
+minor commissioners. It was at this inquiry that the Casket Letters were
+first produced under, we are bound to say, if we judge by the rules of a
+period of settled law and order like our own, very suspicious
+circumstances. Even the question of the language in which they were
+written is a very difficult one. All through, indeed, this question is
+difficult, though it is never formally discussed until that tragical
+occasion. In what language did Mary and Knox hold their discussions?
+Could it be always in French that this accomplished Queen wrote and
+spoke? When she is reported to have said, as recorded in a previous
+chapter, "That man gart me greet sore, and grat never tear," is this
+expression, so distinctively and strongly Scots, a translation from some
+more elegant murmur in another language? She who had so many tongues,
+had she left out that in which she had been born, the language of her
+childhood and of her country? This problem is only considered by the
+historians when it is required to prove that a letter must be forged
+because it is apparently first written in Scots. There is also a very
+great point made of the difference between Scots and English, which
+seems to have been very slight indeed, a difference of spelling more
+than anything else, nothing that could confuse any but the most ignorant
+reader. The following sentences from Buchanan's "<i>Admonition direct to
+the Trew Lordis, maintaineris of justice</i>" will throw some light on the
+latter question, the difference between the written speech of the two
+different kingdoms, which one writer tells us would have made it easier
+for Queen Elizabeth to read letters in French than Scots:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It may seme to zour lordshippis," says Buchanan, "yat I, melling
+with heich materis of governing of comoun welthis do pass myne
+estait, being of sa meane qualitie, or forgetting my dewtie geveing
+counsal to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">{415}</a></span>ye wysest of yis realme. Not the les seeing the miserie
+sa greit appeiring, and the calamitie sa neir approching, I thocht
+it les fault to incur the cryme of surmounting my private estait
+than the blame of neglecting the publict danger."</p></div>
+
+<p>From this the reader will be able to judge what extraordinary difficulty
+there was in the Scotch to an English reader of those days. The use of z
+instead of y, of y instead of th, are matters very easily mastered; and
+it is surely the utmost folly to suppose that Queen Elizabeth could have
+found the slightest difficulty in deciphering this northern version of
+the common tongue.</p>
+
+<p>The document quoted above is a very powerful and no doubt also violent
+assault upon the Hamiltons, especially called forth by the murder of the
+Regent Murray, the slackness of the succeeding Government in the
+punishment of his assassin, and the powerful reasons there were for
+destroying&mdash;a measure which Buchanan thought imperative both for the
+safety of the realm and the child-king&mdash;that powerful family, the head
+of which was next in succession to the Scotch Crown, and had been
+popularly believed to be ready for any crime to obtain it. Now that
+there was nothing but the life of a child between the Hamiltons and this
+elevation, Buchanan lifted up his testimony against the supineness which
+left the race undisturbed to carry out its evil designs. Murray had been
+murdered in the beginning of 1570, and the <i>Admonition</i> was printed at
+Stirling a few months later. In the same year Buchanan wrote that
+curious tract called the <i>Chameleon</i>, a satirical attack upon
+Lethington, which is not very brilliant either in language or
+conception, and fails altogether in the incisive bitterness which
+characterises most of Buchanan's other political papers. "It is at least
+equal in vigour and elegance to that of most compositions in the ancient
+Scottish language," says Buchanan's biographer, but few modern readers
+will <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">{416}</a></span>agree in this verdict. Buchanan's hand had not the lightness
+necessary for such a performance. The guilt of Mary and the death of
+Murray furnished him with more emphatic motives than the iniquities of
+Maitland, and he was evidently stronger in assault and invective than in
+the lighter methods of composition.</p>
+
+<p>It might have been supposed that his hopes of preferment would have been
+seriously injured by Murray's death. But it was after this event that he
+was selected for the greatest office which Scotland could bestow upon a
+scholar&mdash;the education of the young King. Buchanan's services were no
+doubt well worthy of such a reward: at the same time it may be allowed
+that a scholar so renowned, the first of contemporary poets according to
+the judgment of his class, and the greatest of lettered Scotsmen beyond
+all question, could not be passed over. During the intervening time he
+had retained the appointment of Principal of St. Leonard's College, his
+frequent absences being made possible by the fact that though he had
+much to do with the government and regulation of the University of St.
+Andrews, he was not actively employed in giving instruction. But after
+this we float at once into a halcyon time. It was in the end of 1569 or
+beginning of 1570 that he was appointed the governor of the King, and in
+this capacity and amid peaceful surroundings more appropriate to his
+character than the rage of politics, the old scholar becomes more
+distinctly visible than it was possible he could be in the midst of
+contention and under the shadow of greater men. He was about sixty-four
+at the time he entered upon the active duties of the office. "A man of
+notable endowments for his knowledge of Latin poesie&mdash;much honoured in
+other countries, pleasant in conversation, rehearsing on all occasions
+moralities short and instructive, whereof he had abundance, inventing
+when he wanted," says Sir James <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">{417}</a></span>Melville. <i>Sandford and Merton</i> had not
+been written for the advantage of schoolboys in Melville's days, yet the
+picture is that of an antiquated Mr. Barlow never forgetting the art of
+instruction. The particular anecdotes, however, told of Buchanan, do not
+recall Mr. Barlow or his "moralities" at all.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 372px;">
+<img src="images/illus_043.jpg" width="372" height="600" alt="STIRLING CASTLE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">STIRLING CASTLE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">{418}</a></span>The little King James, a precocious and clever child like all the
+infantile monarchs of the house of Stewart, had been established at
+Stirling, always a favourite residence of the Scotch Kings, where he
+held his baby Court in peace while his mother pined in England, and the
+Scotch lords struggled for the mastery, and succeeded each other as
+Regents at home. The troubles of the world outside seem to have been
+kept far from the surroundings of the boy, to whom both the kingdoms
+looked as their heir, the child in whom the glories of his race came to
+a climax, and the union of the warring kingdoms was at last secured.
+Personally, he was by far the least distinguished of his name, but no
+one as yet suspected this fact or thought of Buchanan's pupil as less
+hopeful than any of the gallant Jameses who had preceded him. The little
+Court at Stirling was presided over at this early period by the Lady
+Mar, a dignified matron who was "wise and sharp and kept the king in
+great awe," although at the same time very tender of the child and
+respectful of his royal dignity. Almost all James's immediate
+surroundings seem to have belonged to this powerful race. The master of
+the household was a certain Laird of Drumwhasel, to whom no other name
+is given, and who is described as ambitious and greedy, a man whose
+"greatest care was to advance himself and his friends." Alexander
+Erskine, another member of the household, calls forth something like
+enthusiasm in the courtly narrative as "a gallant, well-nurtured
+gentleman, loved and honoured by all men for his good qualities and
+great discretion, no ways factious nor envious, a lover of all honest
+men, desiring to see men of good conversation about the prince rather
+than his own nearest friends if he found them not so meet." In addition
+to this official household were the tutors charged with James's
+education, two of them being members of the Erskine family, abbots of
+Cambuskenneth and Dryburgh, though those titles were no doubt merely
+fictitious, meaning <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">{419}</a></span>only that the "temporalities," the endowments of the
+extinct monasteries, were in their hands. The other and principal
+masters of James were Sir Peter Young and Mr. George Buchanan. Young was
+"gentle, loth to offend the king at any time, carrying himself warily as
+a man who had a mind to his own weal by keeping of his majesty's
+favour"&mdash;"but Mr. George," adds the historian, "was a Stoick philosopher
+who looked not far before him." He "held the king in great awe," so that
+James "even trembled" as he himself says elsewhere, "at his approach,"
+and did not spare either rod or word in the interests of his pupil. Some
+of the anecdotes of this severe impartiality are amusing enough. At one
+time annoyed by the noise which the King and his playfellows were
+making, Buchanan bade them be silent under certain penalties if the
+offence were repeated, and provoked by a childish impertinence from
+James, took up the little culprit and whipped him with exemplary
+impartiality, notwithstanding that his companion, the little Master of
+Mar, stood by, on whom vicarious chastisement might have been applied.
+Lady Mar, rushing to the scene of action at the sound of "the wailing
+which ensued," took the child from his master's hands and consoled him
+in her motherly arms, asking Buchanan indignantly how he dared to touch
+the Lord's anointed. The incident is very natural and amusing in its
+homely simplicity; the child crying, the lady soothing him, the sardonic
+old master in his furred nightgown and velvet cap, looking on unmoved,
+bidding her kiss the place to make it well. The Master of Mar no doubt
+would cry too for sympathy, and the old gentleman take up his big book
+and move off to seek a quieter place for study. On another occasion,
+when the little King tried to get a sparrow from his companion and
+crushed the bird in the struggle, Buchanan rated him as himself a bird
+out of a bloody nest. He was an old man and alone in the world,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">{420}</a></span>
+indifferent to future favours from a king whose reign he would probably
+not live to see, and treating him with impartial justice.</p>
+
+<p>There was, however, no indifference to James's education in this austere
+simplicity: indeed it would seem that Buchanan, like other preceptors of
+monarchs, had some hope of forming an ideal prince out of the boy. A few
+years after his appointment to his office, and when James was still too
+young to profit by it, he began to write his famous treatise, in the
+form of a dialogue, upon the laws of the kingdom, the duty respectively
+of kings and subjects. The <i>De Jure Regni</i>, published when the King was
+about twelve, was dedicated to him in a grave and dignified letter in
+which Buchanan describes his work as an attempt to expound the
+prerogatives of the Scottish Crown, "in which," he says, "I endeavoured
+to explain from their very cradle, so to speak, the reciprocal rights
+and privileges of kings and their subjects." He goes on to say that the
+book was written in the midst of the public troubles with a view to
+enlightening the disturbers of the commonwealth as to their duties: but
+that peace beginning to be established he had sacrificed his argument
+for the sake of public tranquillity. Now, however, that it may be useful
+to the development of the King he brings it forth again. The direct
+address to James is full of that curious self-deception or defective
+insight which is so common among those who have the training of a pupil
+of great importance in the world. The boy had grown beyond the age of
+personal chastisement; he had reached that in which the precocious
+facility of comprehension, which is so strongly fostered by the
+circumstances of such a position as his, looks to the dazzled pedagogues
+and attendants like genius, and there seems no prognostic too happy or
+too brilliant for the new career in which at last there is about to be
+fulfilled all that men have dreamed of a king.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">{421}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Many circumstances tend to convince me that my present exertions
+will not prove fruitless, especially your age, yet uncorrupted by
+perverse opinions; a disposition beyond your years, spontaneously
+urging you to every noble pursuit; a facility in obeying not only
+your preceptors, but all prudent monitors; a judgment and dexterity
+in disquisition which prevent you from paying much regard to
+authority, unless it be confirmed by solid argument. I likewise
+perceive that by a kind of natural instinct, you so dislike
+flattery, the nurse of tyranny, and the most grievous pest of a
+legitimate monarchy, that you as heartily hate the courtly solecisms
+and barbarisms as they are relished and affected by those who
+consider themselves as the arbiters of every elegance, and who, by
+way of seasoning their conversation, are perpetually sprinkling it
+with majesties, lordships, excellencies, and, if possible, with
+other expressions still more nauseous. Although the bounty of nature
+and the instruction of your governors may at present secure you
+against this error, yet am I compelled to entertain some slight
+degree of suspicion lest evil communication, the alluring nurse of
+the vices, should lend an unhappy impulse to your still tender mind,
+especially as I am not ignorant with what facility the external
+senses yield to seduction. I have therefore sent you this treatise,
+not only as a monitor, but even as an importunate and sometimes
+impudent dun, who in this turn of life may convoy you beyond the
+rocks of adulation; and may not merely offer you advice, but confine
+you to the path which you have entered, and if you should chance to
+deviate may reprehend you and recall your steps. If you obey this
+monitor you will ensure tranquillity to yourself and your family,
+and will transmit your glory to the most distant posterity."</p></div>
+
+<p>That James VI should be described as disliking flattery and despising
+authority, if not enforced by solid argument, is strange to hear; and
+that he should be so boldly called upon to consider a plea for national
+freedom and a constitutional rule, as the chief guarantee of
+tranquillity and honour, is still more remarkable. Certainly it was not
+from Buchanan that he got those high pretensions of divine right, which
+had never flourished in Scotland; although by a not uncommon paradox the
+most faithful partisans of the family which was brought to ruin by these
+pretensions were found in the northern kingdom. Very different were the
+doctrines upon which Buchanan nourished the royal child. James
+acknowledged afterwards not ungracefully the distinction of his
+instructor in letters. "All the world," he says, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">{422}</a></span>"knows that my master
+George Buchanan was a great master in that faculty." But his opinions in
+politics found no favour in his pupil's eyes when James emerged from his
+youthful subjection and began to show his native mettle. At twelve,
+individuality in that respect would scarcely be developed, and a
+reverence for his tutor's sharp tongue and ready hand would keep the
+King from premature opposition.</p>
+
+<p>While this work was going on in the comparative quiet of Stirling,
+Scotland was lost in the turmoil of one of the most wild and terrible
+portions of her history. It is indeed rather from the glimpse we have of
+the little royal household in the foreground of all that strife and
+bloodshed, the Lady Mar in her matronly dignity, Buchanan in his furred
+gown among his books, and the clamour and laughter of the two boys
+interrupting the quiet, that we can believe in any semblance of peace or
+domestic life at all in the distracted country. The Regent Lennox, the
+King's grandfather, was killed under the very rocks of the castle where
+James learned his lessons. His young companion's father, the Earl of
+Mar, was taken from the family at Stirling and raised to a brief and
+agitated Regency, through all of which a civil war was raging. And till
+from beyond the seas there came the still more horrible news of that
+French massacre which convulsed the world, and made an end of Mary's
+party, nothing was secure from one day to another in Scotland. It was in
+the midst of that very tumult and endless miserable conflict, in which
+Mary's followers had at last set up the doctrine of her irresponsibility
+and divine right to retain her position as Queen whatever might be her
+guilt as Mary Stewart&mdash;that the scholar set himself to compose his work
+upon the rights of the kingdom and the duties of kings. His high temper,
+his strong partisanship, his stern logic, would find an incitement and
+inspiration in those specious arguments on the other side which were so
+new to Scotland, and had been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">{423}</a></span>contradicted over and over again in her
+troublous history, where no one was so certain to be brought to book for
+his offences as the erring or unsuccessful monarch. It must be difficult
+for a great classicist to be at the same time a believer in the divine
+right of kings; and it was a new idea for the medi&aelig;val Scot accustomed
+to reverence the name, but to criticise in the sharpest practical way
+the acts of his sovereign. And we may imagine that the old scholar, who
+could not but hear from his window the shouts of the warfare between the
+Queen's party and the King's, would have a grim satisfaction as he sat
+high above them, protected more or less by the royal name, in forging at
+his leisure those links of remorseless argument which, though they had
+no effect upon the pupil to whom they were dedicated, had their share in
+regulating that great rebellion which had so important an effect upon
+the after-history of the two kingdoms.</p>
+
+<p>During this period, however, Buchanan had other occupations besides his
+tutorship and his literary work. He was made "director of the Chancery,"
+whatever that may mean, and in 1570 was elevated to the post of Keeper
+of the Privy Seal, in which capacity he served in various Parliaments:
+and was also a member of the Privy Council. When the conspiracy arose
+against the Regent Morton which ended in his temporary deprivation of
+the regency, Buchanan seems to have taken part against him, though on
+what argument we are not told: for it was Morton's power which had
+brought about the re-establishment of peace and order to which he refers
+in the dedication of his book. And it is a feasible conjecture that it
+was by his crafty suggestion that the Regent's fictitious plaints of
+being weary of his high office and desiring nothing more than that the
+King's Majesty should take the government into his own hand, were
+ingeniously twisted so as to give his dismissal the air <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">{424}</a></span>of a gracious
+consent to Morton's own wishes. An old man like Buchanan, well
+acquainted with the wiles of logic and the pretexts of state, was more
+likely to use an advantage in which there is a certain grim humour, and
+to take the adversary in his own toils, than such an inexperienced
+politician as young Mar, or any of the undistinguished nobles who
+carried out that stratagem. Whether Buchanan supported his old pupil,
+Mar, in his attempt to seize the governorship of the castle and the
+King's person out of the hands of his uncle, or in what aspect he was
+regarded when Morton returned to the head of affairs, we have no means
+of knowing. Whatever his influence might be at the King's ear or amid
+the secret meetings of the malcontents, neither as Lord Privy Seal nor
+as King James's tutor did he come in public collision with any public
+authority. His action, whenever he appears publicly, is perfectly
+characteristic of his real position and faculties. He took part in a
+commission for the establishment of a system of municipal law: he was
+one of the Church's commissioners on two occasions in determining her
+policy and discipline. When the reform of the Universities of Scotland,
+so often taken up since then, and so slow to be accomplished, was
+brought under the consideration of Parliament, Buchanan was one of the
+chief of the commissioners appointed to consider it. He is reported to
+have been the author of a scheme of reconstruction to be employed in the
+University of St. Andrews; and it is interesting to find in this new
+system that special attention was enjoined to be given to Greek, and
+that the study of Hebrew was also recommended to the students. The
+latter language, we believe, still remains an established part of the
+studies of young men in preparation for the ministry in the Church of
+Scotland. Buchanan desired that the Principal of his own College, St.
+Leonards, should lecture on Plato. And he made a present of a number of
+Greek <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">{425}</a></span>books, still carefully preserved, to Glasgow University, though
+why he should have chosen to send them there, instead of to his own
+smaller and poorer University, we have nothing to show. It is thus
+apparent that in his active public work Buchanan's chief attention was
+given to his own proper subjects. There is no evidence that he did more
+than was indispensable to his official character in matters more
+exclusively political.</p>
+
+<p>His old age thus passed, in a certain learned leisure which it is very
+difficult to imagine as existing in so tumultuous a period and amid so
+many violent changes and vicissitudes. He had many learned
+correspondents throughout the world, almost all the great scholars of
+the time being numbered among his friends; and the letters which he
+received from all quarters implied a considerable amount of
+letter-writing on his side. He sent copies of his books to his friends
+as if he had been the most modern of novelists, and it is curious to
+think of the big laborious volume of solemn Latin dramas, or that thin
+but weighty tome, instinct with another and more living kind of
+interest, which set forth the rights of nations&mdash;sent by some trusty
+messenger, a young scholar finding in the packet entrusted to his charge
+the best introduction to one of the lights of learning on the Continent,
+or some adventurer making his way to a commission in the Scottish
+Archers or other service of arms more profitable for a younger son than
+the frays and feuds of Scotland. The learned doctors of the Sorbonne,
+the scholars of Geneva, and the printers of Holland, replied on their
+side not only with elaborate thanks and eulogies, but with responsive
+presents, treatises or translations of their own, some of them dedicated
+to the royal boy who was the pupil of their friend, and of whom he gave
+so wonderful a description. "I have been guilty of trifling with a
+sacred subject," wrote Berger with his volume of poems, "and I have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">{426}</a></span>
+dedicated my trifles to a king." Another learned correspondent sends a
+Plato which he has edited, one volume of which he had also inscribed to
+James, begging that his friend would present it to his Majesty. They
+would seem to have shared Buchanan's satisfaction in his princely pupil,
+and it is chiefly by way of reflection, through these responses, that we
+perceive what his opinion of the young King was, and how much proud
+delight, expressed no doubt in the most classical language, he took in
+the boy's aptitude and promise. The following letter, however, which is
+not classical at all, but written in choice Scots and addressed to Queen
+Elizabeth's envoy, Sir Thomas Randolph, gives a less dignified but very
+graphic description of his own circumstances and occupations. It is
+written from Stirling during Morton's Regency, when peace prevailed and
+even prosperity had returned in some measure to the distracted kingdom.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"To Maister Randolph, Squiar, Maister of Postes to the Queen's Grace
+of England.</p>
+
+<p>"Maister, I haif rescevit diverse letters frome you, and yit I haif
+answerit to nane of them&mdash;of the quhilk albeit I haif mony excuses
+such as age, forgetfulness, business, and disease, yet I will use
+nane as now, except my sweirness (reluctance) and your gentleness:
+and gif ye think nane of them sufficient, content you with ane
+confession of the falt without fear of punition to follow on my
+onkindness. As for the present I am occupied in writyng of our
+historie, being assured to content few, and to displease many
+therethrow. As to the end of it if ye gett it not or (before) this
+winter bepassit lippen (trust) not for it, no nane other writyngs
+from me. The rest of my occupation is with the gout quhilk halds me
+busy both day and night. And quhair ye say ye have not lang to lyif
+I trust to God to go before you, albeit I be on foot, and ye ryd
+<i>the post</i>: praying you also not to <i>dispost</i> my hoste at Newark,
+Jone of Kelsterne. This I pray you partly for his awyn sake quhame I
+tho't ane gude fellow, and partly at request of such as I dare not
+refuse. And thus I take my lief shortly at you now, and my lang lief
+when God pleases, committing you to the protection of the Almighty.
+At Stirling, xxv. day of August, 1577.&mdash;Yours to command with
+service,</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right;">
+<span class="smcap">G. Buchanan</span>."<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>The mild, aged jest about preceding his friend out of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">{427}</a></span>life though he
+must go on foot and Randolph had the advantage of commanding the Post,
+and his recommendation of the erring postmaster at Newark, who was a
+good fellow, throw a pleasant light of kindly humour into this letter.
+And we thus hear for the first time of the History, the greatest work of
+his life, which he seems to have begun in the tranquillity of the
+palace-castle, notwithstanding the hostile influence of gout and
+years&mdash;hostile above all to so great a piece of work. He was now over
+seventy, and the end of his career seemed near at hand, although he had
+but recently taken in hand so great an enterprise. Buchanan's History is
+not, more than other great histories which have succeeded it, an
+absolutely impartial work; but it is, throughout all his own stirring
+and momentous age, the record of a bystander with abundant means of
+knowledge and a keen apprehension of all the controversies and struggles
+of his time. If he may perhaps glorify too much the character of his
+patron and friend the Regent Murray, and take the darkest view of Mary,
+we can only say that he would have been more angel than man had he kept
+himself absolutely without bias in that hot and still unexhausted
+debate. And there was nothing angelical about the old scholar who had
+taken a part in so many historical events, from the siege of Wark
+Castle, where he was present as a boy, to the Conferences at York and
+Westminster, which were matters of yesterday. The science of history has
+so much developed since his time that it may almost be said to have made
+a new beginning; and much that was considered authoritative and
+convincing then has fallen into the limbo of uncertainty, when not
+rejected altogether. The many differing motives and agencies which can
+only be fully estimated when the period of discussion is past, have come
+to occupy a far greater space in the mind of the historian than had been
+dreamed of in Buchanan's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">{428}</a></span>days; and the careful examination of evidence
+with which we are now familiar was unknown either in the study of the
+writer or the courts of law during a time which has left endless
+questions from both to be debated and re-debated by succeeding
+generations. But yet Buchanan's History remains the most important and
+dignified record of the national existence up to his time; and no one
+would now venture to treat the story of ancient Scotland, the chronicles
+of her kings, or even the still undecided questions of Mary Stewart's
+life and reign, without the guidance more or less of this great
+authority. It was a bold step to dedicate to King James a record in
+which his mother's life was denounced and condemned with such unsparing
+freedom; but the astonishing absence of sympathy or human understanding
+shown in this was shared by the greater part of Buchanan's
+contemporaries, who evidently felt the facts of the mother's guilt to be
+too abundantly demonstrated and universally consented to, to demand any
+delicacy of statement as addressed to her son. No one, we think, can
+entertain any doubt of the historian's own strong conviction on this
+subject. Among the many fables current about Buchanan, there was one
+circumstantial and oft-repeated, of his repentance on his deathbed of
+his judgment of the Queen; but this is entirely set at rest by the
+affecting record which we shall quote farther on of a last visit paid to
+him by certain of his friends who had taken fright at the boldness of
+his statements, and feared that the King, now grown up and developing
+his own individual sentiments, might stop the issue of the book when he
+saw these uncompromising records.</p>
+
+<p>We must add one pretty story of Buchanan's kindness to his brethren in
+scholarship and literature which shows the sharp and cautious scholar in
+a very pleasant light. A certain Thomas Jack, a schoolmaster in Glasgow,
+had composed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">{429}</a></span>in Latin verse a little book upon the ancient poets, called
+the <i>Onomasticon Poeticum</i>, and encouraged by the friendship already, as
+he says, shown to him by Buchanan, carried the book to him for revision.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I found him in the royal palace of Stirling, diligently engaged in
+writing his History of Scotland. He was so far from being displeased
+by the interruption that he cheerfully took my work from my hands,
+and after reading two or three pages of it, collected together his
+own papers which were scattered on the table, and said, 'I will
+desist from my work till I have done what you wish.' This promise he
+accurately fulfilled; and within a few days gave me a paper written
+with his own hand, and containing such corrections as he thought
+necessary."</p></div>
+
+<p>One can imagine the old scholar seated with his documents before him in
+the light of a broad window, perhaps arrived at some knotty point which
+wanted consideration, and turning from the crabbed papers, which would
+not fit themselves in, with that delight in a lawful interruption and
+temptation to idleness which only hard-working students know. Much has
+been said about the misery of such interruptions to the absorbed writer,
+but no one has pointed out the occasional relief and comfort which they
+bring. Buchanan must have hailed this occasion of evading for a moment
+his legitimate work with all the pleasure of an old critic and
+connoisseur suddenly appealed to with such a congenial demand. Even in
+our ashes live their wonted fires, and where is the scholar who does not
+turn with delight from his history or his sermon to criticise a copy of
+verses, to <i>savourer</i> a fine latinism or dig his pen through a false
+quantity as if he were cutting down an enemy? Thomas Jack has departed
+into oblivion along with his <i>Onomasticon</i>: but this record of the
+friendly reception he and his book met with affords a delightful gleam
+of light upon the historian's waning days.</p>
+
+<p>It is more remarkable when we find another witness describing our
+somewhat irascible and sharp philosopher as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">{430}</a></span>growing young again in the
+boys who surrounded him, and adapting his mind to all ages and classes
+of men. Probably by the time he came to be the King's preceptor Buchanan
+had ceased to be so compliant, or very probably conceived it
+appropriate, on principle, to be less indulgent to a pupil whose danger
+it would be to have too many flatteries and caresses.</p>
+
+<p>We have no very clear record when it was that the tutelage of James was
+supposed to be over, or if Buchanan was ever formally freed from his
+office. Informally the King would have seemed to be more or less his own
+master at the end of Morton's Regency, when, though subject to "raids"
+like that of Gowrie and the contending influence of one party after
+another, there was no longer any Regent thought of, and the business of
+the country was conducted formally in the King's name. It would seem,
+however, from the dedication of the History, that Buchanan had ceased
+for some time before its publication to take an active part in James's
+education. He speaks in this of "the incurable illness" which made him
+incapable of "discharging the office entrusted to me of cultivating the
+genius" of the young King; and presents the book as making up in some
+degree for that personal failure. The History ends with the death of the
+Regent Lennox, he who was killed in Stirling almost under the
+historian's eyes, and when Scotland was still distracted between two
+parties, and in a state of civil warfare. It has been made a subject of
+reproach to Buchanan that he stopped his chronicle before the beginning
+of the Regency of Morton, because of his personal hatred to that brave
+and able personage&mdash;a singular charge, seeing that Buchanan lived only a
+few months after the last Regent of Scotland; and he has expressly
+mentioned in one of his dedications the increased tranquillity which was
+the result of Morton's government.</p>
+
+<p>It is in Edinburgh we find the old man of letters in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">{431}</a></span>last scene of
+his long and laborious life. In September 1581 he was visited by three
+gentlemen from St. Andrews, one of whom gives us the most lifelike and
+interesting account of this last interview. It would have been still
+more interesting had they afforded some indication where they found him,
+whether he had some pleasant room granted to him in Holyrood, after so
+many years with the King, a suitable retreat for his old age; or if he
+had retired to some private lodging in the Canongate to end his days.
+His visitors make no mention of such unimportant circumstances, but they
+leave us a most touching and faithful picture of the end of his life.
+These visitors were the famous Andrew Melville, Principal of the New
+College at St. Andrews, a scholar almost as distinguished as himself,
+who had at an earlier period been Buchanan's pupil, and who had acquired
+his great knowledge in the same way, in the famous schools of the
+continent; James Melville, his nephew, minister of Kilrenny on the
+shores of Fife; and Thomas Buchanan, the cousin of the dying historian.
+James Melville relates this last visit as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"That September in time of vacans, my uncle Mr. Andrew, Mr. Thomas
+Buchanan and I, hearing that Mr. George Buchanan was weak, and his
+Historie under the press, past over to Edinbruck annes errand
+(expressly) to visit him and see the work. When we came to his
+chalmer we found him sitting in his chair, teaching his young man
+that servit him in his chalmer, to spell a, b, ab, and e, b, eb,
+etc. Efter salutation Mr. Andro says, 'I see, sir, ye are not
+idle.'&mdash;'Better this,' quoth he, 'nor stealing sheep&mdash;or sitting
+idle which is as ill.' Thereafter he shew us the Epistle Dedicatorie
+to the King, the which when Mr. Andro had read he told him that it
+was obscure in some places, and wanted certain words to perfeyt the
+sentence. Sayes he, 'I may do na mair for thinking on another
+matter.'&mdash;'What is that?' sayes Mr. Andro. 'To die,' quoth he; 'but
+I leave that and manie more things for you to help.'</p>
+
+<p>"We went from him to the printer's workhouse, whom we found at the
+end of the 17 book of his Cornicle at a place which we thought verie
+hard for the tyme, which might be an occasion for staying the haill
+work, anent the burial of Davie. Therefore staying the printer from
+proceeding, we came to Mr. George again, and fand him bedfast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">{432}</a></span> by his
+custom, and asking him how he did, 'Ever going the way of weilfare,'
+says he. Mr. Thomas, his cousin, shawes him of the hardness of that
+part of his Storie, that the King would be offendit with it, and it
+might stay all the work. 'Tell me, man,' says he, 'gif I have told
+the truth?'&mdash;'Yes,' says Mr. Thomas, 'Sir, I think so.'&mdash;'I will
+bide his feud and all his kin's then;' quoth he. 'Pray, pray to God
+for me, and let Him direct all.' So by the printing of his Cornicle
+was endit, that maist learned, wyse, and godly man endit this mortal
+life."</p></div>
+
+<p>He was a pedagogue, perhaps something of a pedant, a hot partisan, a
+special pleader; but few lives can show a more dignified and noble end.
+If it was the truth he had written this old man cared for nothing else,
+not even for that fame which is the last infirmity of noble minds. The
+King might keep back the great work of his life, but he could not
+silence the lips in which no fear of man was. Whatever might happen
+afterwards, Buchanan's record was clear; to have told the truth was all
+with which he had anything to do.</p>
+
+<p>There is a touch of what for want of a better word we must call cynicism
+in the humorous indifference with which the old philosopher is said to
+have discussed his own burial. Finding, as the story goes, that there
+was not money enough in the house for the last expenses, he ordered what
+there was to be given to the poor, declaring that he was not concerned
+as to what was to become of his remains. If they did not choose to bury
+him they might let him lie, he said in grim jest. He was, however,
+reverently buried by the authorities of Edinburgh, in the historical
+churchyard of the Greyfriars, attended by "a great company of the
+faithful," though no stone seems ever to have been placed to indicate
+the spot where he was laid. Thus in some unknown corner he rests, like
+so many other illustrious persons&mdash;a man who never rested in his life,
+and carried down his labours to the very verge of the grave. It is a
+curious satire upon human justice that his name should have been kept
+green <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433"></a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">{434}</a></span>in Scotland by the rough jests of an imaginary Geordie Buchanan,
+commonly supposed to have been the King's fool, as extraordinary a
+travesty as it is possible to conceive. It is almost as strange a twist
+of all the facts and meaning of life that the only money of which he
+could be supposed to be possessed at his death should have been one
+hundred pounds (Scots, no doubt), <i>arrears</i> of the pension due to him
+from the Abbey of Crossraguel, given by Queen Mary to that learned pupil
+of the Sorbonne and lover of Lutetia with whom she read Latin at
+Holyrood in the early days before trouble came.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 364px;">
+<img src="images/illus_044.jpg" width="364" height="600" alt="GREYFRIARS CHURCHYARD" title="" />
+<span class="caption">GREYFRIARS CHURCHYARD</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> I must explain that this chapter was written before the
+publication of the recent, and I believe excellent, biography of
+Buchanan by Mr. P. Hume.</p></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">{435}</a></span></p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="PART_IV" id="PART_IV"></a>PART IV<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">THE MODERN CITY</span></h3>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I_III" id="CHAPTER_I_III"></a>CHAPTER I<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">A BURGHER POET</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>After the extraordinary climax of dramatic interest which brought the
+history of Edinburgh and of Scotland to the knowledge of the whole
+world, and which has continued ever since to form one of the most
+exciting chapters in general history, it was inevitable that when that
+fated Court dispersed, and the lady who was its charm and head
+disappeared also under the tragic waves which had been rising to engulf
+her, there should fall a sudden blank into the record, a chill of
+dulness and tedium, the charm departed and the story done. In fact, it
+was not at all so, and the metropolis of Scotland continued to seethe
+with contending elements, and to witness a continued struggle,
+emphasised by many a martyrdom and deed of blood, and many a desperate
+battle both hand to hand and head to head in the streets and in the
+council chambers, all with more or less the religious question involved,
+and all helping to work out the final settlement. When that final
+settlement came after all the tumults and blood it had cost, it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">{436}</a></span>
+scarcely possible not to feel the downfall from those historical
+commotions to the dead level of a certain humdrum good attained, which
+was by no means the perfect state hoped for, yet which permitted peace
+and moderate comfort and the growth of national wellbeing. The little
+homely church towers of the Revolution, as they are to be seen, for
+instance, along the coast of Fife, are not more unlike the Gothic spires
+and pinnacles of the older ages, than was the limited rustical provision
+of the Kirk, its restricted standing and lowered pretensions, unlike the
+ideal of Knox, the theocracy of the Congregation and the Covenant.
+Denuded not only of the wealth of the old communion, but of those
+beautiful dwelling-places which the passion of the mob destroyed and
+which the policy of the Reformers did not do too much to
+preserve&mdash;deprived of the interest of that long struggle during which
+each contending presbyter had something of the halo of possible
+martyrdom about his head&mdash;the Church of the Revolution Settlement lost
+in her established safety, if not as much as she gained, yet something
+which it was not well to lose. And the kingdom in general dropped in
+something like the same way into a sort of prose of existence, with most
+of the picturesque and dramatic elements gone. Romance died out along
+with the actual or possible tragedies of public life, and Humour came
+in, in the development most opposed to romance, a humour full of mockery
+and jest, less tender than keen-sighted, picking out every false
+pretence with a sharp gibe and roar of laughter often rude enough, not
+much considerate of other people's feelings. Perhaps there was something
+in the sudden cessation of the tragic character which had always
+hitherto distinguished her history, which produced in Scotland this
+reign of rough wit and somewhat cynical, satirical, audacious mirth, and
+which in its turn helped the iconoclasts of the previous age, and
+originated that curious hatred of show, ceremony, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">{438}</a></span>demonstration,
+which has become part of the Scottish character. The scathing
+sarcasm&mdash;unanswerable, yet false as well as true&mdash;which scorned the
+"little Saint Geilie," the sacred image, as a mere "painted bradd," came
+down to every detail of life; the rough jokes of the Parliament House at
+every trope as well as at every pretence of superior virtue; the grim
+disdain of the burgher for every rite; the rude criticism of the fields,
+which checked even family tendernesses and caresses as shows and
+pretences of a feeling which ought to be beyond the need of
+demonstration, were all connected one with another. Nowhere has love
+been more strong or devotion more absolute; but nowhere else, perhaps,
+has sentiment been so restrained, or the keen gleam of a neighbour's eye
+seeing through the possible too-much, held so strictly in check all
+exhibitions of feeling. Jeanie Deans, that impersonation of national
+character, would no more have greeted her delivered sister with a
+transport of kisses and rapture than she would have borne false
+testimony to save her. There is no evidence that this extreme
+self-restraint existed from the beginning of the national history, but
+rather everything to show that to pageants and fine sights, to dress and
+decoration, the Scots were as much addicted as their neighbours. But the
+natural pleasure in all such exhibitions would seem to have received a
+shock, with which the swift and summary overthrow of Mary's empire of
+beauty and gaiety, like the moral of a fable, had as much to do as the
+scornful destruction of religious image and altar. The succeeding
+generations indemnified themselves with a laugh and a gibe for the loss
+of that fair surface both of Church and Court: and the nation has never
+given up the keen criticism of every sham and seeming which exaggerated
+the absolutism of its natural character, and along with the destruction
+of false sentiment imposed a proud restraint and restriction upon much
+also that was true.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437"></a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 373px;">
+<img src="images/illus_045.jpg" width="373" height="588" alt="EDINBURGH: GENERAL VIEW" title="" />
+<span class="caption">EDINBURGH: GENERAL VIEW</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>To come down from the age when Mary still reigned in Holyrood and Knox
+in St. Giles's&mdash;and Edinburgh saw every phase of passion and tragedy,
+wild love, hatred, revenge, and despair, with scarcely less impassioned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">{440}</a></span>
+devotion, zeal, and fury of Reformation, and all the clang of opposed
+factions, feuds, and frays in her streets&mdash;to the age when the
+Parliament House and its law courts were the centre of Edinburgh, when
+Holyrood was the debtors' sanctuary, and St. Giles's a cluster of parish
+churches, even its distinctive name no longer used: and when the
+citizens clustered about the Cross of afternoons no longer to see the
+heralds in their tabards and hear the royal proclamations, but to tell
+and spread the news from London and discuss the wars in the Low
+Countries, and many a witty scandal, gibes from the Bench and repartees
+from the Bar, the humours of the old lords and ladies in their "Lodging"
+in the Canongate, and the witticisms of the favourite changehouse&mdash;is as
+great a leap as if a whole world came between. The Court at St. Germains
+retained the devotion of many, but Anne Stewart was on the throne, and
+rebellion was not thought of, while everything was still full of hope
+for the old dynasty, so that Edinburgh was at full leisure to talk and
+jeer and gossip and make encounter of wits, with nothing more exciting
+in hand. In this tranquil period, his apprenticeship being finished, a
+certain young man from the west, by the name of Allan Ramsay, opened a
+shop in the High Street "opposite Niddry's Wynd" as a
+"weegmaker"&mdash;perhaps, if truth were known, a barber's shop, in all ages
+known as the centre of gossip wherever it appears. It is odd, by the
+way, that a place so entirely dedicated to the service of the male
+portion of the population, and where women have no place, should have
+this general reputation; but so it has always been. He had spent his
+early years as a shepherd on Crawford Moor in the Upper Ward of
+Clydesdale, and no doubt had there learned every song that floated about
+the country-side. "Honest Allan" was in every respect a model of the
+well-doing and prosperous Edinburgh shopkeeper of his time&mdash;a character
+not too entirely engrossed by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">{441}</a></span>business, always ready for a frolic, a
+song, a decorous bout of drinking, and known in all the haunts of the
+cheerful townsmen: tolerant in morals yet always respectable, fond of
+gossip, fond of fun, and if not fond of money yet judiciously disposed
+to gain as much as he could make, or as his apprentices and careful wife
+could make for him: and gradually progressing from a smaller to a larger
+shop, from a less to a more "genteel" business, and finally to a
+comfortable retirement.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439"></a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 372px;">
+<img src="images/illus_046.jpg" width="372" height="500" alt="ALLAN RAMSAY&#39;S SHOP" title="" />
+<span class="caption">ALLAN RAMSAY&#39;S SHOP</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In such a life there was plenty of room for enjoyment, for relaxation,
+and no want of leisure to tell a good story or compose a string of
+couplets where that gift existed, even when most busy. We may imagine
+that he did not sit much at his block, but rather in the front of the
+shop amusing his customers, while their periwigs were curled or fitted,
+with Edinburgh gossip and wit in the familiarity of common citizenship,
+or with anecdotes which enlightened the country gentlemen, especially
+those from the west, the last <i>bon mot</i> of the Parliament House, or the
+Lord Advocate's latest deliverance. And his clubs were as numerous as
+those of a young man of fashion. The "Easy Club" was composed of "young
+anti-unionists," which indicates the politics which the wigmaker mildly
+held in cheerful subjection to the powers that were. No doubt he would
+have gone to the death (in verse) for the privileges of Edinburgh: but
+the anti-unionism or sentimental Jacobitism of his class was not of a
+kind to trouble any Government. And except the question of the Union,
+which was settled early in his career, politics do not seem to have been
+of an exciting character in Edinburgh. Local matters, always the most
+interesting of any to the inhabitants of a town not great enough to be
+cosmopolitan but full of distinct and striking individuality, furnished
+the poetical wigmaker with his first themes. It would seem that he only
+learned to rhyme from the necessity <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">{442}</a></span>of taking his part in the high jinks
+of the club; at least all his early productions were intended for its
+diversion. An "Elegy on Maggie Johnstone," mistress of a convenient
+"public" at Morningside, then described as "a mile and a half west from
+Edinburgh," a suburb on "the south side," though now a part of the
+town&mdash;which would lie in the way of the members when they took their
+walks abroad, and no doubt formed the end of many a Sabbath day's
+ramble&mdash;was almost the first of his known productions; and we may well
+believe that the jovial shopkeepers were delighted with the sensation of
+possessing a poet of their own, and held many a discussion upon the new
+verses&mdash;brimful of local allusions and circumstances which everybody
+knew&mdash;over their ale as they rested in the village changehouse, or among
+the fumes of their punch in their evening assemblies. Verses warm from
+the poet's brain have a certain intoxicating quality akin to the toddy,
+and no doubt the citizens slapped their thighs and snapped their fingers
+with delight when some well-known name appeared, the incidents of some
+story they knew by heart, or the features of some familiar character.
+The satisfaction of finding in what they would call poetry a host of
+local allusions about which there was no ambiguity, which they
+understood like their ABC, would rouse the first hearers to noisy
+enthusiasm. And thus encouraged, the cheerful bard (as he was called in
+those days) went on till his fame penetrated beyond the club. Another
+elegy of a more serious description was so highly thought of that it was
+printed and given to the world by the club itself. That world meant
+Edinburgh, its many tradesmen, the crowded inhabitants of all the lofty
+"lands" about that centre of busy social life where the Cross still
+stood, and the old Tolbooth gloomed over the street, cut in two by its
+big bulk and the fabric of the Luckenbooths, a sort of island of masonry
+which divided what is now the broad and airy High <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">{443}</a></span>Street opposite St.
+Giles's into two narrow straits. The writers and the advocates, the
+professors and the clergy, Councillor Pleydell and his kind, were not
+the first to discover that Ramsay the wigmaker had something in him more
+than the other rough wits of the shops and markets. And by and by the
+goodwives in their high lodgings, floor over floor, ever glad of
+something new, learnt to send one of the bairns with a penny to the
+wigmaker's shop in the afternoon to see if Allan Ramsay had printed a
+new poem: and received with rapture the damp broadsheet brought in fresh
+from the press, with a fable or a song in "gude braid Scots," or a witty
+letter to some answering rhymester full of local names and things. There
+was no evening paper in those days, and had there been it was very
+unlikely it would have penetrated into all the common stairs and crowded
+tenements. But Allan's songs, of which Jean or Peggy would "ken the
+tune," and the stories that would delight the bairns, were better worth
+the penny than news from distant London, which was altogether foreign
+and unknown to that humble audience.</p>
+
+<p>This no doubt was the sort of fame and widespread popular appreciation
+which made the statesman of that day&mdash;was it Fletcher of Saltoun or
+Duncan Forbes the great Lord President?&mdash;bid who would make the laws so
+long as he might make the songs of the people. He had in all likelihood
+learnt Allan's widely flying, largely read verses, which every <i>gamin</i>
+of the streets knew by heart, in his childhood. And though they might
+not be in general of a very ennobling quality, there are glimpses of a
+higher poetry to come in some of these productions, and a great deal of
+cheerful self-assertive content and local patriotism, as well as of
+rough fun and jest. If it were not for the very unnecessary introduction
+of Apollo as the god to whom "the bard" addresses his wishes, there
+would be something not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">{444}</a></span>unworthy of Burns in the following lines. The
+poet has of course introduced first, as a needful contrast, "the master
+o' a guid estate that can ilk thing afford," and who is much "dawted
+(petted) by the gods"&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"For me, I can be weel content<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To eat my bannock on the bent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And kitchen't wi' fresh air;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O' lang-kail I can make a feast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And cantily haud up my crest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And laugh at dishes rare.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nought frae Apollo I demand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">But through a lengthened life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My outer fabric firm may stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And saul clear without strife.<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">May he then, but gi'e then,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Those blessings for my share;<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">I'll fairly, and squarely,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Quit a', and seek nae mair."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was no doubt after he had achieved this reputation of the streets&mdash;a
+thing more difficult than greater fame&mdash;that his imagination developed
+in more continuous and refined effort. Whether he himself printed his
+penny broadsheet as well as sold it we are not informed, but as he began
+after a while to combine bookselling with wigmaking we may be allowed to
+imagine that the press which produced these flying leaves was either in
+or near his shop. It is difficult to realise the swarming of life and
+inhabitation within the high houses of the old town in an age when
+comfort was little understood: and even the concentration within so
+small a space, of business, work, interest, idleness, and pleasure, is
+hard to comprehend by people who have been used to appropriate a
+separate centre to each of the great occupations or exercises of
+mankind. When London was comparatively a small town it had still its
+professional distinctions&mdash;the Court, the Temple, the City, the place
+where law was administered and where money was made, where society had
+its abode and poverty found a shelter. But in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">{445}</a></span>old Edinburgh all were
+piled one on the top of another&mdash;the Parliament House within sight of
+the shops, the great official and the poor artificer under the same
+roof: and round that historical spot over which St. Giles's crown rose
+like the standard of the city, the whole community crowded, stalls and
+booths of every kind encumbering the street, while special pleaders and
+learned judges picked their steps in their dainty buckled shoes through
+the mud and refuse of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">{446}</a></span>the most crowded noisy market-place, and all the
+great personages of Edinburgh paced the "plainstanes" close by at
+certain hours, unheeding either smell or garbage or the resounding cries
+of the street.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 253px;">
+<img src="images/illus_047.jpg" width="253" height="400" alt="CROWN OF ST. GILES&#39;S" title="" />
+<span class="caption">CROWN OF ST. GILES&#39;S</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In such a crowded centre the sheets that were being read so eagerly,
+laughed over by the very cadgers at their booths, conned by the women at
+the stairheads, lying on every counter, where Allan's new verses would
+be pulled to pieces by brother wits who had known him to do better, or
+heard a livelier witticism from his lips no farther gone than yestreen,
+must very soon have come to the notice of the westland lads at the
+college, and from them to the learned professors, and still more
+directly to the lively groups that went and came to the Parliament
+House. Already the wigmaker's shop had thriven and prospered; the little
+man, short and fat and jovial, who had begun to lay out books in his
+window under the shadow of the curled and powdered periwigs, found the
+results of his double traffic more satisfactory than poets use. He
+boasts in one of his rhymed addresses that he thatches the outside and
+lines the inside of many a douce citizen, "and baithways gathers in the
+cash." He adds&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"And fain would prove to ilka Scot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That poortith's no the poet's lot."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It must have been altogether an odd little establishment&mdash;the wigs set
+out upon their blocks, perhaps, who knows, the barber's humbler craft
+being plied behind backs; the books multiplying daily on shelves and in
+windows, and the ragged boys with their pennies waiting to see if there
+was a new piece by Allan Ramsay; while perhaps in the corner, where lay
+the lists of the new circulating library&mdash;the first in Scotland&mdash;Miss
+Lydia Languish with her maid, or my lady's gentlewoman from some fine
+house in the Canongate, had come in to ask for the last new novel from
+London, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">{447}</a></span>Scotch capital having not yet begun to produce that article
+for itself.</p>
+
+<p>One may be sure that Allan, rotund and smiling, was always ready for a
+crack with the ladies, and to recommend the brand new <i>Pamela</i>, the
+support of virtue, or some contemporary work of lesser genius. Though
+the general costume was like that worn in the other parts of the island,
+perhaps a little behind London fashions, the fair visitors would still
+be veiled with the plaid, the fine woven screen of varied tartan which
+covered the head like a hood, and could on occasion conceal the face
+more effectually than Spanish lace or Indian muslin&mdash;a singular
+peculiarity not ancient and scarcely to be called national, since the
+tartan came from the still-despised Highlands, and these were Lowland
+ladies who wore the plaid. This fashion would seem to have begun to be
+shaken by Ramsay's time, for he pleads its cause with all the fervour of
+a poetical advocate. There is something grotesque in the arguments, and
+still more grotesque in the names by which he distinguishes the wearers
+of the plaid.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"Light as the pinions of the airy fry<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of larks and linnets who traverse the sky,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is the Tartana, spun so very fine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its weight can never make the fair repine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor does it move beyond its proper sphere,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But lets the gown in all its shape appear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor is the straightness of her waist denied<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be by every ravished eye surveyed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For this the hoop may stand at largest bend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It comes not nigh, nor can its weight offend.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"If shining red Campbella's cheeks adorn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our fancies straight conceive the blushing morn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath whose dawn the sun of beauty lies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor need we light but from Campbella's eyes.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If lined with green Stuarta's plaid we view,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or thine, Ramseia, edged around with blue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One shews the spring when nature is most kind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The other heaven whose spangles lift the mind."<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">{448}</a></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The description of the manner in which this engaging garment is worn has
+all the more reason to be quoted that it was not only a new piece by
+Allan Ramsay, but affords a glimpse of the feminine figures that were to
+be seen in the High Street of Edinburgh going to kirk and market in the
+beginning of the eighteenth century. There is, too, a pleasant touch of
+individuality in the musical street cry that wakes the morn.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"From when the cock proclaims the rising day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And milkmaids sing around <i>sweet curds and whey</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till grey-eyed twilight, harbinger of night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pursues o'er silver mountains sinking light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I can unwearied from my casements view<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Plaid, with something still about it new.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How are we pleased when, with a handsome air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We see Hepburna walk with easy care!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One arm half circles round her slender waist,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The other like an ivory pillar placed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To hold her plaid around her modest face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which saves her blushes with the gayest grace;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If in white kids her slender fingers move,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or, unconfined, jet through the sable glove.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"With what a pretty action Keitha holds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her plaid, and varies oft its airy folds!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How does that naked space the spirits move,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Between the ruffled lawn and envious glove!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We by the sample, though no more be seen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Imagine all that's fair within the screen.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"Thus belles in plaids veil and display their charms,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The love-sick youth thus bright Humea warms,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with her graceful mien her rivals all alarms."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The fair Hepburna, Humea, Campbella, and the rest may tempt the reader
+to a smile; but the picture has its value, and is a detail of importance
+in the realisation of that animated and crowded scene. By this time
+probably Ramsay had removed his shop to the end of the Luckenbooths,
+which faced "east" to the unencumbered portion of the High Street, where
+the City Cross stood, and where all the notable persons made their daily
+promenade. It was here that he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">{449}</a></span>was visited by a kindred spirit, the poet
+Gay, who had been brought to Edinburgh by his patroness the Duchess of
+Queensberry, and soon formed acquaintance with the local poet. The two
+little roundabout bards used to stand together at the door of the shop
+to watch the crowd, in which no doubt Ramsay would be gratified by a
+friendly nod from the Lord President, and swell with civic and with
+personal pride to point out to the English visitor that distinguished
+Scotsman the loyal and the learned Forbes. The Cross, round which this
+genteel and witty crowd assembled daily, stood then, according to the
+plans of the period, in the centre of the High Street, where it had been
+removed for the advantage of greater space in the previous century. And
+the view from Ramsay's shop&mdash;from which by this time the wigs had
+entirely disappeared, and which was now a refined and cultured
+bookseller's, adorned outside with medallions of two poets, Scotch and
+English, Ben Jonson and Drummond of Hawthornden&mdash;was bounded by the gate
+of the Netherbow with its picturesque tower, and glimpses through the
+open roadway, of the Canongate beyond, and the cross lines of busy
+traffic leading to Leith. It was thus a wide space between the lines of
+high houses, more like a Place than a street, upon which the two gossips
+gazed, no doubt with a complacent thought that their living presence
+underneath carried out the symbol of the two heads above&mdash;the poets of
+England and of Scotland&mdash;and that in the teeming street below them were
+many who pointed out to each other this new and delightful combination.
+They were not great poets, either of these round, fat, oily men of
+verse. And yet the association was pleasant. Perhaps the duchess's
+coach-and-six, in which the English bard had been conveyed from London,
+might drive through the open port, as the two stood delighted, watching
+the pedestrians hurry out of the way and the great lawyers and officials
+preparing to pay their devoirs to her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">{450}</a></span>Grace as she drew up before the
+bookshop. No doubt they thought it a scene to be remembered in the
+history of letters. She was at Penicuik House on a visit to the Clerks,
+who were friends and patrons of Allan, and no doubt had supped or drunk
+a dish of tea at New Hall, where the Lord President (who was only the
+Lord Advocate in those days) often took his case in his cousin's house,
+where Ramsay was a familiar and frequent guest. When Allan made wigs no
+longer, when all his occupations were about books, and everybody in
+Edinburgh, gentle and simple, knew him as the poet, he would be still
+more free to make his jokes and his compliments to all those fine
+people. But at no time was the genial little poet "blate," as he would
+himself have said. There was no shyness in him. He "braw'd it," as he
+says, with no doubt the finest of periwigs, long before he had ceased to
+be a skull-thatcher, and swaggered through the wynds and about the Cross
+with the best. The Edinburgh shopkeeper has never been "blate." He has
+always maintained a freedom of independence which has nothing of the
+obsequiousness of more common traders, and which gave the greater value
+to the sly compliment which he would insinuate between two jests. No
+doubt Campbella and Hamilla would laugh at the little man's compliments,
+his bows and admiring glances, yet would not object to his exposition of
+the tartan screen, the delicate silken plaid under which they shielded
+their radiant complexions and golden locks.</p>
+
+<p>Allan must have seen many curious sights from those windows. The riding
+of the Parliament, when in gallant order two by two&mdash;the commissioners
+of the boroughs and the counties leading the way, the peers following,
+through the guards on either side who lined the streets&mdash;they rode up
+solemnly from Holyrood to the Parliament House, with crown and sword and
+sceptre borne before them, the old <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">{451}</a></span>insignia, without which the Acts of
+the ancient Parliaments of Scotland were not considered valid&mdash;marching
+for the last time to their place of meeting to give up their
+trust&mdash;would be one of the most remarkable. The commoners had each two
+lackeys to attend him, the barons three, the earls four, a blue-coated
+brigade, relic of the old days when no gentleman moved abroad without a
+following; and Lyon King-at-arms in his finery to direct the line. With
+lamentation and humiliation was the session closed; even wise men who
+upheld the Union consenting to the general pang with which the last
+Scots Parliament went its way. And the glare of the fire must have
+lighted up the poet's rooms, and angry sparks fallen, and hoarse roar of
+voices drowned all domestic sounds, when the Porteous Mob turned
+Edinburgh streets into a fierce scene of tragedy for one exciting night.
+It would be vain indeed to describe again what Scott has set before us
+in the most vivid brilliant narrative. Such a scene breaking into the
+burgher quietude&mdash;the decent households which had all retired into
+decorous darkness for the night waking up again with lights flitting
+from story to story, the axes crashing against the doors of the
+Tolbooth, the wild procession whirling down the tortuous gloom of the
+West Bow&mdash;was such an interruption of monotonous life as few towns in
+the eighteenth century could have equalled; and it is curious to
+remember the intense national feeling and keen patriotic understanding
+of how far the populace would or could endure interference, which made
+Duncan Forbes in his place in Parliament stand up as almost the defender
+of that wild outburst of lawlessness, and John of Argyle turn from the
+royal presence to prepare his hounds, as he said, against the Queen's
+threat of turning the rebellious country into a desert. These proud
+Scotsmen had supported the Union: they had perceived its necessity and
+its use: but there was a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">{452}</a></span>point at which all their susceptibilities took
+fire, and Whig lords and politicians were at one with every high-handed
+Tory of the early times.</p>
+
+<p>Allan Ramsay must also have seen, though he says nothing of it, the
+brief occupation of Edinburgh by the unfortunate Prince Charles Edward,
+and at a distance the pathetic little Court in Holyrood, the Jacobite
+ladies in their brief glory, the fated captains of that wild little
+army, in which the old world of tradition and romance made its last
+outbreak upon modern prose and the possibilities of life. One would
+imagine that for a man who had lived through that episode in the heart
+of the old kingdom of the Stewarts, and whose house lay half-way between
+the artillery of the castle, where a hostile garrison sat grimly
+watching the invaders below, and the camp at Holyrood&mdash;there would have
+been nothing in his life so exciting, nothing of which the record would
+have been more distinct. But human nature, which has so many
+eccentricities, is in nothing so wonderful as this, that the most
+remarkable historical scenes make no impression upon its profound
+everyday calm, and are less important to memory than the smallest
+individual incident. The swarm of the wild Highlanders that took sudden
+possession of street and changehouse, the boom of the cannon overhead
+vainly attempting to disperse a group here and there or kill a rebel,
+and the consciousness which one would think must have thrilled through
+the very air, that under those turrets in the valley was the most
+interesting young adventurer of modern times, the heir of the ancient
+Scots kings, their undoubted representative&mdash;how could these things fail
+to affect the mind even of the most steady-going citizen? But they did,
+though we cannot comprehend it. Allan has a word for every little
+domestic event in town or suburbs, but there is not a syllable said
+either by himself or his biographers to intimate that he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">{453}</a></span>knew what was
+going on under his eyes at that brief and sudden moment, the "one
+crowded hour of glorious life," which cost so much blood of brave men,
+and which the hapless Prince paid for afterwards in the disenchanted
+tedium of many a dreary year.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 367px;">
+<img src="images/illus_048.jpg" width="367" height="600" alt="SMOLLETT&#39;S HOUSE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">SMOLLETT&#39;S HOUSE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">{454}</a></span>It was before this time, however, that Ramsay reached the height of his
+fame and of his productions in <i>The Gentle Shepherd</i>. He had written
+some years before "A Pastoral Dialogue between Patie and Roger,"
+published as usual in a sheet for a penny, and no doubt affording much
+pleasure to the great popular audience to whom the "new piece" was as
+the daily <i>feuilleton</i>, that friendly dole of fiction which sweetens
+existence. It was evidently so successful that after a while the poet
+composed a pendant&mdash;a dialogue between Jenny and Peggy. These two
+fragments pleased the fancy of both the learned and the simple, and no
+doubt called forth many a flattering inquiry after the two rustic pairs
+and demands for the rest of their simple history, which inspired the
+author to weave the lovers into the web of a continuous story, adding
+the rural background, so fresh and true to nature, and the rustic and
+humorous characters which were wanted for the perfection of the pastoral
+drama. Few poems ever have attained so great and so immediate a success.
+It went from end to end of Scotland, everywhere welcomed, read, conned
+over, got by heart. Such a fame would be indeed worth living for. The
+fat little citizen in his shop became at once the poet of his country,
+as he had been of the Edinburgh streets. It was nearly two centuries
+since Dunbar and Davie Lyndsay had celebrated their romantic town: and
+though the name of the latter was still a household word ("You'll no
+find that in Davie Lyndsay" being the popular scornful dismissal of any
+incredible tale), yet their works had fallen into forgetfulness. The new
+poet was received accordingly with acclamation. People did not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">{455}</a></span>talk of
+sales and profits in those days, and we have no information as to the
+numbers issued, or the time they took to find a home in every cottage,
+as well as to receive the distinction of illustration and critical
+discussion, which proved that it was not only the people who interested
+themselves in the new poet, but a more highly trained and difficult
+audience as well. We have before us two goodly octavos in which the
+little rustical comedy is enshrined in hundreds of pages of notes; and
+where the argument as to its localities, identifying every spot,
+occupies chapter after chapter of earnest discussion, proving exactly
+where every cottage is situated, and that New Hall, the home of the
+Forbeses, was the mansion of the poem, with its little farm-steading
+round. Shakspeare could not have been more closely followed, and we
+doubt if the localities which he has made famous were ever discussed at
+such length. I can remember nearly fifty years ago investigating, with
+the eagerness of a child to whom books were the most precious objects in
+existence, the little shelf high on the wall at the bedhead, where a
+very old woman, an old nurse in her retirement, kept her treasures, and
+mounted high upon a chair, finding a much-thumbed unbound copy of <i>The
+Gentle Shepherd</i> in the dim twilight, ruddy with the glimmer of the
+fire, of the cottage room. In such places it was never absent; it was
+the one book which held its ground by the side of the Bible and perhaps
+a volume of old-world devotion, <i>The Crook in the Lot</i>, or <i>The Saint's
+Rest</i>. Such a distinction is a far more true and genuine triumph than
+the sale of many editions. It went straight into the heart of the
+peasant, who understood and appreciated every scene and line. And it was
+discussed by all the Edinburgh clubs, and by the literati who knew their
+Theocritus and could write dissertations on pastoral poetry. The
+greatest poet could have hoped for no more.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">{456}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And pastoral poetry was the fashion of the time. Ramsay himself had made
+various other attempts before he lighted upon this quite legitimate
+strain. We read with a shudder of comic horror a dialogue "On the Death
+of Mr. Addison," in which the interlocutors are "Richy and Sandy," to
+wit, Sir Richard Steele and Mr. Alexander Pope! who bewail their loss,
+which is far worse than misfortune to their flocks, or the scorn of
+their lasses, being no less than this, that "Addie, that played and sang
+so sweet, is dead"! The poet received, indeed, a complimentary copy of
+verses upon this production, in which he is thus addressed&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"Well fare thee, Allan, who in mother tongue<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So sweetly hath of breathless Addy sung:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His endless fame thy nat'ral genius fired,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thou hast written as if he inspired.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Richy and Sandy,' who do him survive,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long as thy rural stanzas last, shall live."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The grotesque in poetry could scarcely go farther. Mr. Burchett, who
+addressed good Allan in these rhymes, was the refined gentleman who put
+the wigmaker's poems into English. "Richy and Sandy" was contained in a
+volume which Ramsay published by subscription, and which brought him in,
+to the immense admiration of his biographer, four hundred guineas
+sterling, which no doubt was a very admirable recompense indeed for so
+many foolish verses. This volume contained, among other things, Ramsay's
+bold continuation of "Christ's Kirk on the Green," which the same
+biographer describes as "King James the First's ludicrous poem," in
+which the poet of the High Street skilfully turns the poet-monarch's
+rustic revel into a vulgar village debauch. But these pieces of
+presumption and non-comprehension are happily all dead and gone, and
+Ramsay's reputation rests upon a happier basis. It is not a small matter
+to have pervaded a whole country with the simple measures of a rural
+idyll&mdash;a poem in which there are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">{457}</a></span>not perhaps five lines of poetry, but
+which is fragrant of the moors and fields, full of rustic good sense and
+feeling, and as free of harm or offence as the most severe moralist
+could desire. This latter quality is all the more remarkable as it
+belongs to an age not at all squeamish in these matters, and to which
+the frankest assaults upon a heroine's virtue were supposed to be quite
+adapted for the treatment of fiction. But there is no Lovelace in <i>The
+Gentle Shepherd</i>; the rustic love-making is ardent, but simple and
+without guile. The swains respect as much as they admire their nymphs:
+the nymphs are confident in their frank innocence, and fear no evil; the
+old fathers sit cheerful and sagacious at their doors and indulge in
+their cracks, not less pleased with themselves and their share of life
+than are the young ones with their livelier pleasures: the cows breathe
+balmy breath into the wild freshness of the pastoral scenery. There is
+scarcely anything affected, false, or even stilted in the poetical
+dialogues which, with a little licence for the verse and something for
+the sentiment, come naturally and simply from the wholesome, genial
+young shepherds and their sweethearts. To say this is to say as much as
+the most fastidious critic could desire from such a composition.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is it spoiled by classic models or similes. How Ramsay succeeded in
+keeping Venus and Cupid out of it, in forgetting all eclogues and
+pastorals, Virgil or Theocritus, and indulging in nothing that was out
+of place in Scotland, it is hard to tell. The Mantuan bard, the oaten
+reed, Philomela and her songs, Hymen, Ganymede, Bacchus, and all the
+Olympian band disport themselves in his other verses: but <i>The Gentle
+Shepherd</i> is void of those necessary adjuncts of the eighteenth-century
+muse. The wimpling burn is never called Helicon nor the heathery braes
+Parnassus, and nothing can be more genuine, more natural, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">{458}</a></span>familiar
+than the simple scenery of Habbie's Howe&mdash;in which the eager critics
+identified every scene, and the sensible poet enhanced his art by a
+perfect truth to nature. <i>The Gentle Shepherd</i> is perhaps the only
+so-called Pastoral of which this can be said, and it must have required
+no small amount of self-denial to dispense with all those accustomed
+auxiliaries. Even the sentiments are not too highflown for the locality.
+If they are perhaps more completely purified from everything gross or
+fleshly than would have been the case in fact, the poet has not been
+afraid to temper passion with those considerations which naturally rise
+to the mind of the young farmer in choosing his mate. His Peggy, though
+she has beauty enough to make up for every deficiency, has also "with
+innocence the wale of sense."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em">"In better sense without a flaw,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As in her beauty, far excels them a'."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She, on her part, anticipates not raptures and blisses in her marriage,
+but the hallowed usages of life.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"I'll employ with pleasure all my art<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To keep him cheerful, and secure his heart.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At e'en, when he comes weary frae the hill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll have a' things made ready to his will;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In winter when he toils through wind and rain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A bleezin' ingle, and a clean hearth-stane;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And soon as he's flung by his plaid and staff,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The seething pot's be ready to tak' aff."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Ramsay's sobriety here shines in comparison with all the fables and
+idylls of his age. It is entirely natural, living, and of his time.
+Patie plays upon a flute of "plum-tree made with ivory virls round,"
+which he bought from the proceeds of "sax good fat lambs" sold at the
+West Port, instead of the rustic pipe or oaten reed, which in his heart
+of hearts no doubt our wigmaker thought much finer. Thus he secured his
+audience, who knew nothing about oaten reeds, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">{459}</a></span>instead of the
+plaudits of the dilettanti secured the true fame of popular
+comprehension and knowledge. Burns was far higher and nobler in genius,
+and the worship awarded to him by his countrymen is one of the favourite
+subjects of gibe and jest among writers on the other side of the Tweed.
+But even Burns had not the universal acceptance, the absolute command of
+his audience, which belonged to honest Allan. There were politicians and
+there were ecclesiastics, and good people neither one nor the other, who
+shook their troubled heads over the ploughman who would not confine
+himself to the daisy of the field or the Saturday night's observances of
+the Cottar, but was capable of Holy Willie and the Holy Fair. But Ramsay
+had no gainsayer, and <i>The Gentle Shepherd</i> was the first of books in
+most Lowland homes. Its construction, its language and sentiments, are
+all as commonplace as could be imagined, but it is a wholesome, natural,
+pure, and unvarnished tale, and the mind that brought it forth (well
+aware of what pleased his public) and the public who relished and bought
+it, give us a better view of the honest tastes and morals of the period
+than anything else which has come to us from that time. There has always
+been a good deal of drinking, and other vices still less consistent with
+purity of heart, in Scotland. Now and then we are frightened by
+statistics that give us a very ill name; but it is difficult to believe
+that if the national heart had been corrupt <i>The Gentle Shepherd</i> could
+have afforded it such universal and wholesome delight.</p>
+
+<p>It is curious to find two very ordinary and prosaic tradesmen thus in
+the front of popular literature in the beginning of the eighteenth
+century. There is no comparison between Allan Ramsay and Samuel
+Richardson in respect to genius. That humdrum old bookseller evoked by
+some miraculous art the most delicate and lovely of creations<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">{460}</a></span> out of the
+midst of revolting and disgusting circumstances. Fielding was a far
+finer gentleman, a much more accomplished writer, even a greater genius;
+but there are none of his women who are fit to tie the shoes of Clarissa
+Harlowe, to whom indeed there exists no fit companion out of Shakspeare.
+Our good-humoured Allan had no such gift, but he had the art of
+producing one spotless and lifelike tale, absolutely true to nature and
+within the power of verification by any reader, which was accepted by a
+whole country with enthusiasm as the best rendering of its rural life.
+We doubt if there ever was a greater literary triumph.</p>
+
+<p>Ramsay would not have been the true man he was to every tradition and
+inheritance of his class had he not shown a modest complacency in his
+own success. He was assailed, we are told, by nameless critics, who put
+forth "A Block for Allan Ramsay's Wigs," "Remarks on Ramsay's Writings,"
+and so forth&mdash;and retaliated, not without dignity: "Dull foes," he says,
+"nought at my hand deserve."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"The blundering fellows ne'er forget,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">About my trade to sport their fancies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As if, forsooth, I would look blate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">At what my honour most advances.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"Auld Homer sang for's daily bread;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Surprising Shakspeare fin'd the wool;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Great Virgil creels and baskets made;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And famous Ben employed the trowel.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"Yet Dorset, Lansdown, Lauderdale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bucks, Stirling, and the son of Angus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even monarchs, and o' men the wale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Were proud to be enrolled amang us."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is true that Homer and Shakspeare might be surprised to find
+themselves rubbing elbows with the wigmaker of the High Street. Still,
+he shows a fine spirit, and his very strut is respectable.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">{461}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 435px;">
+<img src="images/illus_049.jpg" width="435" height="500" alt="ALLAN RAMSAY&#39;S HOUSE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">ALLAN RAMSAY&#39;S HOUSE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the end of his life, when the author of <i>The Gentle Shepherd</i> by all
+his trades, both as poet and shopkeeper, had amassed a fortune, he built
+himself a house in the most glorious position which poet could have
+chosen. It is on the crest of the hill, a little way below the castle,
+and is still to be seen from Princes Street&mdash;a distinct feature in the
+picturesque and varied line of building. He is said, though on what
+authority we are not told, to have applied to the Crown for ground
+enough to build a cage for <i>his burd</i>, meaning his wife: which is
+supposed to be the reason why he built his house in an octagonal shape
+like a cage: his wife, however, did not live long enough to inhabit it.
+Additions <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">{462}</a></span>and emendations have been made, so that there is no great
+peculiarity in the form of the old square house on the summit of the
+green slope, just clear of the rocks of the castle, as it is visible
+to-day. When it was built the new town of Edinburgh was not yet dreamed
+of, and nothing disturbed the panorama of green fields that lay between
+Edinburgh and the Firth. The town wall was falling into ruin, yet still
+existed in fragmentary towers and ramparts here and there, and low down
+in the depths of the descent, which was not so precipitous there as
+under the castle, the high houses and green braes were reflected in the
+quiet waters of the North Loch. From thence the fields and scattered
+farmhouses, the Calton Hill in unadorned greenness, a church spire and a
+cluster of village roofs here and there, led the eye to the shining of
+the Scottish Sea, the great water with its islands, the coast of Fife
+with its dotted line of little fishing towns, the two green Lomonds
+standing softly distinct against the misty line of more distant hills.
+It was the same view that moved Fitz-Eustace to ecstasy, still but
+little changed in the eighteenth century from what it had been in the
+sixteenth. And picturesque as Edinburgh still continues to be in spite
+of many modern disadvantages, it was no doubt infinitely more
+picturesque then, crowning the rocky ridge, with straggling lanes and
+wynds dropping steeply down into the valley&mdash;opening here and there a
+glimpse of the green country and the shimmer of the Firth&mdash;while on the
+edge of the hill, from all the high windows, the wide landscape softened
+into distance on every side, into the far-off broken ranges of mountains
+and cloudy rolling vapours, and the far-retiring sweep of a horizon
+traversed by all the lights and all the storms&mdash;a wide world of air and
+space and infinite variety. The life of our busy modern world had
+scarcely yet invaded that city on the hill. It stood isolated on the
+height of its rock, reigning from that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">{463}</a></span> domination over all the tranquil
+country: while within its lines still thronged and clamoured an active
+noisy population cooped up and packed together as if it were still
+unsafe to stray away out of shelter of the walls, all the faculties and
+trades, all the wit and the wealth, one above another, with the
+concentration, the picturesqueness, the universal acquaintance and
+familiarity of a medi&aelig;val town. And beautiful as the prospect must have
+been from those high-built houses, it could scarcely have exceeded the
+sight of the old Edinburgh of the kings from without, standing high
+above the level of the soil, with the open crown of St. Giles's rising
+over its grey heights, its walls broken down by careless peace and
+wellbeing, its tall tenements standing up like a line of castles. And in
+the night with its glimmer of household lights at every window hanging
+high in mid air, repeated with a gleam in the waters beneath and in the
+stars above, which sparkled keen out of the northern blue, and the mist
+of habitation, the smoke of the fires and the lamps hanging over
+all&mdash;confusing outlines, yet revealing all the more brightly a higher
+and a higher altitude of human lights&mdash;what a wonderful sight rising
+sheer out of the green and silent champaign below!</p>
+
+<p>Such was royal Edinburgh still, when the shopkeeper-poet, with his jokes
+and his quips, and his good-humoured self-esteem, and certainty of his
+own power, settled down in Ramsay Lodge. It would be well if all poets
+had as prosperous and as fair a retirement for their old age. He lived
+for some time in his quaint self-contained (according to the equally
+quaint Scotch phraseology) birdcage upon the top of the hill, and
+enjoyed his celebrity and his ease and the pleasant conviction that "I
+the best and fairest please." His only son, the second Allan Ramsay, was
+a painter of some reputation, and he had daughters to care for him and
+keep his home cheerful as long as he lived. A man more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">{464}</a></span>satisfied with
+his lot could not be. His chirrup of self-satisfaction, the flattery,
+yet familiarity, of his address to all the noble lords and lairds, the
+judges and advocates, his laugh of jovial optimism and personal content,
+belong perfectly to the character of the comfortable citizen, "in fair
+round belly with good capon lined," and the shopkeeper's rather than the
+poet's desire to please. One can better fancy him at the door of his
+shop looking down the High Street jocose and beaming, with a joke for
+the Lord President and for the Cadie alike, hand in glove with all the
+Town Council, with a compliment for every fair lady or smiling lass that
+tripped by under her tartan screen, delighted with himself and all
+around him&mdash;than retired in his garden on the Castle Hill, though with
+all the variations of the heavens and magnificence of the landscape
+before his eyes. He had no doubt the admiration of that landscape which
+is never wanting to an Edinburgh citizen, a part of the creed to which
+he is born; but the homely limits of the green glens and knowes, the
+wimpling burn, the washing-green, the laird's hospitable house behind,
+were more in Allan's way when he wanted any relaxation from the even
+more attractive town. The High Street and Habbie's Howe are the true
+centres of his soul.</p>
+
+<p>It would be wrong not to note the collections of songs which made his
+name dear to all the pleasant singers both of drawing-room and cottage.
+It is a strange peculiarity in a nation possessing a characteristic and
+melodious popular music of its own like Scotland, to find how little
+place music as a science, or even in its more serious developments, has
+ever had in the country. Nothing can be more sweet, more touching, more
+tender, than the native growth of Scottish song&mdash;nothing more full of
+fun and spirit than the brilliant dance music which, like the song,
+seems to have sprung spontaneous from the soil. And no country has <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">{465}</a></span>ever
+more loved both songs and strathspeys, or clung to them with greater
+devotion. It would be perhaps impossible for the most learned to decide
+between the rival claims of Scotland and Ireland in respect to the airs
+which seem native to both; but Ireland has always laboured under the
+disadvantage of being far less homogeneous than Scotland, and certainly,
+before the time of Moore at least, her native songs did not belong to
+all classes as in the sister country. And Scotland has always through
+all ages (previous to the present age) preferred her own songs to every
+other. During the eighteenth century, when Edinburgh was almost more
+completely the centre of society than ever before, the old tunes were
+sung by ladies as much as by maid-servants, and the delicate old spinets
+performed a soft accompaniment to ballads of the "Ewebuchting" and of
+the "Corn Rigs," and prolonged the pathetic notes of "Waly, waly" and
+the trembling wail of the "Flowers of the Forest" in the finest houses
+as in the humblest. Music, more properly so called, the art which has
+gradually made its way from being a modest handmaiden of poetry to full
+rivalship, if not a half-implied superiority, was already a scientific
+pursuit in England; and though the Italian opera aroused a violent
+opposition, and Tweedledum and Tweedledee called forth the gibes of the
+wits, there existed a vigorous English school of learned musicians, and
+Handel and Haydn found an audience not incapable of appreciating their
+best works. But while this development went on in London, Scotland still
+sang her ancient simple melodies, and contemned everything else with
+that audacious superiority which is born of ignorance. One might almost
+imagine that this was the penalty of a national inheritance so ample and
+so sweet, and that the comparative absence of traditionary music in
+England opened the heart of the country to strains more ambitious and
+classical. However it came about, there is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">{466}</a></span>no denying that so it was. If
+there was any Scottish composer at all, his productions were only
+imitations or modifications of the old airs. Music continued to be
+represented by the songs of immemorial attraction, the woodnotes wild of
+nameless minstrels, pure utterance of the soil. Perhaps the absence of
+music, except in the kindred shape of psalm tunes, which was but another
+form of popular song, in the Church, was one great prevailing cause of
+the national insensibility to all more lavish and elaborate strains. But
+this peculiarity and insensibility had at least one advantage&mdash;they kept
+in constant cultivation a distinct branch of national literature, and
+one that is always attractive and delightful. I do not think it is too
+strong an utterance of national partiality to say that the songwriters
+of Scotland are beyond comparison with those of either of the other
+united kingdoms. The simplest of the old ditties brought out of the
+ancient poets contain a grace of genuine poetry and real feeling far
+above the unmeaning jingle of verse which is the most common utterance
+of popular song; and the cultivation of this delightful gift has called
+forth the most tender and artless poems from gentle writers whom nothing
+but that inspiration could have made to produce what was in them. The
+pathetic wail of the poor lady who found to her cost that</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"Love is bonnie, a little time when it is new,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>but that</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"When love's auld it waxeth cauld,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fades away like morning dew";<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and that touching lullaby in which the mother hushes the babe whose</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"Father wrought her great annoy,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>with its tender and simple refrain&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"It grieves me sore to hear thee weep,"<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">{467}</a></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>breathe out of the ancient depths of human trouble with a reserve and
+simplicity of feeling that seem almost personal. But the kindred
+inspiration which called forth the two versions of the "Flowers of the
+Forest" and the ballad of "Auld Robin Gray," along with many more, shows
+how warm was the impulse to this expression of feelings, which were at
+once intensified and drawn out of the sphere of revelations too
+individual by the breath of the melody which carried them forth.</p>
+
+<p>Allan Ramsay has the merit of being the first collector of Scottish
+song. He was remorseless, like his century, and made the wildest havoc
+with some of his originals, cutting and slashing as suited his fancy,
+and adding of his own whenever it pleased him so to do. But with the
+exception of a number of Strephons and Chloes, not always ungraceful, in
+the newer fashion, and a sprinkling of ruder verses in which there is
+more indecency than immorality, the first two volumes of the <i>Tea-table
+Miscellany</i> are full of merit, and include many delightful simple
+lyrics, songs which compare most advantageously with the insipid "words"
+which at this present advanced age are used as a sort of necessary evil
+to serve the purpose of the music. "Say that our way is only an
+harmonious speaking of many witty or soft thoughts after the poet has
+dressed them in four or five stanzas," says Ramsay, with the apology
+which is a veiled assertion of higher aims, "yet undoubtedly these must
+relish best with people who have not bestowed much of their time in
+acquiring a taste for that downright perfect music which requires none
+or very little of the poet's assistance." And he tells us in the same
+preface of a letter he has had from America informing him that there too
+his manual of song has gone, and that his</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"Soft verse made to a Scottish air<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is often sung by our Virginian fair."<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">{468}</a></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The book is dedicated to the ladies&mdash;the <i>Donne qui hanno intelletto
+d'amore</i>, long supposed to be the final critics and judges of such
+productions: and is confidently recommended to these "fair singers" for
+whose "modest eyes and ears," according to the poet (but with notable
+exceptions, as has been said), they were prepared. The third volume
+consisted almost exclusively of English songs, among which are many
+classic verses. If it were but as a stepping-stone to those perfect
+lyrics, so full of natural truth and feeling, with which Burns
+afterwards brought to a climax the songs of his country, the <i>Tea-table
+Miscellany</i> would have a merit of its own.</p>
+
+<p>Ramsay died in 1758, when the troubles of the country were over, the
+last seeds of insurrection stamped out, and the powerful revolution
+begun which made the clans loyal to Government and Scotch politicians
+faithful to the Union. He was buried in the Greyfriars Churchyard, where
+so many of the most notable of the citizens of Edinburgh were laid. A
+hundred years or so after, the enlightened community placed his statue
+in the gardens that lie between the old town and the new. And thus the
+poet's career was run; it was a prosperous one, full of the success that
+was most sweet to him; comfort and competence and reputation, at once
+that of a warm and well-to-do citizen and that of a poet. Few poets have
+lived to see their productions so popular. <i>The Gentle Shepherd</i> may be
+said to have been in every cottage in Scotland in its author's lifetime,
+and his songs were sung by everybody. Nor did this fame interfere with
+the citizen's well-earned and more substantial reward. The shop in which
+he began his prosperous career, and which was crowded so continually by
+eager messengers with their pennies in search of Allan Ramsay's last new
+piece&mdash;the most immediate and one of the most pleasant evidences of
+success&mdash;still exists, with its high steps and broad low <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">{469}</a></span>windows, in the
+heart of the old town with which his name is so completely associated;
+and the quaint square house in which his later days of ease and
+retirement were spent still keeps its place on the east of the Castle
+Hill, surveying from its windows the enriched and amplified yet
+unalterable panorama so dear and beautiful to all Scottish eyes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">{470}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 361px;">
+<img src="images/illus_050.jpg" width="361" height="600" alt="ALLAN RAMSAY&#39;S MONUMENT" title="" />
+<span class="caption">ALLAN RAMSAY&#39;S MONUMENT</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">{471}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;">
+<img src="images/illus_051.jpg" width="350" height="312" alt="DOORWAY, LADY STAIR&#39;S CLOSE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">DOORWAY, LADY STAIR&#39;S CLOSE</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II_III" id="CHAPTER_II_III"></a>CHAPTER II<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">THE GUEST OF EDINBURGH</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Royal Edinburgh, the city of the Scots kings and Parliament, the capital
+of the ancient kingdom, would seem to have become weary somewhere in the
+eighteenth century of dwelling alone upon her rock. There were, to be
+sure, reasons more prosaic for the construction of the New Town, the
+partner and companion of the old historical city. The population had
+increased, the desire for comfort and space, and many luxuries unknown
+to the early citizens of Edinburgh, had developed among the new. It was
+no longer <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">{472}</a></span>agreeable to the lawyers and philosophers to be crowded up
+with the other inhabitants of a common stair, to have the din of street
+cries and commotion ever in their ears, and the lowest of the population
+always about their feet, as was inevitable when gentle and simple were
+piled together in the High Street and Canongate. The old houses might be
+noble houses when they were finally got at, through many drawbacks and
+abominations&mdash;though in those days there was little appreciation even of
+the stately beauty of old masonry and ornament&mdash;but their surroundings
+became daily more and more intolerable. And it was an anachronism to
+coop up a learned, elegant, and refined class, living under the
+Hanoverian Georges in peace and loyalty, within the circle of walls now
+broken down and useless, which had been adapted to protect the subjects
+of the old Scottish Jameses from continual attacks.</p>
+
+<p>Happily the nature of the situation prevented any amalgamation or loss
+of the old boundaries and picturesque features of the ancient city, in
+the new. There was no question of continuation or enlargement. Another
+Edinburgh rose at the feet of the first, a sober, respectable, modern,
+and square-toed town, with wide streets and buildings solid and strong,
+not without pretensions to a certain stateliness of size and design, but
+in strong contrast with the architecture and fashion native to the
+soil&mdash;the high gables and turreted stairs of the past. The old town had
+to throw a drawbridge, permanent and massive, over the hollow at her
+feet before she could even reach the terraced valley on which the first
+lines of habitation were drawn, and which, rounding over its steep
+slope, descended towards another and yet another terrace before it stood
+complete, a new-born partner and companion in life of the former
+capital, lavish in space as the other was confined, leisurely and
+serious as the other was animated&mdash;a new town of great houses, of big<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">{473}</a></span>
+churches&mdash;dull, as only the eighteenth century was capable of making
+them&mdash;of comfort and sober wealth and intellectual progress. The
+architects who adorned the Modern Athens with Roman domes and Greek
+temples, and placid fictitious ruins on the breezy hill which possessed
+a fatal likeness to the Acropolis, would have scoffed at the idea of
+finding models in the erections of the fourteenth century&mdash;that
+so-called dark age&mdash;or recognising a superior harmony and fitness in
+native principles of construction.</p>
+
+<p>Yet though the public taste has now returned more or less intelligently
+to the earlier canons, it would be foolish not to recognise that there
+is a certain advantage even in the difference of the new town from the
+old. It is not the historical Edinburgh, the fierce, tumultuous,
+medi&aelig;val city, the stern but not more quiet capital of the Reformers,
+the noisy, dirty, whimsical, mirth-loving town, full of broad jest and
+witty epigram, of the eighteenth century. The new town has a character
+of its own. It is the modern, not supplanting or effacing, but standing
+by the old. Those who built it considered it an extraordinary
+improvement upon all that Gothic antiquity had framed. They were far
+more proud of these broad streets and massive houses than of anything
+their fathers had left to them, and flung down without remorse a great
+deal of the antiquated building after which it is now the fashion to
+inquire with so much regret. Notwithstanding the change of taste since
+that time, the New Town of Edinburgh still regards the old with a little
+condescension and patronage; but there is no opposition between the two.
+They stand by each other in a curious peacefulness of union, each with a
+certain independence yet mutual reliance. London and Paris have rubbed
+off all their old angles and made themselves, notwithstanding the
+existence of Gothic corners here and there, all modern, to the
+extinction of most of the characteristic features of their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">{474}</a></span>former
+living. But happy peculiarities of situation have saved our northern
+capital from any such self-obliteration. Edinburgh has been fortunate
+enough to preserve both sides&mdash;the ancient picturesque grace, the modern
+comfort and ease. And though Mr. Ruskin has spoken very severely of the
+new town, we will not throw a stone at a place so well adapted to the
+necessities of modern life. Those bland fronts of polished stone would
+have been more kindly and more congenial to the soil had they cut the
+air with high-stepped gables and encased their stairs in the rounded
+turrets which give a simple distinctive character to so many Scottish
+houses; and a little colour, whether of the brick which Scotch builders
+despise or the delightful washes<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> which their forefathers loved, would
+be a godsend even now. But still, for a sober domestic partner, the new
+town is no ill companion to the ancient city on the hill.</p>
+
+<p>This adjunct to the elder Edinburgh had come into being between the time
+when Allan Ramsay's career ended in the octagon house on the Castle
+Hill, and another poet, very different from Ramsay, appeared in the
+Scotch capital. In the meantime many persons of note had left the old
+town and migrated towards the new. The old gentry of whom so many
+stories have been told, especially those old ladies who held a little
+court, like Mrs. Bethune Balliol, or made their bold criticism of all
+things both new and old, like those who flourish in Lord Cockburn's
+lively pages&mdash;continued to live in the ancestral houses which still kept
+their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">{475}</a></span>old-fashioned perfection within, though they had to be approached
+through all the squalor and misery which had already found refuge
+outside in the desecrated Canongate; but society in the Scotch
+metropolis was now rapidly tending across the lately erected bridge
+towards the new great houses which contemplated old Edinburgh across the
+little valley, where the Nor' Loch glimmered no longer and where fields
+lay green where marsh and water had been. The North Bridge was a noble
+structure, and the newly-built Register House at the other end one of
+the finest buildings of modern times to the admiring chroniclers of
+Edinburgh. And the historians and philosophers, the great doctors, the
+great lawyers, the elegant critics, for whom it was more and more
+necessary that the ways of access between the old town and the new might
+be made more easy, presided over and criticised all those wonderful new
+buildings of classic style and unbroken regularity, and watched the
+progress of the Earthen Mound, a bold and picturesque expedient which
+filled up the hollow and made a winding walk between, with interest as
+warm as that which they took in the lectures and students, the books and
+researches, which were making their city one of the intellectual centres
+of the world.</p>
+
+<p>This is a position to which Scotland has always aspired, and the pride
+of the ambitious city and country was never more fully satisfied than in
+the end of last and the beginning of the present century. Edinburgh had
+never been so rich in the literary element, and the band of young men
+full of genius and high spirit who were to advance her still one step
+farther to the climax of fame in that particular, were growing up to
+take the places of their fathers. A place in which Walter Scott was just
+emerging from his delightful childhood, in which Jeffrey was a
+mischievous boy and Henry Brougham a child, could not but be overflowing
+with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">{476}</a></span>hope, especially when we remember all the good company there
+already&mdash;Dugald Stewart, bringing so many fine young gentlemen from
+England to wonder at the little Scotch capital, and a crowd of Erskines,
+Hunters, Gregories, Monroes, and Dr. Blair and Dr. Blacklock, and the
+Man of Feeling&mdash;not to speak of those wild and witty old ladies in the
+Canongate, and the duchesses who still recognised the claims of
+Edinburgh in its season. To all this excellent company, whose fame and
+whose talk hung about both the old Edinburgh and the new like the smoke
+over their roofs, there arrived one spring day a wonderful visitor, in
+appearance like nothing so much as an honest hill farmer, travelling on
+foot, his robust shoulders a little bowed with the habit of the plough,
+his eyes shining, as no other eyes in Scotland shone, with youth and
+genius and hope. He knew nobody in Edinburgh save an Ayrshire lad like
+himself, like what everybody up to this time had supposed Robert Burns
+to be. The difference was that the stranger a little while before had
+put forth by the aid of a country printer at Kilmarnock a little volume
+of rustic poetry upon the most unambitious subjects, in Westland Scotch,
+the record of a ploughman's loves and frolics and thoughts. It is
+something to know that these credentials were enough to rouse the whole
+of that witty, learned, clever, and all-discerning community, and that
+this visitor from the hills and fields in a moment found every door
+opened to him, and Modern Athens, never unconscious of its own
+superiority and at this moment more deeply aware than usual that it was
+one of the lights of the earth, at his feet.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">{477}</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 321px;">
+<img src="images/illus_052.jpg" width="321" height="600" alt="LADY STAIR&#39;S CLOSE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">LADY STAIR&#39;S CLOSE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Burns was but a visitor, the lion of a season, and therefore we are not
+called upon to associate with Edinburgh the whole tragic story of his
+life. And yet his appearance was one of the most remarkable that has
+distinguished the ancient town. He arrived among all the professors, the
+men of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">{478}</a></span>letters, the cultured classes who held an almost ideal
+pre-eminence, more like what a young author hopes than is generally to
+be met with among men&mdash;his heart beating with a sense of the great
+venture on which he was bound, and a proud determination to quit himself
+like a man whatever were the magnitudes among which he should have to
+stand. Mere Society so called, with all its bustle of gaiety and endless
+occupation about nothing, might have exercised upon him something of the
+fascination which fine names and fine houses and the sweep and whirl of
+hurried life certainly possess; but he who expresses almost with
+bitterness his disgust to see a blockhead of rank received by one of his
+noble patrons with as much, nay more, consideration than is given to
+himself, would probably have had very little toleration for the
+butterflies of fashion: whereas Edinburgh society impressed him greatly,
+as of that ideal kind of which the young and inexperienced dream, where
+the best and brightest are at the head of everything, where poetry is a
+passport to the innermost sanctuary and conversation is like the talk of
+the gods. They were all distinguished for one literary gift or grace or
+another, philosophers golden-mouthed, poets of the most polished sort:
+their knowledge, their culture, their intellectual powers, were the
+foundation upon which their little world was built. The great people who
+were to be found among them were proud to know these scholars and
+sages&mdash;it was they, and not an occasional family of rank, or still more
+rare man of wealth, who gave character and meaning to Edinburgh. To be
+received in such society was the highest privilege which a young poet
+could desire; and it was worthy to receive and foster and encourage that
+new light that came from heaven.</p>
+
+<p>On their side the heads of society in Edinburgh were much interested in
+this young man. There had been an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">{479}</a></span>article in the <i>Lounger</i>, fondly
+deemed a Scotch <i>Spectator</i>, an elegant literary paper widely read not
+only in Scotland but even beyond the Border, upon him and his works.
+"The Ayrshire Ploughman" was the title of the article, and it set forth
+all the imperfections of his breeding, his want of education, his
+ignorance both of books and of the world, and yet the amazing verses he
+had produced, which, though disguised in a dialect supposed to be
+unknown to the elegant reader, and for which Henry Mackenzie, the Man of
+Feeling, supplied a glossary&mdash;living, he himself, in an old-fashioned
+house in the South Back of the Canongate and within the easiest reach of
+those wonderful old ladies who spoke broad Scotch, and left no one in
+any doubt as to the strong opinions expressed therein&mdash;were certified to
+be worthy the perusal of the most fastidious critic. Lord Monboddo, who
+was the author of speculations which forestalled Darwin and who
+considered a tail to be an appendage of which men had not long got rid,
+on the one side, and the metaphysicians and philosophers on the other,
+would no doubt prick up their ears to hear of this absolutely new being
+in whom there might be seen some traces of primeval man. We forget which
+of the early Jameses it was who is said to have shut up two infants with
+a dumb nurse in one of the islands of the Firth to ascertain what kind
+of language they would speak when thus left to the teaching of nature.
+The experiment was triumphantly successful, for the heaven-taught babies
+babbled, the chroniclers tell us, a kind of Hebrew, thus proving beyond
+doubt that the language of the Old Testament was the original tongue of
+man. The Edinburgh savants must have received Burns with something of
+the same feeling: for here was a new soul which had been shut up amid
+the primeval elements, and the language it spoke was Poetry! yet poetry
+disguised in imperfect dialect which might yet <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">{480}</a></span>be trained and educated
+into elegance. They asked him to dinner as a first step, and gathered
+round him to hear what he would have to say; to observe the effect
+produced by the sight of learning, criticism, knowledge; to enjoy his
+awe, and note the improvement that could not but ensue. This curiosity
+was full of kindness; their hearts were a little touched by the
+ploughman, by his glowing eyes, and by the strange sight of him there
+among them in the midst of their high civilisation, a rustic clown who
+knew nothing better than a thatched cottage and a clay floor. No doubt
+they had the sincerest desire that he should be made to understand how
+much he was deficient, what a great deal he had to learn, and be taught
+to use fine language, and turn his attention to higher subjects, and be
+altogether elevated and brought on in the world. The situation is very
+curious and full of human interest, even had the stranger been less in
+importance than he was. It is wonderfully enlightening in any
+circumstances to see such an encounter from both sides, to perceive the
+light in which it appears to them, and the very different light in which
+it is seen by <i>him</i>. There was the usual great divergence between the
+views of the visitor and the highly-cultured community to which he came.
+For he indeed did not come there at all to be enlightened and trained
+and put in the way he should go. He came full of delightful hope that he
+was coming among his own kind, that he was for the first time to meet
+his own species, and recognise in other human faces the light that shone
+about his own path, but in none of the other muddy ways of the
+country-side; to make friends with his natural brethren, and be
+understood of them as no one yet had been found to understand him. In
+his high anticipations, in his warm enthusiasm of hope, he himself
+figured dimly as a sort of noble exile coming back to his father's
+house. So does every child of fancy regard the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481">{481}</a></span>world of which he knows
+nothing, the world of the great and famous, where to dazzled fancy all
+the beautiful things, words, and thoughts for which he has been sighing
+all his life are to be found.</p>
+
+<p>They met, and they were, if not mutually disappointed, yet strangely
+astonished and perplexed. Burns would seem to have been always on his
+guard, too much on his guard we should be disposed to say, suspicious of
+the intention to guide, to chasten, to educate and refine, which was
+indeed in the kindest way at the bottom of everybody's thoughts. He was
+determined to be astonished by nothing, to keep his head so that no one
+should ever be able to say that it was turned by his new experiences&mdash;an
+attitude which altogether bewildered the good people, who were willing
+to give him every kind of education, to excuse any rudeness or roughness
+or imperfection, but not to see a man at his ease, appearing among them
+as if he were of them, requiring no allowance to be made for him,
+holding his head high as any man he met. All the accounts we have of his
+appearance in Edinburgh agree in this. He was neither abashed nor
+embarrassed; no rustic presumption or vulgarity, but quite as little any
+timidity or awkwardness, was in the Ayrshire ploughman. His shoulders a
+little bent with the work to which he had been accustomed, his dress
+like a countryman, a rougher cloth perhaps, a pair of good woollen
+stockings rig and fur, his mother's knitting, instead of the silk which
+covered limbs probably not half so robust&mdash;but so far as manners went,
+nothing to apologise for or smile at. The accounts all agree in this. If
+he never put himself forward too much, he never withdrew with any
+unworthy shyness from his modest share in the conversation. Sometimes he
+would be roused to eloquent speech, and then the admiring ladies said he
+carried them "off their feet" in the contagion of his enthusiasm and
+emotion. But this was a very strange <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482">{482}</a></span>phenomenon for the Edinburgh
+professors and men of letters to deal with: a novice who had not come
+humbly to be taught, but one who had come to take up his share of the
+inheritance, to sit down among the great, as in his natural place. He
+was not perhaps altogether unmoved by their insane advices to him, one
+of the greatest of lyrical poets, a singer above all&mdash;to write a
+tragedy, to give up the language he knew and write his poetry in the
+high English which, alas! he uses in his letters. Not unmoved, and
+seriously inclining to a more lofty measure, he compounded addresses to
+Edinburgh:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Edina, Scotia's darling seat!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and other such intolerable effusions. One can imagine him roaming
+through the fields between the old town and the new, and looking up to
+the "rude rough fortress," and on the other side to the brand-new
+regular lines of building, where</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Architecture's noble pride<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bids elegance and splendour rise,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and musing in his mind how to celebrate them in polished verse so that
+even the critics may be satisfied&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"Thy sons, Edina! social, kind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With open arms the stranger hail;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their views enlarged, their liberal mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Above the narrow, rural vale;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Attentive still to sorrow's wail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or modest merit's silent claim;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And never may their sources fail!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And never envy blot their name!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>One wonders what the gentlemen said to this in the old town and the
+new&mdash;whether it did not confuse them still further, as well intended
+perhaps, but not after all like the "Epistle to Davie," though they had
+all advised him to amend that rustic style. A very confusing business<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483">{483}</a></span>
+altogether&mdash;difficult for the kind advisers as well as for the poet, and
+with no outlet that any one could see.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 359px;">
+<img src="images/illus_053.jpg" width="359" height="600" alt="DUGALD STEWART&#39;S MONUMENT" title="" />
+<span class="caption">DUGALD STEWART&#39;S MONUMENT</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484">{484}</a></span>We have, however, a more agreeable picture of the visitor on another
+occasion when he walked out into the country with Dugald Stewart in a
+spring morning to the hills of Braid and talked that gentle
+philosopher's heart away, not now about Edina's palaces and towers. "He
+told me ... that the sight of so many smoking cottages gave a pleasure
+to his mind which none could understand who had not witnessed like
+himself the happiness and worth which they contained." It is more
+pleasant to think of the poet's dark eyes lighting up as he said this
+than to watch him proud and self-possessed in the drawing-rooms holding
+his own, taking such good care that nobody should divine how his heart
+was beating and his nerves athrill.</p>
+
+<p>But after all there is no such account given of this wonderful visitor
+to Edinburgh as that we have from the after-recollections of a certain
+"lameter" boy who was once present in a house where Burns was a guest.
+The Scott boys from George Square had been admitted to the party which
+they were too young to join in an ordinary way, in order that they might
+see this wonder of the world, the ploughman-poet who was not afraid, but
+behaved as well as any of the gentlemen. And it befell by the happiest
+chance that Burns inquired who was the author of certain verses
+inscribed upon a print which he had been looking at. No one knew but
+young Walter, who we may be sure had not lost a look or a word of the
+stranger, and who had read everything in his invalid childhood. The boy
+was not bold enough to answer the question loud out, but he whispered it
+to some older friend, who told the poet, no doubt with an indication of
+the blushing and eager lad from whom it came, which procured him a word
+and a look never forgotten. But there passed at the same time a thought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485">{485}</a></span>
+through young Walter's mind, the swift reflection of that never-failing
+criticism of youth which pierces unaware through all wrappings and veils
+of the soul. "I remember I thought Burns's acquaintance with English
+poetry was rather limited; and also that having twenty times the ability
+of Allan Ramsay and of Fergusson, he talked of them with too much
+humility as his models." The much-read boy was a little shocked, no
+doubt disturbed in his secret soul that the poet&mdash;so far above any other
+poet that was to be seen about the world in those days&mdash;should not have
+known that verse: though indeed men better read than Burns might have
+been excused for their want of acquaintance with a minor poet like
+Langhorne; but how true was the indignant observation, half angry, that
+with "twenty times the ability" it was Allan Ramsay and the still less
+important unfortunate young Fergusson to whom Burns looked up! Did the
+boy wonder perhaps, though too loyal to say it&mdash;for criticism at his age
+is always keen&mdash;whether there might be a something not quite real in
+that devotion, and ask in the recesses of his mind whether it was
+possible for such a man to be so self-deceived?</p>
+
+<p>There were no doubt various affectations about Burns, as when he talks
+big in his diary of observing character and finding this pursuit the
+greatest entertainment of his life in Edinburgh, with a pretension very
+general among half-educated persons: but there is no reason to believe
+that he was not quite genuine about his predecessors. A poet is not
+necessarily a critic; and Allan Ramsay's fame had been exactly of the
+popular kind which would attract a son of the soil, whereas Fergusson
+was the object of Burns's especial tenderness, pity, and regard. And it
+is touching to recollect that the only sign he left of himself in
+Edinburgh, where for the first time he learned what it was to mix in
+fine company and to feel the freedom of money in his pocket, from which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_486" id="Page_486">{486}</a></span>
+he could afford a luxury, was to place a stone over the grave of
+Fergusson in the Canongate Churchyard, where he lay unknown. His
+application to the Kirk-Session for leave to do this is still kept upon
+the books&mdash;a curious interruption amid the minutes of church discipline
+and economics. One wonders if that homely memorial is kept as it ought
+to be. It is a memorial not only of the admiration of one poet for
+another, but of Burns's poignant pity&mdash;a wellnigh intolerable pang&mdash;for
+a young soul who preceded himself in the way of poetry and despair, one
+whose life, destined to better and brighter things, had been flung away
+like a weed on the dismal strand. Only twenty-three years of poetry and
+folly had sufficed that other reckless boy to destroy himself and
+shatter his little lamp of light. Burns was only a few years older, and
+perhaps, though on the heights of triumph, felt something of that
+horrible tide already catching his own feet to sweep him too into the
+abyss. There are few things in the world more pathetic than this tribute
+of his to the victim who had gone before him.</p>
+
+<p>I may perhaps venture to say, with an apology for recurring to a subject
+dealt with in another book, that this poetic visit to Edinburgh reminds
+me of the visit of another poet in every way very different from Burns
+to another city which cannot be supposed to resemble Edinburgh except in
+the wonderful charm and attraction for devotees which she possesses.
+There is indeed no just comparison between Petrarch at Venice and Burns
+at Edinburgh, nothing but the fantastic link, often too subtle to be
+traced, which makes the mind glide or leap over innumerable distances
+and diversities from one thing to another. The Italian poet came
+conferring glory, great as a prince, and attended by much the same
+honours and privileges, though he was but a half priest, the son of an
+exile, in an age and place where birth and family were of infinitely
+more importance than <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_487" id="Page_487">{487}</a></span>they are now. He was the perfection and flower of
+learning and high culture, and a fame which had reached the point which
+is high-fantastical, and can mount no farther&mdash;and he came to a palace
+allotted to him by the Government, and every distinction which it was in
+their power to bestow, and demeaned himself <i>en bon prince</i>, adorning
+with skilful eloquent touches of description the glorious scene beneath
+his windows, the pageants at which he was an honoured spectator. Nothing
+could be more unlike the young, shy, proud, yet genial-hearted rustic,
+holding firmly by that magic wand of poetry which was his sole right to
+consideration, and facing the curious, puzzled, patronising world with a
+certain suspicion, a certain defiance, as of one whom no craft or wile
+could betray or pretension daunt&mdash;yet ready to melt into an enthusiasm
+almost extravagant when a lovely young woman or a noble youth pushed
+open with a touch the door always ajar, or at least unfastened, of his
+heart.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"The mother may forget the child<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That smiles sae sweetly on her knee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But I'll remember thee, Glencairn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And a' that thou hast done for me!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>What Glencairn had done was nothing but kindness, a warm reception which
+not even the poet's susceptibility could think condescending: but he is
+repaid with an exuberant, extravagant gratitude. Such was the man; ever
+afraid to compromise his dignity, but with no measure for the
+overflowings of his heart. Petrarch, so much more assured in his
+eminence and superiority to all living poets, was driven from his palace
+on the Riva and all his delights by the impertinent gibes of some
+foolish young men. But Burns was flattered and caressed to the top of
+his bent, and&mdash;forgotten, or at least dropped, and no more thought of.
+He returned to Edinburgh only to find that, the gloss of novelty having
+worn off, his friends were no longer ready to move heaven <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_488" id="Page_488">{488}</a></span>and earth in
+order to bring him to their parties, though probably had he chosen he
+might have worked himself back "into society" in a slower but more
+permanent fashion. This, however, he did not choose, but fell back among
+the convivial middle class, the undistinguished and over merry, where
+nobody thought it too great humility to refer to Allan Ramsay and
+Fergusson as his models. It must be recollected, however, that his
+second visit to Edinburgh, and what seems in the telling a foolish and
+almost vulgar flirtation, produced one of the most impassioned and
+exquisite songs of love and despair which has ever been written in any
+language.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ae farewell, alas! for ever!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There is a stillness of exhausted feeling in this wonderful utterance
+which is the very soul of despair.</p>
+
+<p>There has been no more remarkable moment in the experience of the town
+which has known so many strange and striking scenes, though its interest
+has little to do with history or even with national feeling. It is pure
+humanity in an unusual development, an episode in the life of the poet
+such as has many less important parallels, but scarcely any so fully
+representative and typical. It discloses to us suddenly, as by a flash
+of light striking into the darkness, the persons, the entertainments,
+the sentiments of a hundred years ago. We make improvements daily in
+external matters, but society&mdash;we had almost said humanity&mdash;rarely
+learns. There is not the smallest hope that in Edinburgh or elsewhere a
+young man of genius in Burns's position would now be either more wisely
+noticed or more truly benefited by such a period of close contact with
+people who ought by experience and knowledge to know better than he. The
+only thing that is probable is a falling-off, not an advance. I think it
+highly doubtful whether a ploughman from Ayrshire,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_490" id="Page_490">{490}</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_489" id="Page_489"></a></span> however superlative
+his genius, would now be received at all in "the best houses" and by the
+first men and women in Edinburgh; and if not in Edinburgh, surely
+nowhere else would such a reception as that given to Burns await the
+untutored poet. The world has seldom another chance permitted to it, and
+in this case I cannot but think it would be worse and not better used.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 352px;">
+<img src="images/illus_054.jpg" width="352" height="600" alt="BURNS&#39;S MONUMENT" title="" />
+<span class="caption">BURNS&#39;S MONUMENT</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> In this respect I venture to think all Scotland errs. Many
+houses throughout the country, built roughly with a rude and irregular
+but solid mason-work, were made points of light in the landscape by
+these washes of colour which poor dwellings retain. There is a yellow
+which I remember on many old houses in which the stains of time and
+weather produced varieties of tone almost as agreeable as the mellowing
+of marble under the same influences, which are now stripped into native
+roughness and rise in sombre grey, sometimes almost black, abstracting a
+much-needed warmth from the aspect of the country round.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_491" id="Page_491">{491}</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III_III" id="CHAPTER_III_III"></a>CHAPTER III<br />
+<br />
+<span style="font-size: 75%;">THE SHAKSPEARE OF SCOTLAND</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>There are many variations in degree of the greatest human gifts, but
+they are few in kind. The name we have ventured to place at the head of
+this chapter is one not so great as that of Shakspeare, not so
+all-embracing&mdash;though widely-embracing beyond any other second&mdash;not so
+ideal, not so profound. Walter Scott penetrated with a luminous
+revelation all that was within his scope, the most different kinds and
+classes of men, those whom he loved (and he loved all whom it was
+possible to love) and the few whom he hated, with the same comprehension
+and power of disclosure. But Shakspeare was not restrained by the limits
+of any personal scope or knowledge. He knew Lear and Macbeth, and Hamlet
+and Prospero, though they were beings only of his own creation. He could
+embody the loftiest passion in true flesh and blood, and show us how a
+man can be moved by jealousy or ambition in the highest superlative
+degree and yet be a man with all the claims upon our understanding and
+pity that are possessed by any brother of our own. Nothing like Lear
+ever came in our Scott's way: that extraordinary embodiment of human
+passion and weakness, the forlorn and awful strength of the aged and
+miserable, did not present itself to his large and genial gaze. It would
+not have occurred to him perhaps had he lived to the age<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_492" id="Page_492">{492}</a></span> of Methuselah.
+He knew not those horrors and dreadful depths of humanity that could
+make such tragic passion possible. But he had his revenge in one way
+even upon Shakspeare. Dogberry and Verges, as types of the muddle-headed
+old watch&mdash;pompous, confused, and self-important&mdash;are always diverting;
+but they would have been men not all ridiculous had Scott taken them in
+hand&mdash;real creatures of flesh and blood, not watchmen in the abstract.
+Our greater poet did not take trouble enough to make them individual,
+his fancy carrying him otherwhere, and leaving him scarce the time to
+put his jotting down. To Shakspeare the great ideals whom he almost
+alone has been able to make into flesh and blood; to Scott all the
+surrounding world, the men as we meet them about the common
+thoroughfares of life. He knows no Rosalind nor Imogen, but on the other
+hand Jeanie Deans and Jenny Headrigg would have been impossible to his
+great predecessor. Both, we may remark, are incapable of a young
+hero&mdash;the Claudios and the Bertrams being if anything a trifle worse
+than Henry Morton and Young Lovel. But whereas Shakspeare is greatest
+above that line of the conventional ideal, it is below that Sir Walter
+is famous. The one has no restriction, however high he may soar; the
+other finds nothing so common that he cannot make it immortal.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_493" id="Page_493"></a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 370px;">
+<img src="images/illus_055.jpg" width="370" height="600" alt="ST. GILES&#39;S FROM PRINCES STREET" title="" />
+<span class="caption">ST. GILES&#39;S FROM PRINCES STREET</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is, however, especially in the breadth and largeness of a humanity
+which has scarcely any limit to its sympathy and understanding that the
+great romancist of Scotland resembles the greatest of English poets.
+They are both so great, so broad, so little restrained by any individual
+limitations, that a perverse criticism has made this catholic and
+all-comprehending nature a kind of reproach to both, as though that
+great and limpid mirror of their minds, in which all nature was
+reflected, was less noble than the sharp face of a stone which can catch
+but one ray. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_494" id="Page_494">{494}</a></span>They were both subject to political prejudices and
+prepossessions. Shakspeare has made of many a youth of the nineteenth
+century an ardent Lancastrian, ready to pluck a red rose with Somerset
+and die for Margaret and her prince; and Scott in like manner has made
+many a Jacobite, though in the latter case our novelist is too full of
+sense even in the midst of his own inclinations to become ever an
+out-and-out partisan. But, except these prepossessions, they have no
+<i>parti pris</i>. Every faction renders up its soul of meaning, the most
+diverse figures unclose themselves side by side. The wit, the scholar,
+the true soldier, the braggart and thief, the Jew and the Christian, the
+Hamlet, hero of all time, and Shallow and Slender from the fat pastures
+of English rural life, come all together, each as true as if on him
+alone the poet's eye had fixed. And Scott is like him, setting before us
+with unerring pencil the old superstitious despot of medi&aelig;val France,
+the bustling pedant of St. James's, the ploughmen and shepherds, the
+churchmen, the Border reivers and Highland caterans, the broad country
+lying under a natural illumination, without strain or effort, large and
+temperate as the day. Neither in the greatest poet nor the great
+romancer is there any force put upon the natural fulness of life to
+twist its record into a narrow circle with one motive only. It is the
+round world and all that it inhabits, the grandeur and divinity of a
+universe, that delights them. Their view is large as the vision of God,
+or as nearly so as is given to mortal eyes. It is in this, above all,
+that they resemble each other. In degree Shakspeare, it need not be
+said, is all-transcendent, reaching heights such as no other man has
+reached in delineation and creation: but Scott is of his splendid
+species, one of his kind, the only one among all the many sons of genius
+with whom this island has been blessed, for whom the boldest could make
+such a claim.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_495" id="Page_495">{495}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Walter Scott belongs to all Scotland. He was, no man more, a lover of
+the woods and fields, of mountain-sides and pastoral braes, of the river
+and forest, Ettrick and Tweed and Yarrow, and Perthshire&mdash;that princely
+district, half Highland, half Lowland&mdash;and the chain of silvery lochs
+that pierce the mountain shadows through Stirling and Argyle: every
+league of the fair country he loved. From the Western Isles and the
+Orkneys to the very fringe of debatable land which parts the northern
+and the southern half of Great Britain&mdash;is his, and has tokens to show
+of his presence. When he came home to die at the end of almost the most
+tragic yet most noble chapter of individual history which our century
+has known, it was the longing of his sick heart above all other that he
+should not be so unblest as to lay his bones far from the Tweed.</p>
+
+<p>But yet, above all other places, it was to Edinburgh that Scott
+belonged. His birth, his growth, the familiar scenes of his youth, his
+education and training, the business and work of his life, were all
+associated with the ancient capital. George Square&mdash;with its homely and
+comfortable old-fashion, which has nothing to do with antiquity, the
+first breaking out of the Edinburgh citizens into large space and air
+outside the strait boundaries of the city, with the Meadows and their
+trees beyond, and all the sunshine of the south side to warm the deep
+<i>corps de logis</i>, the substantial and solid mansions which are so grey
+without yet so full of warmth and comfort within&mdash;was the first home he
+knew, and his residence up to manhood. No boy could be more an Edinburgh
+boy. Lame though he was, he climbed every dangerous point upon the
+hills, and knew the recesses of Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags by
+heart before he knew his Latin grammar. His schoolboy fights, his
+snowballing, the little armies of urchins set in battle array, the
+friendly feuds of gentle and simple (sometimes attended by hard <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_496" id="Page_496">{496}</a></span>knocks,
+as among his own Liddesdale farmers), fill the streets with amusing
+recollections. And when he was promoted in due time to the Parliament
+House and to all the frolics of the youthful Bar, and his proud father
+steps forth in the snuff-coloured suit which Mr. Saunders Fairford wore
+after him, to tell his friends that "my son Walter passed his private
+Scots law examination with good approbation," and on Friday "puts on the
+gown and gives a bit chack of dinner to his friends and acquaintances,
+as is the custom," how familiar and kindly is the scene, how the sober
+house lights up, and the good wine about which we have known all our
+lives comes out of the cellar and the jokes fly round&mdash;Parliament House
+pleasantries and recollections of the witticisms of the Bench gradually
+giving place to the sallies of the wild young wits, the shaft from the
+new-bent bow of the young advocate himself. Nothing can be more true and
+simple than he is through all the tale, or more real than the Edinburgh
+atmosphere; the fun that is mostly in the foreground; the work that is
+pushed into corners yet always gets done, though it has not the air of
+being important except to the excellent father whose steps on the stair
+are the signal for the disappearance of a chess-board into a drawer or a
+romance under the papers,&mdash;well-known tricks of youth which we have all
+been guilty of. There is a curious evidence, however, in Lockhart's
+<i>Life</i>, less known than the usual tales of frolic and apparent idleness,
+of the professional trick of Scott's handwriting, which showed how
+steadily he must have laboured even in his delightful, easy, innocently
+irregular youth. "I allude particularly to a sort of flourish at the
+bottom of the page, originally, I presume, adopted in engrossing as a
+safeguard against the intrusion of a forged line between the legitimate
+text and the attesting signature. He was quite sensible," adds his
+biographer, "that this ornament might as well be dispensed with; and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_497" id="Page_497"></a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_498" id="Page_498">{498}</a></span>his
+family often heard him mutter after involuntarily performing it, 'There
+goes the old shop again!'" Which of us now could see that flourish
+without the water coming into our eyes?</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 375px;">
+<img src="images/illus_056.jpg" width="375" height="600" alt="THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is impossible to eradicate, from the minds of youthful students at
+least, the admiration which always attends the performances of the young
+man who gains his successes without apparently working for them. As a
+matter of fact, it is the work which we ought to respect rather than
+that apparently fortuitous accidental result: but nothing will ever cure
+us of our native delight in an effect which appears to have no vulgar
+cause, and great has been the misery produced by this prejudice to many
+a youth who has begun with the tradition of easy triumph and presumed
+upon it to the loss of all his after-life. But when there shows in the
+apparent idler a sign like this of many a long hour's labour ignored and
+lightly thought of, covered over with a pleasant veil of fun and ease
+and happy leisure, the combination is one that no heart can resist.</p>
+
+<p>Scott had read everything he could lay his hands on while he was still a
+child, and boasted himself a virtuoso, that is, according to his
+explanation, at six years old, "one who wishes and will know
+everything;" but his boyish tastes and triumphs became more and more
+athletic as he gained a firmer use of his bodily powers. No diseased
+consciousness of disability in respect to his lameness, like that which
+embittered Byron, could find a place in the rough wholesome atmosphere
+of the Edinburgh High School and playgrounds, where nobody was too
+delicate about reminding him of his infirmity, and the stout-hearted
+little hero took it like a man, offering "to fight mounted," and being
+tied upon a board accordingly for his first combat. "You may take him
+for a poor lameter," said one of the Eldin Clerks, a sailor, with equal
+friendly frankness to a party of strangers, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_499" id="Page_499">{499}</a></span>"but he is the first to
+begin a row, and the last to end it." To such a youth the imperfection
+was a virtue the more. When the jovial band strolled forth upon long
+walks the cheerful "lameter" bargained for three miles an hour, and kept
+up with the best. They would start at five in the morning, beguiling the
+way with endless pranks, on one occasion at least without a single
+sixpence in all their youthful pockets with which to refresh themselves
+during a thirty miles' round. "We asked every now and then at a cottage
+door for a drink of water; and one or two of the goodwives, observing
+our worn-out looks, brought forth milk instead of water, so with that
+and hips and haws we came in little the worse." Little they cared for
+fatigue and inconvenience; they were things to laugh over when the lads
+got back. Scott only wished he had been a player on the flute, like
+George Primrose in the <i>Vicar of Wakefield</i>, and his father shook his
+head and doubted the boy was born "for nae better than a gangrel
+scrapegut"&mdash;reproach of little gravity, as the expedition so poorly
+provisioned was of little harm. Thus the young gentlemen bore cheerfully
+what would have been hardship to a ploughman, and gibed even at each
+other's weaknesses without a spark of unkindness, which made the
+weakness itself into a robust matter of fact not to be brooded over.
+High susceptibility might have suffered from the treatment, but high
+susceptibility generally means egotism and inordinate self-esteem,
+qualities which it is the very best use of public school and college to
+conjure away.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing indeed more cheerful, more full of endless frolic and enjoyment,
+fresh air and fun and feeling, ever existed than the young manhood of
+Walter Scott. Talk of Scotch gravity and seriousness! The houses in
+which they were received as they roamed about&mdash;farmers' or lairds', it
+was all the same to the merry lads&mdash;were only too uproarious in their
+mirth; with songs and laughter they made the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_500" id="Page_500">{500}</a></span>welkin ring. At home in
+Edinburgh the fun might be less noisy, but it was not less sincere. In
+the very Parliament House itself the young men clustered in their
+corner, telling each other the last good things, and with much ado to
+keep their young laughter within the bounds of decorum. The judge on the
+Bench, the Lord President himself, greatest potentate of all, was not
+more safe from the audacious wits than poor Peter Peebles. There was
+nothing they did not laugh at, themselves and each other as much as Lord
+Braxfield, and all the humours of a town more full of anecdote and jest,
+laughable eccentricity and keen satire and amusing comment, than any
+town in literature. The best joke of all perhaps was Sydney Smith's
+famous <i>bon mot</i> about the surgical operation, which no doubt he meant
+as an excellent joke in the midst of that laughing community, where the
+fun was only too fast and furious. Nowadays, when life is more temperate
+and the world in general has mended its manners, the habits of that
+period fill us with dismay; but perhaps after all there was less harm
+done than appears, and not more of the fearful tribute of young life
+which our fated race is always paying than is still exacted amid a
+population much less generally addicted to excess. But that of course
+increased rather than diminished the jovial aspect of Edinburgh life
+when Walter Scott was young, and when the few cares he had in hand, the
+occasional bit of work, interfered very little with the warm and lively
+social life in the midst of which he had been born. He dwelt, in every
+sense of the word, among his own people, his friends, the sons of his
+father's friends, his associates all belonging to families like his own,
+of good if modest rank and lineage, the "kent folk" of whom Scotland
+loves to keep up the record. This, which is perhaps one of the greatest
+advantages with which a young man can enter on life, was his from his
+infancy. He and his companions had been at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_501" id="Page_501">{501}</a></span>school together, together in
+the college classes, in frequent social meetings, on the floor of the
+Parliament House. Familiar faces and kind greetings were round him
+wherever he went. No doubt these circumstances, so genial, so friendly
+and favourable, helped to perfect the most kind, the most generous and
+sunshiny of natures. And thus no man could be more completely at once
+the best product and most complete representative of his native soil.</p>
+
+<p>His life too was as prosperous and full of good fortune and happiness as
+a man could desire. He married at twenty-six, and a few years later
+received the appointment of Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire, which
+rendered him independent of the precarious incomings of his profession,
+and made the pleasure he always took in roaming the country into a
+necessary part of his life's work. He had begun a playful and
+pleasurable authorship some time before with some translations from the
+German, B&uuml;rger's <i>Lenore</i> and Goethe's <i>G&ouml;tz von Berlichingen</i>&mdash;the
+first of which was hastily made into a little book, daintily printed and
+bound, in order to help his suit with an early love, so easy, so little
+premeditated, was this beginning. With equal simplicity and absence of
+intention he slid into the Border Minstrelsy, which he intended not for
+the beginning of a long literary career, but in the first place for "a
+job" to Ballantyne the printer, whom he had persuaded to establish
+himself in Edinburgh&mdash;the best of printers and the most attached of
+faithful and humble friends&mdash;and for fun and the pleasure of scouring
+the country in pursuit of ballads, which was a search he had already
+entered upon to his great enjoyment. From this nothing was so easy as to
+float into original poetry, inspired by the same impulse and inspiration
+as his ballads. One of the ladies of the house of Buccleuch told him the
+story of the elfin page, and begged him to make a ballad of it; and from
+this suggestion the <i>Lay of the Last Minstrel</i> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_502" id="Page_502">{502}</a></span>arose. The time was ripe
+for giving forth all that had been unconsciously stirring in his teeming
+fertile imagination. It came at once like a sudden bursting into flower,
+with a splendid <i>&eacute;closion</i>, out-bursting, involuntary, unlaborious,
+delightful to himself as to mankind. From henceforward his name stood in
+one of the highest places of literature and his fame was assured.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_503" id="Page_503"></a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 353px;">
+<img src="images/illus_057.jpg" width="353" height="450" alt="PLAYFAIR&#39;S MONUMENT, CALTON HILL" title="" />
+<span class="caption">PLAYFAIR&#39;S MONUMENT, CALTON HILL</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Nothing could be more unintentional, more spontaneous, almost careless;
+a thing done for his pleasure far more than with any serious purpose;
+nothing&mdash;except the later beginning, equally unintentional, of a still
+more important stream of production. The poems of Scott will always be
+open to much criticism; even those who love them most&mdash;and there are
+many whose love for this fresh, free, spontaneous, delightful fountain
+of song is strong enough to repress every impulse of criticism and
+transport it beyond the reach of comment to a romantic enchanted land of
+its own, where it flows in native sunshine and delight for
+ever&mdash;declining to pronounce any definite judgment as to their
+greatness. But to Scott in his after-work we are inclined to say no man
+worthy of expressing an opinion can give any but the highest place. It
+is true, and the fact has to be admitted with astonishment and regret,
+that one great writer, his countryman, speaking the same language and in
+every way capable of pronouncing judgment, has failed to appreciate Sir
+Walter. We cannot tell why, nor pretend to solve that amazing question.
+Perhaps it was the universal acclaim, the consent of every voice, that
+awoke the germ of perversity that was in Thomas Carlyle: an impulse of
+contradiction, especially in face of an opinion too unanimous, which is
+one of our national characteristics: perhaps one of those prejudices
+pertinacious as the rugged peasant nature itself, which sometimes warps
+the clearest judgment; perhaps, but this we find it difficult to
+believe, a narrower intensity and passion of meaning in himself which
+found little reflection in the great limpid mirror which Scott held up
+to nature. The beginning of Scott's chief and greatest work was as
+fortuitous, as accidental (if we may use the word), as the poetry. He
+took up by some passing impulse the idea of a prose story on the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_504" id="Page_504">{504}</a></span>events
+of the 'forty-five, which perhaps he considered too recent to be treated
+in poetry; wrote (everybody knows the story) half a volume, read it to a
+trusted critic, who probably considered it foolish for a man who had
+risen to the heights of fame by one kind of composition to risk himself
+now with another. It is very likely that Scott himself was easily moved
+to the same opinion. He tossed the MS. into a drawer, and gave it up.
+There had been no special motive in the effort, and it cost him nothing
+to put it aside, to whistle for his dogs, and go out for a long round by
+wood and hill, or to take his gun or rod, or to entertain his
+visitors&mdash;all of which were more rational, more entertaining, and
+altogether important things to do than the writing of a dull story,
+which after all was not his line. For years the beginning chapters of
+<i>Waverley</i> lay there unknown. They lay very quietly, we may well
+believe, not bursting the dull enclosure as they might have done had the
+Baron of Bradwardine been yet born; but that good young Waverley was
+always a little dull, and might have slept till doomsday had nothing
+occurred to disturb his rest. One day, however, some fishing tackle was
+wanted for the use of one of Scott's perpetual visitors at
+Ashiestiel&mdash;not even for himself, for some chance man taking advantage
+of the Shirra's open house. Visitor arriving in a good hour! fortunate
+sorner, to be thereafter blessed of all men! Let us hope he got just the
+lines he wanted and had a good day's sport. For in his search Scott's
+eyes lighted upon the bundle of written pages. "Hallo!" he must have
+said to himself, "there they are! Let's see if they're as bad as Willie
+Erskine thought." In his candid soul he did not think they were very
+good, unless it was perhaps the description of Waverley Honour, a great
+mild English mansion which he would admire all the more that it was so
+unlike Tully Veolan. Perhaps it was the contrast which brought into his
+teeming brain a sudden <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_505" id="Page_505">{505}</a></span>vision of that "Scottish manor-house sixty years
+since," which he went off straightway and built in his eighth chapter
+with the baron and all his surroundings, which must have been awaiting
+impatient that happy moment to burst into life.</p>
+
+<p>And thus by spontaneous accident, by delightful, careless chance, so to
+speak, the thing was done. One wonders by what equally, nay more
+fortunate unthought-of haphazard it was, that the country rogue
+Shakspeare, his bright eyes shining with mock penitence for the wildness
+of his woodland career, and the air and the accent of the fields still
+on his honeyed lips, first found out that he could string a story
+together for the theatre and make the old knights and the fair ladies
+live again. Of this there is no record, but only enough presumption, we
+think, to make it sufficiently clear that the discovery which has ever
+since been one of the chief glories of the English name, and added the
+most wonderful immortal inhabitants to the population, was made, like
+Scott's, by what seems a divine chance, without apparent preparation or
+likelihood. In our day much more importance is given to a development
+which the scientific thinker would fondly hope to be traceable by all
+the leadings of race and inheritance into an evolution purely natural
+and to be expected; while, on the other hand, there is nothing which
+appears more splendid and dignified to others than the aspect of a life
+devoted to poetry, in which the man becomes but a kind of solemn
+incubator of his own thoughts. It will always be, however, an additional
+delight to the greater part of the human race to see how here and there
+the greatest of all heavenly tools is found unawares by the happy hand
+that can wield it, no one knowing who has put it there ready for his
+triumphant grasp when the fated moment comes.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody will remember as a pendant&mdash;but one so <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_506" id="Page_506">{506}</a></span>much more grave that we
+hesitate to cite it, though the coincidence is curious&mdash;the pause made
+by Dante in the beginning of the <i>Inferno</i>, which resembles so exactly
+the pause in Scott's career. The great Florentine had written seven
+cantos of his wonderful poem when the rush of his affairs carried him
+away from all such tranquil work and left the Latin fragment, among
+other more vulgar papers, shovelled hastily into some big cassone in the
+house in Florence from which he was a banished man. It was found there
+after five years by a nephew who would fain have tried his prentice hand
+upon the poem, yet finally took the better part of sending it to its
+author&mdash;who immediately resumed <i>Io dico sequitando</i>, in a burst of
+satisfaction to have recovered what he must have begun with far more
+zeal and intention than Scott. The resemblance, however, which is so
+curiously exact, the seven cantos and the seven chapters, the five
+years' interval, the satisfaction of the work resumed, is, different as
+are the men and their work, one of those fantastic parallels which are
+delightful to the fantastic soul. Nothing could be more unlike than that
+dark and splendid poem to Scott's sunshiny and kindly art; nothing less
+resembling than the proud embittered exile with his hand against every
+man, and the genial romancer whose heart overflowed with the milk of
+human kindness. Yet this strange occurrence in both lives takes an
+enhanced interest from the curious dissimilarity which makes the
+repetition of the fact more curious still.</p>
+
+<p>The sudden burst into light and publicity of a gift which had been
+growing through all the changes of private life, of the wonderful stream
+of knowledge, recollection, divination, boundless acquaintance with and
+affection for human nature, which had gladdened the Edinburgh streets,
+the Musselburgh sands, the Southland moors and river-sides, since ever
+Walter Scott had begun to roam among them, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_507" id="Page_507">{507}</a></span>with his cheerful band of
+friends, his good stories, his kind and gentle thoughts&mdash;was received by
+the world with a burst of delighted recognition to which we know no
+parallel. We do not know, alas! what happened when the audience in the
+Globe Theatre made a similar discovery. Perhaps the greater gift, by its
+very splendour, would be less easily perceived in the dazzling of a
+glory hitherto unknown, and obscured it may be by jealousies of actors
+and their inaptitude to do justice to the wonderful poetry put into
+their hands. But of that we know nothing. We know, however, that there
+were no two opinions about <i>Waverley</i>. It took the world by storm, which
+had had no such new sensation and no such delightful amusement for many
+a day. It was not only the beginning of a new and wonderful school in
+romance, a fresh chapter in literature, but the revelation of a region
+and a race unknown. Scotland had begun to glow in the sunshine of
+poetry, in glimpses of Burns's westland hills and fields, of Scott's
+moss-troopers and romantic landscapes, visions of battle and old
+tradition: but the wider horizon of a life more familiar, of a broad
+country full of nature, full of character, running over with fun and
+pawky humour, thrilling with high enthusiasm and devotion, where men
+were still ready to risk everything in life for a falling cause, and
+other men not unwilling to pick up the spoils, was a discovery and
+surprise more delightful than anything that had happened to the
+generation. The books flew through the island like magic, penetrating to
+corners unthought of, uniting gentle and simple in an enthusiasm beyond
+parallel. How the multitude got at them at all it is difficult to
+understand, for these were the days of really high prices, before the
+actual cost of a book got modified by one-half as now, and when there
+were as yet no cheap editions. <i>Waverley</i> was printed in three small
+volumes at the cost of a guinea. We believe that to buy books was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_508" id="Page_508">{508}</a></span>more
+usual then than now, and there were circulating libraries everywhere,
+conveying perhaps the stream of literature more evenly over the country
+than can be attained by one gigantic Mudie. At all events; by whatever
+means it was procured, <i>Waverley</i> and its successors were read
+everywhere, not only in great houses but in small, wherever there was
+intelligence and a taste for books; and the interest, the curiosity, the
+eagerness, were everywhere overwhelming. I have heard of girls in a
+dressmaker's workroom who kept the last volume in a drawer, from whence
+it was read aloud by one to the rest, the drawer being closed hurriedly
+whenever the mistress came that way. From this humble scene to the
+highest in the land, where the Prince Regent sat&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0" style="margin-left: -0.5em;">"His table spread with tea and toast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Death-warrants, and the <i>Morning Post</i>,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>these volumes went everywhere. One of them lies before me now in rough
+boards of paper, with the "blue back" of which one of Scott's
+correspondents talks, not a prepossessing volume, but independent of
+externals and all things else except its own native excellence and
+power.</p>
+
+<p>For fifteen years after, this stream of living literature poured forth
+in the largest generous volume like a great river, through every region
+where English was spoken or known. His work was as the march of a
+battalion, always increasing, new detachments appearing suddenly, now an
+individual, now a group, to join the line. The Baron of Bradwardine with
+his attendant bailie; Vich Ian Vohr and noble Evan Dhu, and all the
+clan; the family at Ellangowan and that at Charlieshope, good Dandie and
+all his delightful belongings; Jock Jabos and the rest; Monkbarns and
+Edie Ochiltree, and all the pathos of the Mucklebackits; Bailie Nicol
+Jarvie and the Dougal Cratur; humours of the clachan <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_509" id="Page_509">{509}</a></span>and the hillside;
+Jeanie Deans in her perfect humbleness and truth. It would be vain to
+attempt to name the new inhabitants of Scotland who appeared out of the
+unseen wherever Scott moved. Neither to himself nor to his audience
+could it seem that these friends of all were new created, invented by
+any man. Scott, who alone could do it, withdrew the veil that had
+concealed them. He opened up an entire country, a full world of men and
+women, so living, so various, with their natural garb of fitting
+language, and their heart of natural sentiment, and the thoughts which
+they must have been thinking, by inalienable right of their humanity.
+There might have been better plots or more carefully constructed
+stories; as indeed in life, heaven knows, all our stories might be much
+better constructed; but could we conceive it possible that these, our
+country-folk and friends, could be dismissed again off the face of the
+earth, how impoverished, how diminished, would Scotland be! The want of
+them is more than we could contemplate, and we can well understand how
+our country must have appeared to the world a poor little turbulent
+country, without warmth or wealth, before these representatives of a
+robust and manifold race were born.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, amid the delightful enrichment of these productions to the nation
+and the world, the man himself who produced them was perhaps the finest
+revelation of all. And here he transcends for once the larger kindred
+genius of whom we do not know, yet believe, that he was such a man as
+Scott, though better off in one way and less well in others. Shakspeare
+must have been somewhat oppressed with noble patrons, which Scott never
+was&mdash;patrons to whom his own splendid courtesy and the magnifying
+glamour in his poetic eyes must sometimes have made him more flattering
+than was needful, overwhelming them with magnificent words; but on the
+other hand he had not those modern drawbacks <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_510" id="Page_510">{510}</a></span>under which Scott's great
+career was so bitterly burdened, the strain for money, the constant
+combat with debt and liability. To bear the first yoke must have taken
+much of a man's strength and tired him exceedingly: but to bear the
+second is perhaps the severest test to which any buoyant spirit can be
+put. And from the very beginning of his career as a novelist Scott had
+this burden upon his shoulders. He bore the chains very lightly at first
+with a hundred hairbreadth 'scapes which made the struggle&mdash;as even that
+struggle can be made while the sufferer is strong and young&mdash;almost
+exhilarating, with a glee in the relief and the power to surmount every
+difficulty, and a faith strengthened by numberless examples of the
+certainty&mdash;however dark things might seem up to the very last moment&mdash;of
+bursting through, with an exquisite sensation of success, the hardest
+coil of circumstance. But as Scott grew older these obstacles grew
+stronger; he could not put sense or prudence into the heads of his
+colleagues, and it was hard to teach himself, the most liberal, the most
+hospitable and princely of entertainers, those habits of frugality which
+are never harder to learn than by a Scots gentleman of the ancient
+strain accustomed to keep open house. I do not think it has ever been
+acknowledged that there is in this desperate struggle to keep afloat a
+certain intoxication of its own. To foil your pursuers, your enemies,
+whether they take the form of armed assailants or of pressing creditors,
+by ever another and another daring combination, by sudden reliefs
+unthought of, by a bold <i>coup</i> executed at the very moment when the
+crisis seems inevitable, by all the happy yet desperate chances of
+warfare, has a fascination in it which no one could conceive as
+attending a sordid struggle for money. The pursuit becomes exciting,
+breathless, in proportion as it becomes desperate. Sometimes, when all
+the stars in their courses have seemed to be fighting against the
+combatant, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_511" id="Page_511">{511}</a></span>a sudden aid like the very interposition of heaven will bring
+him safety; and a confidence in this interposition takes possession of
+him. He does not see how deliverance can come, but it will come. His
+labouring breast strains, his brain whirls, he is at his last gasp: when
+all at once the heart leaps up in his bosom, the wheels in his head
+stand still, a flash of satisfaction comes over him. Once more and once
+more, again and again, at the last gasp of the struggle he is saved.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt something of this was in the long and desperate fight which
+Scott waged with the creditors of the Ballantynes, who were also his
+own. The worst of the struggle is that it almost legalises a prodigality
+which to men always fixed on solid ground would be impossible. The
+conviction that the money will come somehow, added to the still more
+intoxicating conviction that this somehow depends oftenest upon your own
+unrivalled power of work, and the confidence which all men have in you,
+permits, almost sanctions, a yielding to personal temptations, and the
+indulgence of a little taste and inclination of your own in the midst of
+so many burdens for others. Thus Abbotsford grew, of which all the
+critics have talked as if its, alas! somewhat sham antiquity and its few
+acres had been the cause of all the trouble. One could have wished that
+Scott's taste had been more true, that he had so dearly bought and so
+fondly collected curiosities more worthy, that he should have had a
+genuine old house, a direct and happy lineage, son and son's son, to
+bear his name&mdash;not to posterity, with whom it was safe, but on Tweedside
+among the other Scotts,&mdash;a kindly and not ignoble ambition. But he has
+himself forestalled the criticisms of the antiquarians by that
+delightful record of good Monkbarns's mistakes and deceptions which
+would make us forgive him for any "lang ladle" or fictitious relic; and
+it would be a hard heart that would be otherwise <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_512" id="Page_512">{512}</a></span>than thankful that he
+had so much as Abbotsford to indemnify him for his labours and trials.
+As the time approached when he was no longer able to maintain that
+gallant struggle, and the power of labour failed and confidence was
+lost, the position of the man becomes more tragical than the spectator
+can well bear to look upon. Who can read unmoved the story of the time
+when his faithful friends (though it was their necessities that had
+pulled him down to the ground of this bitter failure) had to come and
+tell him that his last romance was scarcely worth paper and print? who
+could refrain from going down on his knees to kiss that failing hand
+which could now only bring forth Count Robert of Paris where once it had
+set out in glorious array of battle Sir Kenneth of Scotland, and the
+stout old Constable of Chester, and Front de B&oelig;uf, and the Scottish
+archers&mdash;and which still could not be inactive, but would struggle on,
+on&mdash;to pay that miserable money and leave behind a spotless name!</p>
+
+<p>There is one melancholy and almost terrible consolation in such a
+heartbreaking record, terrible from the light it throws upon the
+constitution of human nature and the conditions of that supreme sympathy
+which is the noblest kind of fame. Had Sir Walter been able to throw his
+burdens from him, had he loosed the millstone from his neck and retired
+in full credit and comfort to his Abbotsford to pass the conclusion of
+peaceful and glorious days on the banks of the Tweed&mdash;had we known him
+only as the greatest romancist of the world, the next to Shakspeare in
+large creation and revelation of mankind, proud had every Scotsman been
+of his name, and fondly had the nation cherished his memory. But when
+his brilliant and wonderful life fell under the shadow of all these
+tragical clouds, when its course was arrested by obstacles which are
+usually unsurmountable, before which any other man must have broken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_513" id="Page_513">{513}</a></span>
+down, when he stood in the face of fate, in the face of every
+misfortune, broken in health, in hope, in power, a lonely man where he
+had been the centre of every joy in life, an enchanter with his magic
+wand broken and his witchery gone&mdash;then, and then only, does Scott
+attain his highest greatness and give the world most noble assurance of
+a man. His diary as his life dwindles away, that life once so splendid
+and so full, is like the noblest poem&mdash;its broken and falling sentences
+go direct to the heart. <i>Fuimus</i> was never written more grandly, with
+more noble patience and valour. Without this downfall his triumph might
+have been but as the other triumph&mdash;the tragedy of the conclusion is a
+sight for men and angels. Lockhart, who preserves the record for us,
+becomes for the time the greatest, with a subject more moving, more
+noble, than any that his hero had selected from the records of the ages.
+The pity and anguish grow too much for the spectator. We are spectators
+no longer, but mournful and devoted retainers standing about, all hushed
+and silent, scarcely able either to shed or to restrain the choking
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>One asks one's self, Is this the cost of supreme human power? is it to
+be bought by nothing but the agony in which failure, real or apparent,
+is a part, and in which all the exquisite tenement of reputation,
+happiness, and delightsome life seems to crumble down like a house of
+cards before our eyes? Dread question for the genius of the future, sad
+yet sublime problem of the past! At all events it was so in the life of
+Scott, which in all its greatness was never so great, so touching, so
+secure of love and honour, as in the moment when his weapons fell from
+his hands and his genius and being alike failed, breaking down in a last
+supreme struggle for justice and honour and fair dealing, to avoid what
+he thought disgrace and the intolerable stigma of having done any man
+wrong.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_514" id="Page_514">{514}</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is a penalty of such greatness, especially in the midst of an
+enthusiastic and unanimous country, that it becomes more or less a thing
+to trade upon, the subject of vague patriotic vapourings, and much froth
+of foolish talk from uninstructed lips in the following generations. As
+Stratford-on-Avon is in respect to Shakspeare all Scotland is in respect
+to Burns and Scott. It has even become a mark of culture and superiority
+among certain fine spirits in consequence to pretend to despise the
+former of these names&mdash;perhaps really to despise it, for there is no
+fathom that can sound the depths of human foolishness even in the
+learned and wise. The vulgarity of fame when it becomes the cry of the
+most prosaic is, however, calculated justly to alarm the literary soul,
+and in the excess of Scott monuments, and wooden quaighs, and tartan
+paper-knives, there is a damping and depressing quality which we must
+all acknowledge.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_515" id="Page_515"></a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 370px;">
+<img src="images/illus_058.jpg" width="370" height="600" alt="SIR WALTER SCOTT&#39;S HOUSE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">SIR WALTER SCOTT&#39;S HOUSE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>We need not, however, in these follies forget the illuminating presence
+of Scott in the midst of all the picturesque scenes of what he has
+proudly called "mine own romantic town." From the High School Yards and
+"the kittle nine steps," from George Square, lying cosy but grey in the
+hollow amid the enlarged and beautiful openings of the Meadows, to the
+Parliament House, withdrawn in the square, once blocked by the Old
+Tolbooth, now confronted solely by an embellished and restored
+cathedral, and to the sober street on the other side of the hollow,
+where to 39 North Castle Street he took his bride and set up his
+independent home, there is no corner of Edinburgh where his step and
+voice have not been. And some of the most characteristic scenes which we
+can call to mind in recent history rise before us in his narrative as if
+we had been there. The Porteous Mob riots in our ears, the flare of the
+sudden fire at the gates of the Tolbooth, the blinding smoke, the tramp
+of the crowd, the sudden <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_516" id="Page_516">{516}</a></span>concentrated force of that many-headed
+multitude stilled by stern resolve into unity and action, are as visible
+as if they had happened yesterday. And after ransacking all the serious
+volumes that tell the story and picture the aspect of old Edinburgh, we
+turn back to that tale, and for the first time see the tortuous passage
+between the church and the Tolbooth, the dark old prison with its lofty
+turrets, the Luckenbooths linked on to its dark shadow, oppressing the
+now wide thoroughfare of the High Street, where these buildings have
+left no trace. No topographical record or painstaking print comes within
+a hundred miles of that picture, dashed in boldly by the way, to the
+entrancing tale. I cannot refrain from placing here one or two
+vignettes, which I have no doubt the artist himself will allow to
+surpass his best efforts, and which set the landscape before us with a
+distinct yet ideal and poetical grace which pencil and graver can very
+seldom equal. The first is of the exterior aspect of Edinburgh.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Marching in this manner they speedily reached an eminence, from
+which they could view Edinburgh stretching along the ridgy hill
+which slopes eastward from the Castle. The latter, being in a state
+of siege, or rather of blockade, by the northern insurgents, who had
+already occupied the town for two or three days, fired at intervals
+upon such parties of Highlanders as exposed themselves, either on
+the main street, or elsewhere in the vicinity of the fortress. The
+morning being calm and fair, the effect of this dropping fire was to
+invest the Castle in wreaths of smoke, the edges of which dissipated
+slowly in the air, while the central veil was darkened ever and anon
+by fresh clouds poured forth from the battlements; the whole giving,
+by the partial concealment, an appearance of grandeur and gloom,
+rendered more terrific when Waverley reflected on the cause by which
+it was produced, and that each explosion might ring some brave man's
+knell."</p></div>
+
+<p>The second introduces us to the interior of the city.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Under the guidance of his trusty attendant, Colonel Mannering,
+after threading a dark lane or two, reached the High Street, then
+clanging with the voices of oyster-women and the bells of pie-men,
+for it had, as his guide assured him, just 'chappit eight upon the
+Tron.' It was long since Mannering had been in the street of a
+crowded metropolis, which, with its noise and clamour, its sounds of
+trade, of revelry and of license, its variety of lights, and the
+eternally changing bustle of its hundred groups, offers, by night
+especially, a spectacle which, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_517" id="Page_517">{517}</a></span>though composed of the most vulgar
+materials when they are separately considered, has, when they are
+combined, a striking and powerful effect on the imagination. The
+extraordinary height of the houses was marked by lights, which,
+glimmering irregularly along their front, ascended so high among the
+attics, that they seemed at length to twinkle in the middle sky.
+This <i>coup d'&oelig;il</i>, which still subsists in a certain degree, was
+then more imposing, owing to the uninterrupted range of buildings on
+each side, which, broken only at the space where the North Bridge
+joins the main street, formed a superb and uniform Place, extending
+from the front of the Luckenbooths to the head of the Canongate, and
+corresponding in breadth and length to the uncommon height of the
+buildings on either side."</p></div>
+
+<p>Since then this great Place has become more majestic, as well as more
+open, by the clearing away of the Luckenbooths: but nothing can be finer
+than the touch of the graphic yet reticent pencil which sets down before
+us the glimmering of the irregular lights which seemed at last to
+twinkle in the middle sky. This was how the main street of Edinburgh
+still appeared when Scott himself was a boy, and no doubt he must have
+caught the aspect of the previous sketch on some king's birthday or
+other public holiday, the 4th of June perhaps, that familiar festival in
+other regions, when the guns of the Castle were saluting and the smoke
+hanging about those heights like a veil.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of the privations of Scott's life as it began to fall into
+its last subdued and suffering stage that he had to give up his
+Edinburgh house and the cheerful company which had so long made his
+winters pleasant. He loved the country and his home there at all
+seasons, as the readers of the poetical chapters of friendly dedication
+and communing addressed to different friends between the cantos of
+<i>Marmion</i> will well remember: but yet the yearly change, the natural
+transfer of life in the short days to the cheerful surroundings of town,
+the twinkling of those very lights, the assembling of bright faces, the
+meeting of old friends, were always dear to him, and this sacrifice was
+not one of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_518" id="Page_518">{518}</a></span>least which he made during the tremendous struggle of his
+waning years.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_519" id="Page_519"></a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 346px;">
+<img src="images/illus_059.jpg" width="346" height="600" alt="GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH" title="" />
+<span class="caption">GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>With no other name could we so fitly close the story of our ancient
+capital, a story fitfully told with many breaks and omissions, yet
+offering some thread of connection to link together the different eras
+of a picturesque and characteristic national life. Had space and
+knowledge permitted, there is, in the records of Scottish law alone,
+much that is interesting, along with a still larger contribution of wit
+and humour and individual character, to the elucidation of the period
+which passed between the end of the history of Edinburgh under her
+native kings and the beginning of her brilliant record under the modern
+reign of literature and poetry. This book, however, does not pretend to
+set forth the Edinburgh of the Kirk or the Parliament House, each of
+which has an existing record of its own. Seated on the rocks which are
+more old than any history, though those precipices are now veiled with
+verdure and softness, and the iron way of triumphant modern science runs
+at their feet; with her crown of sacred architecture hanging over her
+among the mists, and the little primeval shrine mounted upon her highest
+ridge; with her palace, all too small for the requirements of an
+enlarged and splendid royalty, and the great crouched and dormant
+sentinel of nature watching over her through all the centuries; with her
+partner, sober and ample, like a comely matron, attended by all the
+modern arts and comforts, seated at the old mother's feet,&mdash;Edinburgh
+can never be less than royal, one of the crowned and queenly cities of
+the world. It does not need for this distinction that there should be
+millions of inhabitants within her walls, or all the great threads of
+industry and wealth gathered in her hands. The pathos of much that is
+past and over for ever, the awe of many tragedies, a recollection almost
+more true than any reality of the present, of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_520" id="Page_520">{520}</a></span>ages and glories gone&mdash;add
+a charm which the wealthiest and greatest interests of to-day cannot
+give, to the city, always living, always stirring, where she stands amid
+traditionary smoke and mist, the grey metropolis of the North, the
+Edinburgh of a thousand fond associations,</p>
+
+<p class='center'>
+Our Own Romantic Town.<br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 170px;">
+<img src="images/illus_060.jpg" width="170" height="250" alt="Sir Walter Scott" title="" />
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='center'>THE END</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p class='center'><i>Printed by <span class="smcap">R. &amp; R. Clark</span>, Edinburgh</i></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Royal Edinburgh, by Margaret Oliphant
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Royal Edinburgh, by Margaret Oliphant
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Royal Edinburgh
+       Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets
+
+Author: Margaret Oliphant
+
+Illustrator: George Reid
+
+Release Date: June 5, 2008 [EBook #25701]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROYAL EDINBURGH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ROYAL EDINBURGH
+
+HER SAINTS, KINGS, PROPHETS AND POETS
+
+
+'Mine own romantic town.' MARMION
+
+
+
+BY
+MRS. OLIPHANT
+AUTHOR OF 'MAKERS OF FLORENCE,' 'MAKERS OF VENICE,' ETC.
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
+BY
+GEORGE REID, R.S.A.
+
+
+LONDON
+MACMILLAN AND CO.
+AND NEW YORK
+
+1891
+
+_All rights reserved_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_First Edition (Medium 8vo) 1890_
+_Second Edition (Crown 8vo) 1891_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: ST. GILES'S FROM THE LAWNMARKET]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+TO MY OLD FRIEND
+
+ALEXANDER MACMILLAN
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PART I
+                                                                    PAGE
+MARGARET OF SCOTLAND, ATHELING--QUEEN AND SAINT                        1
+
+
+PART II
+
+THE STEWARDS OF SCOTLAND
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+JAMES I. POET AND LEGISLATOR                                          38
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+JAMES II: WITH THE FIERY FACE                                         80
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+JAMES III: THE MAN OF PEACE                                          126
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+JAMES IV: THE KNIGHT-ERRANT                                          155
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+JAMES V: THE LAST OF THE HEROIC AGE                                  200
+
+
+PART III
+
+THE TIME OF THE PROPHETS
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+UNDER THE QUEEN REGENT                                               258
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+UNDER QUEEN MARY                                                     310
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE TRIUMPH AND END                                                  350
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE SCHOLAR OF THE REFORMATION                                       374
+
+PART IV
+
+THE MODERN CITY
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A BURGHER POET                                                       435
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE GUEST OF EDINBURGH                                               471
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE SHAKSPEARE OF SCOTLAND                                           491
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+ST. GILES'S FROM THE LAWNMARKET                           _Frontispiece_
+
+ROYAL EDINBURGH                                                      xiv
+
+QUEEN MARGARET'S CHAPEL, EDINBURGH CASTLE                              1
+
+PILLAR IN NAVE, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY                                      5
+
+DUNFERMLINE ABBEY                                                      7
+
+WEST TOWER, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY                                         11
+
+THE NAVE, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY--LOOKING WEST                             13
+
+QUEEN MARGARET'S CAVE                                                 15
+
+WEST DOORWAY, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY                                       17
+
+INTERIOR OF QUEEN MARGARET'S CHAPEL, EDINBURGH CASTLE                 25
+
+ARMS OF QUEEN MARGARET OF SCOTLAND                                    37
+
+THE BASS ROCK                                                         53
+
+HOLYROOD                                                              77
+
+EDINBURGH CASTLE FROM THE SOUTH-WEST                                  81
+
+INNER BARRIER, EDINBURGH CASTLE                                       87
+
+EDINBURGH CASTLE FROM THE VENNEL                                      97
+
+ST. ANTHONY'S CHAPEL AND ST. MARGARET'S LOCH                         115
+
+MONS MEG                                                             123
+
+THE CANONGATE TOLBOOTH                                               127
+
+ARMS OF JAMES IV OF SCOTLAND                                         155
+
+OLD HOUSE IN LAWNMARKET                                              161
+
+ST. ANTHONY'S CHAPEL                                                 165
+
+OLD HOUSES AT HEAD OF WEST BOW                                       171
+
+BAKEHOUSE CLOSE                                                      183
+
+WHITE HORSE CLOSE                                                    195
+
+SALISBURY CRAGS                                                      201
+
+REID'S CLOSE, CANONGATE                                              211
+
+DOORWAY, SIR A. AITCHESON'S HOUSE                                    217
+
+LINLITHGOW PALACE                                                    227
+
+FALKLAND PALACE                                                      253
+
+ST. ANDREWS                                                          287
+
+KNOX'S HOUSE, HIGH STREET                                            307
+
+HOLYROOD PALACE AND ARTHUR'S SEAT                                    311
+
+LOCHLEVEN                                                            331
+
+QUEEN MARY'S BATH                                                    335
+
+WEST DOORWAY, HOLYROOD CHAPEL                                        341
+
+DOORWAY, HOLYROOD PALACE                                             349
+
+MORAY HOUSE, CANONGATE                                               359
+
+THE PENDS, ST. ANDREWS                                               365
+
+INTERIOR OF ST. GILES'S                                              369
+
+KNOX'S PULPIT                                                        372
+
+NORTH DOORWAY, HERIOT'S HOSPITAL                                     381
+
+STIRLING CASTLE                                                      417
+
+GREYFRIARS CHURCHYARD                                                433
+
+EDINBURGH: GENERAL VIEW                                              437
+
+ALLAN RAMSAY'S SHOP                                                  439
+
+CROWN OF ST. GILES'S                                                 445
+
+SMOLLETT'S HOUSE                                                     453
+
+ALLAN RAMSAY'S HOUSE                                                 461
+
+ALLAN RAMSAY'S MONUMENT                                              469
+
+DOORWAY, LADY STAIR'S CLOSE                                          471
+
+LADY STAIR'S CLOSE                                                   477
+
+DUGALD STEWART'S MONUMENT                                            483
+
+BURNS'S MONUMENT                                                     489
+
+ST. GILES'S FROM PRINCES STREET                                      493
+
+THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH                                          497
+
+PLAYFAIR'S MONUMENT, CALTON HILL                                     503
+
+SIR WALTER SCOTT'S HOUSE                                             515
+
+GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH                                             519
+
+SIR WALTER SCOTT                                                     520
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ROYAL EDINBURGH
+
+[Illustration: QUEEN MARGARET'S CHAPEL, EDINBURGH CASTLE.]
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+MARGARET OF SCOTLAND, ATHELING--QUEEN AND SAINT
+
+
+It is strange yet scarcely difficult to the imagination to realise the
+first embodiment of what is now Edinburgh in the far distance of the
+early ages. Neither Pict nor Scot has left any record of what was going
+on so far south in the days when the king's daughters, primitive
+princesses with their rude surroundings, were placed for safety in the
+_castrum puellarum_, the maiden castle, a title in after days proudly
+(but perhaps not very justly) adapted to the supposed invulnerability of
+the fortress perched upon its rock. Very nearly invulnerable, however,
+it must have been in the days before artillery; too much so at least for
+one shut-up princess, who complained of her lofty prison as a place
+without verdure. If we may believe, notwithstanding the protest of that
+much-deceived antiquary the Laird of Monkbarns, that these fair and
+forlorn ladies were the first royal inhabitants of the Castle of
+Edinburgh, we may imagine that they watched from their battlements more
+wistfully than fearfully, over all the wide plain, what dust might rise
+or spears might gleam, or whether any galley might be visible of reiver
+or rescuer from the north. A little collection of huts or rude forts
+here and there would be all that broke the sweeping line of Lothian to
+the east or west, and all that width of landscape would lie under the
+eyes of the watchers, giving long notice of the approach of any enemies.
+"Out over the Forth I look to the north," the maidens might sing,
+looking across to Dunfermline, where already there was some royal state,
+or towards the faint lines of mountains in the distance, over the soft
+swelling heights of the Lomonds. No doubt Edinburgh, Edwinesburgh, or
+whatever the antiquaries imagine it to have been, must have been sadly
+dull if safe, suspended high upon the rock, nearer heaven than earth. It
+is curious to hear that it was "without verdure"; but perhaps the young
+ladies took no account of the trees that clothed the precipices below
+them, or the greenness that edged the Nor' Loch deep at their feet, but
+sighed for the gardens and luxuriance of Dunfermline, where all was
+green about their windows and the winding pathways of the dell of
+Pittendreich would be pleasant to wander in. This first romantic aspect
+of the Castle of Edinburgh is, however, merely traditional, and the
+first real and authentic appearance of the old fortress and city in
+history is in the record, at once a sacred legend and a valuable
+historical chronicle, of the life of Margaret the Atheling, the first of
+several Queen Margarets, the woman saint and blessed patroness of
+Scotland, who has bequeathed not only many benefits and foundations of
+after good to her adopted country, but her name--perhaps among
+Scotswomen still the most common of all Christian names.
+
+No more moving and delightful story was ever written or invented than
+the history of this saint and Queen. She was the daughter of Edward,
+called the Outlaw, and of his wife a princess of Hungary, of the race
+which afterwards produced St. Elizabeth: and the sister of Edgar
+Atheling, the feeble but rightful heir of the Saxon line, and
+consequently of the English throne. The family, however, was more
+foreign than English, having been brought up at the Court of their
+grandfather, the King of Hungary, one of the most pious and one of the
+richest Courts in Christendom; and it was not unnatural that when
+convinced of the fact that the most legitimate of aspirants had no
+chance against the force of William, they should prefer to return to the
+country of their education and birth. It was no doubt a somewhat forlorn
+party that set out upon this journey, for to lose a throne is seldom a
+misfortune accepted with equanimity, and several of the beaten and
+despondent Saxons had joined the royal exiles. Their voyage, however,
+was an unprosperous one, and after much beating about by winds and
+storms they were at last driven up the Firth of Forth, where their ship
+found shelter in the little bay at the narrowing of the Firth, which has
+since borne the name of St. Margaret's Hope.
+
+Lying here in shelter from all the winds behind the protecting
+promontory, with perhaps already some humble shrine or hermit's cell
+upon Inchgarvie or Inchcolm to give them promise of Christian kindness,
+with the lonely rock of Edinburgh in the distance on one side, and the
+soft slopes of the Fife coast rising towards the King's palace at
+Dunfermline on the other, the travellers must have awaited with some
+anxiety, yet probably much hope, the notice of the barbaric people who
+came to the beach to stare at their weather-beaten ships, and hurried
+off to carry the news inland of such unwonted visitors. It is the very
+spot which is now disturbed and changed by the monstrous cobwebs of iron
+which bear the weight of the Forth Bridge and make an end for ever of
+the Queen's Ferry, which Margaret must have crossed so often, and by
+which a personage more familiar, Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck, once, as we all
+know, made his way to the North; but these are modern reflections such
+as have nothing to do with that primitive morning, fresh no doubt as
+to-day with sun and dew, when Malcolm's messengers came hurrying down to
+see what were these intruders, and what their purpose, and whether
+anything was to be apprehended from a visit apparently so unusual. The
+eager and curious emissaries had apparently no warrant to board the
+strangers, but gazed and wondered at the big ship and all its
+equipments, so unlike their own rude galleys; then hastened back again
+with an excited and exciting description of the greatness of the
+passengers on board and all their splendid array. Malcolm, cautious yet
+excited too, sent forth, as we are told in the _Scotichronicon_, "his
+wisest councillors" to make further inquiries. They too were astonished
+by the splendour of all they saw, and especially by the mien of a
+certain lady among these strangers, "whom, by her incomparable beauty,
+and the pleasantness of her jocund speech, I imagined to be the chief of
+the family," said the spokesman; "nor was it wonderful," adds the
+chronicler, "that they should believe her to be the chief who was
+destined to be Queen of Scotland and also heir of England." Perhaps it
+was the after light of these events that conveyed that high appreciation
+of Margaret's qualities into the story, for she must have been quite
+young, and it is very unlikely that in presence of her mother, and the
+brother whom they all considered as the King of England, a young girl,
+however gifted, would have taken upon her the chief place.
+
+[Illustration: PILLAR IN NAVE, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY]
+
+The report he received, however, had so much effect upon King Malcolm
+that he went himself to visit the strangers in their ship. He was not a
+mere barbaric prince, to be dazzled by the sight of these great persons,
+but no doubt had many a lingering recollection in his mind of Siward's
+great house in Northumberland, where he had taken refuge after his
+father's murder. It is curious and bewildering to go back in that dawn
+of national life to familiar Shaksperian regions, and to think that this
+primitive King who had so much in him of the savage, along with all his
+love and gentleness, was the son of that gracious Duncan who addressed
+his hostess like a kingly gentleman though her hospitality was to be so
+fatal. King Malcolm came down, no doubt with such state as he could
+muster, to see the wandering foreign princes. He was not unlearned, but
+knew Latin and the English tongue, though he could not read, as we are
+afterwards told. He had already reigned for fourteen years, after about
+as long a period of exile, so that he could not now be in his first
+youth, although he was still unmarried. He came down with his suite to
+the shore amid all the stir of the inquiring country folk, gathered
+about to see this strange thing--the ship with its unusual equipments,
+and the group of noble persons in their fine clothes who were to be seen
+upon the deck. The Athelings were carrying back with them to Hungary all
+the gifts with which the Emperor, Henry III, had loaded their father
+when he went to England, and had jewels and vessels of gold and many
+fine things unknown to the Scots. And Margaret, even though not so
+prominent as the chroniclers say, was evidently by the consent of all a
+most gracious and courteous young lady, with unusual grace and vivacity
+of speech. The grave middle-aged King, with his recollections of a
+society more advanced than his own, which probably had made him long for
+something better than his rude courtiers could supply, would seem at
+once to have fallen under the spell of the wandering princess. She was
+such a mate as a poor Scots King, badgered by turbulent clans, could
+scarcely have hoped to find--rich and fair and young, and of the best
+blood in Christendom. Whether the wooing was as short as the record we
+have no means of knowing, but in the same year, 1070, Margaret was
+brought with great rejoicing to Dunfermline, and there married to her
+King, amid the general joy.
+
+[Illustration: DUNFERMLINE ABBEY]
+
+The royal house at Dunfermline, according to the chronicle, was
+surrounded by a dense forest and guarded by immense cliffs. The latter
+particular, however, it is difficult to accept, for the dell in which
+the ruins of the mediaeval palace (a building much more recent, it is
+needless to say, than that of Malcolm) still stand, though picturesque
+in its acclivities and precipices, is as far as possible from including
+any cliffs that could be called immense. The young Queen made a great
+change in the internal arrangements of what was no doubt a grim
+stronghold enough, soft as was the country around. Probably the absence
+of decoration and ornament struck her painfully, accustomed as she was
+to palaces of a very different kind--for almost the first thing we hear
+in the contemporary history written by her confessor Theodoric,
+afterwards a monk at Durham, is of the workshops and rooms for
+embroidery and all the arts which were established in Dunfermline,
+presumably in the palace itself under Margaret's own eye, for the
+beautifying of the great church which she founded there, and also no
+doubt for her own house. Certain women of good birth were judged worthy
+to share the Queen's work, and lived with her, it would seem, in a kind
+of seclusion, seeing only such chosen visitors as Margaret brought with
+her to cheer their labours, and forswearing all idle talk and frivolity.
+The Queen had such austerity mingled with her graciousness and such
+grace with her severity, says her monkish biographer, loving an
+antithesis, that all feared and respected her presence. "Her life was
+full of moderation and gentleness, her speech contained the very salt of
+wisdom; even her silence was full of good thoughts."
+
+This biographer--according to the conscientious and painstaking
+investigations of the Bollandist Fathers, who examine in their careful
+way all the guarantees and traditions of the manuscript with a jealousy
+worthy of the most enlightened historians--is not Turgot, who is usually
+credited with it, but Theodoric, a monk of Durham, who must have shared
+with Turgot, at some period of his life, the office of spiritual
+director and confidant to the Queen. It is curious that both these
+writers should have passed from the northern Court to the community at
+Durham, of which Turgot was prior and Theodoric a simple brother; yet
+not so strange either, for Durham was largely patronised and enriched by
+Margaret and her husband, their kingdom at this period reaching as far
+south. Of Turgot's Life, which was presumably written in the vernacular,
+there seems nothing existing; but that of Theodoric is very full, and
+contains many details which set before us the life of the simple Court,
+with its many labours and charities: the King full of reverence and
+tender surprise and admiration of all his wife's perfections; the young
+saint herself, sweet and bright in modest gravity amid a tumultuous
+world little respectful of women, full of the excessive charity of the
+age and of her race, and of those impulses of decoration and
+embellishment which were slow to develop among the ruder difficulties of
+the north. Theodoric himself must have been more or less of an artist,
+for in speaking of the "golden vases" and ornaments for the altars of
+her new church which Margaret devised, "I myself carried out the work,"
+he says. These must have been busy days in Malcolm's primitive palace
+while the workmen were busy with the great cathedral close by, the mason
+with his mallet, the homely sculptor with his chisel, carving those
+interlaced and embossed arches which still stand, worn and gray, but
+little injured, in the wonderful permanency of stone, in the nave of the
+old Abbey of Dunfermline: while the Queen's rooms opened into the hall
+where her ladies sat over their embroidery, among all the primitive dyes
+that art had caught from herbs and traditional mixtures, on one
+hand--and on the other into noisier workshops, where workmen with
+skilful delicate hammers were beating out the shining gold and silver
+into sacred vessels and symbols of piety. Margaret along with her stores
+of more vulgar wealth, and the ingots which were consecrated to the
+manufacture of crucifix and chalice, had brought many holy relics: and
+no doubt the cases and shrines in which these were enclosed afforded
+models for the new, over which Father Theodoric, with his monkish cape
+and cowl laid aside, and his shaven crown shining in the glow of the
+furnace, was so busy. What a pleasant stir of occupation and progress,
+the best and most trustworthy evidences of growing civilisation, must
+have arisen within the shelter of the woods which framed that centre of
+development and new life: the new abbey rising day by day, a white and
+splendid reality in the clearing among the trees; the bells, symbols of
+peace and pleasantness, sounding out over the half-savage country; the
+chants and songs of divine worship swelling upward to the skies.
+Margaret's royal manufactory of beautiful things, her tapestries and
+metal work, her adaptation of all the possibilities of ornament latent
+in every primitive community, with the conviction, always ennobling to
+art, that by these means of sacred adornment she and her assistants and
+coadjutors were serving and pleasing God, no doubt consoled her ardent
+and active spirit for the loss of many comforts and graces with which
+she must have been familiar. At the same time her new sphere of
+influence was boundless, and the means in her hand of leavening and
+moulding her new country almost unlimited--a thing above all others
+delightful to a woman, to whom the noiseless and gradual operation of
+influence is the chief weapon in the world.
+
+[Illustration: WEST TOWER, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY]
+
+There is nothing, however, in this history more charming than the
+description of the relations between the royal pair. King Malcolm had
+probably known few graces in life except those, a step or two in advance
+of his own, which were to be found in Northumberland in the house of
+Earl Siward; and after the long practical struggle of his reign between
+the Scots and Celts, who had already so far settled down together as to
+constitute something which could be called a kingdom, he had no doubt
+fallen even from that higher plane of civilisation. Such rude state as
+the presence of a queen even in those primitive days might have procured
+had been wanting, and all his faculties were probably absorbed in
+keeping peace between the unruly chieftains, and fostering perhaps here
+and there the first rising of a little community of burghers, strong
+enough by union to defend themselves. Uneasy, there can be little doubt,
+was often the head which bore the circlet of troubled supremacy among
+all those half-subdued tribes; and his dwelling in the heart of the
+"dense forest," amid all the noisy retainers in the hall and jealous
+nobles in the council chamber, would leave little room for beauty or
+sweetness of any kind. When the stranger princess suddenly came in like
+an enchantment, with her lovely looks and "jocund eloquence"--full of
+smiles and pleasant speech, yet with a dignity which overawed every rude
+beholder--into these rude and noisy halls, with so many graceful ways
+and beautiful garments and sparkling jewels, transforming the very
+chambers with embroidered hangings and all the rare embellishments of a
+lady's bower, with which no doubt the ship had been provided, and which
+mediaeval princesses, like modern fine ladies, carried about with
+them--the middle-aged man of war was evidently altogether subdued and
+enraptured. To see her absorbed in prayer--an exercise which Malcolm had
+perhaps felt to be the occupation of monks and hermits only--to see her
+bending over her beautiful book with all its pictures, reading the
+sacred story there, filled him with awe and a kind of adoration. He
+could not himself read, which made the wonder all the more; but though
+incapable of mastering what was within, he loved to handle and turn over
+the book from which his beautiful wife derived her wisdom, touching it
+with his rude hands with caressing touches, and kissing the pages she
+loved. When he found one manuscript which she particularly esteemed, he
+"sent for his goldsmith" and had the vellum encased in gold and
+ornamented with jewels; then carried it back to her with such fond
+pleasure as may be easily imagined. Margaret on her part did what she
+could to secure to her King some of the punctilios of reverential
+respect due in her knowledge to a monarch. She suggested the formation
+of a royal guard to protect the King's person and surround him with
+honour and observance. She filled the palace with her wealth, adorning
+it in every way, providing fine clothes for the retainers and so
+enriching the house that the table was served with dishes of gold and
+silver. And it would seem that the reputation of a new and splendid
+Court thus suddenly evolved among the northern mists got abroad, and
+brought merchants with their wares up the Firth, and quickened, if it
+did not altogether originate, the first feeble current of trade which
+was the precursor and origin of all our after wealth in Scotland.
+
+[Illustration: THE NAVE, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY--LOOKING WEST]
+
+[Illustration: QUEEN MARGARET'S CAVE]
+
+This was not all, however, that Margaret did for the commonwealth. If we
+may trust her biographer, it was she who established that great
+principle of reform so important in all states, and generally one of the
+later fruits of civilisation, that the soldiers should be prevented from
+exacting or putting under requisition the peaceful people about, and
+that all they had should be honestly paid for, which was the last thing
+likely to be thought of by a mediaeval prince. Altogether Margaret's
+influence was exerted for the best purposes to induce her husband "to
+relinquish his barbarous manners and live honestly and civilly," as the
+chronicler says. It was perhaps not so good an exercise of her power
+when she opened arguments, apparently through Malcolm as interpreter,
+with the native clergy of Scotland, the hermits and ecclesiastics of
+Columba's strain, and the mysterious Culdees of whom we know so little.
+The one certain fact fully established concerning them being, that they
+kept Easter at a different date from that appointed by Rome. The King,
+though no scholar, would seem to have been a linguist in his way, since
+he spoke both languages, that is the Saxon, and the Celtic or Pictish,
+again a most difficult question to determine--with a smattering of
+Latin; and was thus able to act as Margaret's mouthpiece in her
+arguments. She found fault with the Celts not only for the date of their
+Easter, but for their habit of not communicating at that festival. It is
+very curious to note in their answer the very same reason which has
+prevailed in later days among all the changes of faith and ceremonial,
+and is still put forth in Highland parishes as an excuse for the small
+number of communicants. The Celtic priests and bishops defended their
+flocks by producing the words of St. Paul, in which that Apostle says
+that those who eat and drink unworthily eat and drink condemnation to
+themselves. So, according to Theodoric, the Celtic party in the Church
+answered Margaret, and so would their descendants, the "Men" of the
+Highlands, answer at this day. The integrity of the tradition is very
+remarkable. On the other hand, they offended the devout Queen by their
+neglect of Sunday, a reproach which cannot be addressed to their
+descendants.
+
+[Illustration: WEST DOORWAY, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY]
+
+These theological discussions between the fair and learned Queen and the
+Highland ecclesiastics and anchorites, carried on by means of her chief
+convert the warrior King, whom love for her had taught to respect and
+share in her devotion, must have afforded many picturesque and striking
+scenes, though unfortunately there was no modern observer there to be
+interested and amused, but only Theodoric standing by, himself very hot
+upon the atrocity of a miscalculated Easter, and perhaps helping his
+royal mistress here and there with an argument. Naturally his story is
+especially full upon the religious side of Margaret's life--her much
+prayer, her humility and reverence during the services of the Church, an
+intent and silent listener to all teachings, only a little disposed to
+rebel now and then when her confessor passed too lightly over her
+faults. As for her charities, they were boundless. It was not for
+nothing that the blood of St. Ursula, and that which was to give life to
+still another saint, Elizabeth of Hungary, was in her veins. It is
+needless to say that nobody in those days had discovered the evil of
+indiscriminate almsgiving, which was, on the contrary, considered one of
+the first of Christian virtues. Margaret was the providence of all the
+poor around her. Her biographer tells us naively, with no sense that the
+result was not one to be proud of, that the fame of her bounty and
+kindness brought the poor in crowds to every place where she was. When
+she went out they crowded round her like children round their mother.
+When she had distributed everything she had of her own she took garments
+and other things from her courtiers and attendants to give away, a
+spoliation to which they consented willingly, knowing that the value of
+everything thus appropriated would be returned to them--an excellent
+reason for acquiescence. This "rapine of piety" was so strong in her
+that she sometimes even appropriated to her poor certain of the gold
+pieces which it was the King's custom to offer at Easter to the
+Church--a pious robbery which Malcolm pretended not to perceive until he
+caught her in the act, when he accused her with a laugh of tender
+amusement for her rapacity. In all the touches by which the sympathetic
+priest delineates the union of this pair there is something at once
+humorous and pathetic in the figure of the King, the rough old warrior,
+always following with his eyes the angelic saintly figure by his side,
+all believing, half adoring, and yet not without that gleam of amusement
+at the woman's absolute unhesitating enthusiasm--an amusement mingled
+with admiration and respect, but still a smile--a delighted surprise at
+all her amazing ways, and wonder what she will do next, though
+everything in his eyes was perfect that she did--such as may still be
+seen in the eyes of many a world-worn husband looking on at the
+movements of that directer, more simple, yet more subtle being, and the
+quick absolutism and certainty of the bright spirit at his side. The
+grey-bearded old soldier, leader of many a raid and victor in many a
+struggle, with this new revelation of beauty and purity bursting upon
+his later life, becomes to us a recognisable and friendly human soul in
+these glimpses we have of him, unintentional and by the way. Theodoric
+himself must have liked Malcolm, half-barbarian as he was, and even
+admired the look of ardent supplication which would come into the King's
+face, "a great intentness and emotion," such as seemed to him
+extraordinary in a secular person, and which his wife's beautiful
+example and the contagion of her piety alone could have developed.
+
+Among Margaret's many duties there was one which throws a very strange
+light upon the time. Just before her arrival in Scotland, King Malcolm
+had been carrying fire and sword through Northumberland in one of the
+many raids over the Border which were the commonplace of the time--if
+indeed we may speak of the Border at such an unsettled and shifting
+period when the limits of the kingdoms were so little certain. The issue
+of this raid was that Scotland, probably meaning for the most part
+Lothian, the southern portion of the country, was filled with English
+captives, apportioned as slaves, or servants at least, through the
+entire population, so that scarcely a house was without one, either male
+or female. The Queen interested herself particularly in these captives,
+as was natural; sometimes paying the ransom exacted for them, and in all
+cases defending and protecting them. Her emissaries went about among
+them inquiring into their condition and how they were treated, visiting
+them from house to house: and all that Margaret could do to mitigate the
+evils of their captivity was done. Nothing can be more strange than to
+realise a time when Northumbrian prisoners of war could be house slaves
+in Lothian. No doubt what was true on one side was true on the other,
+and Scotch captives had their turn of similar bondage.
+
+In those days the ancient county which her children love to call the
+Kingdom of Fife was far more than Edinburgh, then a mere fortress
+standing up on an invulnerable rock in the middle of a fertile plain,
+the centre of the national life. Not only was the King's residence at
+Dunfermline, but the great Cathedral of St. Andrews was the
+ecclesiastical capital, gradually working out that development of Roman
+supremacy and regularity which soon swept away all that was individual
+in the apostleship of St. Columba and the faith of his followers. That
+the King and Queen were frequently at Edinburgh is evident from the fact
+that Margaret had her oratory and chapel on the very apex of the rock,
+and had there established a centre of worship and spiritual life. St.
+Andrews, however, was the centre of influence, the shrine to which
+pilgrims flowed, and the pious Queen, in her care for every office of
+religion and eagerness to facilitate every exercise of piety, gave
+special thought to the task of making the way easy and safe towards that
+holy metropolis. The Canterbury of the north was divided from the other
+half of Malcolm's kingdom by that sea which in these later days, at much
+cost of beauty, money, and life, has been bridged over and
+shortened--"the sea which divides Lothian from Scotland" according to
+the chronicler, "the Scottish Sea" as it is called by others, the mighty
+Firth, which to the rude galleys of the little trading villages along
+its shores must have been a sea dangerous and troubled, full of risks
+and perils. The Queen, we are told, erected houses of shelter on either
+side of this angry strait, and established what we should call a line of
+passenger boats to take the pilgrims over at the expense of the State.
+One wonders how much or how little of State policy might mingle in this
+pious act, for no doubt the establishment of an easy and constant means
+of communication between the wealthy Lothians and the then centre of
+national life must have been of unspeakable use in consolidating a
+kingdom still so imperfectly knit together and divided by the formidable
+line of the great estuary. It is one drawback of a religious chronicler
+that no such motive, large and noble as it might be, is thought of,
+since even national advantage counted so much less than the cultivation
+of piety. And it is very likely that Margaret thought of nothing else,
+and reckoned a prayer at the shrine of the patron saint as far more
+important than the intercommunications thus established and the
+knowledge of each other thus acquired by the different parts of a
+kingdom which still retained the differences of separate nationalities.
+A mingled aim, a practical motive, might not have accomplished half so
+much; but no doubt among Malcolm's men, his greybeards pondering in
+council, or perhaps himself thinking of many things as he protected all
+his wife's schemes, there was a dawning perception, along with the
+undoubted advantages of piety, of a national use in the quickened
+intercourse and securely established communications. If so he would
+probably blame himself for a mixed motive by the side of Margaret's pure
+and absolute heavenly-mindedness, yet take pleasure in the secondary
+unacknowledged good all the same.
+
+Thus their life went on for nearly a quarter of a century in a course of
+national development to which everything contributed, even the love of
+splendour which Margaret brought with her, and her artistic tastes, and
+the rage for decoration and beautiful surroundings which had then begun
+to be so strong an element in national progress. She had many children
+in the midst of all these labours and public interests, seven sons and
+two daughters, whom she brought up most carefully in all the perfection
+of her own faith. Three of these sons succeeded one after the other to
+the Scottish throne, and proved the efficacy of her teaching by piety as
+strong and as liberal as her own. It was in the year 1093 that
+Margaret's beautiful and touching life came to an end, in great sorrow
+yet triumph and pious victory over trouble. Before this time, but at a
+date not indicated in the narrative, she had parted with her friend and
+biographer Theodoric, probably not very long before her own death, as we
+are told that she was oppressed by forebodings, or rather premonitions
+of death and sorrow, of which she spoke to him with tears. When the
+moment of separation came both penitent and confessor so long united in
+the closest bonds of sympathy wept sore. "Farewell," said the Queen; "I
+shall not live long, but you will live long after me. Remember my soul
+in your prayers, and take care of my children; cease not to teach and
+admonish them, especially when they are raised to great estate." He made
+the promise with tears, not daring to contradict her by happier
+auguries, and in this way took his last farewell of the Queen, and never
+saw her more. He continues his story, however, taking it from the lips
+of a priest who remained with her during the rest of her life, probably
+also a Saxon, since he became a monk of St. Cuthbert's on Margaret's
+death.
+
+The narrative goes on with an account of the declining health of the
+Queen. For more than six months she had been unable to mount a horse, or
+sometimes to rise from her bed, and in the midst of this illness the
+King set forth upon one of his raids into England, on what provocation
+or with what motive it is difficult to tell, except that the provocation
+was perpetual and the motive persistent the leading rule of life. His
+two elder sons accompanied him on this expedition, which for some reason
+Margaret had opposed, "much dissuading" him from going; but this time,
+unfortunately, had not been hearkened to. Probably she set out along
+with him, on her way to Edinburgh to pass the time of his absence there,
+which was a place where news could be had more readily than beyond the
+sea in Fife. The solitary castle, high perched upon its hill, whence
+messengers could be seen approaching, or, better still, the King's
+banners coming back, was a fitter home for an anxious wife than the
+palace over the Firth among its woods. How long she remained there we
+are not told, and there are now unhappily no articulate remains at all
+of the old stronghold which must have risen upon that height, with its
+low massive walls and rude buildings. The oldest relic in Edinburgh is
+that little sanctuary, plain and bare as a shed, deprived of all
+external appearance of sanctity, and employed for vulgar uses for many
+centuries, which has been at length discovered by its construction, the
+small dark chancel arch and rude ornament, to have been a chapel, and
+which there seems no doubt is at least built upon the site consecrated
+for Margaret's oratory, if not the very building itself. It is small
+enough and primitive enough, with its little line of toothed ornament,
+and its minute windows sending in a subdued light even in the very flush
+of day, to be of any antiquity. I believe that even the fortunate
+antiquary who had the happiness of discovering it does not claim for
+this little chapel the distinction of being the very building itself
+which Margaret erected. Yet it must have been one very similar,
+identical in form and ornament, so that the interested spectator may
+well permit himself to picture the sick and anxious Queen, worn out with
+illness and weighed down by sore forebodings, kneeling there in the
+faint light before the shadowed altar, trying to derive such comfort as
+was possible from the ministrations of the priests, and following with
+her prayers her husband and her boys, so young still and not hardened to
+war, who might be falling by the hands perhaps of her own kindred, in
+the country which was hers, yet which she scarcely knew. In the
+intervals of these anxious prayers, when her failing strength permitted,
+how wistfully the Queen and her ladies must have gazed from the walls
+far around on every side to watch for the first appearance of any
+messenger or herald of return. From the woods of Dunfermline and its
+soft rural landscape, and the new abbey with its sweet singing and all
+its magnificence, it must have been a change indeed to dwell imprisoned
+so near the sky, within the low, stern rugged walls of the primitive
+fort, with a few rude houses clinging about it, and the little chapel on
+the rock, small and dark, as the only representative of the stately
+arches and ornate services which she loved. But the little chapel is
+deeply involved in all the later history of Margaret's life.
+
+[Illustration: INTERIOR OF QUEEN MARGARET'S CHAPEL, EDINBURGH CASTLE]
+
+One day her attendants remarked that she was even more sad than her
+wont, and questioning her received a reply which must have made them
+tremble. "Perhaps to-day," she said, "a great evil has fallen upon the
+Scots, such as has not happened to them for years." Her hearers, however
+it alarmed them, made as light as they could of this prophetic
+foreboding, which might be but a deepened impression of the prevailing
+despondency in her heart. No doubt it was a melancholy night in the
+fortress, where the women who had husbands or sons or brothers in the
+distant army would cluster together in the antechamber and watch for the
+attendants who came and went behind the curtain into the sick chamber
+where the Queen, visibly sinking day by day, lay sleepless and sad,
+listening for every sound. Terrors surrounded the castle for the
+personal safety of its occupants as well as for their brethren in the
+wars; and no doubt there would be whispers of the King's brother, Donald
+Bane, and of the watchful jealous Celtic chiefs all ready to rise with
+him, should an opportunity occur, and dash the stranger brood from the
+throne. All these sad prognostications were quickly realised. Next
+morning brought messengers in fear and distress from the army to say
+that the King had fallen at Alnwick in Northumberland, and to prove that
+Margaret's prophecy had been fulfilled at the very time it was spoken.
+It was November, dark and cheerless both within and without, and the
+Queen would seem to have been prostrated for a day or two by the sad
+news: but on the fourth day she rose from her bed and tottered to the
+little chapel on the rock to hear mass for the last time, and receive
+the Holy Sacrament in preparation for death. She then returned to her
+rooms with the pallor of death already on her face, and bidding all
+around--"me," says the priest, "and the others who stood by"--to
+recommend her to Christ, asked that the black rood should be brought to
+her. This was the most holy of all the relics which she had brought with
+her to Scotland. It was a case of pure gold in the form of a cross,
+ornamented with marvellous work, bearing the image of the Saviour
+curiously carved in ivory, and enclosing a portion of the true cross
+(proved to be so by many miracles). The Queen took it in her hands,
+pressed it to her dying breast, and touched with it her eyes and face.
+While thus devoutly employed, with her thoughts diverted from all
+earthly things, Margaret was brought back to her sorrow by the sudden
+entrance of her son Ethelred, who had returned from the defeated army to
+carry to his mother the dreadful news of the death not only of his
+father but of his elder brother. The sight of his mother in extremity,
+almost gone, no doubt confused the poor boy, still little more than a
+stripling, and with that weight of disaster on his head--and he answered
+to her faltering inquiry at first that all was well. Margaret adjured
+him by the holy cross in her arms to tell her the truth: then when she
+heard of the double blow, burst out in an impassioned cry. "I thank
+Thee, Lord," she said, "that givest me this agony to bear in my death
+hour." Her life had been much blessed; she had known few sorrows; it was
+as a crown to that pure and lovelit existence that she had this moment
+of bitterest anguish before God gave to His beloved sleep.
+
+While this sad scene was enacting within, the country was full of tumult
+and conspiracy without. Donald Bane, the brother of Malcolm, had no
+doubt chafed at the Saxon regime under which the King had fallen, for
+years, and struggled against the influences brought in from abroad in
+the retinue of the foreigner, as has been done in every commonwealth in
+history at one time or another. He represented the old world, the Celtic
+rule, the traditions of the past. Some of the chroniclers indeed assert
+that Malcolm was illegitimate and Donald Bane the rightful heir to the
+crown. He was, at all events, a pretender kept in subjection while
+Malcolm's strong hand held the sceptre, but ready to seize the first
+opportunity of revolution. No doubt the news of the King's death, and of
+that of his heir, would run like wildfire through the country; but it
+would seem that the attempt of Donald must have been already organised,
+since his siege of Edinburgh, where most of his brother's children were
+with their mother, placed there for safety in the King's absence, had
+already begun. Upon the death of the Queen, Donald was not likely to
+have treated the royal children who stood in his way with much mercy;
+and the state of affairs was desperate when young Ethelred, the third of
+her sons, not yet arrived at man's estate, closed his mother's eyes, and
+found himself at the head of the weeping family shut up within the
+castle, surrounded by precipices on every side except that upon which
+his angry uncle lay with all the forces of the discontented in Scotland
+at his back, all the lovers of the old regime and enemies of the
+stranger, and with a fierce contingent from Norway to support his Celtic
+horde. In the simplicity of the narrative we hear not a word of the
+troubled councils which must have been held while the boy prince in his
+sorrow and the sudden dreadful responsibility laid on his young
+shoulders turned to such wise advisers as might have followed Margaret
+into the stronghold, and took thought how to save the children and carry
+off the precious remains of the Queen. The expedient to which they had
+recourse was one which their assailants evidently thought impossible.
+That the rock upon which Edinburgh Castle stands should have been
+considered inaccessible by practical mountaineers like the followers of
+Donald Bane seems curious: but in those days the art of climbing for
+pleasure had not been discovered, and it had no place in the methods of
+warfare. It seemed enough to the assailants to hold the gates and the
+summit of the eastern slopes, where probably there must already have
+been some clusters of huts or rough half-fortified dwellings descending
+from the Castle Hill, foreshadowing a Lawnmarket at least if not yet a
+Canongate. No one would seem to have thought of the possibility of any
+descent on the other side from that perpendicular rock.
+
+But despair sharpens the wits, and no doubt after many miserable
+consultations a desperate expedient was found. Even now nothing but a
+goat, or a schoolboy, or perhaps a young private fearful of punishment,
+could find a way down the wonderful curtain of rock which forms the west
+side of Edinburgh Castle; and to guide the children and their
+attendants, a sorrowful little group of mourners, distracted with grief
+and fear, and Margaret's body in its litter, down those rocks where
+there was scarcely footing for an alert and experienced climber, must
+have been one of the most difficult as it was one of the boldest of
+undertakings. While the rebel host raged on the other side, and any
+traitor might have brought the enemy round to intercept that slow and
+painful descent, it was accomplished safely under cover of "a great
+myst," Heaven, as all thought, helping the forlorn fugitives by that
+natural shield. Mists are no rare things, as everybody knows, on these
+heights. Perhaps it was the well-known easterly haar, the veil of salt
+sea fog which Edinburgh so often wraps round her still, which, blowing
+up from the mouth of the Firth, enveloped the travellers and hid them in
+its folds of whiteness, impenetrable by the closest watcher, till they
+had safely reached the level ground, and stealing down to the Queen's
+Ferry escaped to loyal Fife and their home in Dunfermline. Needless to
+say that this mist was a miraculous agency to all the family and
+servants of the Queen. To us it adds a touch of local colour, the
+well-known symbol of a familiar scene. Edinburgh was then nothing but a
+castle upon a rock, and now is one of the fairest and most celebrated of
+historical cities; but still its perpendicular crags rise inaccessible
+against the setting sun, and still the white mist comes sweeping up from
+the sea.
+
+It is to the credit of the priests that this is the only miracle that is
+connected with the name of Margaret, if we except the pretty legend
+which tells how a hundred years later, when her descendants removed the
+remains of the saint from the place where they had been deposited to lay
+them before the high altar in Dunfermline, the coffin in which they were
+placed could not be carried past the humble spot in which lay, brought
+back from Northumberland, the bones of her King. The cortege stopped
+perforce, the ceremonial had to be interrupted, for all the force of all
+the bearers could not carry even in death the faithful wife from her
+husband; and the only thing it was found that could be done was to
+transport Malcolm along with the partner of his life to the place of
+honour, to which on his own account that rude soldier had but little
+claim. Many saints have had whims as to the place of their interment,
+and showed them in a similar way, but this is all sweetness and tender
+fidelity and worthy to be true. The royal pair were carried off
+afterwards, stolen away like so much gold or silver, by Philip of Spain
+to enrich his gloomy mausoleum-palace, and can be traced for a long time
+in one place or another receiving that strange worship which attaches to
+the most painful relics of humanity. But where they now lie, if in the
+bosom of the kindly earth or among other dreadful remains in some
+sanctuary filled with relics, no one knows.
+
+Margaret had done in her lifetime great things for Scotland. She had
+introduced comforts and luxuries of every kind, and the decorative arts,
+and a great deal of actual wealth, into a very poor and distracted
+country. The earliest charter which is found in the Scottish archives is
+one of Malcolm and Margaret, showing how the time of settlement and
+established order began in their reign. She had helped to give the
+distracted and divided kingdom, made up of warring sects, that
+consolidation and steadiness which enabled it to take its place among
+recognised nations. She turned the wavering balance between Celt and
+Saxon to what has proved to be the winning side, the side of progress
+and advancement. The Donalds and Duncans were swept away after a brief
+and bloody interval and were no more possible in Scotland after her, and
+the reign of the Anglo-Saxon was assured. She was apparently the
+instrument too, though there is little information on this subject, of
+drawing the Church of Scotland into that close union with Rome which had
+been already accomplished in England; a step which, if it lost some
+doubtful freedom and independence in ecclesiastical matters, secured
+still more completely a recognised place in Catholic Christendom to the
+northern kingdom. "The pure Culdee" of whom we know so little did not
+survive, any more than did the Celtic kings, her influence and the
+transformation she effected. Her life and legend formed the
+stepping-stone for Scotland into authentic history as into a
+consolidated and independent existence. The veil of fable and
+uncertainty cleared away before the mild shining of her name and story.
+Like Edinburgh coming suddenly into sight, as in some old and primitive
+picture, high upon its rock, with the slope of the Castle Hill on one
+side and the precipices round, and the white mist sweeping up from the
+sea, Scotland itself becomes recognisable and grows into form and order
+by the light of her peaceful and gracious presence.
+
+And it is something worth noting that this image of purity and
+excellence was no monkish vision of the purity of the cloister, but that
+more complete and at the same time more humble ideal of the true wife,
+mother, and mistress, whose work was in and for the world and the
+people, not withdrawn to any exceptional refuge or shelter--which has
+always been most dear to the Anglo-Saxon race. The influence of such an
+example in a country where manners and morals were equally rudimentary,
+where the cloister proved often the only refuge for women, and even that
+not always a safe one--was incalculable, and the protection of a
+virtuous Court something altogether novel and admirable. The gentlewomen
+who worked at their tapestry under Margaret's eye, and learned the
+gentler manners of other Courts and countries of old civilisation by her
+side, and did their wooing modestly with the sanction of her approval,
+must have changed the atmosphere of the north in the most wonderful way
+and quickened every current of national development though the influence
+was remote and the revolution unperceived. The chroniclers go back with
+a fond persistence to the story of Margaret and her sons, and the number
+of her family and the circumstances of her marriage and of her death.
+Before her there is little but fable; after her the stream of history
+flows clear. The story of Macbeth, which is, yet is not, the
+Shakspearian drama, and accordingly takes quite a curious distinct flow
+of its own, like a new and imperfect version of something already
+familiarly known, is the only episode of secular history that has any
+reality before we come, in the next generation, to herself and her King.
+The earlier annals of Adamnan, the life of Columba and the records of
+his sacred isle, belong to those ever-living ever-continuing legends of
+the saints in which the story of the nations counts for little. But
+Margaret was fortunately secular, and though a saint, a great and
+influential personage in the front of everything, and also a woman in
+the fullest tide of life to whom all human events were happening; who
+lived by love and died of grief, and reigned and rejoiced and triumphed
+as well as suffered and prayed.
+
+There followed, however, a terrible moment for that new Scottish-Saxon
+royal family, when both their parents were thus taken from them. Donald
+Bane set up a brief authority, restoring the old kingdom and banishing,
+after the familiar use and wont of such revolutions, his brother's
+children from Scotland. Of these children, however, but three sons are
+mentioned: Edgar, Alexander, and David, who must all have been under age
+at the time. Ethelred, who had the dangerous office of conveying his
+brothers and sisters along with his mother's body to Dunfermline, died
+or was killed immediately after this feat, and was laid with the King
+and Queen before the rood altar in Dunfermline; and of Edmund, an elder
+son, we have but a confused account, Wynton and Fordun both describing
+him as "a man of gret wertu," who died in religion, having taken the
+cowl of a monk of Cluny; whereas William of Malmesbury accuses him of
+treachery and complicity in the murder of his base-born brother Duncan.
+However this might be, he was at least swept from the succession, in
+which there is no mention of him. Malcolm's lawful heirs were thus
+reduced to the three boys whom their uncle, Edgar Atheling, had received
+in England. But Donald Bane was not long permitted to enjoy his conquest
+in peace. Duncan, the illegitimate son (but this counted for little in
+those days) of Malcolm, who was a hostage in England, after his uncle
+had held the sovereign power for six months, made a rush upon Scotland
+with the help of an English army, and overcame and displaced Donald; but
+in his turn was overcome after a reign of a year and a half, Donald Bane
+again resuming the power, which he held for three years more. By this
+time young Edgar, Margaret's son, had come to man's estate, and with the
+help of the faithful Saxons who still adhered to his uncle, Edgar
+Atheling, and encouraged by dreams and revelations that the crown was to
+be his, came back to Scotland and succeeded finally in overcoming Donald
+and securing his inheritance. The period of anarchy and trouble lasted
+for five years, and no doubt the civilisation and good order which
+Malcolm and Margaret had toiled to establish were for the moment much
+disturbed. But after Edgar's succession the interrupted progress was
+resumed. "He was a man of faire havyng," says old Wynton, and in his
+time the Saxon race came again to great honour and promotion, at once by
+his own firm establishment upon the Scottish throne, and by the marriage
+of his sister Maud to the new King of England, Henry I., which restored
+the Saxon succession and united right to might in England. Thus after a
+moment of darkness and downfall the seed of the righteous took root
+again and prospered, and the children of St. Margaret occupied both
+thrones. Edgar, like so many of his race, died childless; but he was
+peacefully succeeded by his brother Alexander, who, though as much
+devoted to church-building and good works as the rest of his family, was
+apparently a more warlike personage, since he was called Alexander the
+Fierce, an alarming title, and was apparently most prompt and
+thoroughgoing in crushing rebellion and other little incidents of the
+age. He was succeeded in his turn by the youngest of Margaret's sons,
+David, that "sair sanct for the crown," who covered Scotland with
+ecclesiastical foundations.
+
+    "He illumynyd in his dayes
+    His landys wyth kirkis and abbayis;
+    Bishoprychs he fand bot foure or three,
+    Bot or he deyd nyne left he."
+
+Among the many other foundations made by King David was the house of the
+Holy Rood which has been so familiar a name in Scottish history--built
+low in the valley at the foot of the surrounding hills and that castle
+in which the Queen died pressing the black rood--most precious
+possession--to her dying breast. Whether a recollection of that scene,
+which might well have impressed itself even on the memory of a child,
+and of the strange wild funeral procession, with all its associations of
+grief and terror, which had stumbled down the dangerous rocks in the
+mist thirty-five years before, was in David's mind, it would be vain to
+inquire. The black rood of itself, besides these touching and sacred
+associations, was a relic of almost unequalled sanctity, and well
+warranted the erection of a holy house for its guardianship and
+preservation. How far the street, which would be little more than a
+collection of huts, had crept down the Castle Hill towards the new
+monastery in the valley there is no evidence to show, but no doubt both
+the castle and the religious house were soon surrounded by those humble
+scattered dwellings, and David's charter itself makes it plain that
+already the borough of Edinburgh was of some importance. Part of the
+revenues of the monastery were to be derived from the dues and taxes of
+the town, and it was also endowed with "one half of the tallow, lard,
+and hides of the beasts slain in Edinburgh," an unsavoury but no doubt
+valuable gift. The canons of the Abbey of Holyrood, or Holyrood House as
+it is called from the beginning with a curious particularity, had also
+permission to build another town between themselves and Edinburgh, which
+would naturally cluster round the Canon's Gate--the road that led to St.
+Cuthbert's, at the farther end of the North Loch, where every man could
+say his mass; or more directly still to the dark little chapel upon the
+castle rock, made sacred by all its memorials of the blessed Margaret.
+The nucleus of the future capital is thus plainly apparent between the
+two great forces of that age, the Church, the great instrument of
+congregation and civilisation, and the Stronghold, in which at any
+moment of danger refuge could be taken. It is curious to realise the
+wild solitude of this historical ridge, with its rude houses coming into
+being one by one, the low thatched roofs and wattled walls which in the
+course of time were to give place to buildings so stately. The Canongate
+would be but a country road leading up towards the strong and gloomy
+gate which gave entrance to the _enceinte_ of the castle--itself like
+some eagle's nest perched high among the clouds.
+
+The line of Margaret went on till her sons held their Courts and dated
+their charters from Holyrood House, and Parliaments were held and laws
+made in the Castle of Edinburgh, and the scattered huts upon the Castle
+Hill had grown into a metropolis. They were a pious and in many respects
+an enlightened race, and they came to great honour and renown on both
+sides of the house. Maud, Margaret's daughter, became Queen of England,
+and her grand-daughter Empress, while Scotland developed and flourished
+in the hands of the saintly Queen's sons and their descendants. There
+are unfortunate individuals in the most prosperous races, and Scotland
+never sustained greater humiliation than in her attempts to rescue
+William called the Lion, a sorry lion for his kingdom, when he allowed
+himself to be caught in a trap and made the prisoner of the English
+king. But the children of Malcolm and Margaret retained their character
+through many generations, and were a Godfearing house, full of faith and
+devotion, careful of their people's interests, and dear to their hearts.
+They prospered as the virtuous and excellent so often do even in this
+world, and covered Scotland with endowments--endowments which indeed
+proved a snare to the church on after occasions, but which at that
+period were probably the best means in which money could be invested for
+the benefit of the people, since alms and succour and help and teaching
+in every way came from the monks in the primitive circumstances of all
+nations. They were not only the guardians of learning; they were
+examples in husbandry, in building, in every necessary craft; nursing
+the sick, receiving the stranger, and, as the very title-deed of their
+existence, feeding the poor. In those uncomplicated times there was no
+such fear of pauperising the natives of the soil as holds our hands now,
+and everything had to be taught to the primitive labourer, who might
+have to leave the plough in the middle of the furrow and be off and away
+on his lord's commands at any moment, leaving his wife and children to
+struggle on with the help of the good fathers who taught the boys, or
+the gentle sisters who trained the girls to more delicate work, feeding
+the widow and her brood. David and his brothers, and the devout kings
+who immediately followed, probably did what was best for their agitated
+kingdom in establishing so many centres of assured and quiet living,
+succour and peace, even if what was salvation for their age became the
+danger of another time. Those foundations continued through the whole of
+the period during which the lineal descendants of Margaret held the
+throne. Her lineage, it is true, has never died out: but the strain
+changed with the death of the last Alexander, and another change came
+over Scotland not so profound as that which attended the coming of the
+Saxon princess, yet great and remarkable--the end of an age of
+construction, of establishment, of knitting together; the beginning of a
+time disturbed with other questions, with complications of advancing
+civilisation, nobles and burghers, trade and war.
+
+[Illustration: ARMS OF QUEEN MARGARET OF SCOTLAND
+
+(From the Ceiling of St. Machar's Cathedral, Old Aberdeen)]
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+THE STEWARDS OF SCOTLAND
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+JAMES I. POET AND LEGISLATOR
+
+
+The growth of Edinburgh is difficult to trace through the mists and the
+tumults of the ages. The perpetual fighting which envelops the Scotland
+of those days as in the "great stour" or dust, which was Sir Walter
+Scott's conception of a battle, with gleams of swords and flashes of
+fire breaking through, offers few breaks through which we can see
+anything like the tranquil growth of that civic life which requires
+something of a steady and settled order and authority to give it being.
+The revolutions which took place in the country brought perpetual
+vicissitude to the Castle of Edinburgh, and no doubt destroyed and drove
+from their nests upon the eastern slopes of the rock the settlers who
+again and again essayed to keep their footing there. When the family of
+St. Margaret came to a conclusion, and the great historical struggle
+which succeeded ended in the establishment of Robert Bruce upon the
+throne, that great victor and statesman destroyed the Castle of
+Edinburgh with other strongholds, that it might not afford a point of
+vantage to the English invader or other enemies of the country's
+peace--a step which would seem to have been premature, though probably,
+in the great triumph and ascendency in Scotland which his noble
+character and work had gained, he might have hoped that at least the
+unanimity of the nation and its internal peace were secured, and that
+only an enemy would attempt to dominate the reconciled and united
+country. The Castle was, however, built up again and again,
+re-established and destroyed, a centre of endless fighting during the
+tumultuous reigns that followed, though it is only on the accession of a
+new race, a family so deeply connected with the modern history of Great
+Britain that no reader can be indifferent to its early appearances, that
+Edinburgh begins to become visible as the centre of government, the
+royal residence from whence laws were issued, and where the business of
+the nation was carried on. Following what seems to be one of the most
+wonderful rules of heredity--a peculiarity considerably opposed to the
+views which have been recently current on that subject--Robert Bruce was
+too great a man to have a son worthy of him: and after the trifling and
+treacherous David the inheritance of his kingdom came through his
+daughter to a family already holding a high place--the Stewards of
+Scotland, great hereditary officials, though scarcely so distinguished
+in character as in position. The tradition that their ancestor Banquo
+was the companion of Macbeth when the prophecy was made to him which had
+so great an effect upon that chieftain's career, and that to Banquo's
+descendants was adjudged the crown which Macbeth had no child to
+inherit, is far better known, thanks to Shakspeare, than any fact of
+their early history. It is probably another instance of that inventive
+ingenuity of the original chroniclers, which so cleverly imagined a
+whole line of fabulous kings, to give dignity and importance to the
+"ancient kingdom" thus carried back to inarticulate prehistoric ages. In
+this way the Stewarts, actually a branch of a well-known Norman family,
+were linked to a poetic and visionary past by their supposed
+identification with the children of Banquo, with all the circumstantial
+details of an elaborate pedigree. According to the legend, the dignity
+of Grand Steward of Scotland was conferred by Malcolm Canmore upon a
+descendant of the ancient thane, and the lineage of the family is traced
+through all the dim intervening ages with scrupulous minuteness. The
+title of Steward of Scotland was enough, it would seem, to make other
+lordships unnecessary, and gradually developed into that family surname
+with which we are now so familiar, which has wrought both Scotland and
+England so much woe, yet added so intense an interest to many chapters
+of national history. The early Stewards are present by name in all the
+great national events: but have left little characteristic trace upon
+the records, as of remarkable individuals. They took the cross in
+repeated crusades, carrying their official coat with its chequers, the
+brand of the Chief Servitor of the Scottish Court, through the wars of
+the Holy Land, till they came finally into the highest favour and
+splendour in the days of Bruce, whose cause, which was also the cause of
+the independence of Scotland, they maintained. Walter, who then held the
+office of Steward, was knighted on the field of Bannockburn. He was
+afterwards, as the story goes, sent to receive on the Border, after
+peace had been made, various prisoners who had been detained in England
+during the war, and among them Marjory Bruce, the daughter of the
+patriot-king. It would be easy to imagine the romance that followed: the
+young knight reverently escorting the young princess across the
+devastated country, which had not yet had time to recover its cruel
+wounds, but yet was all astir with satisfaction and hope: and how his
+account of what had happened in Scotland, and, above all, of that
+memorable field where he had won from the Bruce's own famous sword the
+touch of knighthood, would stir the maiden's heart. A brave young
+soldier with great hereditary possessions, and holding so illustrious an
+office, there was no reason why he should despair, however high-placed
+his affections might be. It takes a little from the romance to be
+obliged to acknowledge that he was already a widower; but marriages were
+early and oft-repeated in those days, and when Marjory Bruce died her
+husband was still only about twenty-three. It was thus that the crown
+came to the family of the Stewards of Scotland, the Stewarts of modern
+times: coming with a "lass" as her descendant said long afterwards, and
+likely to "go with a lass" when it was left to the infant Mary: though
+this last, with all her misfortunes, was the instrument not of
+destruction but transformation, and transferred that crown to a more
+splendid and enlarged dominion.
+
+It was in the reign of Marjory's son, the grandson and namesake of the
+Bruce, and of his successors, that Edinburgh began to be of importance
+in the country, slowly becoming visible by means of charters and
+privileges, and soon by records of Parliaments, laws made, and public
+acts proceeding from the growing city. Robert Bruce, though he had
+destroyed the castle, granted certain liberties and aids to the
+burghers, both in repression and in favour pursuing the same idea, with
+an evident desire to substitute the peaceful progress of the town for
+the dangerous domination of the fortress. Between that period and the
+reign of the second Stewart, King Robert III, the castle had already
+been re-erected and re-destroyed more than once. Its occupation by the
+English seemed the chief thing dreaded by the Scots, and it was again
+and again by English hands that the fortifications were restored--such a
+stronghold and point of defence being evidently of the first importance
+to invaders, while much less valuable as a means of defence. In the year
+1385 the walls must have encircled a large area upon the summit of the
+rock, the _enceinte_ probably widening, as the arts of architecture and
+fortification progressed, from the strong and grim eyrie on the edge of
+the precipice to the wide and noble enclosure, with room for a palace as
+well as a fortress, into which the great castles of England were
+growing. The last erection of these often-cast-down walls was made by
+Edward III on his raid into Scotland, and probably the royal founder of
+Windsor Castle had given to the enclosure an amplitude unknown before.
+The Scots king most likely had neither the money nor the habits which
+made a great royal residence desirable, especially in a spot so easily
+isolated and so open to attack; but he gave a charter to his burghers of
+Edinburgh authorising them to build houses within the castle walls, and
+to pass in and out freely without toll or due--a curious privilege,
+which must have made the castle a sort of _imperium in imperio_, a town
+within a town. The little closets of rooms which in a much later and
+more luxurious age must have sufficed for the royal personages whom fate
+drove into Edinburgh Castle as a residence, are enough to show how
+limited were the requirements in point of space of the royal Scots. The
+room in which James VI of Scotland was born would scarcely be occupied,
+save under protest, by a housemaid in our days. But indeed the Castle of
+Edinburgh was neither adapted nor intended for a royal residence. The
+abbey in the valley, from which the King could retire on receipt of evil
+tidings, where the winds were hushed and the air less keen, and gardens
+and pleasant hillsides accessible, and all the splendour of religious
+ceremonies within reach, afforded more fit and secure surroundings even
+for a primitive court. The Parliament met, however, within the fortress,
+and the courts of justice would seem to have been held within reach of
+its shelter. And thither the burghers carried their wealth, and built
+among the remains of the low huts of an earlier age their straight steep
+houses, with high pitched roofs tiled with slabs of stone, rising gray
+and strong within the _enceinte_, almost as strong and apt to resist
+whatever missiles were possible as the walls themselves, standing out
+with straight defiant gables against the northern blue.
+
+King Robert III was a feeble, sickly, and poor-spirited king, and he had
+a prodigal son of that gay, brilliant, attractive, and impracticable
+kind which is so well known in fiction and romance, and, alas! also so
+familiar in common life. David, Duke of Rothesay, was the first in the
+Scotch records who was ever raised to that rank--nothing above the
+degree of Earl having been known in the north before the son and brother
+of the King, the latter by the fatal title of Albany, brought a new
+degree into the roll of nobility. Young David, all unknowing of the
+tragic fate before him, was then a daring and reckless youth, held
+within bounds, as would appear, by the influence of a good and wise
+mother, and if an anxiety and trouble, at least as yet no disgrace to
+the throne. He was the contemporary of another madcap prince, far better
+known to us, of whose pranks we are all more than indulgent, and whose
+name has the attraction of youth and wit and freedom and boundless
+humour to the reader still. David of Scotland has had no one to
+celebrate his youthful adventures like him whose large and splendid
+touch has made Prince Hal[1] so fine a representative of all that is
+careless and gay in prodigal youth, with its noble qualities but half in
+abeyance, and abounding spirit and humour and reckless fancy making its
+course of wild adventure comprehensible even to the gravest. Perhaps the
+licence of the Stewart blood carried the hapless northern prince into
+more dangerous adventures than the wild fun of Gadshill and Eastcheap.
+And Prince David's future had already been compromised by certain sordid
+treacheries about his marriage when he first appears in history, without
+the force of character which changed Prince Hal into a conquering leader
+and strong sovereign, but with all the chivalrous instincts of a young
+knight. He had been appointed at a very early age Lieutenant of the
+Kingdom to replace his father, it being "well seen and kenned that our
+lorde the Kyng for sickness of his person may not travail to govern the
+realm," with full provision of counsellors for his help and guidance;
+which argues a certain confidence in his powers. But the cares of
+internal government were at this point interrupted by the more urgent
+necessity of repelling an invasion, a danger not unusual, yet naturally
+of an exciting kind.
+
+[1] We here take Shakspeare's Prince Hal for granted, as we feel disposed
+at all times to take the poet's word in defiance of history; though no
+doubt the historical argument is calculated to throw a chill of doubt
+upon that gay and brilliant image.
+
+On this occasion the invader was Henry IV of England, the father of the
+other prodigal, whose object is somewhat perplexing, and differs much
+from the usual raid to which the Scots were so well accustomed. So far
+as appears from all the authorities, his invasion was a sort of
+promenade of defiance or bravado, though it seems unlike the character
+of that astute prince to have undertaken so gratuitous a demonstration.
+He penetrated as far as Leith, and lay there for some time threatening,
+or appearing to threaten, Edinburgh Castle; but all that he seems to
+have done was to make proclamation by his knights and heralds in every
+town they passed through, of the old, always renewed, claim of
+allegiance to the English crown which every generation of Scots had so
+strenuously and passionately resisted. The fact that he was allowed to
+penetrate so far unmolested is as remarkable as that the invasion was an
+entirely peaceful one and harmed nobody. When Henry pitched his camp at
+Leith, Albany was within reach with what is called a great army, but did
+not advance a step to meet the invader--in face of whom, however, young
+David of Rothesay, and with him many potent personages, retired into
+Edinburgh Castle with every appearance of expecting a siege there. But
+when no sign of any such intention appeared or warlike movement of any
+kind, nothing but the gleam of Henry's spears, stationary day by day in
+the same place, and a strange tranquillity, which must have encouraged
+every kind of wondering rumour and alarm, the young Prince launched
+forth a challenge to the English king and host to meet him in person
+with two or three hundred knights on each side, and so to settle the
+question between them and save the spilling of Christian blood. Henry,
+it is said, replied with something of the sarcasm of a grave and
+middle-aged man to the hasty youth, regretting that Prince David should
+consider noble blood as less than Christian since he desired the
+effusion of one and not the other. The position of the young man shut up
+within the walls of the fortress in enforced inactivity while the hated
+Leopards of England fluttered in the fresh breezes from the Firth, and
+Henry's multitudinous tents shone in the northern sun--an army too great
+to be encountered by his garrison and noble attendants alone--while dark
+treason and evil intent in the person of Albany kept the army of
+Scotland inactive though within reach, was one to justify any such
+outbreak of impatience. David must have felt that should the invader
+press, there was little help to be expected from his uncle, and that he
+and his faction would look on not without pleasure to see the castle
+fall and the heir of Scotland taken or slain. But King Henry's object or
+meaning is more difficult to divine. Save for his proclamations, and the
+quite futile summons to King Robert to do homage, he seems to have
+attempted nothing against the country through which he was thus
+permitted to march unmolested. The little party of knights with their
+attendant squires and heralds riding to every market-cross upon the way,
+proclaiming to the astonished burghers or angry village folk the
+invader's manifesto, scarcely staying long enough to hear the fierce
+murmurs that arose--a passing pageant, a momentary excitement and no
+more--was a sort of defiant embassage which might have pleased the fancy
+of a young adventurer, but scarcely of a king so wary and experienced;
+and his own stay in the midst of the startled country is still more
+inexplicable. When the monks of Holyrood sent a mission to him to beg
+his protection, lying undefended as they did in the plain, his answer to
+them was curiously apologetic. "Far be it from me," he said, "to be so
+inhuman as to harm any holy house, especially Holyrood in which my
+father found a safe refuge.... I am myself half Scotch by the blood of
+the Comyns," added the invader. The account which Boece gives of the
+expedition altogether is amusing, and strictly in accord with all that
+is said by other historians, though they may not take the same amiable
+view. I quote from the quaint translation of Bellenden.
+
+    "A schort time efter King Harry came in Scotland with an army.
+    Howbeit he did small injury to the people thairof, for he desirit
+    nowt but his banner to be erected on their walls. Alwayis he was ane
+    plesand enneme, and did gret humaniteis to the people in all places
+    of Scotland where he was lodgit. Finally he showed to the lords of
+    Scotland that he come in their rialm more by counsel of his nobles
+    than ony hatred that he bore to Scottes. Soon efter he returnit
+    without any further injure in England."
+
+It is very seldom that a Scotch historian is able to designate an
+English invader as "a pleasant enemy," and whether there was some scheme
+which came to nothing under this remarkable and harmless raid, or
+whether it was only the carrying out of Henry's own policy "to busy
+giddy minds with foreign quarrels"
+
+    "Lest rest and lying still might make them look
+    Too near unto my state,"
+
+it is difficult to say. The nobles pent up in Edinburgh Castle with the
+hot-headed young Prince at their head did not know what to make of the
+pleasant enemy. The alarm he had caused, compelling their own withdrawal
+into the stronghold, wrath at the mere sight of him there in the heart
+of Scotland, the humiliating inaction in which they were kept by a foe
+which neither attacked nor withdrew, must have so chafed the Prince and
+his companions that the challenge thrown forth like a bugle from the
+heights to break this oppressive silence and bring about the lingering
+crisis one way or another must have been a relief to their excitement if
+nothing else. One of the bewildered reasons alleged for the invasion is
+that young David had written letters to France in which he called
+Bolingbroke a traitor--letters which had fallen into Henry's hands; but
+this is as unlikely to have brought about the invasion as any other
+frivolous cause, though no doubt it might make the young Prince still
+more eager to take upon himself the settling of the quarrel. We have no
+reason to suppose that any foreboding of his fate had crossed the mind
+of the youth at this period of his career, yet to watch the army of
+England lying below, and to know his uncle Albany close at hand, and to
+feel himself incapable--with nothing but a limited garrison at his
+command and no doubt the wise Douglas and the other great noblemen
+holding him back--of meeting the invader except by some such fantastic
+chivalrous expedient, must have been hard enough.
+
+And how strange is the scene, little in accordance with the habits and
+traditions of either country: the English camp all quiet below, as if on
+a holiday expedition, the Scots looking on in uneasy expectation, not
+knowing what the next moment might bring. The excitement must have grown
+greater from day to day within and without, while all the inhabitants,
+both citizens and garrison, kept anxious watch to detect the first sign
+of the enemy's advance. Henry, we are told, was called away to oppose a
+rising in Wales; not indeed that rising which we all know so well in
+which Prince Hal, more fortunate than his brother prodigal, had the
+means of showing what was in him; but even the suggestion approaches
+once more strangely and suggestively the names of the two heirs whose
+fate was so different--the one almost within sight of a miserable
+ending, the other with glory and empire before him. Prince Henry did not
+apparently come with his father to Scotland, or there might perhaps have
+been a different ending to the tale, and it would not have needed Harry
+Hotspur to rouse his namesake from his folly. There was, alas! no such
+noble rival to excite David of Scotland to emulation, and no such happy
+turning-point before him. No one, not even a minstrel or romancer, has
+remembered it in his favour that he once defied the English host for the
+love of his country and the old never-abandoned cause of Scottish
+independence. Already it would seem a prodigal who was a Stewart had
+less chance than other men. Whether some feeble fibre in the race had
+already developed in this early representative of the name, or whether
+it was the persistent ill-fortune which has always pursued them, making
+life a continual struggle and death a violent ending, the fatal thread
+which has run through their history for so many generations comes here
+into the most tragic prominence, the beginning of a long series of
+tragedies. It adds a softening touch to the record of David's unhappy
+fate that the death of his mother is recorded as one of the great
+misfortunes of his life. In the same year in which these public
+incidents occurred the Queen died, carrying with her the chief influence
+which had restrained her unfortunate son. She was Annabella Drummond, a
+woman of character and note, much lamented by the people. And to add to
+this misfortune she was followed to the grave within a year by the great
+Earl of Angus, David's father-in-law, and the Bishop of St. Andrews, to
+whom, as the Primate of Scotland, the young Prince's early instruction
+had probably been committed, as his loss is noted along with the others
+as a special disaster.
+
+Thus the rash and foolish youth was left to face the world and all its
+temptations with no longer any one whom he feared to grieve or whom he
+felt himself bound to obey. His father, a fretful invalid, had little
+claim upon his reverence, and his uncle Albany, the strong man of the
+family, was his most dangerous enemy, ever on the watch to clear out of
+his path those who stood between him and the throne: or such at least
+was the impression which he left upon the mind of his time. Thus
+deprived of all the guides who had power over him, and of the only
+parent whom he could respect, the young Duke of Rothesay, only
+twenty-three at most, plunged into all those indulgences which are so
+fatally easy to a prince. It is supposed that the marriage into which a
+false policy had driven him was not the marriage he desired. But this
+was a small particular in those days, as it has proved even in other
+times less rude. He ran into every kind of riot and dissipation, which
+the councillors appointed to aid him could not check. After no doubt
+many remonstrances and appeals this band of serious men relinquished the
+attempt, declaring themselves unable to persuade the Prince even to any
+regard for decency: and the ill-advised and feeble King committed to
+Albany, who had been standing by waiting for some such piece of good
+fortune, the reformation of his son. The catastrophe was not slow to
+follow. Rothesay was seized near St. Andrews on the pretence of stopping
+a mad enterprise in which he was engaged, and conveyed to Falkland,
+where he died in strict confinement, "of dysentery or others say of
+hunger" is the brief and terrible record--blaming no one--of the
+chroniclers, on Easter Eve 1401. It would be vain to attempt to add
+anything to the picture of the young unfortunate and his end which Sir
+Walter Scott has given. We can but rescue out of obscurity the brief
+moment in which that young life was at the turning-point and might have
+changed into something noble. Had his challenge been accepted, and had
+he died sword in hand outside the castle gates for Scotland and her
+independence, how touching and inspiring would have been the story! But
+fortune never favoured the Stewarts; they have had no luck, to use a
+more homely expression, such as falls to the lot of other races, and
+what might have been a legend of chivalry, the record of a young hero,
+drops to the horror of a miserable murder done upon a victim who foils
+even the pity he excites--a young debauchee almost as miserable and
+wretched as the means by which he died.
+
+There was this relic of generosity and honour about the unfortunate
+Prince, even in his fallen state, that he refused to consent to the
+assassination of the uncle, who found no difficulty, it would appear, in
+assassinating him; thus showing that wayward strain of nobleness among
+many defects and miseries which through all their tragic career was to
+be found even in the least defensible of his race.
+
+King Robert, who had for some time been retired from the troubles of the
+throne, a poor man, infirm in health and in purpose, virtually deposed
+in favour of the son who was Lieutenant or the brother who was Regent of
+the kingdom, and from whom all his domestic comfort had been taken as
+well as his power, was driven to desperation by this blow. He had lost
+his wife and his best counsellors; he had never been strong enough to
+restrain his son, nor resist his brother. David, his first-born and
+heir, the gay and handsome youth who was dazzling and delightful to his
+father's eyes even in his worst follies, had been, as no doubt he felt,
+delivered over to his worst enemy by that father's own tremulous hand;
+and the heart-broken old man in his bereavement and terror could only
+think of getting the one boy who remained to him safe and out of harm's
+way, perhaps with the feeling that Albany might once again persuade him
+to deliver over this last hope into his hands if he did not take a
+decisive step at once. The boy-prince was at St. Andrews, pursuing his
+studies, under the care of the bishop, when his brother was murdered;
+and from thence he was sent, when the preparations were complete, across
+the Firth to the Bass, there to await a ship which should take him to
+France. It was a forlorn beginning for the Prince of Scotland to be thus
+hastily taken from his books and the calm of a semi-monastic life and
+hurried off to that wild rock in the middle of the waves, probably with
+his brother's awful story thrilling in his ears and his terrible uncle
+within reach, pushing forward a mock inquiry in Parliament into the
+causes of Rothesay's death. How easy it would have been for that uncle
+with the supreme power in his hands to seize the boy who now stood alone
+between him and the throne; and with what burning at the heart, of
+impotent rage and fierce indignation, the little Prince, old enough to
+know and feel his father's helplessness, his own abandonment, and his
+brother's terrible end, must have been conveyed away to the sea
+stronghold among the bitter eastern blasts. James, the first of the
+name, was not one of the feeble ones of the family. With all the romance
+and poetry of his race he conjoined a great spirit and a noble
+intelligence, and even at twelve, in the precocious development of that
+age of blood, when even a royal stripling had to learn to defend himself
+and hold his own, he must have had some knowledge why it was that he had
+to be sent thus clandestinely out of his native country: he, the hope of
+Scotland, in terror for his life.
+
+The little garrison on the rock and the governor to whom the Prince's
+safety was confided must have watched with many an anxious vigil among
+the trading vessels stumbling heavily down the Firth from Leith, for
+that sail which was to carry their charge, into safety as they thought.
+Whether there was any navy belonging to the Crown at this period, or
+whether the King himself possessed some galley that could venture on the
+voyage to France, we are not told. But no doubt the ship when it arrived
+bore some sign by which the Prince's guardians, and unfortunately others
+besides, could recognise it. It could not be in any way a cheerful
+embarkation. It was in the dark days of Lent, in March, when the north
+is most severe: and the grey skies and blighting wind would be
+appropriate to the feelings of the exiles as they put forth from their
+rock amid the wild beating of the surf, anxiously watched by the
+defenders of the place, who no doubt had at the same time to keep up a
+vigilant inspection landward, lest any band of spearmen from Albany
+should arrive upon the adjacent shore in time to stop the flight. The
+grey rock, the greyer leaden sea, the whirling flight of wild sea birds
+white against the dark horizon, the little boat, kept with difficulty
+from dashing against the cliffs and rocky boulders, the attendant ship,
+driven up and down by the waves, and distant Fife, with its low hills in
+tones of neutral tint upon the horizon--would all increase the sadness
+of the parting: but no doubt there was a long breath of relief breathed
+by everybody about when the vessel continued its course, and slowly
+disappeared down the Firth. Whatever might happen elsewhere, at least
+the heir was safe.
+
+[Illustration: THE BASS ROCK]
+
+But this hope soon proved futile. Whether it was some traitorous
+indication from Albany, or information from another source, or pure
+hazard, which directed the English ships to this one vessel with its
+royal freight, it had but rounded the headland of Flamborough when it
+fell into the hands of the enemy. Palm Sunday 1405 was the date of this
+event, but it was not till the end of Lent 1423, almost exactly eighteen
+years after, that James came back. The calamity seemed overwhelming to
+the nation and to all who were not pledged to Albany throughout
+Scotland. It was the death-warrant of poor old King Robert in his
+retirement. He lingered out a weary year in sickness and sorrow, and
+when the anniversary of his son's loss came round again, died at
+Rothesay, in Bute, amid the lovely lakes and islets of western
+Scotland--a scene of natural peace and tranquillity, which, let us hope,
+shed some little balm upon the heart of the helpless superseded
+sovereign. Perhaps he loved the place because it had given his title to
+his murdered boy, the hapless David, so gallant and so gay. There is
+something more than ordinarily pathetic and touching in the misfortunes
+of the feeble in an age of iron. As civilisation advances they have
+means of protecting themselves, but not in a time which is all for the
+strongest. One son buried, like any peasant's son, ignobly in the Abbey
+of Lindores: the other in an English prison, at the mercy of the "auld
+enemy," whom Scotland had again and again resisted to the death: and his
+kingdom entirely gone from him, in the hands of his arrogant and
+imperious brother; there was nothing left for poor King Robert but to
+die.
+
+Thus James became at thirteen, and in an English castle, the King of
+Scotland. His prison, however, proved a noble school instead of an
+ignoble confinement to his fine and elevated spirit. The name of Stewart
+has never been so splendidly illustrated as by this patriotic and
+chivalrous Prince. No doubt it is infinitely to the credit of the
+English kings, both Henrys, IV and V, that he received from them all the
+advantages of education that could have been given to a prince of their
+own blood--advantages by which he profited nobly, acquiring every art
+and cultivation that belonged to his rank, besides that divine art which
+no education can communicate, and which is bestowed by what would seem a
+caprice, were it not divine, upon prince or ploughman as it pleases God.
+For above all his knightly and kingly qualities, his studies in chivalry
+and statesmanship, which prepared him to fill the throne of Scotland as
+no man save his great ancestor Bruce had yet filled it, James Stewart
+was a poet of no mean rank, not unworthy to be named even in the
+presence of Chaucer, and well worthy of the place which he has kept in
+literature. We need not enter here into that part of his history which
+concerns another locality full of great and princely associations--the
+noble Castle of Windsor, where the royal youth first saw and sang the
+lady of his love, "the fairest and the sweeteste yonge flour," of whom
+he has left one of the most tender and beautiful descriptions that is to
+be found in all the course of poetry. It is more to our present purpose
+to tell how, amid all the charms of that courtly residence, so far
+superior to anything which primitive Scotland could offer in the way of
+dignity or luxury, the boy-king remained faithful to his country, and
+maintained the independence for which she had so long struggled. It is
+said that the one advantage taken of his captivity and youth was to
+press the old oft-repeated arguments concerning the supposed supremacy
+of England, and the homage due from the kings of Scotland, upon the boy
+who bore that title sadly amid the luxury and splendour of what was
+still a prison, however gracious and kind his jailers might be. No
+circumstances could have been better suited to impress upon James's mind
+the conviction that submission was inevitable: and it would have been
+almost more than mortal virtue on the part of his captors had they not
+attempted to bring about so advantageous a conviction. King Henry V,
+under whom it is said the attempt was made, had been most generously
+liberal to and careful of the boy. He was a man so brilliant in
+reputation and success that a generous youth might well have been led by
+enthusiasm into any homage that was suggested, too happy to feel himself
+thus linked to so great a king; and James was very young, distant from
+his own country and all native advisers, his very life as well as his
+liberty in the power of those who asked this submission from him, and
+the force of circumstances so great that even his own people might have
+forgiven, and Holy Church could scarcely have hesitated to dispense him
+from keeping, an obligation entered into under such pressure. But the
+royal youth stood fast, and was not to be moved by any argument. Boece,
+whose authority is unfortunately not much to be depended upon, has a
+still more distinct and graphic story of judgment and firmness on the
+part of the young captive. He had been, according to this account, taken
+to France in the train of King Henry, who after the defeat the English
+had sustained near Orleans, chiefly through the valour of the Scots who
+had joined the French army, sent for James, and desired him "to pass to
+the Scots, and to command them to return to Scotland. King Harry
+promised, gif the said James brought this matter to good effect, not
+only to remit his ransom but to send him to Scotland with great riches
+and honour." James answered courteously, with expressions of goodwill
+and gratitude for the humanity shown towards him, but "I marvel not
+little," he said, "that thou considerest not how I have no power above
+the Scots so long as I am ane private man and holden in captivity." The
+chronicler adds: "Then said King Henry, 'Maist happy people shall they
+be that happens to get yon noble man to their prince.'" It is a pity
+that we have no more trustworthy proof of this charming story.
+
+As a matter of fact James attained his freedom only after the death of
+Albany, when the resistance or the still more effectual indifference to
+his liberation of the man who alone could profit by his death in prison,
+or by any unpopular step he might be seduced into making to gain his
+freedom, was dead, and had ceased from troubling. It would perhaps,
+however, be false to say that his imprisonment had done him nothing but
+good. So far as education went this was no doubt the case; but it is
+possible that in his subsequent life his reforms were too rapid, too
+thorough-going, too modern, for Scotland. The English sovereigns were
+richer, stronger, and more potent; the English commonalty more perfectly
+developed, and more capable of affording a strong support to a monarch
+who stood against the nobles and their capricious tyranny. James might
+not have been the enlightened ruler he was but for his training in a
+region of more advanced and cultivated civilisation; but had he been
+less enlightened, more on the level of his subjects, he might have had a
+less terrible end and a longer career.
+
+He returned to Scotland--with the bride of whom he had made so beautiful
+a picture, preserving her lovely looks and curious garments, and even
+the blaze of the Balas ruby on her white throat, to be a delight to all
+the after generations--in 1423, during Lent; and on Passion Sunday,
+which Boece calls _Care_ Sunday, entered Edinburgh, where there was "a
+great confluence of people out of all parts of Scotland richt desirous
+to see him: for many of them," says the chronicle, "had never seen him
+before, or else at least the prent of his visage was out of their
+memory." There must indeed have been but few who could recognise the
+little prince who had been stolen away for safety at twelve in the
+accomplished man of thirty in all the fulness of his development, a
+bridegroom, and accustomed to the state and prestige of a richer Court
+than anything that Scotland could boast, who thus came among them full
+of the highest hopes and purposes, and surrounded by unusual splendour
+and wealth. It is true there was the burden behind him of a heavy ransom
+to pay, but her English kindred, we may well believe, did not suffer the
+Lady Jane to appear in her new kingdom without every accessory that
+became a queen; and a noble retinue of adventurous knights, eager to try
+their prowess against the countrymen of that great Douglas whose name
+was still so well known, would swell the train of native nobles who
+attended the sovereign. Old Edinburgh comes to light in the glow of this
+arrival, not indeed with any distinctness of vision, but with something
+of the aspect of a capital filled to overflowing with a many-coloured
+and picturesque crowd. The country folk in their homespun, and all the
+smaller rank of gentlemen, with their wives in the French hoods which
+fashion already dictated, thronged the ways and filled every window to
+see the King come in. It was more like the new setting up of a kingdom,
+and first invention of that dignity, than a mere return: and eager
+crowds came from every quarter to see the King, so long a mere name, now
+suddenly blazing into reality, with all the primitive meaning of the
+word so much greater and more living than anything that is understood in
+it now. The King's Grace! after the long sway of the Regent, always
+darkly feared and suspected, and the feeble deputyship full of abuses of
+his son Murdoch, it was like a new world to have the true Prince come
+back, the blood of Bruce, the genuine and native King, not to speak of
+the fair Princess by his side and the quickened life they brought with
+them. From the gates of the castle where they first alighted, down the
+long ridge--through the half-grown town within its narrow walls, where a
+few high houses, first evidences of the growth of the wealthy burgher
+class, alternated with the low buildings which they were gradually
+supplanting--through the massive masonry of the Port with its
+battlements and towers to the country greenness and freshness of the
+Canon's Gate which led to the great convent of the valley, there could
+be no finer scene for a pageant. Holyrood was one of those great
+monastic establishments in which kings could find a lodgment more
+luxurious than in their own castles, and though there would scarcely
+seem as yet to have been any palace attached to that holy house, it was
+already a frequent residence of royalty, and with all its amenities of
+parks and gardens would be more fit for the reception of a young queen
+coming straight from princely Windsor than the narrow chambers in the
+castle. Among the many presents which she is said to have brought with
+her from England there is a special mention of fine tapestries for the
+adornment of her new habitation.
+
+Thus the royal pair took possession of their kingdom, and of the
+interest and affection of the lively and eager crowd for which Edinburgh
+has always been famous--a populace more like that of a French town than
+an English, though with impulses sometimes leading to tragedy. James
+would scarcely seem to have been settled in that part of the ancient
+establishment of the abbey which was appropriated to the lodging of the
+King, or to have exhausted the thanksgivings of Easter and the
+rejoicings of the restoration, when he set himself to inquire into the
+state of the country and of the royal finances, to which he had been so
+long a stranger. There was no Civil List in those days nor votes of
+supply, and the state of the Crown lands and possessions, "the King's
+rents," was doubly important in view of the ransom yet to be paid, of
+which only a fourth part had been remitted as the portion of the Queen.
+The result of this investigation was anything but satisfactory. It was
+found that during the reign of Albany many of these possessions had been
+alienated, made into fiefs, and bestowed upon the leaders of the faction
+which supported the Regent. "There was nothing left to sustain the
+Crown," says Boece, "except the customs of burrows. He was naething
+content of this," adds the chronicler with pithy conciseness, "howbeit
+he shewed good will (gud vult) for the time." James had already griefs
+enough against the family of his cousin without this startling
+discovery; and his "gud vult" would seem rather to have been the serious
+self-control of a man who was biding his time than any pretence of
+friendliness with his unfaithful relations and stewards. Amid the early
+pageants and festivities it is indeed recorded that he knighted Walter
+Stewart among the other candidates for that honour, the flower of the
+noble youth, a band of twenty-six gentlemen of the best houses in
+Scotland; but this was probably a step which was inevitable, as it would
+have been impossible to leave his own nearest relative out of the list
+until he had finally made up his mind how the family of Albany was to be
+treated. It is stated that the complaints and grievances of the people
+brought him to a decision on this point, and helped him to carry out his
+revenge upon the house which had, in popular belief at least, the guilt
+of his brother's blood upon it as well as that of his own long
+confinement. Walter Stewart, whose only other appearance in history is
+that of a rebellious and undutiful son whom his father was incapable of
+keeping in subjection, was arrested in Edinburgh Castle about a year
+after James's restoration, and after an interval of several months his
+arrest was followed by that of Duke Murdoch and his son Alexander, both
+of whom were also seized in Edinburgh Castle, where they had probably
+retired for safety. A few of their retainers arrested with them were
+speedily liberated, and it became apparent that upon this doomed family
+alone was King James's wrath directed. They were tried at Stirling, by a
+court of their peers, under the presidency of the King himself. The
+offences charged against them were misgovernment and oppression of the
+people, the greatest of public sins: but it was no less the end of a
+long tragedy. The younger branch of the race had been engaged in a
+struggle with the elder for the last two generations at least: and it
+had been the royal line that had suffered most during that period.
+Bitterly, in blood and heartbreak and long suppression, they had been
+weighed down under superior force: but now the time of reprisals had
+come. As they stood there confronting each other, the stern young King
+on one side and his kinsmen on the other, with a quarter of a century of
+wrong between them, the shadow of the young prince at Falkland, and the
+old father at Rothesay, and the eighteen years of captivity full in the
+minds of all, what a day of reckoning at last! It makes the retribution
+almost more tragic, like the overwhelming fate of the Greek drama, that
+the men upon their trial had nothing to do with these crimes, unless it
+might be the last. Murdoch of Albany had not exerted himself to liberate
+James, but that was his only evident offence, and his sons were not
+instrumental, so far as appears, in any injury to their royal cousin.
+The sins of the fathers were to be visited upon the children. We are
+told that the two sons, young men in the flower of their youth, were
+executed one day, and their father and maternal grandfather, a very old
+man, the Earl of Lennox, whose share in the matter it is difficult to
+make out, on the next. Thus James settled summarily the question between
+himself and his kinsmen. The house of Albany ended upon the scaffold,
+and however just their doom might have been, there was something
+appalling in this swift and sweeping revenge, carried out rigorously
+without a sign of hesitation by a young king, a happy bridegroom, an
+accomplished and gay cavalier.
+
+It must indeed be allowed, notwithstanding his poetry and his evident
+love of everything that was lovely and of good report, that the reign of
+the first James was a stern one. Every witness agrees as to his
+accomplishment, and that he was the flower of knighthood, of splendour
+and courtesy, the most chivalrous, the most daring, the most graceful
+and gracious of all his Court: and his genius as a poet is even more
+generally acknowledged. The King's "Quhair" as a poem is quite capable
+of standing on its own merits, and needs no additional prestige as the
+performance of a king. Had he been but a wandering minstrel Chaucer
+would have had no need to be ashamed of his pupil. It is full of
+delightful descriptions of nature and love and youth: the fresh morning
+as it rises upon the castled heights, the singing of the birds and
+fluttering of the leaves, the impulse of a young heart even in the
+languor of imprisonment to start up and meet the sun, with all the
+springs of new life which at that verdant season come with every new
+day--the apparition of the beautiful one suddenly appearing in the old
+immemorial garden with all its flowers, herself the sweetest and the
+fairest of flowers, all are set before us, with a harmony and music not
+to be excelled. The young Prince chafing at his imprisonment, dreaming
+of all the fantastic wonderful things he might do were he free, yet
+still so full of irrepressible hope that his impatience and his longings
+are but another form of pleasure, takes shape and identity as distinct
+as if he had been one of the figures in that famous pilgrimage to
+Canterbury, which had been part of his training in this delightful art.
+If James had never reigned at all he would still have lived through all
+these centuries in the guise in which he stood at his window on that May
+morning, and suddenly, amid his youthful dreams, beheld the lovely
+vision of the Lady Jane emerging from under the young spring verdure of
+the trees. There is a certain window not generally supposed to be that
+at which the royal captive stood--a window in the Norman Tower of
+Windsor Castle, now fitly garnished and guarded by sympathetic hands,
+from which the spectator looking out upon the deep moat-garden
+underneath in the circle about the old donjon will scarcely be able to
+withstand the thrill of feeling which attends a poetic scene and
+incident fully realised. Nothing could be more green, more fresh, more
+full of romance and association, than this garden where all is youthful
+as the May, yet old in endless tradition, the garden of the Edwards and
+Henrys, where Chaucer himself may have thought over his accounts or
+taken the delightful image of his young squire "synging" who was, "or
+flouting all the day" from among some group of bright-faced lads in
+their bravery, where the countess who dropped her garter may have
+wandered, and the hapless Henry, the mild and puny child who was born
+there while James was undergoing his far from harsh captivity, played.
+James Stewart's name, had he been no king, would have been associated
+with this place, as that of his master in poetry is with the flowery
+ways of Kent.
+
+Nor was his inspiration derived alone from the well of English
+undefiled. A still more wonderful gift developed in him when he got home
+to his native country. Though the tones of Scotch humour were much less
+refined, and its utterances at that early period could be scarcely more
+than the jests and unwritten ballads of the populace, yet his early
+acquaintance with them must have lingered in the young Prince's mind,
+acquiring additional zest from the prepossessions of exile and the
+longing for home. And when the polished singer of the King's "Quhair"
+found himself again in his native land he seems to have burst forth with
+the most genuine impulse into the broad fun, rustical and natural and
+racy of the soil, which perhaps was more congenial to his Scottish
+audience. "Peblis to the Play" and "Christis Kirk on the Green" are
+poems full of the very breath of rural life and the rude yet joyous
+meetings of the country folk at kirk and market, which with wonderfully
+little difference of sentiment and movement also inspired Burns. He must
+have had a mind full of variety and wide human sympathy almost
+Shakspearian, who could step from the musings of Windsor and the
+beautiful heroine, all romance and ethereal splendour, to the lasses in
+their gay kirtles, and Hob and Raaf with their rustic "daffing," as true
+to the life as the Ayrshire clowns of Burns, and all the clumsy yet
+genial gambols of the village festival. It is one of the most curious
+and least to be expected transformations of poetic versatility--for it
+is even amazing how he could know the life into which he thus plunged
+joyous, as if he had been familiar with it from his childhood. King
+James was not without an object amid all the laughter and the pranks of
+his holiday. The King's cheerful ridicule of the clumsy fellows who
+could not draw the bow was intended, with a prick of scorn under the
+laughter, to rouse up his rustic lieges to emulation, not to be behind
+the southern pock-puddings whose deadly arrows were, in every encounter
+between Scots and English, the chief danger to the fighting men of the
+north. It is curious that this difference should have existed and
+continued with such obstinacy through all these fighting centuries; the
+Scotch spearmen were all but invulnerable in their steady square, like a
+rock, but they had little defence against the cloth-yard shafts of the
+English bowmen, which neither exhortation nor ridicule, neither prizes
+to win nor disaster to fear, could teach them to adopt. James laboured
+hard, in ways more practical than his poems, to introduce this new arm,
+but in vain. It was kept up languidly in holiday contentions, like that
+of Christis Kirk on the Green, while his life lasted; but when his reign
+was over and the momentary stimulus withdrawn the bows were all thrown
+away.
+
+The King's command of this humorous vein, so dear to his people, with
+its trenchant sketches from the life and somewhat rough jests, is
+wonderful, when his courtly breeding and long separation even from such
+knowledge of rustic existence as a prince is likely to obtain is
+considered. And the many-sided nature which made these humours so
+familiar and easy to him is a strange discovery in the midst of all the
+tragic circumstances of his life and reign. The union of the most
+delicate poetry and romance with that genial whim and fancy is unusual
+enough: but it is still more unusual to find the stern Justiciar,
+avenger of blood and redresser of wrong, the reconstructer of a
+distracted country, capable not only of the broad fun of the rustic
+ballad-maker, but of so tolerant and humorous a view of the humble
+commons, the underlying masses upon which society is built. For the
+first aspect of affairs in Scotland could not be a cheerful one:
+although it was rather with the nobles and gentlemen, the great
+proprietors of the country, who had to be summoned to exhibit their
+charters and prove their titles, partly no doubt with the view of
+discovering what Crown lands had been alienated by the Albany party,
+that the King's quarrel was, than with the humbler subjects of the
+nation.
+
+Yet there is no doubt, with all these lights and softening influences of
+character and genius, that his reign was a stern one. James had
+everything to reform in the country to which he came with so many new
+ideas and so enlarged a knowledge of what the internal economy of a
+nation might be made. It is rather against the general historical
+estimate of the talents and power of the Regent Albany that the new King
+should have found, as appears, so much to do for the reorganisation of
+the commonwealth--regulating the laws, appointing courts of justice,
+inquiring into the titles of property, and in every other way giving
+consistency and order to the affairs of Scotland. However, the lavish
+grants made to the great Scots lords and the licence given them to rule
+their vassals as they pleased arose not from weakness but from Albany's
+deliberate policy of securing a strong party on his side, a policy
+exactly opposed to that of James, whose heart was set on subduing these
+fierce nobles, and perhaps of developing the people at large, the nation
+itself, if that is not too modern an ambition. The reign of Law, broken
+and disturbed by a hundred storms, but still henceforward with a
+statute-book to fall back upon and some fitful authority at its command,
+began in Scotland in his day.
+
+There are some curious details in the _Scotichronicon_ about the taxes,
+now, it would seem, for the first time levied upon the general mass of
+the people. In 1424, the year after James's return, a tax of twelvepence
+in the pound was imposed by the Parliament at Perth, for the maintenance
+of the King's state and payment of his ransom, upon all goods, lands,
+and annual revenues of whatever description, both spiritual and
+temporal, which was passed with the consent of the estates, no doubt
+under the stimulus of the general rejoicing at the King's return. This
+impost was to last for two years. An income tax so general and
+all-embracing could scarcely be expected to be popular, but for the
+first year it was paid, we are told, with readiness, certain of the
+greatest nobles in the kingdom being appointed in their various
+districts to the office of collecting. That the Church should have taken
+her share in the payment of this tax says much for the loyalty of the
+Scotch priesthood and their unity with the people at this crisis of the
+national history. In the second year, however, grumblings arose. It is
+comprehensible that a nation unaccustomed to this pressure should
+respond to it in a moment of enthusiasm, yet become uneasy under the
+repetition when the enthusiasm had probably died away, especially if a
+fear arose that it might become permanent. King James, however, adopted
+a course not at all usual with governments when the power to exact has
+once been placed in their hands. When the popular murmur came to his
+ears he stopped at once the unpopular demand. How the paying of the
+ransom was carried on, and how the maintenance of the King's state we
+need not inquire. The Crown lands were no doubt extensive still. Some
+years later another experiment of the same kind was made; the new tax,
+however, being only twopence in the pound, and its object the payment of
+expenses of a mission sent to France to negotiate a marriage between the
+baby-princess Margaret and the equally juvenile dauphin--an object which
+does not appear to have appealed to the sympathies of the people, since
+we are told that it was the cause of immediate murmurs, the King not
+only stopped the unpopular tax but returned the money to those who had
+paid it--a most admirable but seldom followed example.
+
+The curious system afterwards employed by all the Scots kings of tours
+or "raids" of justice throughout the kingdom seems to have originated in
+James's energetic reign, but he carried not only the officers of the
+law, but occasionally his entire Parliament with him, moving about to
+the different centres of Scotland with great impartiality. Sometimes
+they met at Edinburgh, in the Great Parliament Hall in the Castle, and
+made "many good laws if they could have been kept," says the chronicler;
+sometimes at Perth, a favourite residence of the King; and on one
+memorable occasion so far north as Inverness, where, impatient of
+continual disquietude in the Highlands, James went to chastise the
+caterans and bring them within the reach of law. This he did with a
+severe and unsparing hand, seizing a number of the most eminent chiefs
+who had been invited to meet him there, and executing certain dangerous
+individuals among them without mercy. These summary measures would seem
+to have borne immediate fruit in the almost complete subjugation of the
+Highlands. But it was hard to reckon with such a restless element as the
+clans, and hanging and heading were very ineffectual measures among
+people with whom "another for Hector" was the simplest suggestion of
+natural law.
+
+It was after this stern Parliament of Inverness that there occurred at
+Edinburgh one of the most curious and picturesque scenes that it is
+possible to imagine. One of the chiefs tried at that assize was the
+greatest and most important of all, the Lord of the Isles, sometimes
+called Donald and sometimes Alexander by the chroniclers, who on his
+promise to amend his ways, and no longer harbour caterans or head
+forays, was, no doubt out of respect for his almost princely position,
+set at liberty. But no sooner was the fierce chieftain set free, "within
+a few days after," says the chronicler, than he took and burnt the town
+of Inverness, in which the Parliament had been held, and showed his
+impenitence by an utter abuse of the mercy accorded to him. When,
+however, he heard that the King himself with all the forces of the
+kingdom was coming against him, Donald hastily disbanded his men and
+took refuge in the watery fastnesses of his islands: and it would seem
+that he must have felt the tide of national sentiment to be against him,
+and his power not equal to make any stand against all the force of
+peaceful and law-abiding Scotland under the energetic new King. The wily
+Highlander made his submission in the way which, no doubt, he thought
+most likely to disarm authority and gain exemption. He choose Easter
+day, the greatest of religious festivals, for his appearance as a
+penitent, and in the middle of the service in the Chapel of Holyrood
+appeared suddenly, almost without clothing, and knelt down before the
+King "where he was sittand at his orison," praying for grace in the name
+of Him who rose from the dead that day. So strange an interruption in
+the midst of all the glories of the Easter mass throws a strange and
+wild light upon the varieties of national life in Scotland. That
+half-savage figure, with plaid and weapons cast aside, defenceless, at
+the King's mercy, in all the primitive abandonment yet calculation of
+early patriarchal times; while all that the art and culture of a
+splendid age could do to give magnificence to the most imposing
+ceremonial of the Church surrounded this strange apparition, the incense
+rising, the music pealing, the Court in all its glory of flashing jewels
+and splendid stuffs filling the lofty area. Like some wild god of the
+mists suddenly gleaming through the fragrant smoke between the bishop's
+white robes and the kneeling King, what a strange interruption to the
+mass! The King, at the request of the Queen we are told, gave him his
+life, as the adjuration addressed to him and all the force of the
+surroundings gave James little choice but to do; for he could not have
+offended the sentiment of his people by refusing the boon which was
+demanded in that Name, however doubtful he might be of the expediency of
+granting it. "Then the King began to muse," says Boece. He must have
+been devout indeed to have been able to return to the course of the
+service with the Islesman before him on his knees, and all that wild
+half of the kingdom, with its dangerous habits and fierce tribal laws,
+thus suddenly made visible--a spectre which had often before troubled
+the King's peace. James had not to learn for the first time that
+apparent submission from such a suppliant did not necessarily mean any
+real change, and must have thoroughly felt the hollowness of that
+histrionic appearance and all the difficulties which beset his own
+action in the matter. The conclusion was, that the life of the Lord of
+the Isles was spared, but he was committed to safe keeping in the strong
+Castle of Tantallon, with, however, the unfailing consequence, that his
+brother took the field with all his caterans in his stead.
+
+James reigned in Scotland for thirteen years--a reign full of commotion
+and movement, by which many in high place were humiliated, the spoils of
+the feudal tyrants taken from them, and the wrongs of the suffering
+commonalty redressed, proceedings which procured for the King many
+enemies among the nobility before the force of popular sentiment was
+strong enough to balance this opposition by its support. He began in
+Scotland that struggle which for some time had been going on in England
+against the power of the nobles, who were still in the north something
+like a number of petty kings ruling in their own right, making little
+account of national laws, and regarding the King with defiance as almost
+a hostile power. One of the greatest risks of such a struggle is that it
+raises now and then a fiery spirit stung by the sense of injury and the
+rage of deprivation into a wild passion of revenge which bursts every
+restraint. The Grahams of Strathearn in the north had fallen specially
+under the rectifying process of James's new laws of property: and out of
+this house there suddenly arose the tragic figure of an avenger whose
+brief but terrible career occupies but a single page in history, yet
+contains all the elements of a fatal drama. Sir Robert Graham, of whose
+antecedents there is little record, was not the head of the house, but a
+younger brother of daring character, and one of those fanatics of race
+to whom the glory of their house is a religion. The first we hear of him
+is a sudden appearance in the Parliament of January 1435, when he made a
+fiery and violent speech, ending by an impeachment of the King himself
+for injustice and robbery. Such an assault would find little support in
+the public assembly of the States, in the awe of the royal presence, and
+Graham had to escape for his life, finding means of flight into the
+Highlands, the ever-ready refuge for rebels. There he launched wild
+threats against James, which the King, probably well accustomed to
+missiles of the kind, paid little attention to. The monarch was warned
+too, we are told, by another wild apparition, which suddenly appears out
+of the mists for this purpose--a Highland witch of the order of those
+who drove Macbeth's ambition to frenzy, but whose mission now was to
+warn James of the mischief brewing against him. The King was brave and
+careless, used to the continual presence of danger, keeping his
+Christmas merrily at Perth with all the sports and entertainments with
+which it was possible to cheat the gloomy weather, and made little but
+additional mirth both of the prophecy and the threats. Evidently the
+Court found pleasure in the fair city on the Tay. They were still
+lingering there, having taken up their residence in the monastery of the
+Black Friars, at the end of February. In Scotland as elsewhere the great
+religious houses seem to have been the best adapted to give hospitality
+to kings. It was long after this date before anything that could be
+called an independent royal residence was built at Holyrood itself: for
+generations the King and Court were but guests in the stately abbey,
+which was, like the monastery of the Black Friars, so convenient and
+commodious a house both for entertainment and shelter that its great
+chambers became the natural, as they were the most stately and pleasant,
+lodging that could be provided for a monarch.
+
+The tragedy that followed is well known. At the end of a pleasant
+evening when there had been music--in which James himself was the first
+connoisseur in Scotland, inventing, some say, the national lilt, the
+rapidly rising and falling strain which is so full of pathos yet so
+adaptable to mirth--"and other honest solaces of grete pleasance and
+disport," the sound of trampling feet and angry voices broke upon the
+conventual stillness outside and the cheerful talk of the friendly group
+within. The King was taken at a disadvantage, apparently without even a
+gentleman of his Court near him, nothing but his wife and her ladies
+lingering for a last moment of pleasant conversation before they went to
+bed. It is easy to imagine the horror with which the little party must
+have listened to the rush of the savage band, hoping perhaps at first
+that it was but some tumult in the street, or affray between the
+townsfolk and the caterans--never very far off and often threatening St.
+John's town--till the cries and clashing of the arms came nearer, and
+wild torch-light flared through the high windows and proved the fatal
+object of the raid. The groans of a few easily despatched sentinels, the
+absence of any serious opposition or stand in defence, the horrible
+discovery of bolts and bars removed and the King at the mercy of his
+enemies, must have followed in a few terrible moments. No incident in
+history is better known than that piteous attempt of one distracted
+girl, a Douglas, born of a heroic race, to bar the door with her own
+slim arm, thrusting it through the holdfasts from which the bolt had
+been taken away: poor ineffectual bar! yet enough to gain a moment when
+moments were so precious, and while there was still a chance of saving
+the King.
+
+The narrative of the death struggle, and the distracted attempts to find
+a place of concealment for the victim, are too heartrending to be
+repeated here. James fell, it is said, with sixteen wounds in him,
+hacked almost to pieces, yet facing his murderers so desperately that
+some of them bore the marks of his dying grip when they were brought to
+the scaffold to be killed in their turn with every circumstance of
+horror conceivable some time later. The execution of these miserable
+traitors, one of them the King's own uncle Athole, took place at
+Edinburgh for the greater solemnity and terror of the punishment, which
+was accomplished by every kind of torture. The Queen, too, after the
+horrible scene of which she had been a witness, and almost more than a
+witness--for she had thrown herself before her husband and had been
+wounded in the terrible struggle--gathered her children and fled to
+Edinburgh Castle to put the little heir of the kingdom, now James II, in
+security. The hapless child was sadly crowned at Holyrood at six years
+old, with a hastily adapted ceremonial, the first of many such
+disastrous rites to come.
+
+The time of James's reign had been one of rising prosperity throughout
+the realm. Law and order had been established in recognised courts and
+tribunals, the titles of property had been ascertained and secured, not
+without loss, no doubt, to many arrogant lords who had seized upon stray
+land without any lawful title, or on whom it had been illegally bestowed
+during the Albany reign--but to the general confidence and safety. And
+the condition of the people had no doubt improved in consequence. It is
+difficult to form any estimate of what this condition was. All foreign
+witnesses give testimony of an unpleasing kind, and represent the
+country as wretched, squalid, and uncivilised: but on the other hand
+nothing can be more unlike this report than the most valuable and
+unintentional evidence furnished by King James's own poems, with their
+tale of village merry-makings and frays which convey no impression of
+abject poverty, nor even of that rudest level of life where material
+wants are so pressing as to exclude all lighter thoughts. "On Mayday,"
+says King James, "when everybody is bound to Peblis to the play,"
+
+    "At Beltane quhan ilke bodie bownis
+         To Peblis to the play,
+    To heir the singing and sweit soundis,
+         The solace suth to say.
+    Be firth and forest furth they found,
+         They graythit them full gay;
+    God wot that wald they do that stound,
+         For it was thair feist day
+                              They said
+         Of Peblis to the Play."
+
+All the lasses of the west, he goes on to tell us, were up at cockcrow,
+and no men might rest for the chatter and the noise of their
+preparations. One cried that her curch was not starched enough, another
+that a hood was best, another bewailed herself as "so evil sunburnt"
+that she was not fit to be seen. The young folk stream along "full bold"
+with the bagpipes blowing, and every village adding its contingent, "he
+before and she before to see which was most gay."
+
+    "Some said that they were mercat folk,
+    Some said the Quene of May
+                           Was cumit
+    Of Peblis to the Play."
+
+When they arrive at the "taverne hous" they give orders that the board
+be served, and to see that the napery is white, "for we will dyn and
+daunce." At "Christis Kirk on the Green" there is a similar description,
+the lasses coming out as before, "weshen clean," in their new grey
+kirtles "well prest with many plaits," with their gloves of doeskin and
+morocco shoes. All these incidental traits, and the atmosphere of the
+merry ballads, though both end in a fray, contradict with vigour the
+cold and wretched picture given by outsiders of a country where the
+people warmed themselves by burning sulphureous stones dug out of the
+ground, where the houses had a cow's hide stretched for a door, and all
+was squalid misery and nakedness. There was plenty of fighting going on
+it is evident--not a lowland fair without its broken heads (a habit
+that, according to Sir Walter Scott, no mean authority, lasted into the
+nineteenth century)--and much oppression, the great lords reigning like
+absolute tyrants in the midst of subjects without resource or
+protection; but the case of the peasantry notwithstanding all these
+evils does not seem to have been a bad one. A certain vigorous capacity
+of revival, which history shows us continually as existing on the broad
+level of the soil, must have brought them back to rough ease and
+comfort, and the freedom of the natural healthful atmosphere which makes
+itself apparent in transcripts of life so little likely to be forced or
+optimistic. In all times and circumstances there can be little doubt
+that the amount of simple enjoyment to be got out of life, especially by
+the young, who form at least the half of every community, far exceeds
+the elements of wellbeing which outsiders see in it. And the protection
+of the Church, the comparative quiet to be enjoyed on church lands, the
+charities and succour of the cloister, must have made an incalculable
+addition to the possibilities of existence. Everything in James's reign
+was calculated to increase the stability and good order which are the
+best guarantees of national life; even his severities cultivating a
+sense of security in the weak and a wholesome consciousness of the
+necessity of self-restraint in the strong. For the first time for many
+generations the nobles were kept within bounds, and exceptional
+cruelties became if not impossible, yet of so certain discovery and
+punishment that lesser tyrants at least must have trembled. The law that
+might makes right fell into temporary disuse, and a better law, that of
+the courts that sat periodically over all the kingdom, and--appealing
+still more strongly to the imagination--a king that shut his ears to no
+petition and interfered with a strong hand to right the wronged, began a
+new era for the commonalty of Scotland. Even the unfavourable
+description so often quoted of Eneas Silvius, reports the common people
+as having "abundance of flesh and fish," no small ingredient of
+wellbeing, and records rather a complete absence of luxuries than that
+want which reduces the vital strength of a nation. The same authority
+tells of exportations of "hides, wool, salt fish, and pearls," the
+latter a curious item, although there were as yet no manufactures, and
+even such necessaries as horse-shoes and every kind of harness had to be
+imported from Flanders. But the Scots in their farmhouses and cottages
+made the cloth with which they were clothed, and their "blew caps," the
+well-known blue bonnet which has lasted to our own days. And they
+retained the right which, according to her monkish chronicler, St.
+Margaret had been the first to secure for them--of immunity from all
+military requisitions, and even, which is a curious contradiction of the
+supposed tyrannies of the nobles, held an absolute property in their own
+goods which out of the island of Great Britain no peasantry in the world
+possessed. The French allies who were in Scotland in the end of the
+fourteenth century were struck with angry consternation to hear
+themselves hailed by a set of clodhoppers, and bidden to keep the paths
+and not trample down the growing corn, and to find that, however willing
+the Scots men-at-arms might be to harry England when occasion offered,
+not the greatest lord in the French contingent could carry off a cow or
+a brace of pullets without compensation. We cannot but think that the
+country in which the peasant's barnyard was thus defended was at least
+as forward in the best elements of civilisation as those in which there
+were hangings of arras and trenches of silver, but no security for
+anything in homesteads or workshop which might be coveted by the
+seigneur.
+
+[Illustration: HOLYROOD]
+
+Edinburgh, as has been said, never seems to have been a favourite
+habitation of this enlightened and accomplished Prince. Perhaps Queen
+Jane found the east winds too keen on the heights, or the Abbey of the
+Holy Rood too low in the valley. The heir was born there it is true, and
+we have note of various Parliaments and visits, but no settled residence
+in the capital. One incident is mentioned by the chroniclers which must
+have afforded a picturesque scene, when the King himself presided,
+before the gates of Edinburgh Castle, at a duel between a knight called
+Henry Knokkis or Knox (curious precursor in the dimness of distance of
+another of his name!), who had been accused by an Edinburgh burgess of
+treasonable speeches against the King--and his accuser. But who this
+accuser was, and by what privilege he was allowed to meet a gentleman
+and knight in single combat we have no information. Perhaps he was
+himself of noble blood, a younger son, a man before his time, seeking
+the peaceful profits of trade instead of those of the marauder, as it
+has become the fashion of a later age to do. It is almost impossible not
+to fancy that there must have been a touch of the burlesque in this
+combat, which James himself interfered to stop, separating the
+combatants. He was very careless it would seem of treasonable speeches,
+apt to treat them lightly and very probably smiled a little at the zeal
+of the citizen who was more jealous of his honour than he was himself.
+The platform before the gates would still make a splendid area for any
+feat of arms, if the winds did not interfere before the King and blow
+the combatants away: and the old-world crowd with their many colours,
+the jerkins slashed and embroidered with the blazon of all the great
+families in Scotland, the plumed caps and dazzling helmets of courtier
+and knight, the border of blue bonnets outside, and all the shining
+array of fair ladies around and behind the throne, would present a more
+striking picture than the best we could do nowadays. Let us hope the sun
+shone and warmed the keen clear air, and threw into high relief the
+towers and bastions against the northern blue.
+
+Edinburgh by this time had grown into the proportions of a town. The
+houses which the citizens had the privilege of building within the
+castle precincts would appear to have been low, to secure the protection
+of the walls; and by certain precautionary regulations for their
+preservation from fire it would seem that many of them were still
+thatched. The King's residence there, judging from the straitened
+accommodation, which was all that existed in a much more advanced
+period, must have been small and poor, though there already existed a
+Parliament Hall, in which probably other great assemblies were held. The
+city walls were continued along the crest of the ridge in narrow lines,
+deflecting a little only on the south side, where the limits were broken
+by several wealthy and well-cultivated enclosures where brotherhoods
+were established--White and Black Friars, sons of Augustine and Dominic,
+with their great detached houses, their gardens always an example of
+husbandry, and chapels filling the air with pleasant sound of bells.
+King James had himself endowed, besides many existing foundations, a
+monastery for the Franciscans or Grey Friars, which has always continued
+to be one of the chief ecclesiastic centres of Edinburgh. It was so fine
+a building, as the story goes, that the humble-minded Minors declined at
+first to take possession of it as being too magnificent for an Order
+vowed to poverty; though as their superior was a monk from Cologne, sent
+for by the King on account of his learning and sanctity, and accustomed
+to the great convents of the Continent, such an objection is curious. On
+the south side of the town, at some distance outside the walls, on the
+platform afterwards occupied by the buildings of the old High School,
+stood amid its blossoming gardens the Church of St. Mary in the Field,
+afterwards so fatally known as the Kirk of Field, a great house so
+extensive and stately that it had already served on several occasions as
+a royal lodging. St. Giles's, one of the oldest foundations of all,
+stood among its graves, at the foot of the Castle Hill in the centre of
+the life of ancient Edinburgh, as it does still. These clusters of
+sacred buildings, encircled by their orchards and gardens, made a fringe
+of verdure, of charity and peace, sanctuaries for the living and
+resting-places for the dead, round the strong and dark fortifications of
+the little royal town, which hitherto had held for its life upon that
+ridge of rock, a dangerous eminence lying full in every invader's way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+JAMES II: WITH THE FIERY FACE
+
+
+It is clear that the public opinion of Scotland, so far as there was
+such a thing in existence, had no sympathy whatever with the murderers
+of James. The instruments of that murder were in the first place
+Highland caterans, with whom no terms were ever held and against whom
+every man's hand was armed. And the leaders who had taken advantage of
+these wild allies against their natural monarch and kindred were by the
+very act put beyond the pale of sympathy. They were executed ferociously
+and horribly, according to the custom of the time, the burghers of Perth
+rising at once in pursuit of them, and the burghers of Edinburgh looking
+on with stern satisfaction at their tortures--these towns feeling
+profoundly, more perhaps than any other section of the community, the
+extraordinary loss they had in the able and vigorous King, already, like
+his descendant and successor, the King of the commons, their stay and
+encouragement. If there was among the nobility less lamentation over a
+ruler who spared none of them on account of his race, and was sternly
+bent on repressing all abuse of power, it was silent in the immense and
+universal horror with which the event filled Scotland. It would seem
+probable that the little heir, only six years old, the only son of King
+James, was not with his parents in their Christmas rejoicings at Perth,
+but had been left behind at Holyrood, for we are told that the day after
+his father's death the poor little wondering child was solemnly but
+hastily crowned there, the dreadful news having flown to the centre of
+government. He was "crownd by the nobilitie," says Pitscottie, the great
+nobles who were nearest and within reach having no doubt rushed to the
+spot where the heir was, to guard and also to retain in their own hands
+the future King. He was proclaimed at once, and the crown, or such
+substitute for it as could be laid sudden hands upon, put on his infant
+head. The scene is one which recurred again and again in the history of
+his race, yet nothing can take from it its touching features. At six
+years old even the intimation of a father's death, especially when
+taking place at a distance, would make but a transitory impression upon
+the mind; yet we may well imagine the child taken from his toys, wrapped
+from head to foot in some royal mantle, with a man's crown held over his
+baby head, receiving with large eyes of wonder and fright easily
+translated into tears, the sacred oil, the sceptre which his little
+fingers could scarcely enclose. Alas for the luckless Stewarts! again
+and again this affecting ceremony took place before the time of their
+final promotion which was the precursor of their overthrow. They were
+all kings almost from their cradle--kings ill-omened, entering upon
+their royalty with infant terror and tears.
+
+[Illustration: EDINBURGH CASTLE FROM THE SOUTH-WEST]
+
+When they had crowned the little James, second of the name, the lords
+held a convention "to advise whom they thought most able both for
+manheid and witt to take the government of the commonwealth in hand."
+They chose two men for this office, neither of whom was taken from a
+very great family, or had, so far as can be known, any special
+importance--Sir Alexander Livingstone, described as Knight of Callender,
+and Sir William Crichton, Chancellor of Scotland. Perhaps it was one of
+the compromises which are so common when parties are nearly equal in
+power which thus placed two personages of secondary importance at the
+head of affairs: but any advantage which might have been secured by this
+selection was neutralised by the division of power, which added to all
+the evils of an interregnum the perplexity of two centres of government,
+so that "no man knew," as says Pitscottie, "whom he should obey." One of
+the Regents reigned in Edinburgh, the other in Stirling--one had the
+advantage of holding possession of the King, the other had the doubtful
+good of the support of the Queen. It may be imagined what an
+extraordinary contrast this was to the firm and vigilant sway of a
+monarch in the fulness of manhood, with all the prestige of his many
+gifts and accomplishments, his vigorous and manful character and his
+unquestioned right to the government and obedience of the country. It
+had been hard work enough for James I., with all these advantages, to
+keep his kingdom well in hand: and it would not be easy to exaggerate
+the difficulties now, with two rival and feeble powers, neither great
+enough to overawe nor united enough to hold in check the independent
+power of the great houses which vied with each other in the display of
+dominion and wealth. In a very brief time all the ground gained by King
+James was lost again. Every element of anarchy arose in new force, and
+if it had been hard to secure the execution of the laws which would have
+been so good had they been kept in the time when their chief
+administrator was the King himself, it may be supposed what was the
+difficulty now, when, save in a little circuit round each seat of
+authority, there was virtually no power at all. Pitscottie gives a
+curious and vivid picture of the state of affairs in this lamentable
+interval.
+
+    "In the mean time many great dissensions rose amongst us, but it was
+    uncertain who were the movers, or by what occasion the chancellor
+    exercised such office, further than became him. He keeped both the
+    Castle of Edinburgh and also our young King thereintill, who was
+    committed to his keeping by the haill nobilitie and ane great part
+    of the noble men assisted to his opinion. Upon the other side, Sir
+    Alexander Livingstoun bearing the authoritie committed to him by
+    consent of the nobilitie, as said is, contained another faction, to
+    whose opinion the Queen mother with many of the nobility very trewly
+    assisted. So the principals of both the factions caused proclaime
+    lettres at mercat crosses and principal villages of the realm that
+    all men should obey conforme to the aforesaid letters sent forth by
+    them, under the pain of death. To the which no man knew to whom he
+    should obey or to whose letters he should be obedient unto. And also
+    great trouble appeared in this realm, because there was no man to
+    defend the burghs, priests, and poor men and labourers hauntind to
+    their leisum (lawful) business either private or public. These men
+    because of these enormities might not travel for thieves and
+    brigands and such like: all other weak and decrepit persons who was
+    unable to defend themselves, or yet to get food and sustentation to
+    themselves, were most cruelly vexed in such troublous times. For
+    when any passed to seek redress at the Chancellor of such injuries
+    and troubles sustained by them, the thieves and brigands, feigning
+    themselves to be of another faction, would burn their house and
+    carry their whole goods and gear away before ever they returned
+    again. And the same mischief befell those that went to complain to
+    the Governor of the oppression done to them. Some other good men
+    moved upon consideration and pitie of their present calamities
+    tholed (endured) many such injuries, and contained themselves at
+    home and sought no redresse. In the midst of these things and
+    troubles, all things being out of order, Queen-Mother began to find
+    out ane moyane (a means) how she should diminish the Chancellor's
+    power and augment the Governor's power, whose authority she
+    assisted."
+
+The position of Queen Jane in the circumstances in which her husband
+left her, a woman still young, with a band of small children, and no
+authority in the turbulent and distracted country, is as painful a one
+as could well be imagined. Her English blood would be against her, and
+even her beauty, so celebrated by her chivalrous husband, and which
+would no doubt increase the immediate impulse of suitors, in that
+much-marrying age, towards the beautiful widow who was of royal blood to
+begin with and still bore the title of Queen. That she seems to have had
+no protection from her royal kindred is probably explained by the fact
+that Henry VI was never very potent or secure upon his throne, and that
+the Wars of the Roses were threatening and demanding the whole attention
+of the English Government. Wounded in her efforts to protect her husband
+by her own person, seeing him slaughtered before her eyes, there could
+not be a more terrible moment in any woman's life, hard as were the
+lives of women in that age of violence, than that which passed over Jane
+Beaufort's head in the Blackfriars Monastery amid the blood and tumult
+of that fatal night. The chroniclers, occupied by matters more weighty,
+have no time to picture the scene that followed that cruel and horrible
+murder, when the distracted women, who were its only witnesses, after
+the tumult and the roar of the murderers had passed by, were left to
+wash the wounds and compose the limbs of the dead King so lately taking
+his part in their evening's pastime, and to look to the injuries of the
+Queen and the torn and broken arm of Catherine Douglas, a sufferer of
+whom history has no further word to say. The room with its imperfect
+lights rises before us, the wintry wind rushing in by those wide-open
+doors, waving about the figures on the tapestry till they too seemed to
+mourn and lament with wildly tossing arms the horror of the scene--the
+cries and clash of arms as the caterans fled, pausing no doubt to pick
+up what scattered jewels or rich garments might lie in their way: and by
+the wild illumination of a torch, or the wavering leaping flame of the
+faggot on the hearth, the two wounded ladies, each with an anxious group
+about her--the Queen, covered with her own and her husband's blood; the
+girl, with her broken wrist, lying near the threshold which she had
+defended with all her heroic might. They were used to exercise the art
+of healing, to bind up wounds and bring back consciousness, these
+hapless ladies, so constantly the victims of passion and ambition. But
+amid all the horrors which they had to witness in their lives, horrors
+in which they did not always take the healing part, there could be none
+more appalling than this. Neither then nor now, however, is it at the
+most terrible moment of life, when the revolted soul desires it most,
+that death comes to free the sufferer. The Queen lived, no doubt, to
+think of the forlorn little boy in Holyrood, the five little maidens who
+were dependent upon her, and resumed the burden of life now so strangely
+different, so dull and blank, so full of alarms and struggles. Her elder
+child, the little Princess Margaret, had been sent to France three or
+four years before, at the age of ten, to be the bride of the Dauphin--a
+great match for a Scottish princess--and it is possible that her next
+sister, Eleanor, who afterwards married the Duc de Bretagne, had
+accompanied Margaret--two little creatures solitary in their great
+promotion, separated from all who held them dear. But the four infants
+who were left would be burden enough for the mother in her unassured and
+unprotected state. It would seem that she was not permitted to be with
+her boy, probably because of the jealousy of the Lords, who would have
+no female Regent attempting to reign in the name of her son: but had
+fixed her residence in Stirling under the shield of Livingstone, who as
+Governor of the kingdom ought to have exercised all the functions of the
+Regency, and especially the most weighty one, that of training the King.
+Crichton, however, who was Chancellor, had been on the spot when James
+II was crowned, and had secured his guardianship by the might of the
+strong hand, if no other, removing him to Edinburgh Castle, where he
+could be kept safe under watch and ward. The Queen, who would seem to
+have been throughout of Livingstone's faction, and who no doubt desired
+to have her son with her, both from affection and policy, set her wits
+to discover a "moyane," as the chroniclers say, of recovering the
+custody of the boy. The moyane was simple and primitive enough, and
+might well have been pardoned to a mother deprived of her natural
+rights: but it shows at the same time the importance attached to the
+possession of the little King, when it was only in such a way that he
+could be secured. Queen Jane set out from Stirling "with a small train"
+to avert suspicion, and appeared at the gates of Edinburgh Castle
+suddenly, without warning as would seem, asking to be admitted to see
+her son. The Chancellor, wise and wily as he was, would appear to have
+acknowledged the naturalness of this request, and "received her," the
+chronicler says, "with gladness, and gave her entrance to visit her
+young son, and gave command that whensoever the Queen came to the castle
+it should be patent to Her Grace." Jane entered the castle accordingly,
+with many protestations of her desire for peace and anxiety to prevent
+dissensions, all which was, no doubt, true enough, though the
+chroniclers treat her protestations with little faith, declaring her to
+have "very craftilie dissembled" in order to dispel any suspicion the
+Chancellor may have entertained. It would seem that she had not borne
+any friendship to him beforehand, and that her show of friendship now
+required explanation. However that might be, she succeeded in persuading
+Crichton of her good faith, and was allowed to have free intercourse
+with her son and regain her natural place in his affections. How long
+they had been separated there is no evidence to show, but it could
+scarcely be difficult for the mother to recover, even had it fallen into
+forgetfulness, the affection of her child. When she had remained long
+enough in the castle to disarm any prejudices Crichton might entertain
+of her, and to persuade the little King to the device which was to
+secure his freedom, the Queen informed the Chancellor that she was about
+to make a pilgrimage to the famous shrine of Whitekirk, "the white kirk
+of Brechin," Pitscottie says, in order to pray for the repose of the
+soul of her husband and the prosperity of her son, and asked permission
+to carry away two coffers with her clothes and ornaments, probably
+things which she had left in the castle before her widowhood, and that
+means of conveyance might be provided for these possessions to Leith,
+where she was to embark. This simple request was easily granted, and the
+two coffers carried out of the castle, and conveyed by "horss" to the
+ship in which she herself embarked with her few attendants. But instead
+of turning northward Queen Jane's ship sailed up the Firth, through the
+narrow strait at Queensferry, past Borrowstounness, where the great
+estuary widens out once more, into the quiet waters of the Forth,
+winding through the green country to Stirling on its hill. She was "a
+great pairt of the watter upward before ever the keepers of the castle
+could perceive themselves deceived," says Pitscottie. As the ship neared
+Stirling, the Governor of the kingdom came out of the castle with all
+his forces, with great joy and triumph, and received the King and his
+mother. For one of the coffers, so carefully packed and accounted for,
+contained no less an ornament than the little King in person, to whose
+childish mind no doubt this mode of transport was a delightful device
+and pleasantry. One can imagine how the Queen's heart must have throbbed
+with anxiety while her son lay hidden in the bed made for him within the
+heavy chest, where if air failed, or any varlet made the discovery
+prematurely, all her hopes would have come to an end. She must have
+fluttered like a bird over her young about the receptacle in which her
+boy lay, and talked with her ladies over his head to encourage and keep
+him patient till the end of the journey was near enough, amid the
+lingering links of Forth, to open the lid and set him free. It is not a
+journey that is often made nowadays, but with all the lights of the
+morning upon Demayat and his attendant mountains, and the sun shining
+upon that rich valley, and the river at its leisure wending, as if it
+loved them, through all the verdant holms and haughs, there is no
+pleasanter way of travelling from Edinburgh to Stirling, the two
+hill-castles of the Scottish crown.
+
+[Illustration: INNER BARRIER, EDINBURGH CASTLE]
+
+It would be pleasant to think that Queen Jane meant something more than
+the mere bolstering up of one faction against another in the distracted
+kingdom by the abduction of her son. It is very possible indeed that she
+did so, and that to strengthen the hands of the man who was really
+Regent-Governor of Scotland, but whose power had been stolen from his
+hands by the unscrupulousness of Crichton, seemed to her a great
+political object, and the recovery of the supreme authority, which would
+seem to have appeared to all as infallibly linked with the possession of
+the young King, of the greatest importance. It is evident it was
+considered by the general public to be so; but there is something
+pitiful in the struggle for the poor boy, over whose small person those
+fierce factionaries fought, and in whose name, still so innocent and
+helpless as he was, so many ferocious deeds were done.
+
+No sooner was he secure in Stirling than the Governor called together a
+convention of his friends, to congratulate each other and praise the wit
+and skill of "that noble woman, our soverain mother," who had thus set
+things right. "Whereby I understand," he says piously, "that the wisest
+man is not at all times the sickerest, nor yet the hardy man happiest,"
+seeing that Crichton, though so great and sagacious and powerful, should
+be thus deceived and brought to shame. "Be of good comfort therefore,"
+adds this enlightened ruler; "all the mischief, banishment, troubles,
+and vexation which the Chancellor thought to have done to us let us do
+the like to him." He ended this discourse by an intimation that he was
+about to besiege Edinburgh. "Let us also take up some band of
+men-of-war, and every man after his power send secret messages to their
+friends, that they and every one that favours us may convene together
+quietly in Edinburgh earlie in the morning, so that the Chancellor
+should not know us to come for the sieging of the castle till we have
+the siege even belted about the walls; so ye shall have subject to you
+all that would have arrogantly oppressed you."
+
+This resolution was agreed to with enthusiasm, the Queen undertaking to
+provision the army "out of her own garners"; but the Governor had no
+sooner "belted the siege about the castle," an expression which renders
+most graphically the surrounding of the place, than the Chancellor,
+taken by surprise, prostrated by the loss of the King, and finding it
+impossible to draw the powerful Earl of Douglas to his aid, made
+overtures of submission, and begged for a meeting "in the fields before
+the gates," where, with a few chosen friends on either side, the two
+great functionaries of the kingdom might come to an agreement between
+themselves.
+
+By this time there would seem to have begun that preponderating
+influence of the Douglas family in Scotland which vexed the entire reign
+of the second James, and prompted two of the most violent and tragic
+deeds which stain the record of Scottish history. James I. was more
+general in his attempt at the repression and control of his fierce
+nobility, and the family most obnoxious to him was evidently that of his
+uncle, nearest in blood and most dangerous to the security of the
+reigning race. The Douglas, however, detaches himself in the following
+generation into a power and place unexampled, and which it took the
+entire force of Scotland, and all the wavering and uncertain expedients
+of law, as well as the more decisive action of violence quite lawless,
+to put down. Whether there was in the pretensions of this great house
+any aim at the royal authority in their own persons, or ambitious
+assertion of a rival claim in right of the blood of Bruce, which was as
+much in their veins as in those of the Stewarts, as some recent
+historians would make out, it is probably now quite impossible to
+decide. The chroniclers say nothing of any such intention, nor do the
+Douglases themselves, who throughout the struggle never hesitated to
+make submission to the Crown when the course of fortune went against
+them. The Chancellor had been deeply stung, it is evident, by the answer
+of Douglas to his appeal, in which the fierce Earl declared that discord
+between "you twa unhappie tyrants" was the most agreeable thing in the
+world to him, and that he wished nothing more than that it should
+continue. Deprived of the sanction given to all his proceedings by the
+name of the King, outwitted among his wiles, and exposed to the ridicule
+even of those who had regarded his wisdom with most admiration, Crichton
+would seem to have turned fiercely upon the common opponent, perhaps
+with a wise prescience of the evil to come, perhaps only to secure an
+object of action which might avert danger from himself and bring him
+once more into command of the source of authority--most likely with both
+objects together, the higher and lower, as is most general in our
+mingled nature. The meeting was held accordingly outside the castle
+gates, the Chancellor coming forth in state bearing the keys of the
+castle, which were presented, Buchanan says, to the King in person, who
+accompanied the expedition, and who restored the great functionary to
+his office. The great keys in the child's hand, the little treble pipe
+in which the reappointment would be made, the tiny figure in the midst
+of all these plotters and warriors, gives a touch of pathos to the many
+pictorial scenes of an age so rich in the picturesque; but the earlier
+writers say nothing of the little James's presence. There was, however,
+a consultation between the two Regents, and Douglas's letter was read
+with such angry comments as may be supposed. The Earl's contempt
+evidently cut deep, and strongly emphasised the necessity of dealing
+authoritatively with such a high-handed rebel against the appointed
+rulers.
+
+It would appear, however, that little could be done against the
+immediate head of that great house, and the two rulers, though they had
+made friends over this common object, had to await their opportunity,
+and in the meantime do their best to maintain order and to get each the
+chief power into his own hands. Crichton found means before very long to
+triumph over his adversaries in his turn by rekidnapping the little
+King, for whom he laid wait in the woods about Stirling, where James was
+permitted precociously to indulge the passion of his family for hunting.
+No doubt the crafty Chancellor had pleasant inducements to bring forward
+to persuade the boy to a renewed escape, for "the King smiled," say the
+chroniclers, probably delighted by the novelty and renewed
+adventure--the glorious gallop across country in the dewy morning, a
+more pleasant prospect than the previous conveyance in his mother's big
+chest. Thus in a few hours the balance was turned, and it was once more
+the Chancellor and not the Governor who could issue ordinances and make
+regulations in the name of the King.
+
+Nothing, however, could be more tedious and trifling in the record than
+these struggles over the small person of the child-king. But the story
+quickens when the long-desired occasion arrived, and the two rulers,
+rivals yet partners in power, found opportunity to strike the blow upon
+which they had decided, and crush the great family which threatened to
+dominate Scotland, and which was so contemptuous of their own sway. The
+great Earl, Duke of Touraine, almost prince at home, the son of that
+Douglas whose valour had moved England, and indeed Christendom, to
+admiration, though he never won a battle--died in the midst of his
+years, leaving behind him two young sons much under age as the
+representatives of his name. It is extraordinary to us to realise the
+place held by youth in those times, when one would suppose a man's
+strength peculiarly necessary for the holding of an even nominal
+position. Mr. Church has just shown in his Life of Henry V how that
+prince at sixteen led armies and governed provinces; and it is clear
+that this was by no means exceptional, and that the right of boys to
+rule themselves and their possessions was universally acknowledged and
+permitted. The young William, Earl of Douglas, is said to have been only
+about fourteen at his father's death. He was but eighteen at the time of
+his execution, and between these dates he appears to have exercised all
+the rights of independent authority without tutor or guardian. The
+position into which he entered at this early age was unequalled in
+Scotland, in many respects superior to that of the nominal sovereign,
+who had so many to answer to for every step he took--counsellors and
+critics more plentiful than courtiers. The chronicles report all manner
+of vague arrogancies and presumptions on the part of the new Earl. He
+held a veritable court in his castle, very different from the
+semi-prison which, whether at Edinburgh or Stirling, was all that James
+of Scotland had for home and throne--and conferred fiefs and knighthood
+upon his followers as if he had been a reigning prince. "The Earl of
+Douglas," says Pitscottie, "being of tender age, was puffed up with new
+ambition and greater pride nor he was before, as the manner of youth is;
+and also prideful tyrants and flatterers that were about him through
+this occasion spurred him ever to greater tyranny and oppression." The
+lawless proceedings of the young potentate would seem to have stirred up
+all the disorderly elements in the kingdom. His own wild Border county
+grew wilder than ever, without control. Feuds broke out over all the
+country, in which revenge for injuries or traditionary quarrels were lit
+up of the strong hope in every man's breast not only of killing his
+neighbour, but taking possession of his neighbour's lands. The caterans
+swarmed down once more from the mountains and isles, and every petty
+tyrant of a robber laird threw off whatever bond of law had been forced
+upon him in King James's golden days. This sudden access of anarchy was
+made more terrible by a famine in the country, where not very long
+before it had been reported that there was fish and flesh for every man.
+"A great dearth of victualls, pairtly because the labourers of the
+ground might not sow nor win the corn through the tumults and cumbers of
+the country," spread everywhere, and the state of the kingdom called the
+conflicting authorities once more to consultation and some attempt at
+united action.
+
+The meeting this time was held in St. Giles's, the metropolitan church,
+then, perhaps, scarcely less new and shining in its decoration than now,
+though with altars glowing in all the shadowy aisles and the breath of
+incense mounting to the lofty roof. There would not seem to have been
+any prejudice as to using a sacred place for such a council, though it
+might be in the chapter-house or some adjacent building that the barons
+met. It is to be hoped that they did not go so far as to put into words
+within the consecrated walls the full force of their intention, even if
+it had come to be an intention so soon. There was but a small following
+on either side, that neither party might be alarmed, and many fine
+speeches were made upon the necessity of concord and mutual aid to
+repress the common enemy. The Chancellor, having restolen the King,
+would no doubt be most confident in tone; but on both sides there were
+equal professions of devotion to the country, and so many admirable
+sentiments expressed, that "all their friends on both sides that stood
+about began to extol and love them both, with great thanksgiving that
+they both regarded the commonwealth so mickle and preferred the same to
+all private quarrels and debates." The decision to which they came was
+to call a Parliament, at which aggrieved persons throughout the country
+might appear and make their complaints. The result was a crowd of woeful
+complainants, "such as had never been seen before. There were so many
+widows, bairns, and infants seeking redress for their husbands, kin, and
+friends that were cruelly slain by wicked murderers, and many for
+hireling theft and murder, that it would have pitied any man to have
+heard the same." This clamorous and woeful crowd filled the courts and
+narrow square of the castle before the old parliament-hall with a murmur
+of misery and wrath, the plaint of kin and personal injury more sharp
+than a mere public grief. The two rulers and their counsellors no doubt
+listened with grim satisfaction, feeling their enemy delivered into
+their hands, and finding a dreadful advantage in the youth and
+recklessness of the victims, who had taken no precaution, and of whom it
+was so easy to conclude that they were "the principal cause of these
+enormities." Whether their determination to sacrifice the young Douglas,
+and so crush his house, was formed at once, it is impossible to say.
+Perhaps some hope of moulding his youth to their own purpose may have at
+first softened the intention of the plotters. At all events they sent
+him complimentary letters, "full of coloured and pointed words,"
+inviting him to Edinburgh in their joint names with all the respect that
+became his rank and importance. The youth, unthinking in his boyish
+exaltation of any possibility of harm to him, accepted the invitation
+sent to him to visit the King at Edinburgh, and accompanied by his
+brother David, the only other male of his immediate family, set out
+magnificently and with full confidence with his gay train of knights and
+followers--among whom, no doubt, the youthful element
+predominated--towards the capital. He was met on the way by
+Crichton--evidently an accomplished courtier, and full of all the habits
+and ways of diplomacy--who invited the cavalcade to turn aside and rest
+for a day or two in Crichton Castle, where everything had been prepared
+for their reception. Here amid all the feastings and delights the great
+official discoursed to the young noble about the duties of his rank and
+the necessity of supporting the King's government and establishing the
+authority of law over the distracted country, sweetening his sermon with
+protestations of his high regard for the Douglas name, whose house, kin,
+and friends were more dear to him than any in Scotland, and of affection
+to the young Earl himself. Perhaps this was the turning-point, though
+the young gallant in his heyday of power and self-confidence was all
+unconscious of it; perhaps he received the advice too lightly, or
+laughed at the seriousness of his counsellor. At all events, when the
+gay band took horse again and proceeded towards Edinburgh, suspicion
+began to steal among the Earl's companions. Several of them made efforts
+to restrain their young leader, begging him at least to send back his
+young brother David if he would not himself turn homeward. "But," says
+the chronicler, "the nearer that a man be to peril or mischief he runs
+more headlong thereto, and has no grace to hear them that gives him any
+counsel to eschew the peril."
+
+[Illustration: EDINBURGH CASTLE FROM THE VENNEL]
+
+The only result of these attempts was that the party of boys spurred on,
+more gaily, more confidently than ever, with the deceiver at their side,
+who had spoken in so wise and fatherly a tone, giving so much good
+advice to the heedless lads. They were welcomed into Edinburgh within
+the fatal walls of the Castle with every demonstration of respect and
+delight. How long the interval was before all this enthusiasm turned
+into the stern preparations of murder it seems impossible to say--it
+might have been on the first night that the catastrophe happened, for
+anything the chroniclers tell us. The followers of Douglas were
+carefully got away, "skailled out of the town," sent for lodging outside
+the castle walls, while the two young brothers were marshalled, as
+became their rank, to table to dine with the King. Whether they
+suspected anything, or whether the little James in his helpless
+innocence had any knowledge of what was going to happen, it is
+impossible to tell. The feast proceeded, a royal banquet with "all
+delicatis that could be procured." According to a persistent tradition,
+the signal of fate was given by the bringing in of a bull's head, which
+was placed before the young Earl. Mr. Burton considers this incident as
+so picturesque as to be merely a romantic addition; but no symbol was
+too boldly picturesque for the time. When this fatal dish appeared the
+two young Douglases seem at once to have perceived their danger. They
+started from the table, and for one despairing moment looked wildly
+round them for some way of escape. The stir and commotion as that tragic
+company started to their feet, the vain shout for help, the clash of
+arms as the fierce attendants rushed in and seized the victims, the
+deadly calm of the two successful conspirators who had planned the
+whole, and the pale terrified face of the boy-king, but ten years old,
+who "grat verie sore," and vainly appealed to the Chancellor for God's
+sake to let them go, make one of the most impressive of historical
+pictures. The two hapless boys were dragged out to the Castle Hill,
+which amid all its associations has none more cruel, and there beheaded
+with the show of a public execution, which made the treachery of the
+crime still more apparent; for it had been only at most a day or two,
+perhaps only a few hours, since the Earl and his brother in all their
+bravery had been received with every gratulation at these same gates,
+the welcome visitors, the chosen guests, of the King. The populace would
+do little but stare in startled incapacity to interfere at such a scene;
+some of them, perhaps, sternly satisfied at the cutting off of the
+tyrant stock; some who must have felt the pity of it, and had
+compunction for the young lives cut off so suddenly. A more cruel
+vengeance could not be on the sins of the fathers, for it is impossible
+to believe that the Regents did not take advantage of the youth of these
+representatives of the famous Douglas race. Older and more experienced
+men would not have fallen into the snare, or at all events would have
+retained the power to sell their lives dear.
+
+If the motives of Livingstone and Crichton were purely patriotic, it is
+evident that they committed a blunder as well as a crime: for instead of
+two boys rash and ill-advised and undeveloped they found themselves in
+face of a resolute man who, like the young king of Israel, substituted
+scorpions for whips, persecuting both of them without mercy, and finally
+bringing Livingstone at least to destruction. The first to succeed to
+William Douglas was his uncle, a man of no particular account, who kept
+matters quiet enough for a few years; but when his son, another William,
+succeeded, the Regents soon became aware that an implacable and powerful
+enemy, the avenger of his two young kinsmen, but an avenger who showed
+no rash eagerness and could await time and opportunity, was in their
+way. The new Earl married without much ceremony, though with a papal
+dispensation in consequence of their relationship, the little Maid of
+Galloway, to whom a great part of the Douglas lands had gone on the
+death of her brothers, and thus united once more the power and
+possessions of his name. He was himself a young man, but of full age, no
+longer a boy, and he would seem to have combined with much of the steady
+determination to aggrandise and elevate his race which was
+characteristic of the Douglases, and their indifference to commonplace
+laws and other people's rights, an impulsiveness of character, and
+temptation towards ostentation and display, which led him at once to
+submission and to defiance at unexpected moments, and gave an element of
+uncertainty to his career. Soon after his succession it would seem to
+have occurred to him, after some specially unseemly disputes among some
+of his own followers, that to get himself into harmony with the laws of
+the realm and gain the friendship of the young King would be a good
+thing to do. He came accordingly to Stirling where James was, very sick
+of his governors and their wiles and struggles, and throwing himself at
+the boy's feet offered himself, his goods and castles, and life itself,
+for the King's service, "that he might have the licence to wait upon His
+Majesty but as the soberest courtier in the King's company," and
+proclaimed himself ready to take any oath that might be offered to him,
+and to be "as serviceable as any man within the realm." James, it would
+seem, was charmed by the noble suitor, and all the glamour of youth and
+impulse which was in the splendid young cavalier, far more great and
+magnificent than all the Livingstones and Crichtons, who yet came with
+such abandon to the foot of the throne to devote himself to its service.
+He not only forgave Douglas all his offences, but placed him at the head
+of his government, "used him most familiar of any man," and looked up to
+him with the half-adoring admiration which a generous boy so often feels
+towards the first man who becomes his hero.
+
+This happened in 1443, when James was but thirteen. It would be as easy
+to say that Douglas displaced with a rush the two more successful
+governors of the kingdom, and took their places by storm--and perhaps it
+would be equally true: yet it would be vain to ignore James as an actor
+in national affairs because of his extreme youth. In an age when a boy
+of sixteen leads armies and quells insurrections, a boy of thirteen,
+trained amid all the exciting circumstances which surrounded James
+Stewart, might well have made a definite choice and acted with full
+royal intention, perhaps not strong enough to be carried out by its own
+impulse, yet giving a real sanction and force to the power which an
+elder and stronger man was in a position to wield. We have no such means
+of forming an idea of the character and personality of the second James
+as we have of his father. No voice of his sounds in immortal accents to
+commemorate his loves or his sadness. He appears first passively in the
+hands of conspirators who played him in his childhood one against the
+other, a poor little royal pawn in the big game which was so bloody and
+so tortuous. His young memory must have been full of scares and of
+guileful expedients, each party and individual about him trying to
+circumvent the other. Never was child brought up among wilder chances.
+The bewildering horror of his father's death, the sudden melancholy
+coronation, and all the nobles in their sounding steel kneeling at his
+baby feet, which would be followed in his experience by no expansion or
+indulgence, but by the confinement of the castle; the terrible
+loneliness of an imprisoned child, broken after a while by the sudden
+appearance of his mother, and that merry but alarming jest of his
+conveyance in the great chest, half stifled in the folds of her
+embroideries and cloth of gold. Then another flight, and renewed stately
+confinement among his old surroundings, monotony broken by sudden
+excitements and the babble in his ears of uncomprehended politics, from
+which, however, his mind, sharpened by the royal sense that these
+mysterious affairs were really his own, would no doubt come to find
+meaning at a far earlier age than could be possible under other
+circumstances. And then that terrible scene, most appalling of all, when
+he had to look on and see the two lads, not so much older than himself,
+young gallants, so brave and fine, to whom the boy's heart would draw in
+spite of all he might have heard against them, so much nearer to himself
+than either governor or chancellor, those two noble Douglases, suddenly
+changed under his eyes from gay and welcome guests to horrified victims,
+with all the tragic passion of the betrayed and lost in their young
+eyes. Such a scene above all must have done much to mature the
+intelligence of a boy full like all his race of spirit and independence,
+and compelled to look on at so much which he could not stop or remedy.
+Thus passive and helpless, yet with the fiction of supremacy in his
+name, we see the boy only by glimpses through the tumultuous crowd about
+him with all their struggles for power, until suddenly he flashes forth
+into the foreground, the chief figure in a scene more violent and
+terrible still than any that had preceded it, taking up in his own
+person the perpetual and unending struggle, and striking for himself the
+decisive blow. There is no act so well known in James's life as that of
+the second Douglas murder, which gives a sinister repetition, always
+doubly impressive, to the previous tragedy. And yet between the two what
+fluctuations of feeling, what changes of policy, how many long
+exasperations, ineffectual pardons, convictions unwillingly formed, must
+have been gone through. That he was both just and gentle we have every
+possible proof, not only from the unanimous consent of the chronicles,
+but from the manner in which, over and over again, he forgives and
+condones the oft-repeated offences of his friend. And there could be few
+more interesting psychological studies than to trace how, from the
+sentiments of love and admiration he once entertained for Douglas, he
+was wrought to such indignation and wrath as to yield to the weird
+fascination of that precedent which must have been so burnt in upon his
+childish memory, and to repeat the tragedy which within the recollection
+of all men had marked the Castle of Edinburgh with so unfavourable a
+stain.
+
+We are still far from that, however, in the bright days when Douglas was
+Lieutenant-Governor of the kingdom, and the men who had murdered his
+kinsmen were making what struggle they could against his enmity, which
+pursued them to the destruction of one family and the frequent hurt and
+injury of the other. How Livingstone and his household escaped from time
+to time but were finally brought to ruin, how Crichton wriggled back
+into favour after every overthrow, sometimes besieged in his castle for
+months together, sometimes entrusted with the highest and most
+honourable missions, it would be vain to tell in detail. James would
+seem to have yielded to the inspiration of his new prime minister for a
+period of years, until his mind had fully developed, and he became
+conscious, as his father had been, of the dangers which arose to the
+common weal from the lawless sway of the great nobles, their continual
+feuds among themselves, and the reckless independence of each great
+man's following, whose only care was to please their lord, with little
+regard either for the King and Parliament or the laws they made. During
+this period his mother died, though there is little reason to suppose
+that she had any power or influence in his council, or that her loss was
+material to him. She had married a second time, another James Stewart
+called the Black Knight of Lorne, and had taken a considerable part in
+the political struggles of the time always with a little surrounding of
+her own, and a natural hope in every change that it might bring her son
+back to her. It is grievous that with so fair a beginning, in all the
+glow of poetry and love, this lady should have dropped into the position
+of a foiled conspirator, undergoing even the indignity of imprisonment
+at the hands of the Regents whom she sometimes aided and sometimes
+crossed in their arrangements. But a royal widow fallen from her high
+estate, a queen-mother whose influence was feared and discouraged and
+every attempt at interference sternly repressed, would need to have been
+of a more powerful character than appears in any of her actions to make
+head against her antagonists. She died in Dunbar in 1446, of grief, it
+is said, for the death of her husband, who had been banished from the
+kingdom in consequence of some hasty words against the power of the
+Douglas, of whom however, even while he was still in disgrace, Sir James
+Stewart had been a supporter. Thus ended in grief and humiliation the
+life which first came into sight of the world in the garden of the great
+donjon at Windsor some quarter of a century before, amid all the
+splendour of English wealth and greatness, and all the sweet
+surroundings of an English May.
+
+James was married in 1450, when he had attained his twentieth year, to
+Mary of Gueldres, about whom during her married life the historians find
+nothing to say except that the King awarded pardon to various
+delinquents at the request of the Queen--an entirely appropriate and
+becoming office. No doubt his marriage, so distinct as a mark of
+maturity and independence, did something towards emancipating James from
+the Douglas influence; and it is quite probable that the selection of
+Sir William Crichton to negotiate the marriage and bring home the bride
+may indicate a lessening supremacy of favour towards Douglas in the mind
+of his young sovereign. Pitscottie records a speech made to the Earl and
+his brothers by the King, when he received and feasted them after their
+return from a successful passage of arms with the English on the Border,
+in which James points out the advantage of a settled rule and lawful
+authority, and impresses upon them the necessity of punishing robbers
+and reivers among their own followers, and seeing justice done to the
+poor, as well as distinguishing themselves by feats of war. By this time
+the Douglases had once more become a most formidable faction. The head
+of the house had so successfully worked for his family that he was on
+many occasions surrounded by a band of earls and barons of his own
+blood, his brothers having in succession, by means of rich marriages or
+other means of aggrandisement, attained the same rank as himself, and,
+though not invariably, acting as his lieutenants and supporters, while
+his faction was indefinitely increased by the followers of these cadets
+of his house, all of them now important personages in the kingdom. It
+was perhaps the swelling pride and exaltation of a man who had all
+Scotland at his command, and felt himself to have reached the very
+pinnacle of greatness, which suggested the singular expedition to France
+and Rome upon which Douglas set forth, in the mere wantonness of
+ostentation and pride, according to the opinion of all the chroniclers,
+to spread his own fame throughout the world, and show the noble train
+and bravery of every kind with which a Scottish lord could travel. It
+was an incautious step for such a man to take, leaving behind him so
+many enemies; but he would seem to have been too confident in his own
+power over the King, and in his greatness and good fortune, to fear
+anything. No sooner was he gone, however, than all the pent-up
+grievances, the complaints of years during which he had wielded almost
+supreme power in Scotland, burst forth. The King, left for the first
+time to himself and to the many directors who were glad to school him
+upon this subject, was startled out of his youthful ease by the tale of
+wrong and oppression which was set before him. No doubt Sir William
+Crichton would not be far from James's ear, nor the representatives of
+his colleague, whom Douglas had pursued to the death. The state of
+affairs disclosed was so alarming that John Douglas, Lord Balvenie, the
+brother of the Earl, who was left his procurator and representative in
+his absence, was hastily summoned to Court to answer for his chief.
+Balvenie, very unwilling to risk any inquisition, held back, until he
+was seized and brought before the King. His explanations were so little
+satisfactory, that he was ordered at once to put order in the matter,
+and to "restore to every man his own:" a command which he received
+respectfully, but as soon as he got free ignored altogether, keeping
+fast hold of the ill-gotten possessions, and hoping, no doubt, that the
+momentary indignation would blow over, and all go on as before. James,
+however, was too much roused to be trifled with. When he saw that no
+effect was given to his orders he took the matter into his own hands.
+The Earl of Orkney with a small following was first sent with the King's
+commission to do justice and redress wrongs: but when James found his
+ambassador insulted and repulsed, he took the field himself, first
+making proclamation to all the retainers of the Douglas to yield to
+authority on pain of being declared rebels. Arrived in Galloway, he rode
+through the whole district, seizing all the fortified places, the narrow
+peel-houses of the Border, every nest of robbers that lay in his way,
+and, according to one account, razed to the ground the Castle of Douglas
+itself, and placed a garrison of royal troops in that of Lochmaben, the
+two chief strongholds of the house. But James's mission was not only to
+destroy but to restore. He divided the lands thus taken from the House
+of Douglas, according to Pitscottie, "among their creditors and
+complainers, till they were satisfied of all things taen from them,
+whereof the misdoers were convict." This, however, must only have
+applied, one would suppose, to the small losses of the populace, the
+lifted cows and harried lands of one small proprietor and another. "The
+King," adds the same authority, "notwithstanding of this rebellion, was
+not the more cruel in punishing thereof nor he was at the beginning:"
+while Buchanan tells us that his clemency and moderation were applauded
+even by his enemies.
+
+This is throughout the opinion which we find of James. He was capable of
+being moved to sudden violent indignation and hasty action, as was too
+distinctly demonstrated afterwards; but the hasty outburst once over
+came back at once without rancour to his natural benignity, always
+merciful, slow to anger, ready to hear whatever the accused might have
+to say for himself, and to pardon as long as pardon was possible.
+Notwithstanding the rebellious and audacious contempt of all authority
+but their own shown by the Douglas party, notwithstanding the standing
+danger of their insolent power, their promises so often broken, their
+frequent submissions and actual defiance, his aim in all his dealings
+with them was rather to do justice to the oppressed than to punish the
+guilty. His genial temper, and that belief in his kind which is always
+so ingratiating a quality, is proved by the account Major gives of his
+life on those military expeditions which from this time forth occupied
+so much of his time. He lived with his soldiers as an equal, that
+historian tells us, eating as they did, without the precaution of a
+taster, which Major thinks highly imprudent, but which would naturally
+bind to the frank and generous monarch the confidence and regard of his
+fellow-soldiers, and the captains with whom he shared the sometimes
+scanty provisions of the campaign.
+
+News of these strange events was conveyed to Douglas, now in England on
+his return from the pilgrimage of pride and ostentation to which, though
+it was professedly for the Papal jubilee, no one attempts to give a
+religious character. He was returning at his leisure, lingering on his
+way, not without suspicion of secret treaties with the English in
+support of the party of York, though all the prepossessions of Scotland
+and King James were on the other side: but hurried home on hearing the
+news, and was politic enough to make immediate submission as soon as he
+became aware of the seriousness of the crisis, promising everything that
+could be demanded of him in the way of obedience and respect of "the
+King's peace." Once more he was fully and freely pardoned, his lands,
+with some small diminution, restored, and the King's confidence given
+back to him with a too magnanimous completeness. In the Parliament held
+in Edinburgh in June 1451 he was present, and received back his charters
+in full amity and kindness, to the great satisfaction and pleasure of
+"all gud Scottis men." Later in the year, in his capacity of Warden of
+the Marches, he was employed to assuage the endless quarrels of the
+Border, but during his negotiations for this purpose secretly renewed
+his mysterious and treacherous dealings with England, of which there is
+no very clear account, but which was of all others the kind of treachery
+most obnoxious to his countrymen. So far as would appear, James obtained
+some hint of these clandestine proceedings, and was very angry, "highly
+commoved," as was natural: on hearing which Douglas appeared once more
+to ask pardon, with apparently an inexhaustible confidence in the
+clemency of the young man whom he had guided so long. But the idea of
+some "quyet draucht betwixt him and the King of Ingland," some secret
+understanding with the old enemy, was more serious still than domestic
+rebellion, and though he pardoned at the "great request" of the Queen
+and nobles, the King did not again restore so doubtful a representative
+to the great offices he had held. There would seem to have been a pause
+of consternation on the part of Douglas when he found for the first time
+the charm of his friendship and every petition for pardon ineffectual.
+To attribute the change to old Crichton, who had recovered much of his
+former influence and was again Chancellor, was easy, and the Earl who
+had but the other day sworn the King's peace with all, set an ambush for
+his old opponent, and would have succeeded in killing him but for
+Crichton's son, "ane young valiant man," who overcame the bravos, and
+housed his father safely in his Castle of Crichton. Douglas himself was
+afterwards almost surprised in Edinburgh by Crichton's followers, and
+saved himself only by a hurried departure not unlike a flight.
+
+This disappointment, and the loss of the King's favour, and the apparent
+solidity of his rivals in their place, half maddened the great noble,
+little accustomed to yield to any contradiction. He had been up to this
+time, save in so far as his private feuds and covetousness were
+concerned, on the side of lawful authority; the King's man so long as
+the King was his man, and did not interfere with the growth of his
+wealth and greatness. But now he would seem to have given up hope of
+recovering his hold upon his sovereign, and turned his eyes elsewhere
+for support. The Earl of Crawford in the north country, and the Lord of
+Isles who was also Earl of Ross in the west, were as powerful and as
+intractable as Douglas himself, and more often in open rebellion than in
+amity with the King, a constant danger and disturbance of all good order
+and law. Douglas in his anger made an alliance with these two, by which
+all bound themselves to resent and avenge any injury offered to either.
+It was probably an expedient of rage and despair--the desire of doing
+what was most baneful and insolent to his former friends, such as
+happens often when a breach occurs--as much as a political act; but it
+is evident that in every way Douglas was on the eve of open treachery,
+no longer disposed to keep any terms with the royal master whose
+patience had been exhausted at last. It required, however, a crowning
+outrage to arouse once more James's much-forgiving spirit.
+
+Among the gentlemen of Galloway, the most of whom rode with Douglas and
+supported him in all his high-handed proceedings, too near neighbours to
+venture upon independence, were a few who preferred to hold the other
+side, that of law and justice and the authority of the King. Among them
+was "one called Maclelan, who was tutor of Bombie for the time, and
+sister's son to Sir Patrick Gray, principal servitor to the King, and
+captain of his guard." The refusal of this man to serve in the
+rebellious host under the Earl was immediately punished by Douglas, who
+assailed his house and carried him off prisoner. The story reads like a
+romance, which, however, is no reason for receiving it with discredit. A
+more doubtful circumstance is that it is asserted to have happened in
+Douglas Castle, which had been very recently destroyed by James, and
+which was besides at a great distance from Edinburgh. I hazard a
+conjecture whether it may have happened in the Castle of Abercorn, since
+it must have been impossible for Douglas in Galloway to pursue Sir
+Patrick to the very gates of Edinburgh. Wherever the incident may have
+occurred, the story is, that Sir Patrick Gray, the uncle of the
+prisoner, hastened to the King with the story of his nephew's danger,
+and was at once sent off by James with "a sweit letter of supplication,"
+praying the Earl to deliver over the unfortunate gentleman to the
+messenger for love of the King. The Earl was at dinner when, "bloody
+with spurring, fiery red with haste," Sir Patrick arrived at the castle,
+where the drawbridge was lifted and the doors closed. "The Earle caused
+incontinent draw the boards, and rose and met the said Sir Patrick with
+great reverence and humilitie, because he was the King's principal
+servant and familiar to His Grace." I tell the rest of the tale in the
+words of Pitscottie:--
+
+    "He inquired at the said Patrick if he had dined, who answered that
+    he had not. Then the Earle said there was 'no talk to be had betwixt
+    ane full and ane fasting; therefore ye shall dine, and we shall
+    talke together at length.'
+
+    "In this meane tyme Sir Patrick Gray sat down to his dinner, and the
+    Earle treatted him and made him goode cheare, whereof Sir Patrick
+    was well contented, believing all things to succeed well thereafter.
+    But the Earle of Douglas on the other pairt took a suspicion and
+    conjecture what Sir Patrick's Gray's commission was, and dreading
+    the desyne thereof should be for his friend, the tutor of Bombie;
+    therefore in the meane time when they were at the dinner, talking of
+    merry matters, the Earle caused quietly take forth the tutor of
+    Bombie out of prison, and have him to the greene and there strooke
+    off his head and took the samine away from him, and syne covered a
+    fair cloth on his bodie that nothing might be seene of that
+    treasonable act that was done.
+
+    "In this meane time when dinner was done Sir Patrick Gray presented
+    the King's writing unto the Earle, who reverently received it and
+    considered the effect thereof. He gave great thanks to Sir Patrick
+    Gray, saying he was beholden to him that brought so familiar an
+    writing from his Prince to him, considering how it stood betwixt
+    them at that time: and as to the desire and supplication, it should
+    be thankfullie granted to the King, and the rather for Sir Patrick's
+    sake; and took him by the hand and led him furth to the greene where
+    the gentleman was lying dead, and shew him the manner, and said,
+    'Sir Patrick, you are come a litle too late; but yonder is your
+    sister's son lying, but he wants the head; take his body and do with
+    it what you will.' Sir Patrick answered again with ane sore heart,
+    and said, 'My Lord, ye have taken from him his head, dispone upon
+    the body as ye please;' and with that called for his horse and leapt
+    thereon. And when he was on horseback he said to the Earle on this
+    manner, 'My Lord, an I live ye shall be rewarded for your labour
+    that ye have used at this time, according to your demerits.' At this
+    saying the Earle was highly offended and cryed for horse. Sir
+    Patrick seeing the Earle's fury spurred his horse, but he was chased
+    neare to Edinburgh before they left him, and had it not been his
+    leid horse was so tryed and goode he had been taken."
+
+The scene that ensued when James--awaiting in Edinburgh the return of
+his messenger, without a doubt we may suppose of the obedience of
+Douglas the friend of his youth, the often-pardoned, owing so much to
+his clemency and friendship--saw Sir Patrick arrive breathless and
+haggard, scarcely escaping, though the King's messenger, with his life,
+and heard his story--the insolent contempt, the brutal jest, the cruel
+murder--is one that might well mark the turning-point even in a mind so
+magnanimous. The King had not been entirely without signs of inheriting
+his father's firmness and promptitude; but his gentleness of
+disposition, and strong inclination towards kindness and peace, had in
+general carried the day over his sterner qualities. He had shown both
+sides of his character when he pardoned Douglas and accepted his
+promises of reformation on his return, but cut him off from public
+service and closed all the doors of advancement against him. The
+defiance now addressed to him, the scorn of his letters and request, so
+audaciously shown, raised a sudden storm of indignation in his breast.
+Whether his future action was based on the decision of his council to
+which he submitted, sanctioning on his own part the treachery by which
+alone Douglas could be beguiled within his reach, as the chroniclers, to
+whom such a device was quite justifiable, tell us; or whether when he
+issued his safe-conduct he still hoped to be able to convince the Earl
+of his folly in resisting, and to bring him to a real and effectual
+change of mind, no one can now tell. But James was so little addicted to
+treachery, so fair, tolerant and merciful, that we may well give him the
+benefit of the doubt, and believe that it was with the intention of
+making another effort to bring Douglas back to his right mind and
+allegiance that the King invited him to Stirling, where it was strange
+indeed that with all his enormities on his conscience Douglas ventured
+to come, whatever were the safe-conducts given. "Some sayes he got the
+great seale thereunto before he would grant to come to the King," says
+the chronicle. The fact that he did come however, after all that had
+passed, says much for his confidence in King James and in his own power
+over him, for Douglas must have been very well aware that safe-conducts
+and royal promises were but broken reeds to trust to.
+
+When he arrived in Stirling, whatever lowering looks he might see around
+him--and it is scarcely possible to believe that Sir Patrick Gray for
+one could have entirely cleared his countenance of every recollection of
+their last meeting, of the men-at-arms thundering at his heels, and his
+nephew's body headless on the greensward--Douglas found no change in the
+King, who received and banqueted him "very royally," thinking if it were
+possible "with good deeds to withdraw him from his attempt that he
+purposed to do." After supper the King took his rebellious subject
+aside, into another room opening from that in which they had supped, and
+which is still exhibited in Stirling Castle to the curious stranger, and
+once more reasoned with him on his conduct. No private matter would seem
+to have been introduced, the treasonable league which the Earl had made
+with Crawford and Ross, rebels against the lawful authority of the
+kingdom, being the subject on which James put forth all his strength of
+argument. Douglas, Pitscottie tells us, answered "verrie proudlie," and
+the argument grew hot between the two men, of whom one had always
+hitherto been the conqueror in every such passage of arms. It was
+probably this long habit of prevailing that made the proud Earl so
+obstinate, since to submit in words had never heretofore been difficult
+to him. At last the dispute came to a climax, in the distinct refusal of
+Douglas to give up his traitor-allies. "He said he myt not nor wald
+not," says a brief contemporary record. "Then the King said, 'False
+traitor, if you will not, I sall,' and stert sodunly till him with ane
+knyf." "And they said," adds this chronicle with grim significance,
+"that Patrick Gray straik him next the King with ane pole ax on the
+hed." The other companions crowded round, giving each his stroke. And
+thus within a short space of years the second Earl of Douglas was killed
+in a royal castle, while under a royal safe-conduct, at a climax of
+hopeless discord and antagonism from which there seemed no issue. The
+exasperation of the King, the dead-lock of all authority, the absolutely
+impracticable point at which the two almost equal powers had arrived,
+account for, though they do not excuse, such a breach of faith. I prefer
+to believe that James had at least no decided purpose in his mind, but
+hoped in his own power to induce Douglas to relinquish these alliances
+which were incompatible with his allegiance; but that the sudden
+exasperation with which he became convinced of his own powerlessness to
+move him brought about in a moment the fatal issue (with who knows what
+sudden wild stimulus of recollection from the murder of which he had
+been a witness in his childhood?) which statesmen less impulsive had
+already determined upon as necessary, though probably not in this sudden
+way.
+
+[Illustration: ST. ANTHONY'S CHAPEL, AND ST. MARGARET'S LOCH]
+
+The "Schort Memorial of the Scottis Cronikles," called the Auchinleck
+Chronicle, gives a brief but striking account of the proceedings that
+followed. Earl Douglas's retainers and kinsmen would seem to have been
+struck dumb by the event, and probably fled in horror and dismay; but it
+was not till long after, when the King had left Stirling, that the
+younger brothers returned, on St. Patrick's Day in Lent, bringing with
+them the safe-conduct with all its seals, which they exhibited at the
+cross and dragged through the streets tied to a horse's tail, with many
+wild and fierce words against the King and all that were with him,
+ending by spoiling and burning the town. As James was no longer in it,
+however, nor apparently any one who could resist them, this was a cheap
+and unsatisfactory vengeance.
+
+Some months after, in the summer of 1452, a Parliament was held at
+Edinburgh, in which the three Estates passed a declaration that no
+safe-conduct had been given on that fatal occasion--a declaration which
+it is evident no one believed, and which probably was justified by some
+quibble which saved the consciences of those who asserted it. The new
+Earl, James Douglas, was summoned to appear at this Parliament, but
+answered by a letter under his seal and that of his brother, which was
+secretly affixed to the door of the Parliament House, "declynand from
+the King, saying that they held not of him, nor would hold with him,
+with many other slanderous words, calling them traitors that were his
+secret council." Some say it was upon the church doors that this
+defiance was attached. In any case it must have produced a wonderful hum
+and commotion through the town, where already no doubt the slaying of
+the Douglas had been discussed from every point of view--at the cross,
+and among the groups at the street corners, where there would be many
+adherents of the Douglas, and many citizens ready to discuss the new
+event and all its possible consequences. The Parliament was followed by
+a general muster upon the Burrowmuir, where the barons and their men
+gathered, with all their spears and steel caps glistening in the June
+sunshine, with an apparent intention of pursuing the race to its
+stronghold and making an end of it. The raid, which was led by the King
+in person, with an army of some thirty thousand men, accomplished little
+however, doing more mischief than good the chronicle says, treading down
+the new corn, and spoiling the country "right fellonly," notwithstanding
+the King's presence. The result, at all events, was complete submission
+on the part of the new Earl, accompanied by a promise to bear no enmity,
+a promise often made but altogether impossible in the fifteenth century
+to mortal flesh and blood.
+
+It was scarcely possible however, short of a moral miracle, that such a
+thing could happen as the abandonment of the entire policy of the house
+of Douglas at a moment when their minds were embittered by so great a
+tragedy. The new Earl was not a mere soldier, still less a courtier, but
+a man of some culture, originally intended, it is said, for the Church,
+though this does not seem to have withheld him from taking part in the
+tumults of the time. Nor did it restrain him from marrying his brother's
+widow, the hapless Maid of Galloway, whose share of the Douglas lands
+made her indispensable to her two warlike cousins, though it seems
+uncertain whether either of the two marriages, which necessitated two
+dispensations from the Pope, was anything but nominal. After his
+submission James Douglas was employed as his brother had been in the
+arrangement of terms of truce with England, which was too great a
+temptation for him, and led to further treasonable negotiations. He
+would seem also to have renewed his brother's alliances with the rebels
+of the north: and in a very brief period the nominal peace and doubtful
+vows were all thrown to the winds, and this time there seems to have
+been no question of partial rebellion, but every indication that a civil
+war, rending the entire country in two, was about to break forth.
+Douglas had the strong backing of England behind him, the support of the
+Highland hordes always ready to be poured upon the peaceful country, and
+many great lords in his immediate train. He had raised an army of, it is
+said, forty thousand men, an enormous army for Scotland, and it was
+evident that the struggle was one of life and death.
+
+At this moment it would seem that King James for the first time lost
+heart. He had been fighting during all the beginning of the year 1455,
+reducing the west and south, the Douglas country, to subjection and
+desolation. But when he found himself menaced by an army as great as
+anything he could muster, with the angry north in the background and
+clouds of half-savage warriors on the horizon, the King's heart sank. He
+is said to have left Edinburgh in disgust and depression, and taken ship
+at Leith for St. Andrews, to seek counsel from the best and most
+trustworthy of his advisers, a man whose noble presence appears in the
+distracted history with such a calm and sagacious steadfastness that we
+can well understand the agitated King's sudden impulse towards him at
+this painful period of his career. Bishop Kennedy had himself suffered
+from the lawlessness of the Douglas retainers: and he too had royal
+blood in his veins. He occupied one of the highest positions in the
+Church, and his wisdom and strength had made him one of the most
+prominent statesmen in the kingdom. James arrived hastily, according to
+the chronicle, unexpected, and with many signs of distress and anxiety.
+He betrayed to the Bishop his weariness of the ever-renewed struggle,
+and of the falsehood and treachery which, even if victorious, were all
+he had to encounter, the failure of every pledge and promise, the faith
+sworn one day which failed him the next, and the deep discouragement
+with all things round him which had taken possession of his mind. The
+wise prelate heard this confession of heart-sickness and despondency,
+and with a fatherly familiarity bade the young King sit down to meat,
+which he much wanted, while he himself went to his oratory to pray for
+enlightenment. That James thought no less than to throw up the struggle
+and retire from his kingdom, is what the old writers say. But when, with
+his bosom lightened by utterance of his trouble, and his courage a
+little restored by food and rest, the Bishop came back to him with a
+cheerful countenance from his prayers, the King took heart again.
+Kennedy produced to him the old image of the sheaf of arrows which,
+bound together, were not to be broken, but one by one could easily be
+snapt asunder, and advised him to make proclamation of a free pardon to
+all who would throw down their arms and make submission, and to march at
+once against the rebel host with full confidence of victory. Inspired by
+this advice, and by the companionship of the Bishop who went with him,
+the King set out to meet the rebels, though with an army inferior in
+number to theirs. Douglas, from some unexplained reason, wavered and
+hesitated, taking no active step, and gave Bishop Kennedy time to put
+his own suggestion in practice in respect to his nephew Lord
+Hamilton--who was one of Douglas's chief supporters--sending secret
+messengers to him to urge him to submission. Hamilton no doubt had
+already perceived signs of wavering purpose and insecurity in the
+heterogeneous host, in which were many whose hearts failed them at sight
+of the King's banners--men who were apt to rebellion without being wound
+up to the extreme point of civil war: but he had "ane kyndlie love to
+Earl Douglas" as well as a regard for his own honour, and would not
+lightly desert his friend. While thus uncertain he appealed to Douglas
+to know what he meant to do, warning him that the longer he hesitated,
+the less would be the forces at his disposal. Douglas replied haughtily
+that if he were tired of waiting he might go when he pleased--an
+indiscreet answer, which decided Hamilton to withdraw and throw himself
+upon the King's promised mercy. The same night he went over to the royal
+army, carrying with him so many that "on the morn thereafter the Earl
+Douglas had not ane hunder men by his own household," the whole host
+having melted away. Never was a greater risk for a monarchy nor a more
+easy and bloodless escape. The Earl fled to the depths of his own
+country and thence to England, where he lived long a pensioned
+dependant, after all his greatness and ambition, to reappear in history
+only like a ghost after many silent years.
+
+Amid all these bewildering and bitter struggles, in which much misery
+was no doubt involved, it is recorded of the King that he never lost his
+humane character, and that even in the devastations he was forced to
+sanction or command, the cruel reprisals carried out over all the south
+of Scotland, his severity was always tempered with mercy. "He was not so
+much feared as a king as loved like a father," says Major. This luminous
+trait appears through all the darkness of the vexed and furious time.
+The King was always ready to pardon at a word, to believe in the vows
+and receive the submission of the fiercest rebels. One curious evidence
+of the confidence felt in him was shown by the widow of the murdered
+Earl, Margaret Douglas, the Maid of Galloway, a woman doubly injured in
+every relation--the sister of the young Earl murdered at Edinburgh,
+married by his successor in order to reunite the Douglas patrimony, a
+great portion of which went to her as her brother's heir--and again
+forced into another and unlawful marriage by her husband's brother,
+immediately upon his death, for the same end. James received this
+fugitive kindly, restored to her part of the lands of her family, and
+finally married her--thus freeing her from the lawless bond into which
+she had been driven--to his own step-brother, John, Earl of Atholl, "the
+Black Knight of Lorne's son;" upon hearing of which another fugitive of
+a similar description appeared upon the scene.
+
+    "When the Earl of Ross's wyff understood the King to be some pairt
+    favourable to all that sought his grace she fled also under his
+    protection to eschew the cruel tyranny of her husband, which she
+    dreaded sometyme before. The King called to remembrance that this
+    woman was married not by her own counsel to Donald of the Isles (the
+    Earl of Ross). He gave her also sufficient lands and living whereon
+    she might live according to her estate."
+
+The case of women, and especially heiresses, in that lawless age must
+have been miserable indeed. Bandied about from one marriage to another,
+forced to accept such security as a more or less powerful lord could
+give, and when he was killed to fall victim to the next who could seize
+upon her, or to whom she should be allotted by feudal suzerain or
+chieftain, the mere name of a king who did not disdain a woman's plaint,
+but had compassion and help to give, must have conveyed hope to many an
+unhappy lady bound to a repugnant life. James would seem to have been
+the only man who recognised the misery to which such unconsidered items
+in the wild and tumultuous course of affairs might be driven.
+
+Thus King James and Scotland with him were delivered from the greatest
+and most dangerous of the powerful houses that held the country in fear.
+Shortly after he conquered, partly by arms, partly by the strain of a
+universal impulse, which seemed to rouse the barons to a better way,
+those great allies in the north who held the key of the Highlands, the
+Earl of Crawford and the Earl of Ross, so that at last something of a
+common rule and common sentiment began to move the country. It is almost
+needless to say that James took advantage of this temporary unity and
+enthusiasm in order to invade England--a thing without which no Scots
+King could be said to be happy. The negotiations by which he was at once
+stimulated and hindered--among others by ambassadors from the Duke of
+York to ask his help against Henry VI, with orders to arrest his army on
+their way--are too complicated to be entered upon; but at last the Scots
+forces set out and, after various successes, James found himself before
+Roxburgh, a town and castle which had remained in the hands of the
+English from the time when the Earl of March deserted his country for
+England in the reign of Robert III. The town was soon taken, but the
+castle, in which there was a brave garrison, stood out manfully. This
+invasion of the Borders, and opportunity of striking a blow at the "auld
+enemy," was evidently an act of the highest policy while yet the
+surgings of civil war were not entirely quieted, and a diversion of
+ideas as well as new opportunities of spoil were peculiarly necessary.
+Its first excellent result was that Donald of the Isles, the Earl of
+Ross and terror of the north country, whose submission had been but
+provisionally accepted, and depended upon some evidence of real desire
+for the interest of the common weal, suddenly appeared with "ane great
+armie of men, all armed in the Highland fashion," and claimed the
+vanguard, the place of honour, and to be allowed to take upon him "the
+first press and dint of the battell." James received this unexpected
+auxiliary with "great humanitie," but prudently provided, before
+accepting his offer, which apparently, however, was made in all good
+faith, that Donald should "stent his pavilliones a little by himself,"
+until full counsel had been taken on the subject. The army was also
+joined by "a great company of stout and chosen men," under the Earl of
+Huntly, whose coming "made the King so blyth that he commanded to charge
+all the guns and give the castle ane new volie." James would seem
+throughout to have felt the greatest interest in the extraordinary new
+arm of artillery which had made a revolution in warfare. He pursued
+siege after siege with a zeal in which something of the ardour of a
+military enthusiast and scientific inquirer mingled with the necessities
+of the struggle in which he was engaged. The "Schort Cronikle," already
+quoted, describes him as lingering over the siege of Abercorn, "striking
+mony of the towers down with the gret gun, the whilk a Franche man shot
+richt wele, and failed na shot within a fathom where it was charged him
+to hit." And when, in the exultation of his heart to see each new
+accession of force come in, he ordered "a new volie" against the stout
+outstanding walls, the excitement of the discharge, the eagerness of an
+adept to watch the effect, no doubt made this dangerous expression of
+satisfaction a real demonstration of pleasure.
+
+[Illustration: MONS MEG]
+
+King James had attained at this time a success which probably a few
+years before his warmest imagination could not have aspired to. He had
+brought into subjection the great families which had almost contested
+his throne with him. Douglas, the highest and most near himself, had
+been swept clean out of his way. The fiercest rebel of all, the head of
+the Highland caterans, with his wild host in all their savage array, was
+by his side, ready to charge under his orders. The country, drained of
+its most lawless elements, was beginning to breathe again, to sow its
+fields and rebuild its homesteads. Instead of the horrors of civil war
+his soldiers were now engaged in the most legitimate of all
+enterprises--the attempt to recover from England an alienated
+possession. Everything was bright before him, the hope of a great reign,
+the promise of prosperity and honour and peace.
+
+It is almost a commonplace of human experience that in such moments the
+blow of fate is near at hand. The big guns which were a comparatively
+new wonder, full of interest in their unaccustomed operation, were still
+a danger as well as a prodigy, and James would seem to have forgotten
+the precautions that were considered necessary in presence of an
+armament still only partially understood. The historian assumes, as
+every human observer is apt to do in face of such a calamity, a tone of
+blame. "This Prince," says the chronicle with a shrill tone of
+exasperation in the record of the catastrophe, "more curious than became
+the majestie of a king, did stand hard by when the artilliarie was
+discharging." And in a moment all the labours and struggles, and the
+hope of the redeemed kingdom and all the prosperity that was to come,
+were at an end. One can imagine the sudden dismay in the group around
+him, the rush of his attendants, his own feeble command to keep silence
+when some cry of horror rose from the pale-faced circle. His thigh had
+been broken, "dung in two," by the explosion of the gun, "by which he
+was struken to the ground, and died hastilie thereafter," with no time
+to say more than to order silence, lest the army should be discouraged
+and the siege prove in vain.
+
+So ended the troublous reign of the second James, involved in strife and
+warfare from his childhood, vexed by the treacheries and struggles over
+him of his dearest friends, full of violence alien to his mind and
+temper, which yet was justified by his example at the most critical
+moment of his life. He made his way through continual contention,
+intrigue, and blood, for which he was not to blame, to such a settlement
+of national affairs as might have consolidated Scotland and made her
+great--by patience and firmness and courage, and conspicuously by mercy,
+notwithstanding one crime. And when the helm was in his hands, and a
+fair future before him, fell, not ignominiously indeed, yet uselessly, a
+noble life thrown away, leaving once more chaos behind him. He was only
+twenty-nine when the thunderbolt thus falling from a clear sky destroyed
+all the hopes of Scotland; yet had reigned long, for twenty-three years
+of trouble, tumult, and distress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+JAMES III: THE MAN OF PEACE
+
+
+Again the noises cease save for a wail of lamentation over the dead. The
+operations of war are suspended, the dark ranks of the army stand aside,
+and every trumpet and fatal cannon is silent while once more a woman and
+a child come into the foreground of the historic scene. Once more, the
+most pathetic figure surely in history, a little startled boy clinging
+to his mother--not afraid indeed of the array of war to which he has
+been accustomed all his life, and perhaps with an instinct in him of
+childish majesty, the consciousness which so soon develops even in an
+infant mind, of unquestioned rank, but surrounded by the atmosphere of
+horror and affright in which he has been taken from among his
+playthings--stands forth to be hastily enveloped in the robes so
+pitifully over-large of the dead monarch. The lords, we are told, sent
+for the Prince in the first sensation of the catastrophe, and had him
+crowned at Kelso, feeling the necessity of that central name at least,
+round which to rally. They were not always respectful of the real King
+when they had him, yet the divinity which hedged the title, however
+helpless the head round which it shone, was felt to be indispensable to
+the unity and strength of the kingdom. Mary of Gueldres in her sudden
+widowhood would seem to have behaved with great dignity and spirit at
+this critical moment. She is said to have insisted that the siege should
+not be abandoned, but that her husband's death might at least accomplish
+what his heart had been set upon; and the army after a moment of
+despondency was so "incouraged" by the coming of the Prince "that they
+forgot the death of his father and past manfullie to the hous, and wan
+the same, and justified the captaine theroff, and kest it down to the
+ground that it should not be any impediment to them hereafter." The
+execution of the captain seems a hard measure unless he was a traitor to
+the Scottish crown; but no doubt the conflict became more bitter from
+the terrible cost of the victory.
+
+[Illustration: THE CANONGATE TOLBOOTH]
+
+Once more accordingly the kingdom was thrown into the chaos which in
+those days attended a long minority, the struggle for power, the
+relaxation of order, and all the evils that follow when one firm hand
+full of purpose drops the reins which half a dozen conflicting
+competitors scramble for. There was not, at first at least, anything of
+the foolish anarchy which drove Scotland into confusion during the
+childhood of James II, and opened the way to so many subsequent
+disasters, for Bishop Kennedy, the dead King's chief counsellor and
+support and a man universally trusted, was in the front of affairs,
+influencing if not originating all that was done: and to him, almost as
+a matter of course, the education of the little heir was at once
+confided. But Mary of Gueldres was a woman of resolution and force, and
+did not give up without a struggle her pretensions to the regency.
+Buchanan relates a scene which, according to his history, took place in
+Edinburgh on the occasion of the first Parliament after James's death.
+The Queen had established herself in the castle while Kennedy was in
+Holyrood, probably with his little pupil, but there is no mention made
+of James. On the second day of the Parliament Mary appeared suddenly in
+what would seem to have been, according to modern phraseology, "a packed
+house," her own partisans having no doubt been warned to be present by
+the action of some energetic "whip," and was, then and there, by a hasty
+Act, carried through at one sitting, appointed guardian and Regent,
+after which summary success she returned with great pomp to her
+apartments, though with what hope of having really attained a tenable
+position it is impossible to say. When the news was carried to Holyrood,
+Bishop Kennedy in his turn appeared before the Estates, which had been
+thus taken by surprise. It is evident that the populace of Edinburgh was
+excited by what had occurred--Mary's partisans no doubt rejoicing, while
+the people in general, always jealous of a foreigner and never very
+respectful of a woman, surged through the great line of street towards
+the castle with all the fury of a popular tumult. The High Street of
+Edinburgh was not unaccustomed to sudden encounters, clashing of swords
+between two passing lords, each with fierce followers, and all the risks
+of sudden brawls when neither would concede the "crown of the causeway."
+But the townsfolk seldom did more than look on, with perhaps an
+ill-concealed satisfaction in the wounds inflicted by their natural
+opponents upon each other. On this occasion, however, the tumult was a
+popular one, involving the interests of the citizens; and it is
+difficult to believe that the inclinations of the townsfolk would not
+rather lean towards the Queen, a woman of wealth and stately
+surroundings, likely to entertain princes and great personages and to
+fill Edinburgh with the splendour of a Court, than to the prelate,
+although his tastes also were magnificent, whose metropolis was not
+Edinburgh but St. Andrews, and who might consider frugality and sobriety
+the best qualities for the Court of a minor. At all events the crowd had
+risen and was ripe for tumult, when Bishop Kennedy persuaded them to
+pause, and reminded them of the mutual forbearance and patience and
+quiet which was above all necessary at such a troublous time. Other
+prelates would seem to have been in his train, for we are told it was
+the intercessions and explanations of "the bishops" which prevented the
+tumult from rising into a fight. The parties would seem to have been so
+strong, and so evenly divided, that the question was finally solved by a
+compromise, Parliament appointing a council of guardians, two on each
+side: Seaton and Boyd for the Queen; John Kennedy, brother of the
+Bishop, and the Earl of Orkney, for the others--an experiment which was
+no more successful than in the previous minority.
+
+The Queen-mother had soon, however, something to occupy her leisure in
+the visit, if visit it can be called, of Henry VI and his Queen and
+household, fugitives before the victorious party of York, who had sought
+refuge from the Scots, and lodging for a thousand attendants--a request
+which was granted, and the convent of the Greyfriars allotted to them as
+their residence. The Queen at the Castle would thus be a near neighbour
+of the royal fugitives, and it is interesting to think of the meeting,
+the sympathy and mutual condolences of the two women. Margaret, the
+fervid Provencal, with her passionate sense of wrong and restless
+energy, and the hopeless task she had of maintaining and inspiring to
+play his part with any dignity her too patient and gentle king; and
+Mary, the fair and placid Fleming, stung too in her pride and affections
+by the refusal of the regency, and her subordination to those riotous
+and unmannerly lords and the proud Bishop who had got the affairs of
+Scotland in his hand. The two Queens might have had some previous
+acquaintance with each other, at a time when both had fairer hopes; at
+all events they amused themselves sadly, as they sat and talked
+together, with fancies such as please women, of making a marriage
+between the little Edward, the future victim of Tewkesbury, then a child
+at his mother's knee, and the little Princess of Scotland who played
+beside him, in the good days when all these troubles should be past, and
+Henry or his son after him should have regained the English crown. One
+follows with regretful interest the noble figure of Margaret, under the
+guise in which that sworn Lancastrian Shakspeare has disclosed it to us,
+before her sweeter mood had disappeared under the pressure of fate, and
+when not curses but hopes came from her mouth in her young motherhood,
+and every recovery and restoration, and happy marriage and royal state,
+were possible for her boy. Mary too had been cut off in the middle of
+her greatness. They were two Queens discrowned, two fair heads veiled
+with misfortune, though nothing irremediable had as yet happened,
+nothing that should make the future a desert though the present might be
+dark; ready to live again in their children, and make premature treaties
+over the little blonde heads at their knee. So natural a scene comes in
+strangely to the records of violence and misery. Nothing more tragic
+could be than the fate of Margaret; and the splendour and happiness had
+been very shortlived in Mary's experience, soon quenched in sudden
+destruction; but to see the two young mothers planning over the heads of
+the little ones how the two kingdoms were to be united, and happiness
+come back in a future that was never to be, while they sat together in
+brief companionship in those strait rooms of Edinburgh Castle, which
+were so narrow and so poor for a queen's habitation, or within the
+precincts of the Greyfriars, looking out upon the peaceful Pentlands and
+the soft hills of Braid, is like the recurring melody in a piece of
+stormy music, the bit of light in a tempestuous picture. It teaches us
+to perceive that, however the firmament of a kingdom may be torn with
+storms, there are everywhere about, even in queens' chambers, scenes of
+tenderness and peace.
+
+Mary died in her own foundation of Trinity College Hospital--the
+beautiful church of which was demolished within living memory--three
+years after her husband, while her children were still very young: and
+thus all further struggles about the regency were ended. She does not
+seem indeed ever to have repeated her one stand for power. Bishop
+Kennedy, we may well believe, was not a man with whom there would be
+easy fighting. His sway procured a little respite for Scotland in the
+ordinary miseries of her career. The Douglases were safely out of the
+way and ended, and there was a truce of fifteen years with England which
+kept danger from that side at arm's length--not, the chroniclers assure
+us, from any additional love between the two countries, but because "the
+Inglish had warres within themselves daylie, stryvand for the crown."
+Kennedy lived some years after the Queen, guiding all the affairs of the
+kingdom so wisely that "the commounweill flourished greatly." He was a
+Churchman of the noblest kind, full of care for the spiritual interests
+of his diocese as well as for the secular affairs which were placed in
+his hands. "He caused all persones (parsons) and vicars to remain at
+their paroche kirks," says Pitscottie, "for the instruction and edifying
+of their flocks: and caused them preach the Word of God to the people
+and visit them that were sick; and also the said Bishope visited every
+kirk within the diocese four times in the year, and preached to the said
+parochin himself the Word of God, and inquired of them if they were
+dewly instructed by their parson and vicar, and if the poor were
+sustained and the youth brought up and learned according to the order
+that was taine in the house of God."
+
+With all this, and many other gifts beside, among which are noted the
+knowledge he had of the "civil laws, having practised in the same," and
+his experience and sagacity in all public affairs--he was a scholar and
+loved all the arts. "He founded," says Pitscottie, "ane triumphant
+college in Sanct Androis, called Sanct Salvatore's College, wherein he
+made his lear (library) very curiouslie and coastlie; and also he biggit
+ane ship, called the Bishop's Barge, and when all three were complete,
+to wit, the college, the lear, and the barge, he knew not which of the
+three was the costliest; for it was reckoned for the time by honest men
+of consideration that the least of the three cost him ten thousand pound
+sterling." Major gives the same high character of the great Bishop,
+declaring that there were but two things in him which did not merit
+approval--the fact that he held a priory (but only one, that of
+Pittenweem) _in commendam_, "and the sumptuositie of his sepulchre."
+That sepulchre, half destroyed--after having remained a thing of beauty
+for three hundred years--by ignorant and foolish hands in the end of the
+eighteenth century, may still be seen in the chapel of his college at
+St. Andrews, the only existing memorial of the time when all Scotland
+was governed from that stormy headland to the great advantage of the
+commonwealth. It is difficult to make out from the different records
+whether the young King remained in the Bishop's keeping so long as he
+lived, which was but until James had attained the age of thirteen, or
+whether the usual struggle between the two sets of guardians appointed
+by Parliament, the Boyds and Kennedies, had begun before the Bishop's
+death. It may be imagined, however, that the evident advantages to the
+boy of Bishop Kennedy's care would outweigh any formal appointment;
+although at the same time the idea suggests itself whether in the
+perversity of human nature this training was not in itself partly the
+cause of James's weaknesses and errors. He would learn at St. Andrews
+not only what was best in the learning of the time, but as much of the
+arts as were known in Scotland, and especially that noble art of
+architecture, which has been the passion of so many princes. And no
+doubt he would see the advancement of professors of these arts, of men
+skilful and cunning in design and decoration, the builders, the
+sculptors, and the musicians, whose place in the great cathedral could
+never be unimportant. A Churchman could promote and honour such public
+servants in the little commonwealth of his cathedral town with greater
+freedom than might be done elsewhere; and James, a studious and feeble
+boy, not wise enough to see that the example of his great teacher was
+here inappropriate and out of place, learned this lesson but too well.
+The King grew up "a man that loved solitariness and desired never to
+hear of warre, but delighted more in musick and politie and building nor
+he did in the government of his realm." It would seem that he was also
+fond of money, which indeed was very necessary to the carrying out of
+his pursuits. It is difficult to estimate justly the position of a king
+of such a temperament in such circumstances, whether he is to be blamed
+for abandoning the national policy and tradition, or whether he was not
+rather conscientiously trying to carry out his stewardry of his kingdom
+in a better way when he withheld his countenance from the perpetual wars
+of the Border, and addressed himself to the construction of noble halls
+and chapels and the patronage of the arts. He was at least so far in
+advance of his time, still concerned with the rudest interests of
+practical life as to be universally misunderstood: and he had the
+further misfortune of sharing the unpopularity of the favourites with
+whom he surrounded himself, as almost every monarch has done who has
+promoted men of inferior position to the high places of the State.
+
+James's supineness, over-refinement, and love of peaceful occupations
+were made the more remarkable from the contrast with two manly and
+chivalrous brothers, the Dukes of Mar and Albany, of fine person and
+energetic tastes, interested in all the operations of war, fond of fine
+horses and gallant doings, and coming up to all the popular expectations
+of what was becoming in a prince. Nothing is more difficult to make out
+at any time than the real motives and meaning of family discords: and
+this is still more the case in an age not yet enlightened by the clear
+light of history. The chroniclers, especially Boece, have much doubt
+thrown upon them by more serious historians, who quote them and build
+upon them nevertheless, having really no better evidence to go upon. The
+report of these witnesses is that James had been warned by witches, in
+whom he believed, and by one Andrew the Fleming, an astrologer, that his
+chief danger arose from his own family, and that "the lion should be
+devoured by his whelps." Pitscottie's account, however, indicates a
+conspiracy between Cochrane and the Homes, whom Albany had mortally
+offended, as the cause at once of these prophecies and the King's alarm.
+The only thing clear is that he was afraid of his brothers, and
+considered their existence a danger to his life. It would appear that he
+had already begun to surround himself with those favourites to whom was
+attributed every evil thing in his reign, when this poison was first
+instilled into his mind: and the blame was attributed rightly or wrongly
+to Cochrane, the chief of his "minions," who very probably felt it to be
+to his interest to detach from James's side the manly and gallant
+brothers who were naturally his nearest counsellors and champions.
+
+There is very little that is authentic known of the men whom James III
+thus elevated to the steps of his throne. Cochrane was an architect
+probably, though called a mason in his earlier career, and had no doubt
+been employed on some of the buildings in which the King delighted,
+being "verrie ingenious" and "cunning in that craft." Perhaps, however,
+to make the royal favour for a mere craftsman more respectable,
+according to the notions of the time, it is added in a popular story
+that the favourite was a man of great strength and stature, whose
+prowess in some brawl attracted the admiration of the timid monarch, to
+whom a man who was a tall fellow of his hands, as well as a person of
+similar tastes to himself, might well be a special object of approval. A
+musician, William Roger, an Englishman, whose voice had charmed the
+King--a weakness which at least was not ignoble, and was shared by
+various other members of his race--was the second of James's favourites:
+and there were others still less important--one the King's tailor--a
+band of persons of no condition, who surrounded him no doubt with
+flattery and adulation, since their promotion and maintenance were
+entirely dependent on his pleasure. King Louis XI was at that time upon
+the throne of France, a powerful prince whose little privy council was
+composed of equally mean men, and perhaps some reflection from the Court
+of the old ally of Scotland made young James believe that this was the
+best and wisest thing for a King to do. Louis was also a believer in
+astrologers, witches, and all the prophecies and omens in which they
+dealt. To copy him was not a high ambition, but he was in his way a
+great king, and it is conceivable that the feeble monarch of Scotland,
+never roused to the height of his father's or grandfather's example,
+took a little satisfaction in copying what he could from Louis. The
+example of Oliver le Dain might make him think that he showed his
+superiority by preferring his tailor, a man devoted to his service, to
+Albany or Angus. And if Louis trembled at the predictions of his Eastern
+sage, what more natural than that James should quake when the stars
+revealed a danger which every spaewife confirmed? No doubt he would know
+well the story of the mysterious spaewife who, had her advice been
+taken, might have saved James I. from his murderers. It is rarely that
+there is not a certain cruelty involved in selfish cowardice. In a
+sudden panic the mildest-seeming creature will trample down furiously
+any weaker being who stands in the way of his own safety, and James was
+ready for any atrocity when he was convinced that his brothers were a
+danger to his life and crown. The youngest, the handsome and gallant
+Mar, was killed by one treachery or another; and Alexander of Albany,
+the inheritor of that ill-omened title, was laid up in prison to be safe
+out of his brother's way.
+
+We find ourselves entirely in the regions of romance in this unfortunate
+reign. Sir Walter Scott has painted for us the uncomfortable Court of
+Louis with his barber and his prophet, and Dumas has reproduced almost
+the identical story in his _Vingt Ans Apres_, of the Duke of Albany's
+escape from Edinburgh. There could scarcely be a more curious scene.
+Strangely enough James himself was resident in the castle when his
+brother was a prisoner there. One would have thought that so near a
+neighbourhood would have seemed dangerous to the alarmed monarch, but
+perhaps he thought, on the other hand, that watch and ward would be kept
+more effectually under his own eyes. Mar had died in the Canongate,
+perhaps in the Tolbooth there, according to tradition in a bath, where
+he was bled to death, probably in order that a pretence of illness or
+accident might be alleged; and Edinburgh, no doubt, was full of dark
+whispers of this strange end of one prince, and the danger of the other,
+shut up within the castle walls where the King's minions had full sway,
+and any night might witness a second dark deed. Prince Alexander's
+friends must have been busy and eager without, while he was not so
+strictly under bar and bolt inside that he could not make merry with the
+castle officials now and then, and cheat an evening with pleasant talk
+and a glass of good wine with a young captain of the guard. One day
+there came to him an intimation of the arrival of a ship at Leith with
+wine from France, accompanied by some private token that there was more
+in this announcement than met the ear. Albany accordingly sent a trusted
+servant to order two flasks of the wine, in one of which, contained in a
+tube of wax, was enclosed a letter, in the other a rope by which to
+descend the castle walls. The whole story is exactly as Dumas tells the
+escape of the Duc de Beaufort, though whether the romancer could have
+seen the old records of Scotland, or if his legend is sanctioned by the
+authentic history of France, I am unable to tell. Alexander, like the
+prince in the novel, invited the Captain of the Guard to sup with him to
+try the new wine--an invitation gladly accepted. After supper the
+Captain "passed to the King's chamber to see what was doing, who was
+then lodged in the castle," probably to get the word for the night. It
+is curious to think of the unconscious officer, so little aware of what
+was about to befall, going from the chamber of the captive to that of
+the King, where the little Court would be assembled at their music or
+their "tables," or where perhaps James was taking counsel over the
+leafage of a capital or the spring of an arch--and thence returning when
+all the rounds were made, the great gates barred and bolted, the
+sentries set, to the Prince in his prison, who was a finer companion
+still. Alexander plied the unsuspecting Captain with his wine, spiced or
+perhaps drugged to make it act the sooner, and along with him a warder
+or two who were in constant attendance upon the royal prisoner. A prince
+to drink with such carles! "The fire was hett, and the wyne was strong":
+and the united influence of the spiced drink and the hot room soon
+overcame the revellers, all but Alexander and his trusty man, who had
+taken care to refrain. In Dumas the gaoler was but gagged and bound: but
+in Scotland life went for little, and some of the authorities say that
+when the Prince saw the drunkards in his power, "he lap from the board
+and strak the captane with ane whinger and slew him, and also stiked
+other two with his own hand." He had been informed that he was to die
+the next day if he did not escape that night, which was some excuse for
+him.[2] When the men were thus disposed of, in one way or another, the
+Prince and his servant, "his chamber chyld," stole out with the rope to
+"a quiet place" on the wall. Coming out into the dark freshness and
+stillness of the night after that stifling and horrible room, seeing the
+stars once more and the distant glimmer of the sea, and feeling freedom
+at hand, it was little they would reck of the gaolers, always an
+obnoxious class. One would imagine that it must have been on the most
+precipitous side of the castle rock where there were few sentinels and
+the exit was easy, though the descent terrible. The faithful servant
+tried the rope first but found it too short, and fell, breaking his
+thigh. With what feelings Alexander must have stolen back to get his
+sheets with which to lengthen the rope, pushing through the smoke,
+almost despairing to get off in safety! One is relieved to hear that he
+took his crippled attendant on his back and carried him, some say to a
+safe place--or, as others say, all the way across country to where the
+ship rocked at the pier of Leith. They must have got down to some dark
+spot on the northern slopes, where there would be no city watchman or
+late passer-by to give the alarm, and all would be clear and still
+before them to the water's edge--though a long, weary, and darkling way.
+
+[2] Buchanan's account is not so bloodthirsty: he represents Alexander
+as entertaining his guests with stories of his restoration to favour,
+and approaching deliverance, and dismissing them in all mirth and
+friendliness though heavy with wine: so that his guards having
+incontinently fallen asleep at their posts he was able to make his
+escape.
+
+    "But on the morne when the watchman perceived that the towis were
+    hinging over the walls, then ran they to seek the Captane to show
+    him the matter and manner, but he was not in his own chamber. Then
+    they passed to the Duke's chamber and found the door open and ane
+    dead man lying in the chamber door and the captane and the rest
+    burning in the fire, which was very dollorous to them; and when they
+    missed the Duke of Albanie and his chamber chyld, they ran speedilie
+    and shewed the King how the matter had happened. But he would not
+    give it credence till he passed himself and saw the matter."
+
+These events happened in 1479, when Albany escaped to France, where he
+remained for some years. Up to this period all that is said of him has
+been favourable. His treatment by his brother was undeserved, and there
+is no sign of either treachery or rebellion in him in these early years.
+But when he had languished for a long time in France perhaps,
+notwithstanding a first favourable reception, sooner or later eating the
+exile's bitter bread--exasperation and despair must have so wrought in
+him that he began to traffic with the "auld enemy" of England, and even
+put his hand to a base treaty, by which his brother was to be dethroned
+and he himself succeed to the kingdom by grace of the English king--a
+stipulation which Albany must have well known would damn him for ever
+with his countrymen.
+
+In the meantime James had begun to breathe again in the relief he felt
+to be freed of the presence of both his brothers. He "passed through all
+Scotland at his pleasure, in peace and rest," says the chronicler. But
+it was not long that a king of Scotland could be left in this repose.
+The usual trouble on the Borders had begun again as soon as Edward IV
+was secure upon his throne, and the English king had even sent his ships
+as far as the Firth of Forth, where he burnt villages and spoiled the
+coast under the very eyes of James. Though he would so much rather have
+been left in quiet to complete his beautiful new buildings at Stirling
+and arrange the choir in his new chapel, where there was a double supply
+of musicians that the King might never want this pleasure, yet the
+sufferings of the people and the angry impulse of the discontented
+nobles were more than James could resist, and he set forth reluctantly
+towards the Border to declare war. He had become more and more shut up
+within his little circle of favourites after the death and disappearance
+of his brothers, and Cochrane had gradually acquired a more and more
+complete sway over the mind of his master and the affairs of the realm.
+The favourite had been guilty of all those extravagances which
+constitute the Nemesis of upstarts. He had trafficked in patronage and
+promotion, he had debased the currency, and he was supposed to influence
+the King to everything least honourable and advantageous to the country.
+Last injury of all, he had either asked from the King or accepted from
+him--at least, permitted himself to be tricked out in the name of Mar,
+the title of the young prince whose death he was believed to have
+brought about. The lords of Scotland had already remonstrated with the
+King on various occasions as to the unworthy favourites who usurped
+their place around his throne: and their exasperation seems to have
+risen to a height beyond bearing when they found "the mason," as
+Cochrane is called, with his new liveries and extravagance of personal
+finery, at the head of the army which was raised to avenge the English
+invasion, and in the closest confidence of the King. When they had got
+as far as Lauder the great lords, who were left out of all James's
+private councils, assembled in a council of their own in the parish
+church to talk over their grievances, and to consult what could be done
+to reform this intolerable abuse and to bring back the King to the right
+way. Some, it would appear, went so far as to meditate deposition,
+declaring that James was no longer fit to be their King, having
+renounced their counsel and advice, banished one brother and slain
+another, and "maid up fallowes, maissones, to be lords and earls in the
+place of noblemen." The result of the meeting, however, was that milder
+counsels prevailed so far as James was concerned: "They concluded that
+the King should be taine softlie without harm of his bodie, and conveyed
+to the Castle of Edinburgh with certain gentlemen," while Cochrane and
+the rest were seized and hanged over Lauder Brig.
+
+The question, however, remained, Who should be so bold as to take the
+first step and lay hands upon the favourite? It was now that Lord Gray,
+one of the conspirators, told, with that humour which comes in so grimly
+in many dark historic scenes, the story of the mice and the cat--how the
+mice conspired to save themselves by attaching a bell to the cat to warn
+them of her movements--until the terrible question arose which among
+them should attach to the neck of the enemy this instrument of safety.
+One can imagine the grave barons with half a smile looking at each other
+consciously, in acknowledgment of a risk which it needed a brave man to
+run. Angus, the head of the existing branch of the Douglas family, who
+had already risen into much of the power and importance of his forfeited
+kinsman, answered with equally grim brevity "I'se bell the cat." But
+while he spoke, the general enemy, mad with arrogance and
+self-confidence, and not believing in any power or boldness which could
+stop him in his career, forestalled the necessity. He came to the kirk,
+where no doubt he had heard there was some unauthorised assembly,
+arrayed in black velvet with bands of white, the livery he had chosen, a
+great gold chain round his neck, a hunting horn slung about him adorned
+with gold and jewels, and probably a marvel of mediaeval art--and "rushed
+rudlie at the kirk door." The hum of fierce satisfaction which arose
+when the keeper of the door challenged the applicant for admission, and
+the answer, "The Earl of Mar," rang into the silence in which each man
+had been holding his breath, may be imagined. It was Archibald
+Bell-the-Cat, ever hereafter known by that name, who advanced to meet
+the swaggering intruder in all his pride of privilege and place, but
+with a welcome very different from that which the favourite expected,
+who had come, no doubt, to break up the whisperings of the conspirators
+and assert his own authority. Angus pulled the gold chain from
+Cochrane's neck, and said "a rop would sett him better," while another
+Douglas standing by snatched at the horn. Cochrane, astonished but not
+yet convinced that any real opposition was intended, asked between
+offence and alarm, perhaps beginning to doubt the sombre excited
+assembly, "My lords, is it jest or earnest?" It would seem that the grim
+and terrible event of the execution "over the Bridge of Lauder" though
+why this special locality was chosen we are not told, followed with an
+awful rapidity. The chief offender had fallen into the hands of the
+conspirators with such unhoped-for ease that they evidently felt no time
+was to be lost.
+
+    "Notwithstanding the lords held him quiet while they caused certain
+    armed men pass to the King's pavilion, and two or three wyse men
+    with them, and gave the King fair and pleasant words, till they had
+    laid hands on all his servants, and took them and hanged them over
+    the Bridge of Lauder before the King's eyes, and brought in the King
+    himself to the council. Thereafter incontinent they brought out
+    Cochrane and his hands bound with ane tow, behind his back, who
+    desired them to take ane of his own pavilion tows [cords] which were
+    of silk and bind his hands, for he thought shame to be bound with
+    ane hemp tow lyk ane thiefe. The lords answered and said, 'He was
+    worse than a thiefe, he was ane traitour and deserved no better.'"
+
+The last despairing bravado of the condemned man desiring that his hands
+might be bound with a silken cord at least, the horror and wrath of the
+pale King, helpless, looking on, forced into the assembly of the lords
+to witness their pitiless vengeance, are painfully tragical and
+terrible. All James's favourite attendants, the friends of his retired
+leisure and sharers in the occupations he loved, were thus executed
+before his eyes--all but a certain young Ramsay, who was at least a
+gentleman, and who, to save his life, leapt up behind his master upon
+the horse which the King was compelled to mount to see the dreadful deed
+accomplished. Ramsay's life was spared, not to the advantage of Scotland
+as became afterwards apparent.
+
+The historical student will not fail to note how close in almost every
+particular is this grim incident to the catastrophe of Piers Gaveston in
+England in a previous age.
+
+The state of affairs in Scotland after this extraordinary event was more
+extraordinary still, if possible. James was conveyed to Edinburgh,
+
+    "with certain lords in companie with him that took hold on him and
+    keeped him in the said castle and served and honoured him as ane
+    prince ought to be in all things: for he was not put there as a
+    prisoner, but for the maintaining of the commonweill: gave him leave
+    to use all his directions, gifts, and casualties at his pleasure.
+    For nothing was derogat from him by reason of his authority, and all
+    letters was given and proclamations made and printed in his name
+    lykas they were before at his inputting, nor no regent nor governour
+    was chosen at that time, but every lord within his own bounds was
+    sworn to minister justice and to punish theft and slaughter within
+    themselves, or else to bring the doers of the same to the King's
+    justice at Edinburgh."
+
+"Thus there was peace and rest in the country the space of
+three-quarters of a year," says Pitscottie. This, however, is a mistake,
+for the time of the King's retirement was only three or four months,
+from St. Magdalene's Day to Michaelmas. Short or long, it was one of the
+most curious moments of interregnum that history knows. James was
+conveyed back to Edinburgh with every show of respect, attended by the
+triumphant lords, who despised his milder virtues, his preferences and
+tastes, not one of whom could manage either pencil or lute, who cared
+for none of these things--while his strained eyes could still see
+nothing but the vision against the daylight, the impromptu gibbet of the
+high-arched bridge over the Border stream, where his familiar friends
+had been strung up with every sign of infamy. He had to contain within
+himself the rage, the shame, the grief and loneliness of his heart, and
+endure as he best could the exultation which his captors would scarcely
+attempt to conceal. The historians tell us little or nothing of the
+Queen, Margaret of Denmark, to whom James had been married for several
+years, and who had brought with her the full allegiance of the isles,
+the Hebrides, which up to that time had paid a tribute to the
+Scandinavian kingdom, and Orkney and Shetland which were the Queen's
+portion. Whether he found any comfort in her and in his children, when
+he was thus brought back to them to the castle, which would seem to have
+been their favourite residence, we are not told. At all events the shame
+of such a return, and of the captivity which was veiled by so many
+ironical appearances of freedom, must have been grievous to him, even as
+reflected in the eyes of his foreign wife, or the wondering questions on
+his sudden return of his baby son.
+
+How this strange state of things was brought to an end it is difficult
+to tell, for the story is confused and troublesome. According to
+Pitscottie, James's private friends advised him first to take counsel
+with the Earl of Douglas, the long-forfeited and banished Earl,
+represented as being then imprisoned in Edinburgh, which is clearly
+apocryphal: and afterwards with the Duke of Albany, to whom Pitscottie
+is throughout very favourable, making no mention of his undoubted
+treachery. For whatever may be the actual truth of all the curious and
+confused movements that were going on, it appears to be beyond doubt
+that Albany--though he had lately visited the English Court and formed a
+treasonable bargain with Edward IV to dethrone James, and to be himself
+made King in dependence upon England--now acted like a true brother.
+His first use of his alliance with Edward seems to have been for the
+advantage of the sovereign whom he intended to displace, a curious
+paradox of which we can offer no explanation. In this magnanimous act he
+had the support of the English who had engaged to help him, as the
+documents prove, in so different an enterprise: all which is very
+bewildering. Accompanied by the Duke of Gloucester and a small army, he
+suddenly appeared in Edinburgh to deliver the royal prisoner. There
+would seem to have been no fighting of any kind, nor any attempt on the
+part of Albany to dethrone his brother--nothing, indeed, but what would
+appear the most magnanimous action on his part, were not those secret
+treaties in existence bearing a silent testimony against him. When the
+lords heard of the coming of this expedition, which occurred in August
+1482 (Albany having escaped in 1479, three years before), they "drew
+themselves together to ane council," apparently to watch the proceedings
+of the invaders.
+
+    "Soon therafter compeired the Duke of Albanie and the Duke of
+    Gloucester within the town of Edinburgh, with the number of ane
+    thousand gentlemen, and entered within the Tolbooth thereof before
+    the lords of Scotland, who were sitting at ane council at that time,
+    and there very reverently saluted the Duke of Albanie, reverenced
+    him and welcomed him home, and required of him what was his
+    petition. He answered, 'I desire the King's grace, my brother, to be
+    put to libertie,' which was granted to him incontinent. But the
+    Chancellor answered and said, 'My lord, we will grant you your
+    desires; but as to that man that is with you, we know him not, nor
+    yet will we grant nothing to his desire.'"
+
+This speech, which breathes that undying defiance of English
+interference which was the very inspiration of Scotland, is too
+characteristic not to be genuine. "That man" was Richard, afterwards
+Richard III, "Crookback Richard," the bitter and powerful hunchback of
+Shakespeare, whom other authorities have endeavoured in vain to persuade
+us to regard in a more favourable light. Whatever he might be in other
+aspects, in Scotland he was merely Albany's companion, silently aiding
+in what seems a most legitimate and honourable mission. The only way the
+historians can find of reconciling this strangely virtuous and exemplary
+behaviour with the secret engagements between Albany and England is by
+the conjecture that the lords of Scotland were so evidently indisposed
+to favour Albany, and there was so little feeling shown towards him by
+any part of the population, that the treason was silently abandoned, and
+in the hopelessness of playing a treasonable part he played a
+magnanimous one, with the utmost grace and semblance of sincerity; which
+is a bewildering conclusion. In any case he was the deliverer of his
+brother. It would seem to be the fact, however, that James's deliverance
+was much aided by the attitude of the burghers of Edinburgh, who were,
+as so often, on the King's side--and to whom the character of a patron
+of the arts, and promoter of so many persons of their own class into his
+friendship, would naturally be as great a recommendation as it was an
+offence to the others. Their action at this period excited the King's
+gratitude so much that he conferred upon the city a special charter,
+securing the independence of their municipal government, as well as
+their right to levy customs in the port of Leith, and also, it is said,
+a sign of these privileges, in the shape of the standard called the Blue
+Blanket, which still remains in the possession of the Edinburgh guilds,
+with liberty to display it for their king, country, and city rights,
+when occasion calls.
+
+The two Dukes of Albany and Gloucester marched together to the castle,
+preceded by heralds, to claim the King from the officials who had him in
+charge. One can imagine the mingled relief and humiliation of James when
+delivered from that stronghold by the brother who had escaped from it by
+night, within a few hours of the time when he had been ordered for
+execution, and who in the meantime had been an exile. There is no reason
+to suppose that he was aware of the secret understanding with England to
+which his brother had set his seal, so that there was nothing to lessen
+the intensity of the coals of fire thus heaped upon his head. No doubt
+all Edinburgh was in the streets to watch that strange sight, as the
+King rode from the castle gates, past the great Church of St. Giles, and
+down the long line of the Canongate to Holyrood, making his emancipation
+visible to all. Apparently he had not left the castle since he was
+brought into it in shame and misery after the fatal episode at Lauder.
+One wonders how he looked upon the crowd which no doubt would throng
+after him with acclamations--whether thankfully and cheerfully in the
+pleasure of release, or with a revengeful sense of how little he owed to
+their easy applauses. It is said that Albany rode behind him on the same
+horse as an exhibition of amity. It is very probable that James would
+find bitterness in that too, as another humiliation.
+
+The King was no sooner free than he made it evident that he had not
+forgiven the humiliation and shame to which he had been subjected. He
+imprisoned in their turn a number of the lords who had been foremost in
+the death of Cochrane, and would have "justified" them we are told, but
+for the interference of Angus--now too great apparently for James to
+touch--and Albany. For some time after the latter remained with his
+brother, fulfilling the functions of chief counsellor and Prime
+Minister. But whether he displayed his ambition and evil intentions, or
+the old jealousy and terrors of James got the upper hand as the lords
+again became suspicious of him, it is difficult to tell. At all events
+Albany was forced to escape once more for his life, and again took
+refuge in France, where either now or previously, for the chronology is
+difficult to follow, he had made a great marriage. Here he disappears
+altogether from Scottish history, and not long after from life, having
+been killed by accident in a tournament. Had Albany been the elder
+instead of the younger brother it seems very probable that a dark
+chapter might have been left out of the history of Scotland, and a third
+patriotic and energetic King carried on the traditions of the first and
+second James.
+
+But it was scarcely to be looked for that, after all the dissensions
+between the King and the lords, everything should settle into harmony
+again. James is said to have removed to Stirling from Edinburgh, which
+no doubt had acquired painful associations to him from the time of his
+enforced residence there--and to have resumed or completed the buildings
+in which he had taken so much pleasure--especially the great hall of
+Stirling Castle, with all its grotesque and curious ornamentation, which
+seems to prove that Scotland was still much behind in refinement, though
+with a barbaric inspiration of her own. Whether the renewed tumults
+began by the appropriation of certain Church lands hitherto in the power
+of the Homes, for the endowment of the King's new chapel, it is
+difficult to tell, a similar reason having been already alleged for
+disturbances in which the Duke of Albany was the antagonist of that
+powerful family; at all events a very small matter was enough to awake
+again all the old rancours. The malcontents headed by the same men who
+had already inflicted so much suffering and shame upon the King began to
+draw together in alarming numbers. Roused from among his more congenial
+occupations by this renewed commotion, James sent a herald to ask the
+reason of their assembling: but the herald was disrespectfully treated
+and his letters torn in pieces, an insult which seems to have convinced
+the King that the strongest measures of defence were necessary. He is
+said to have strongly fortified Stirling, where Prince James, the heir
+of the kingdom, now a boy of fifteen or sixteen, was. Perhaps the King
+was suspicious of the boy, perhaps his old terrors as to the danger to
+his life which was to arise from his own family had returned to him: for
+the restrictions under which young James was left were exceedingly
+severe and arbitrary. No man was to be allowed to enter the castle,
+great or small, till the King's return, nor was the Prince to be allowed
+to pass the gates "to no game, nor to meet with no man." Pitscottie says
+that Edinburgh Castle was also strengthened, and the King's treasury
+placed in it and all his valuables laid up there. When these precautions
+were taken James embarked "in ane ship of Captane Woode's"--probably the
+most legitimate way in which he could have travelled, the vessel being
+that of the Admiral, Andrew Wood, the greatest sailor in Scotland--and
+went to Fife, from whence he marched to the north, calling the nobles of
+the northern counties round him, and gathering an army with which to
+oppose the greater lords and lairds who awaited him on the other side of
+the Firth of Forth. James's unusual energy must have equally roused and
+alarmed the rebels, against whom the royal name was as a strong tower.
+That such men as Angus and the other great nobles of Scotland, who had
+reduced their King to a puppet with such entire success, should now feel
+it necessary to get possession of Prince James in order to confer
+dignity, on their proceedings seems very strange; but perhaps when
+rebellion comes to the dignity of a pitched battle its flags and
+pretensions are of more importance than when it can so order matters as
+to put on an appearance of acting in the King's own interests, as at
+Lauder. And how far the Prince might be an independent actor in this
+troubled drama there is no evidence to show. He had arrived at an age
+when youths in these early-maturing days acted for themselves; even in
+our own a lad of sixteen would scarcely allow his name to be employed
+against his father without some protest, and could not be treated as a
+child in a conflict so momentous. Therefore it is scarcely possible to
+imagine that the Prince was entirely guiltless. And the spectator cannot
+but enter with warmth into the feelings of the King when he discovered
+what had been done, and that his heir was in the enemy's camp, giving
+substance and reason to their rebellion.
+
+There is a curious story told of how Lord Lindsay of the Byres, a fierce
+and grim baron of Fife, presented on the very eve of the battle "a great
+grey courser" to the King, assuring him that were he ever in extremity
+that horse would carry him, "either to fly or to follow," better than
+any horse in Scotland, "if well sitten"--a present which James accepted,
+and which comes in as part of the paraphernalia of fate. On the morning
+of the day of battle the King mounted this horse, and "rade to ane hill
+head to see the manner of the cuming" of his enemies against him. He saw
+the host defiling "in three battells," with six thousand men in each,
+their spears shining, their banners waving, Homes and Hepburns in the
+front, with Merse and Teviotdale and all the forces of the Border, and
+the men of Lothian in the rear: while in the main body rose the ensigns
+of all the great lords who had already beaten and humbled
+him--Bell-the-Cat and the other barons who had hanged his friends before
+his eyes--but now bearing his own royal standard, with his son among
+them, the bitterest thought of all. James sat upon his fleet horse,
+presented to him the night before with such an ominous recommendation,
+and saw his enemies bearing down upon him--his enemies and his son.
+"Then," says the chronicler, "he remembered the words which the witch
+had spoken to him many days before, that he should be suddenly destroyed
+and put down by the nearest of his kin." For this he had allowed the
+murder of young Mar and driven Alexander of Albany into exile; but who
+can wonder if in his stricken soul he now perceived or imagined that no
+man can cheat the Fates? His own son, his boy! Some nobler poignancy of
+anguish than the mere sick despair and panic of the coward must surely
+have been in his mind as he realised this last and crowning horror. The
+profound moral discouragement of a man caught in the toils, and for whom
+no escape was possible; the sickening sense of betrayal; the wide
+country before him, in which there might still be found some peaceful
+refuge far from these distractions and contradictions of men; the whirl
+of the dreadful yet beautiful sight, companies marching and ever
+marching, spears and helmets shining, banners waving, and all against
+him--a man who had never any pleasure in the pomp and circumstance of
+war. Who can wonder as these hurrying thoughts overwhelmed his mind, and
+the fleet courser pawed the turf, and the wild sweet air blew free in
+his face, inviting him to escape, to flee, to find somewhere comfort and
+peace--that such a man should have yielded to the mad impulse, and in an
+access of despair, longing for the wings of a dove that he might flee
+away and be at rest, have turned from the rising tumult and fled?
+
+Of all the ironies of Fate there could be none more bitter than that
+which drove the hapless fugitive, in growing consciousness of shame,
+like a straw before the wind, across the famous field of Bannockburn.
+What an association to be connected with that victorious name! He had
+aimed at Stirling, but wild with despair and panic and misery missed the
+way. As the grey courser entered the village of Bannockburn at full
+flight a woman drawing water let fall her "pig" or earthen pot in
+affright, and startled the horse; and the King "being evill sitten"
+(having a bad seat) fell from his saddle before the door of the mill.
+The sight of this strange cavalier in his splendid armour, covered with
+foam and dust, borne to the earth like a log by the weight of his
+armour, appalled the simple people, who dragged him inside the mill and
+covered him where he lay with some rough horsecloth, not knowing what to
+do. When he had come to himself James implored the wondering people to
+fetch him a priest before he died. "Who are you?" they asked, standing
+over him. What a world of time had passed in that wild ride! how many
+ages since the dying fugitive lying on the dusty floor and covered with
+the miller's rug was James Stewart, at the head of a gallant army! "This
+morning," he said, with a bitter comprehension of all that had passed
+since then, "I was your King." The miller's wife ran forth to her door
+calling for a priest, and some one who was passing by answered her call;
+but whether he was really a priest, or only one of the stragglers of the
+rebel army, seems uncertain. He came into the mill, hearing no doubt the
+cries of the astonished couple that it was the King, and kneeling down
+recognised the fallen monarch; but instead of hearing his confession,
+drew a knife and stabbed him three or four times in the breast. Thus
+miserably ended James Stewart, the third of the name.
+
+Of all the tragical conclusions to which his family had come this was
+the most deplorable, as his life had been the least satisfactory.
+Whether there was more than weakness to be alleged against him it is now
+impossible to tell; and whether his favourite companions and occupations
+proved a spirit touched to finer issues than those about him, or showed
+only, as his barons thought, a preference for low company and paltry
+pursuits of peace. But howsoever his patronage of the arts, the
+buildings he has left to Scotland, or the tradition of the music and
+gentle pleasures which he loved, may justify him to the reader, it is at
+least clear that his stewardry of his kingdom was a miserable failure,
+and his life a loss and harm to his country. Instead of promoting the
+much-interrupted progress of her development, so far as his individual
+influence went, he arrested and hindered it. And, difficult as the
+position of affairs had been when he succeeded at seven years old to his
+father's uncompleted labours, the situation which he left behind him,
+the country torn in two, one half of his subjects in arms against the
+other, his son's name opposed to his own, and every national benefit
+postponed to the settlement of this quarrel, was ten times more
+difficult and terrible. He was the first of his name whose influence was
+all unfavourable to the progress of the nation, not only by evil
+fortune, but by the disasters of a mind not sufficient for the weight
+and burden of his time. He thus died ignominiously, in the month of June
+1488, having reigned twenty-eight years and lived thirty-five--a short
+lifetime for so much trouble and general misfortune.
+
+[Illustration: ARMS OF JAMES IV OF SCOTLAND
+
+(From King's College Chapel, Old Aberdeen)]
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+JAMES IV: THE KNIGHT-ERRANT
+
+
+The graver records of the nation pause at the point to which we have
+arrived. The tale leaves both battlefield and council chamber, though
+there is an inevitable something of both in the chronicle as there is
+something of daily bread in the most festive day. But it is not with
+these grave details that the historian occupies himself. The most
+serious page takes a glow from the story it has to tell, the weighty
+matters of national life and development stand aside, and it is a knight
+of romance who stands forth to occupy the field. The story of James, the
+fourth of the name, is one of those passages of veritable history in
+which there is scarcely anything that might not be borrowed from a tale
+of chivalry. It is pure romance from beginning to end.
+
+Of the character and personality of the boy whose education was carried
+on under strict surveillance at Stirling we know nothing whatever, until
+he suddenly appears before us in the enemy's camp, whether with his own
+consent or not, or how much, if with his own consent, with any knowledge
+of what he was about, it is difficult to tell. His mother had died while
+he was still a child, and probably for the last few years of his much
+disturbed life James III had but little attention to spare for his son.
+If there is any truth in a curious story told by Pitscottie of a search
+on board Sir Andrew Wood's ship for the murdered King, while yet the
+fact of his death was unknown, and the Prince's wistful address to the
+great sailor, "Sir, are ye my father?" we might suppose that the boy had
+been banished altogether from his father's presence. But perhaps this is
+too slender a foundation to build upon. There can be no doubt, however,
+that after the battle, little honourable to either side, and lost by the
+King's party almost before begun, from which he fled in a panic so
+ignominious and fatal, there was a moment of great perplexity and
+dismay, when King James's fate remained a mystery, and the rebel nobles
+with the boy-prince among them knew not what to do or to say, in the
+doubt whether he was dead or alive, whether he might not reappear at any
+moment with a host from the Highlands or from France, or even England,
+at his back. When they had fully realised their unsatisfactory victory
+they marched to Edinburgh, with the Prince always among them and a chill
+horror about them, unaware what way to look for news of the King. The
+rush of the people to watch their return with their drooping banners and
+faces full of consternation, and wonder at the unaccustomed sight of the
+young Prince which yet was not exciting enough to counterbalance the
+anxiety, the wonder, the perpetual question what had become of the
+King--must have been as a menace the more to the perplexed leaders, who
+knew that a fierce mob might surge up into warfare at any moment, or a
+rally from the castle cut off their discouraged and weary troops. Where
+was the King? Had he perhaps got before them to Edinburgh? was he there
+on that height, misty with smoke and sunshine, turning against them the
+great gun, which had been forged for use against the Douglas: or ready
+to appear from over the Firth terrible with a new army; or in the ships,
+most likely of all, with the great admiral who lay there watching, ready
+to carry off a royal fugitive or bring back strange allies to revenge
+the scorn that had been done to the King? The lords decided to take
+their dispirited and broken array to Leith instead of going to Holyrood,
+and there collected together to hold a council of war. Among the
+confused reports brought to them of what one man and another had seen or
+heard was one, more likely than the rest, of boats which had been seen
+to steal down Forth and make for the _Yellow Carvel_ lying in the
+estuary, with apparently wounded men on board. They sent accordingly to
+summon Sir Andrew Wood to their presence. The sailor probably cared
+nothing about politics any further than that he held for the King--and
+furious with the Lords who had withstood his Majesty declined to come
+unless hostages were sent for his safety. When this was accorded, the
+old sea-lion, the first admiral of Scotland, came gruffly from his ships
+to answer their questions. Whether there was any resemblance between the
+two men, as he stood with his cloak wrapped round him defiant before the
+rebel lords, or if the Prince had, as is possible, been so long absent
+from his father that the vague outline of a man enveloped and muffled
+deceived him, it is impossible to say. But there is a tone of
+penetrating reality in the "Sir, are ye my father?" of the troubled boy,
+perhaps only then aroused to a full comprehension of his position and
+the sense that he was himself guiltily involved in the proceedings which
+had brought some mysterious and unknown fate upon the King. It is
+difficult to see why, accepting from Pitscottie all the rest of this
+affecting narrative, the modern historian should cut out this as
+unworthy of belief, "Who answered," continues the chronicler, "with
+tears falling from his eyes,"
+
+    "'Sir, I am not your father, but I was a servand to your father, and
+    sall be to his authoritie till I die, and ane enemy to them that was
+    the occasion of his doon-putting.' The lords inquired of Captain
+    Wood if he knew of the King or where he was. He answered he knew
+    nothing of the King nor where he was. Then they speired what they
+    were that came out of the field and passed into his ships. He
+    answered: 'It was I and my brother, who were ready to have waired
+    our lives with the King in his defence.' Then they said, 'He is not
+    in your ships?' who answered again, 'He is not in my ship, but would
+    to God he were in my ship safelie, I should defend him and keep him
+    skaithless frae all the treasonable creatures who has murdered him,
+    for I think to see the day when they shall be hanged and quartered
+    for their demerites.'"
+
+The lords would fain have silenced this rude sailor, but having given
+hostages for his safe return were obliged to let him go. There could not
+be a more vivid picture of their perplexity and trouble. They proceeded
+to Edinburgh after this rebuff, coming in, we may well believe, with
+little sound of trumpet or sign of welcome, and with many a threatening
+countenance among the crowds that gazed wistfully upon the boy in their
+midst, who, if the King were really dead, was the King--another James.
+There might be old men about watching from the foot of the Canongate the
+silent cortege trooping along the valley to Holyrood--men who remembered
+with all the force of boyish recollection how the assassins of James I.
+had been dragged and tormented through Edinburgh streets, and might
+wonder and whisper inquiries to their sons whether such a horrible sight
+might be coming again, and what part that pale boy had in the dreadful
+deed? It was but fifty years since that catastrophe, and already two
+long minorities had paralysed the progress of Scotland. How the crowding
+people must have eyed him, as he rode along, the slim stripling, so
+young, so helpless, in the midst of all these bearded men! What part did
+he have in it? Was his father done to death by his orders? Was he
+consenting at least to what was done? Was he aware of all that was to
+follow that hurried ride with the lords, into which he had been beguiled
+or persuaded? James III had to some degree favoured Edinburgh, where,
+notwithstanding his long captivity in the Castle, he had found defenders
+and friends. And there must have been many in the crowd who took part
+with the unfortunate monarch, so mysteriously gone out of their midst,
+and who looked with horror upon the boy who had something at least to do
+with the ruin and death of his father. It was a sombre entry upon the
+future dwelling to which this young James was to bring so much splendour
+and rejoicing.
+
+How these doubts were cleared up and certainty attained we have no sure
+way of knowing. Pitscottie's story is that when the false priest
+murdered the King, he took up the body on his back and carried it away,
+"but no man knew what he did with him or where he buried him." Other
+authorities speak of a funeral service in the Abbey of Cambuskenneth on
+the banks of the Forth--a great religious establishment, of which one
+dark grey tower alone remains upon the green meadows by the winding
+river; and there is mention afterwards of a bloody shirt carried about
+on the point of a lance to excite the indignant Northmen to rebellion.
+But notwithstanding these facts no one ventures to say that James's body
+was found or buried. Masses for the dead were sung, and every religious
+honour paid; but so far as anything is told us, these rites might have
+been performed around an empty bier. At last however, in some way, a
+dolorous certainty, which must by many have been felt as a relief, was
+attained, and the young King was crowned in Edinburgh in the summer of
+1488, some weeks after his father's death. At the same time a Parliament
+was called, and the Castle of Edinburgh, which all this time seems to
+have kept its gates closed and rendered no submission, was summoned by
+the herald to yield, "which was obediently done at the King's command,"
+says the chronicle. There was evidently no thought of rebellion or of
+resisting the lawful sovereign, so soon as it was certain which he was.
+The procession of the herald, perhaps the Lord Lyon himself, with all
+his pursuivants, up the long street to sound the trumpets outside the
+castle gates and demand submission, must have brightened the waiting and
+wondering city with the certainty of the new reign. But the bravery and
+fine colours of such a procession, though made doubly effective by the
+background of noble houses and all the lofty gables and great churches
+in the crowded picturesque centre at the foot of the Castle Hill, were
+not then as now strange to the "grey metropolis of the North." No
+country in Christendom would seem to have so changed under the influence
+of the Reformation as Scotland. The absence of pageant and ceremonial,
+the discouragement of display, the suppression of the picturesque in
+action, in the midst of one of the most picturesque scenes in the world,
+are all of modern growth. In the fifteenth century, and especially in
+the reign that was now begun, the town ran over with bright colour and
+splendid spectacle. When the lists were formed upon the breezy platform,
+overlooking the fair plains of Lothian, the great Firth, and the
+surrounding circle of hills, at the castle gate--how brilliant must have
+been both scene and setting, the living picture and the wonderful frame,
+and how every window would be crowded to see the hundred little
+processions of knights to the jousts and ladies to the tribunes, and the
+King and Queen riding with all their fine attendants "up the toun" all
+the way from Holyrood! Nor would the curiosity be much less when, coming
+in from the country, with every kind of quaint surrounding, the great
+nobles with their glittering retinue, the lairds each with a little
+posse of stout men-at-arms, as many as he could muster, the burgesses
+from the towns, the clergy from all the great centres of the Church, on
+mules and soft-pacing palfreys, would gather for the meetings of
+Parliament. It scarcely wanted a knight-errant like the fourth James,
+with his chivalrous tastes and devices, to fill the noble town with
+brightness, for all these fine sights were familiar to Edinburgh. But
+the brightest day was now to come.
+
+[Illustration: OLD HOUSE IN LAWNMARKET]
+
+The Parliament which assembled in all the emotion of that curious
+crisis, while still the wonder and dismay of the King's tragic
+disappearance were in the air, was a strange one. It was evidently
+convened with the intention of shielding the party which had taken arms
+against James III, while making a cunning attempt to throw the blame on
+those who had stood by him: these natural sentiments being combined with
+the determination, most expedient in the circumstances, to reconcile all
+by punishing none. The young King and the power now exercised in his
+name were in the hands of the lords who had headed the rebellion, Angus,
+Home, Bothwell, and the rest; and while their own safety was naturally
+their first consideration, they had evidently no desire to stir up
+troublesome questions even for the fierce joy of condemning their
+opponents. At one or other of the early Parliaments in this reign,
+either that first held by way of smoothing over matters and preparing
+such an account of all that had happened as might be promulgated by
+foreign ambassadors to their respective Courts--or one which followed
+the easy settlement of an attempt at rebellion already referred to, when
+the Lord of Forbes carried a bloody shirt, supposed to be that of King
+James, through the streets of Aberdeen, and raised a quickly-quelled
+insurrection--there occurs the trial of Sir David Lindsay, one of the
+most quaint narratives of a _cause celebre_ ever written. The
+chronicler, whom we may quote at some length--and whose living and
+graphic narrative none even of those orthodox historians who pretend to
+hold lightly the ever-delightful Pitscottie, upon whom at the same time
+they rely as their chief authority, attempt to question in this
+case--was himself a Lindsay, and specially concerned for the honour of
+his name. The defendant was Lindsay of the Byres, one of the chief of
+James III's supporters, he who had given the King that ominous gift of a
+fleet courser on the eve of the battle. When he appeared at the bar of
+the house so to speak--before Parliament--the following "dittay" or
+indictment was made against him:--
+
+    "Lord David Lindsay of the Byres compeir for the cruel coming
+    against the King at Bannokburne with his father, and in giving him
+    counsall to have devored his sone, the King's grace, here present:
+    and to that effect gave him ane sword and ane hors to fortify him
+    against his sone: what is your answer heirunto?"
+
+A more curious reversal of the facts of the case could not be, and the
+idea that James the actual monarch could be a rebel against his own son,
+then simply the heir to the crown, is bewildering in its grave defiance
+of all reason. There is not much wonder that Lindsay, "ane rasch man,
+and of rud language, albeit he was stout and hardy in the field and
+exercised in war," burst forth upon the assembled knights and lords,
+upbraiding them with bringing the Prince into their murderous designs
+against the King. The effect of his speech on the assembly would seem to
+have been considerable, and it is very apparent that the party in power
+had no desire to make any fight, for the Chancellor anxiously excused
+Lindsay to the King as "ane man of the old world, that cannot answer
+formallie nor get speech reverentlie in your Grace's presence." This
+roused the brother of the culprit, a certain Mr. Patrick Lindsay,
+otherwise described as a Churchman, who was by no means content to see
+the head of his house thus described, nor yet that Lord Lindsay should
+come "in the King's will," thus accepting forfeiture or any other
+penalties that might be pronounced against him. Accordingly he
+interfered in the following remarkable way:--
+
+    "To that effect he stamped on his brother's foot to latt him
+    understand that he was not content with the decree which the
+    Chancellour proponed to him. But this stamp of Mr. Patrick's was so
+    heavy upon his brother's foot, who had ane sair toe which was
+    painful to him, wherefore he looked to him and said, 'Ye were over
+    pert to stampe upon my foot; were you out of the King's presence I
+    would overtake you upon the mouth.' Mr. Patrick, hearing the vain
+    words of his brother, pled on his knees before the King and the
+    Justice, and made his petition to them in this manner: 'Sir, if it
+    will please your Grace and your honorabill counsall, I desire of
+    your Grace, for His cause that is Judge of all, that your Grace will
+    give me leave this day to speak for my brother, for I see there is
+    no man of law that dare speak for him for fear of your Grace; and
+    although he and I has not been at ane this mony yeires, yet my heart
+    may not suffer me to see the native house whereof I am descended to
+    perish!' So the King and the Justice gave him leave to speak for his
+    brother. Then the said Mr. Patrick raise off his knees, and was very
+    blythe that he had obtained that license with the King's favour. So
+    he began very reverentlie to speak in this manner, saying to the
+    whole lords of Parliament, and to the rest of them that were
+    accusers of his brother at that time, with the rest of the lords
+    that were in the summons of forfaltrie, according to their dittay,
+    saying: 'I beseech you all, my lords, that be here present, for His
+    sake that will give sentence and judgment on us all at the last day,
+    that ye will remember now instantly is your time ... therefore now
+    do all ye would be done to in the administration of justice to your
+    neighbours and brethren, who are accused of their lives and
+    heritages this day, whose judgment stands in your hands. Therefore
+    beware in time, and open not the door that ye may not steik.' Be
+    this Mr. Patrick had ended his speeches, the Chancellour bid him say
+    something in defence of his brother, and to answer to the points of
+    the summons made and raised upon his brother and the rest of the
+    lords and barons. Then Mr. Patrick answered again and said: 'If it
+    please the King's grace, and your honours that are here present, I
+    say the King should not sit in judgment against his lords and
+    barons, because he has made his oath of fidelity when he received
+    the crown of Scotland that he should not come in judgment against
+    his lords and barons in no action where he is partie himself. But
+    here His Grace is both partie, and was at the committing of the
+    crime himself, therefore he ought not, neither by the law of God nor
+    of man, to sit in judgment at this time; wherefore we desire him, in
+    the name of God, to rise and depart out of judgment, till the matter
+    be further discussed conform to justice.'"
+
+[Illustration: ST. ANTHONY'S CHAPEL]
+
+This bold request apparently commended itself to the Parliament, for we
+hear that the Chancellor and lords considered it reasonable, and the
+King was accordingly desired "to rise up and pass into the inner
+tolbooth, which," adds Pitscottie, "was very unpleasant to him for the
+time, being ane young prince sittand upon his royall seat to be raised
+by his subjects." Mr. Patrick so pressed his advantage after this
+strange incident, and the argument of the young King's presence and
+complicity in all that had happened was so unanswerable, added to some
+inaccuracy in the indictment, of which the keen priest made the most,
+that the summons was withdrawn, and Lindsay along with all the other
+barons of his party would seem to have shared in the general amnesty, as
+probably was the intention of all parties from the beginning. For the
+victors, who were victors by a chance, were not powerful enough to carry
+matters with a high hand, and their opponents, though overcome, were too
+strong to be despised. It was better for all to gather round the new
+King, who had no evil antecedents nor anything to prevent a new
+beginning of the most hopeful kind. The scene ends with characteristic
+liveliness. "The lord David Lindsay was so blyth at his brother's
+sayings that he burst forth saying to him, 'Verrilie, brother, ye have
+fine pyet words. I should not have trowed, by St. Amarie, that you had
+sic words'"--an amusing tribute of half-scornful gratitude from the
+soldier to the Churchman whose pyet or magpie words were so wonderfully
+efficacious, yet so despicable in themselves, to change the fate of a
+gentleman! It is grievous to find that the King was so displeased at Mr.
+Patrick and his boldness that he sent him off to the Ross of Bute, and
+kept him imprisoned in that solitary yet beautiful region for a whole
+year.
+
+Notwithstanding, however, this little failure of respect to the
+sovereign, and the dismal uncertainty and anxiety in which his reign
+began, there seemed to be nothing but the happiest prospects opening
+before the young King. Out of the miserable struggle which brought him
+to the throne, he himself, most probably only awakened to the meaning of
+it after all was over, brought a lifelong remorse which he never threw
+off, and which was increased by the melancholy services of commemoration
+and expiation, the masses for his father's soul and solemn funeral
+ceremonials whether real or nominal, at all of which the youth would
+have to be present with a sore and swelling heart. We are told that he
+went and unburthened himself to the Dean of the Chapel Royal in
+Stirling, his father's favourite church, which James III had built and
+endowed, arranging the services and music with special personal care.
+The Dean received his confession with kindness seeing him so penitent,
+and gave him "good counsel and comfort," and remained his friend and
+spiritual adviser as he grew into manhood; but we are not told whether
+it was by his ordinance as a penance and constant reminder of his sin,
+or by a voluntary mortification of his own, that James assumed the iron
+belt which he wore always round him "and eikit it from time to time,"
+that is, increased its size and weight as long as he lived. This
+sensibility, which formed part of his chivalrous and generous character,
+the noble, sweet, and lovable nature which conquered all hearts, at once
+subdued and silenced his many critics, and furnished them with a
+reproach which spite and ill-will could bring up against him when
+occasion occurred. But the enemies were few and the lovers many who
+surrounded the young Prince when the contentions of the crisis were once
+over, and the warring factions conciliated by general condemnations in
+principle which hurt nobody so long as they were not accompanied by
+confiscations or deprivations. Such clemency in so young a king was a
+marvel to all, the chroniclers say, though indeed there could be little
+question of clemency on James's part in a mutual hushing-up, which was
+evidently dictated by every circumstance of the time and the only source
+of mutual safety.
+
+When, however, he had arrived at man's estate, and makes a recognisable
+and individual appearance upon the stage of history, the picture of him
+is one of the most attractive ever made, the happiest and brightest
+chapter in the tragic story of the Stewarts. Youth with that touch of
+extravagance which becomes it, that genial wildness which all are so
+ready to pardon, and an adventurous disposition, careless of personal
+safety, gave a charm the more to the magnificent young King, handsome,
+noble, brave, and full of universal friendliness and sympathy, who comes
+forth smiling in the face of fate, ready to turn back every gloomy
+augury and bring in another golden age. Pitscottie's description is full
+of warmth and vivid reality:--
+
+    "In this mean time was good peace and rest in Scotland and great
+    love betwixt the King and all his subjects, and was well loved by
+    them all: for he was verrie noble, and though the vice of
+    covetousness rang over meikle in his father it rang not in himself:
+    nor yet pykthankis nor cowards should be authorised in his companie,
+    nor yet advanced; neither used he the council but of his lords,
+    whereby he won the hearts of the whole nobilitie; so that he could
+    ride out through any part of the realme, him alone, unknowing that
+    he was King; and would lie in poor men's houses as he had been ane
+    travellour through the country, and would require of them where he
+    lodged, where the King was, and what ane man he was, and how he used
+    himself towards his subjects, and what they spoke of him through the
+    countrie. And they would answer him as they thought good, so by this
+    doing the King heard the common bruit of himself. This Prince was
+    wondrous hardie and diligent in execution of justice, and loved
+    nothing so well as able men and horses; therefore at sundry times he
+    would cause make proclamations through the land to all and sundry
+    his lords and barons who were able for justing and tourney to come
+    to Edinburgh to him, and there to exercise themselves for his
+    pleasure, some to run with the spear, some to fight with the
+    battle-axe, some with the two-handed sword, and some with the bow,
+    and other exercises. By this means the King brought the realm to
+    great manhood and honour: that the fame of his justing and tourney
+    spread through all Europe, which caused many errant knights to come
+    out of other parts to Scotland to seek justing, because they heard
+    of the kinglie fame of the Prince of Scotland. But few or none of
+    them passed away unmatched, and ofttimes overthrown."
+
+The town to which, under this young and gallant Prince, the stream of
+chivalry flowed, was yet more picturesque than the still and always
+"romantic town" of which every Scotsman is proud. The Nor' Loch
+reflected the steep rocks of the castle and the high crown of walls and
+turrets that surmounted them, with nothing but fields and greenery, here
+and there diversified by a village and fortified mansion between it and
+the sea. The walls, which followed the irregularities of the rocky
+ridge, as far as the beginning of the Canongate, were closed across the
+High Street by the picturesque port and gateway of the Nether Bow, the
+boundary in that direction of the town, shutting in all its busy life,
+its markets, its crowding citizens, its shops and churches. On the south
+at the foot of the hill, the burghers' suburb, where the merchants,
+lawyers, and even some of the nobles had their houses and gardens, lay
+outside the walls in the sunshine, protected only by the soft summits of
+the Braid and Pentland hills: what is now the Cowgate, not a savoury
+quarter, being then the South Side, the flowery and sheltered faubourg
+in which all who could afford the freedom of a country residence while
+still close to the town, expanded into larger life, as the wealthy
+tradesfolk of all ages, and persons bound to a centre of occupation and
+duty, always love to do. Towards the east, and gradually becoming as
+important and busy as the High Street itself, though outside the series
+of towers which guarded the city gate, lay the long line of the Court
+suburb, the lofty and noble Canongate descending towards the abbey and
+palace, where all that was splendid in Scotland congregated around the
+gay and gallant King. Outside the Netherbow Port, striking out in
+opposite directions, was the road which led to the seaport of Leith and
+that which took its name from the great Kirk of Field, St. Mary's Wynd,
+a pleasant walk along the outside of the fortifications to the great
+monastery on its plateau, with the Pleasance, a name suggestive of all
+freshness and greenery and rural pleasure, at its feet. Inside the town,
+between the castle gates and those of the city, were the crowded
+habitations of a mediaeval town, the only place where business could be
+carried on in safety, or rich wares exhibited, or money passed from hand
+to hand. The Lawnmarket or Linen Market would be the chief centre of
+sale and merchandise, and there, no doubt, the booths before the lower
+stories, with all their merchandise displayed, and the salesmen seated
+at the head of the few deep steps which led into the cavernous depths
+within, would be full of fine dresses and jewellery, and the gold and
+silver which, some one complains, was worn away by the fine workmanship,
+which was then more prized than solid weight. The cloth of gold and
+silver, the fine satins and velvets, the embroidery, more exquisite than
+anything we have time or patience for now--embroidery of gold thread
+which we hear of, an uncomfortable sort of luxury, even upon the linen
+of great personages--would there be put forth and inspected by gallants
+in all their fine array, or by the ladies in their veils, half or wholly
+muffled from public inspection. Even the cheaper booths that adorned the
+West Bow or smaller wynds, where the country women bought their kirtles
+of red or green when they brought their produce to the market, would
+show more gay colours under their shade in a season than we with our
+soberer taste in years; and the town ladies, in their hoods and silk
+gowns, which were permitted even in more primitive times to the
+possessors of so much a year, must have been of themselves a fair sight
+in all their ornaments, less veiled and muffled from profane view than
+more high-born dames and demoiselles. No doubt it would be a favourite
+walk with all to pass the port and see what was doing among the great
+people down yonder at Holyrood, or watch a gay band of French knights
+arriving from Leith with their pennons displayed, full of some challenge
+lately given by the knights of Scotland, or eager to maintain on their
+own account the beauty of their ladies and the strength of their spears
+against all comers. Edinburgh can never have been so amusing, never so
+gay and bright, as in these fine times; though, no doubt, there was
+always the risk of a rush together of two parties of gallants, a melee
+after the old mode of Clear the Causeway, a hurried shutting of shops
+and pulling forth of halberds. For the younger population, at least, no
+doubt these risks were almost the best part of the play.
+
+[Illustration: OLD HOUSES AT HEAD OF WEST BOW]
+
+Thus Edinburgh breasted its ridge of rock--a fair sight across all the
+green country; its sentinel mountain crouching eastward between the
+metropolis and the sea, its suburbs growing and expanding; this full of
+the fine people of the Court, that of the quiet wealth and enjoyment
+which made no extravagant demonstration. It had never been so
+prosperous, never so much the centre of all that was splendid in the
+kingdom, as in the reign of the fourth James--the knight of romance, the
+gayest and brightest representative of the House of Stewart, though
+unable to defend himself from the tragic fate which awaited every
+sovereign of his name.
+
+Among the finest sights seen in Edinburgh must have been those which
+occurred very early in his reign, when the great Admiral, Sir Andrew
+Wood, he who had met so proudly the inquisition of the lords, came from
+sea with his prisoners and his spoils. Wood had not pleased the reigning
+party by his rough fidelity to the dead King, but they could not induce
+the other sea captains, by any promise of reward or advancement, to
+attack and punish, as was their desire, the greatest sailor in Scotland.
+And when an English expedition began to vex the Scottish coasts, there
+was no one but Wood to encounter and defeat them, which he did on two
+different occasions, bringing the captains of the rover
+vessels--probably only half authorised by the astute King Henry VII, who
+had evidently no desire to attack Scotland, but who had to permit a raid
+from time to time as the most popular thing to do--as prisoners to the
+courteous King, who though he "thanked Sir Andrew Wood greatly and
+rewarded him richlie for his labours and great proof of his manhood,"
+yet "propined (gave presents to) the English captain richlie and all his
+men and sent them all safelie home, their ships and all their
+furnishing, because they had shown themselves so stout and hardie
+warriours." "So he sent them all back to the King of England," says the
+chronicler, with full enjoyment of James's magnanimous brag and of thus
+having the better of "the auld enemy" both in prowess and in courtesy,
+"to let him understand he had as manlie men in Scotland as he had in
+England; therefore desired him to send no more of his captains in time
+coming." England was obliged to accept, it appeared, this bravado of the
+Scots, having no excuse for repeating the experiment, but was
+"discontented" and little pleased to be overcome both in courtesy and in
+arms.
+
+A more serious matter than this encounter at sea, which was really more
+a trial of strength than anything else, was the purely chivalric
+enterprise of James in taking up the cause of Perkin Warbeck, the
+supposed Duke of York, who imposed upon all Europe for a time, and on
+nobody so much as the King of Scotland. This adventurer, who was given
+out as the younger son of Edward IV escaped by the relenting of the
+murderers when his elder brother was killed in the Tower, was by
+unanimous consent of all history a youth of person and manners quite
+equal to his pretensions, playing his part of royal prince with a grace
+and sincerity which nobody could resist. The grave Pinkerton, so
+sarcastically superior to all fables, writing at the end of the
+eighteenth century, had evidently not even then made up his mind how to
+accept this remarkable personage, but speaks of him as "this unfortunate
+prince or pretender," and of James as "sensible of the truth of his
+report or misled by appearance," with an evident leaning to the side of
+the hero who played so bold a game. The young adventurer came to James
+with the most illustrious of guarantees. He brought letters from Charles
+VIII of France, and from the Emperor Maximilian, and was followed by a
+train of gallant Frenchmen and by everything that was princelike,
+gracious, and splendid. So completely was he received and believed at
+the Scottish Court that when there arose a mutual love, as the story
+goes, between him and the Lady Catherine Gordon, daughter of the Earl of
+Huntly, one of the most powerful peers in Scotland, and at the same time
+of royal blood, a cousin of the King, the marriage seems to have been
+accepted as a most fit and even splendid alliance. No greater pledge of
+belief could have been given than this. The King of Scots threw himself
+into the effort of establishing the supposed prince's claims as if they
+had been his own. Curious negotiations were entered into as to what the
+pretender should do if, by the help of Scotland, he was placed upon the
+English throne. He was to cede Berwick, that always-coveted morsel which
+had to change its allegiance from generation to generation as the
+balance between the nations rose and fell--and pay a certain sum towards
+defraying the expenses of the expedition, a bargain to which Perkin,
+playing his part much better than any king of the theatre ever did
+before, demurred, insisting upon easier terms--as he afterwards
+remonstrated when James harried the Borders, declaring that he would
+rather resign all hopes of the crown than secure it at the expense of
+the blood and goods of his people. A pretended prince who thus spoke
+might well be credited as far as faith could go. The story of this
+strange enterprise is chiefly told in the letters to Henry VII of
+England of Sir John Ramsay, the same who had been saved by James III
+when the rest of his favourites were killed, and who had more or less
+thriven since, though in evil ways, occupying a position at the Court of
+James IV whom he hated, and acting as spy on his actions, which were all
+reported to the English Court. Ramsay gives the English Government full
+information of all that his sovereign is about to do on behalf of the
+fengit (feigned) boy, and especially of the invasion of England which he
+is about to undertake "against the minds of near the whole number of his
+barons and people. Notwithstanding," Ramsay says, "this simple
+wilfulness cannot be removed out of the King's mind for nae persuasion
+or mean. I trust verrilie," adds the traitor, "that, God will, he be
+punished by your mean for the cruel consent of the murder of his
+father."
+
+Curiously enough Pitscottie, the most graphic and circumstantial of
+historians, says nothing whatever of this most romantic episode. Why he
+should have left it out, for it is impossible that it could have been
+unknown to him, we are unable to imagine; but so it is. Buchanan however
+enters fully into the tale. The wisest of James's counsellors, he tells
+us, were disposed to have nothing to do with this spurious young prince
+coming out of the unknown with his claim to be the rightful King of
+England; but many more were in his favour, specially with the reflection
+that the moment of England's difficulties was always one of advantage
+for the Scots. An army was accordingly raised, with which James marched
+into England, carrying Perkin with him with a train of about fourteen
+hundred followers, and hopes that the country would rise to greet and
+acknowledge their lost prince. But it is evident that the Northumbrians
+looked on without any response, and saw in the expedition but one of the
+many raids which they were always so ready to return on their side when
+occasion offered. The pretender, on whose behalf all this was done,
+shrank, it would appear, from the devastation, and with something like
+the generous compunction of a prince protested that he would rather lose
+the crown than gain it so--a protest which James must have thought a
+piece of affectation, for he replied with a jeer that his companion was
+too solicitous for the welfare of a country which would neither
+acknowledge him as prince nor receive him as citizen. Perkin must have
+begun to tire the patience of the finest gentleman in Christendom before
+James would have made such a contemptuous retort. He returned with the
+King, however, when this unsuccessful expedition--the only use of which
+was that it proved to James the fruitlessness of fighting on behalf of a
+pretender who had no hold upon the people over whom he claimed to
+reign--came to an end. It was followed by some slight reprisals on the
+part of the English, and after an interval by an embassy to make peace.
+Henry VII would seem to have been at all times most unwilling to have
+Scotland for an enemy, notwithstanding the strange motive suggested to
+him by the traitor Ramsay. "Sir," writes this false Scot, "King Edward
+had never fully the perfect love of his people till he had war with
+Scotland; and he made sic good diligence and provision therein that to
+this hour he is lovit; and your Grace may as well have as gude a tyme as
+he had." But the cunning old potentate at Westminster was not moved even
+by this argument. Instead of following the instructions of the virulent
+spy whose hatred of his native king and country reaches the height of
+passion, he sent a wise emissary, moderate like himself, the Bishop of
+Durham, to inquire into the reasons of the attack.
+
+And Edinburgh must have had another great sensational spectacle in the
+arrival not only of the English commissioners, but of such a great
+foreign personage as the Spanish envoy, one of the greatest grandees of
+the most splendid of continental kingdoms, who had come to England to
+negotiate the marriage of Catherine of Arragon with the Prince of Wales,
+and who continued his journey to Scotland with letters of amity from his
+sovereigns for James, and with the object of assisting in the
+peacemaking between the two Kings. Henry required James to give up the
+pretender into his hands--a thing which of course it was not consistent
+with honour to do--but it was evident that the King of Scots had already
+in his own mind given up the adventurer's cause. And after the
+negotiations had been concluded and peace made between England and
+Scotland, Perkin and his beautiful young wife and his train of followers
+set sail from Scotland in a little flotilla of three ships, intending it
+is said to go to Ireland, where he had been well received before coming
+to the Court of James. The imagination follows with irrestrainable pity
+the forlorn voyage of this youthful band of adventurers: the young
+husband trained to all the manners and ways of thinking of a prince,
+however little reality there might be in his claims; the young wife,
+mild and fair, the White Rose as she was called, with the best blood of
+Scotland in her veins; the few noble followers, knights, and a lady or
+two who shared their fortunes, setting out vaguely to sea, not knowing
+were to go, with the world before them where to choose. When they got to
+Ireland Prince Perkin heard of an insurrection in Cornwall, and hastened
+to put himself at the head of it, placing his wife for security in the
+quaint fortress, among the waters, of St. Michael's Mount. But the
+insurrection came to nothing, and "the unfortunate prince or adventurer"
+was taken prisoner. He was pardoned it is said, but making a wild
+attempt at insurrection again, was this time tried and executed. His
+White Rose, most forlorn of ladies, was taken by King Henry from her
+refuge at the end of the world, placed in charge of the Queen, and never
+left the English Court again. There is no record that she and her
+husband were ever allowed to meet. So ends one of the saddest and most
+romantic of historical episodes.
+
+This story takes up a large part of the early reign of James, who no
+doubt saw his error at the last, but in the beginning threw himself into
+Perkin's fortunes with characteristic impetuosity, and thought nothing
+too good, not even his own fair kinswoman, for the rescued prince. It
+was an error, however, that James shared with many high and mighty
+potentates who gave their imprimatur at first to the adventurer's cause.
+But even for the most genuine prince, when only a pretender, the
+greatest sovereigns are but poor supporters in the long run. James had a
+hundred things to do to make him forget that unfortunate adventure of
+Perkin. It was in the year 1497 that this incident ended so far as the
+Scottish Court was concerned, and James returned to the natural course
+of his affairs, not without occasional tumults on the Border, but with
+no serious fighting anywhere for a course of pleasant years. The old
+traditional strife between the King and the nobles no longer tore the
+kingdom asunder. Perhaps the first great event of his life, the waking
+up of his boyish conscience to find himself in the camp of a faction
+pitted against his own father, influenced him throughout everything, and
+made the duty of conciliation and union seem the first and most
+necessary; perhaps it was but the natural revulsion from those methods
+which his father had adopted to his hurt and downfall; or perhaps
+James's chivalrous temper, his love of magnificence and gaiety, made him
+feel doubly the advantage of courtiers who should be great nobles and
+his peers, not dependants made splendid by his bounty. At all events the
+King lived as no Stewart had yet lived, surrounded by all without
+exception who were most noble in the land, encouraging them to vie with
+him in splendour, in noble exercises and pastimes, and almost, it may be
+imagined--with a change of method, working by good example and genial
+comradeship what his predecessors had vainly tried to do by fire and
+sword--tempting them to emulate him also in preserving internal peace
+and a certain reign of justice throughout the country. There was no lack
+of barons in the Court of James. Angus and Home and Huntly, who had
+pursued his father to the death and placed himself upon the throne, were
+not turned into subservient courtiers by his gallantry and charm: but
+neither was there any one of these proud lords in the ascendant, or any
+withdrawn and sullen in his castle, taking no share in what was going
+on. The machinery of the State worked as it had never done before. There
+were few Parliaments, and not very much law-making. Enough laws had been
+made under his predecessors, "if they had but been kept," to form an
+ideal nation; the thing to do now was to charm, to persuade, to lead
+both populace and nobility into respecting them. It would be vain to
+imagine that this high purpose was always in James's mind, or that his
+splendour and gaieties were part of a plan for the better regulation of
+the kingdom. But that he was not without a wise policy in following his
+own character and impulses, and that the spontaneous good-fellowship and
+sympathy which his frank, genial, and easy nature called forth
+everywhere were not of admirable effect in the welding together of the
+nation, it would be unjust to say. If he had not the sterner nobility of
+purpose which made the first of his name conceive and partially carry
+into effect the ideal reign of justice which was the first want of his
+kingdom, he had yet a noble ambition for Scotland to make her honoured
+and feared and famous, and the success with which he seems to have
+carried out this object of his life for many years was great. He made
+the little northern kingdom known for a centre of chivalry, courtesy,
+courage, and, what was more wonderful, magnificence, as it had never
+been before. He penetrated that country with traditions and associations
+of himself in the character always attractive to the imagination, of
+that prince of good fellows, the wandering stranger, who came in unknown
+and sought the hospitality of farmer or ploughman, and made the humble
+board ring with wit and jest, and who thereafter was discovered by
+sudden gift, or grace, or unexpected justice, to be the King:--
+
+    "He took a bugle from his side, and blew both loud and shrill,
+    And four and twenty belted knights came trooping owre the hill;"
+
+    "Then he took out his little knife, let a' his duddies fa',
+    And he was the brawest gentleman that was among them a'."
+
+The goodman of Ballangeich,[3] the jovial and delightful Gaberlunzie,
+the hero of many a homely ballad and adventure, some perhaps a trifle
+over free, yet none involving any tragic treachery or betrayal, James
+was the playfellow of his people, the Haroun al Raschid of Scotch
+history. "By this doing the King heard the common brute (bruit) of
+himself." Thus he won not only the confidence of the nobles but the
+genial sympathy and kindness of the poor. A minstrel, a poet too in his
+way a man curious about all handicrafts, famous in all exercises, "ane
+singular good chirurgian, so that there was none of that profession if
+they had any dangerous case in hand but would have craved his advice
+"--he had every gift that was most likely to commend him to the people,
+who were proud of a king so unlike other kings, the friend of all. And
+nothing could exceed the activity of the young monarch, always occupied
+for the glory of Scotland whatever he was doing. It was he who built the
+great ship, the _Michael_, which was the greatest wonder ever seen in
+the northern seas; a ship which took all the timber in Fife to build her
+(the windswept Kingdom of Fife has never recovered that deprivation)
+besides a great deal from Norway, with three hundred mariners to work
+her, and carrying "ane thousand men of warre" within those solid sides,
+which, all wooden as they were, could resist cannon shot. "This ship lay
+in the road, and the King took great pleasure every day to come down and
+see her," and would dine and sup in her, and show his lords all her
+order and provisions; No doubt there were many curious parties from
+Edinburgh who followed the King to see that new wonder, and that groups
+would gather on the ramparts of the castle to point out on the shining
+Firth the great and lofty vessel, rising like another castle out of the
+depths. James had also the other splendid taste, which his unfortunate
+father had shared, of building, and set in order the castle at Falkland
+in the heart of the green and wealthy Fife--where there was great
+hunting and coursing, and perhaps as yet not much high farming in those
+days--and continued the adornments of Stirling, already so richly if
+rudely decorated in the previous reign.
+
+[3] This name and assumed character is generally supposed to belong to
+James V: but all the accompanying circumstances seem to point so much
+more to what is recorded of James IV, that I venture to attribute them
+to him. If it is an error there is this, at least, to be said in favour
+of it, that the story is as applicable to one as to the other monarch.
+
+But Edinburgh was the centre of all the feasting and splendour which
+distinguished his time. The lists were set before the castle gates, on
+that lofty and breezy plateau where all the winds blow. Sometimes there
+were bands of foreign chivalry breaking lances with the high Scottish
+nobles according to all the stately laws of that mimic war; sometimes
+warriors of other conditions, fighting Borderers or Highlanders, would
+meet for an encounter of arms, ending in deadly earnest, which was not
+discouraged, as we are told with grim humour, since it was again to the
+realm to be disembarrassed of these champions at any cost, and the best
+way was that they should kill each other amicably and have no rancour
+against Justiciar or King. Among the foreign guests who visited James
+was Bernard Stuart of Aubigny, Monsieur Derbine, as Pitscottie calls
+him, the representative of a branch of the royal race which had settled
+in France, whom James received, his kinsman being an old man, with even
+more than his usual grace, making him the judge in all feats of chivalry
+"at justing and tourney, and calling him father of warres, because he
+was well practised in the same." Another of the visitors, Don Pedro
+d'Ayala, the Spanish grandee who helped to conduct the quarrel over
+Perkin Warbeck to a great issue, wrote to his royal master a description
+of King James, which is highly interesting, and full of unconscious
+prophecy. The Spaniard describes the young monarch at twenty-five as one
+of the most accomplished and gallant of cavaliers, speaking Latin (very
+well), French, German, Flemish, Italian, and Spanish; a good Christian
+and Catholic, hearing two masses every morning; fond of priests--a
+somewhat singular quality unless such jovial priests and boon-companions
+as Dunbar, the poet-friar, were the subject of this preference; though
+perhaps the seriousness which mingled with his jollity, the band of iron
+under his silken vest, led him to seek by times the charm of graver
+company, the mild and learned Gavin Douglas and other scholars in the
+monasteries, where thought and learning had found refuge. The following
+details, which are highly characteristic, bring him before us with
+singular felicity, and, as afterwards turned out, with a curious
+foreseeing of those points in him which brought about his tragical end.
+
+    "Rarely even in joking a word escapes him which is not the truth. He
+    prides himself much upon it, and says it does not seem to him well
+    for kings to swear their treaties as they do now. The oath of a king
+    should be his royal word as was the case in bygone ages. He is
+    courageous even more than a king should be. I have seen him even
+    undertake most dangerous things in the late wars. I sometimes clung
+    to his skirts and succeeded in keeping him back. On such occasions
+    he does not take the least care of himself. He is not a good
+    captain, because he begins to fight before he has given his orders.
+    He said to me that his subjects serve him with their persons and
+    goods, in just or unjust quarrels, exactly as he likes; and that
+    therefore he does not think it right to begin any warlike
+    undertaking without being himself the first in danger. His deeds are
+    as good as his words. For this reason, and because he is a very
+    humane prince, he is much loved."
+
+[Illustration: BAKEHOUSE CLOSE]
+
+The perfect reason yet profound unreasonableness of this quality in
+James, so fatally proved in his after history, is very finely
+discriminated by the writer, who evidently had come under the spell of a
+most attractive personality in this young sovereign, so natural and
+manful, so generous and true. That James should acknowledge the penalty
+of the fatal power he had to draw a whole nation into his quarrel, just
+or unjust, by risking himself the first, is so entirely just according
+to every rule of personal honour, yet so wildly foolish according to all
+higher policy; exposing that very nation to evils so much greater than
+the worst battle. Flodden was still far off in the darkness of the
+unknown, but had this description been written after that catastrophe,
+it could not more clearly have disclosed the motives and magnanimity but
+tragic unwisdom of this prince of romance.
+
+The Spaniard adds much praise of James's temperance, a virtue
+indifferently practised by his subjects, and of his morality, which is
+still more remarkable. The amours and intrigues of his youth, Don Pedro
+informs his king, this young hero had entirely renounced, "or so at
+least it is believed," partly "from fear of God, and partly from fear of
+scandal," which latter "is thought very much of here"--a curious touch,
+which would seem to indicate a magnificent indifference to public
+opinion, not shared by the little northern Court, in the haughtier
+circles of Madrid. The picture is perhaps a little flattered; and it is
+hard to imagine how James could have picked up so many languages in the
+course of what some writers call a neglected education, confined to
+Scotland alone; but perhaps his father's fondness for clever artificers
+and musicians may have made him familiar in his childhood with foreign
+dependants, more amusing to a quick-witted boy than the familiar varlets
+who had no tongue but "braid Scots." "The King speaks besides," says
+Ayala, "the language of the savages who live in some parts of Scotland
+and in the islands"; clearly in every sense of the word a man of endless
+accomplishments and personal note, quite beyond the ordinary of kings.
+
+At no time, according to unanimous testimony, had Scotland attained so
+high a position of national wealth, comfort, and prosperity. The wild
+Highlands had been more or less subdued by the forfeiture of the
+traditionary Lord of the Isles, and the final subjection of that lawless
+region, nominally at least, to the King's authority, and with every
+precaution for the extension of justice and order to its farthest
+limits. A navy had suddenly sprung into being, signalising itself in its
+very birth by brilliant achievements and consisting of vessels few
+indeed, but of exceptional size and splendour, as great for their time
+as the great Italian ironclads are for this, and like them springing
+from something of the bravado as well as for the real uses of a rapidly
+growing power. And there had been peace, save for that little passage of
+arms on account of Perkin Warbeck, throughout all the reign of
+James--peace to which the warlike Scots seem to have accustomed
+themselves very pleasantly, notwithstanding that on the one side of the
+Border as on the other there was nothing so popular as war between the
+neighbour nations; but the exploits of Sir Andrew Wood with his _Yellow
+Carvel_, and the _Great Michael_ lying there proudly on the Firth, ready
+to sweep the seas, afforded compensation for the postponement of other
+struggles.
+
+It was in these circumstances that the negotiations for James's marriage
+with the little Margaret, Princess Royal of England, and in every way,
+as it turned out, a true Tudor, though then but an undeveloped child,
+took place. The gallant young King, then seven or eight and twenty, in
+the plenitude of his manhood, was not anxious for the bride of ten
+persistently offered to him by her royal father; and the negotiations
+lagged, and seemed to have gone on _a plusieurs reprises_ for several
+years. But at length by the persistent efforts of Henry VII, who saw all
+the advantages of the union, and no doubt also of councillors on the
+Scots side, who felt that the continued prosperity of the country was
+best secured by peace, it was brought about in 1504, when James must
+have been just over thirty and Margaret was twelve--a very childish
+bride, but probably precocious, and not too simple or ignorant, as
+belonged to her violent Tudor blood. He "was married with her
+solemnedlie by the advice of the nobilitie of England and Scotland, and
+gatt great summes of money with her: and promise of peace and unity made
+and ordained to stand between the two realms," says Pitscottie. The
+great sums, however, seem problematical, as the dower of Margaret was
+not a very large one, and the sacrifices made for her were
+considerable--the town of Berwick being given up to England as one
+preliminary step. The event, however, was one of incalculable importance
+to both nations, securing as it did the eventual consolidation in one of
+the realm of Great Britain, though nobody as yet foresaw that great
+consequence that might follow. Along with the marriage treaty was made
+one of perpetual peace between England and Scotland--a treaty indeed not
+worth the paper it was written upon, yet probably giving comfort to some
+sanguine spirits. Had the prudent old monarch remained on the throne of
+England as long as James ruled in Scotland it might indeed never have
+been broken; but Henry was already old, and his son as hot-headed as the
+cousin and traditionary adversary now turned into a brother. Margaret
+was conveyed into Scotland with the utmost pomp, and Edinburgh roused
+itself and put on decorations like a bride to receive the little maiden,
+so strangely young to be the centre of all these rejoicings: her lofty
+houses covered with flutterings of tapestries and banners and every kind
+of gay decoration, and her windows filled with bright faces, coifs, and
+veils, and embroideries of gold that shone in the sun. The dress worn by
+James, as he carried his young bride into Edinburgh seated on horseback
+behind him, is fully described for the benefit of after ages. He wore a
+jacket of cloth of gold bordered with purple velvet, over a doublet of
+purple satin, showing at the neck the collar of a shirt embroidered with
+pearls and gold, with scarlet hose to complete the resplendent costume.
+At his marriage he wore a jacket of crimson satin over a doublet of
+cloth of gold, with the same scarlet hose, and a gown of white damask
+brocaded with gold over all. No doubt the ladies were not behind in this
+contest of brave apparel. Grey Edinburgh, accustomed this long time to
+the dull tones of modern habiliments, sparkled and shone in those days
+of finery and splendour. The streets were meant for such fine shows; its
+stairheads and strong deep doorways to relieve the glories of sweet
+colour, plumes, and jewels. When the lists were set on the summit of the
+hill, the gates thrown up, the garrison in their steel caps and
+breastplates lining the bars, and perhaps the King himself tilting in
+the melee, while all the ladies were throned in their galleries like
+banks of flowers, what a magnificent spectacle! The half-empty streets
+below still humming with groups of gazers not able to squeeze among the
+throngs about the bars, but waiting the return of the splendid
+procession: and more and more banners and tapestries and guards of
+honour shining through the wide open gates of the port all the way down
+to Holyrood. There was nothing but holiday-making and pleasure while the
+feasting lasted and the bridal board was yet spread.
+
+While this heydey of life lasted and all was bright around and about the
+chivalrous James, there was a certain suitor of his Court, a merry and
+reckless priest, more daring in words and admixtures of the sacred and
+the profane than any mere layman would venture to be, whose familiar and
+often repeated addresses to the King afford us many glimpses into the
+royal surroundings and ways of living, as also many pictures of the
+noisy and cheerful mediaeval town which was the centre of pleasures, of
+wit and gay conversation, and all that was delightful in Scotland.
+Dunbar's title of fame is not so light as this. He was one of the
+greatest of the followers of Chaucer, a master of melody, in some points
+scarcely inferior to the master himself whose praise he celebrates as
+
+          "Of oure Inglisch all the light
+    Surmounting every tong terrestrial
+      Alls far as Mayis morrow dois mydnyght."
+
+But it is unnecessary here to discuss the "Thrissil and the Rois," the
+fine music of the epithalamium with which he celebrated the coming of
+Margaret Tudor into Scotland, or the more visionary splendour of the
+"Golden Targe." The poet himself was not so dignified or harmonious as
+his verse. He possessed the large open-air relish of life, the broad
+humour, sometimes verging on coarseness, which from the time of James I.
+to that of Burns has been so singularly characteristic of Scots poetry:
+and found no scene of contemporary life too humble or too ludicrous for
+his genius--thus his more familiar poems are better for our purpose than
+his loftier productions, and show us the life and fashion of his town
+and time better than anything else can do. This is one, for example, in
+which he upbraids "the merchantis of renown" for allowing "Edinburgh
+their nobil town" to remain in the state in which he describes it:--
+
+    "May nane pass through your principall gates
+    For stink of haddocks and of skates,
+    For cryin' of carlines and debates,
+    For fensome flytings of defame.
+          Think ye not shame
+    Before strangers of all estates
+    That sic dishonour hurt your name?
+
+    "Your stinkand schule that standis dirk
+    Halds the light from your Parroche Kirk,
+    Your forestairs makis your houses mirk
+    Like na country but here at hame
+          Think ye not shame,
+    Sa little policie to work
+    In hurt and sklander of your name?
+
+    "At your hie Croce, where gold and silk
+    Should be, there is but curds and milk,
+    And at your Tron but cokill and wilk,
+    Pansches, puddings, of Jok and Jame.
+          Think ye not shame
+    Kin as the world sayis that ilk
+    In hurt and sklander of your name?"
+
+Thus old Edinburgh rises before us, beautiful and brave as she is no
+longer, yet thronged about the Netherbow Port, and up towards the Tron,
+the weighing-place and centre of city life, with fishwives and their
+stalls, with rough booths for the sale of rougher food, and with country
+lasses singing curds and whey, as they still did when Allan Ramsay
+nearly four hundred years after succeeded Dunbar as laureate of
+Edinburgh. Notwithstanding, however, these defects the Scottish capital
+continued to be the home of all delights to the poet-priest. When his
+King was absent at Stirling, Dunbar in the pity of his heart sang an
+(exceedingly profane) litany for the exile that he might be brought
+back, prefacing it by the following compassionate strain:--
+
+    "We that are here in Hevinis glory
+    To you that are in Purgatory
+    Commendis us on our hairtly wyiss,
+    I mean we folk in Paradyis,
+    In Edinburgh with all merriness
+    To you in Strivilling in distress,
+    Where neither pleasance nor delyt is,
+    For pity thus ane Apostle wrytis.
+
+    "O ye Heremeitis and Hankersaidillis
+    That takis your penance at your tabillis,
+    And eitis nocht meit restorative
+    Nor drinkis no wyne comfortative
+    Bot aill, and that is thyn and small,
+    With few courses into your hall;
+    But (without) company of lordis or knights
+    Or any other goodly wightis,
+    Solitar walkand your allone
+    Seeing no thing but stok and stone,
+    Out of your powerfull Purgatory
+    To bring you to the bliss of glory
+    Of Edinburgh the merry toun,
+    We sall begin ane cairfull soun,
+    And Dirige devout and meik
+    The Lord of bliss doing besiek
+    You to delyvre out of your noy
+    And bring you soon to Edinburgh joy,
+    For to be merry among us,
+    And so the Dirige begynis thus."
+
+Many are the poet's addresses to the King in happier circumstances when
+James is at home and in full enjoyment of these joys of Edinburgh. His
+prayers for a benefice are sometimes grave and sometimes comic, but
+never-failing. He describes solicitors (or suitors) at Court, all
+pushing their fortune. "Some singis, some dancis, some tells storyis."
+Some try to make friends by their devotion, some have their private
+advocates in the King's chamber, some flatter, some play the fool--
+
+    "My simpleness among the lave
+    Wist of na way so God me save,
+    But with ane humble cheer and face
+    Referris me to the Kyngis grace,
+    Methinks his gracious countenance
+    In ryches is my sufficence."
+
+Not always so patient, however, he jogs James's memory with a hundred
+remedies. "God gif ye war Johne Thomsounis man!" he cries with rueful
+glee through a lively set of verses--
+
+    "For war it so than weill were me
+    Bot (without) benefice I wald not be;
+    My hard fortune war endit then
+        God gif ye war Johne Thomsounis man!"
+
+John Thomson's man was, according to the popular saying, a man who did
+as his wife told him; and Dunbar was strong in the Queen's favour.
+Therefore happy had been his fate had James been of this character. We
+cannot, however, follow the poet through all his pleadings and witty
+appeals and remonstrances, until at last in despairing jest he commends
+"the gray horse Auld Dunbar" to his Majesty, and draws or seems to draw
+at last a consolatory reply, which is thus recorded at the end of the
+poem under the title of "Responsio Regis."
+
+    "Efter our writtingis, Treasurer
+    Tak in this gray horse, Auld Dunbar,
+    Which in my aucht with service trew
+    In lyart changit is his heu.
+    Gar house him now against this Yuill
+    And busk him like ane Bischoppis muill,
+    For with my hand I have indorst
+    To pay whatever his trappouris cost."
+
+Whether this response was really from James's hand or was but another
+wile of the eager suitor it is impossible to tell: but he did eventually
+have a pension granted him of twenty pounds Scots a year, until such
+time as a benefice of at least fifty pounds should fall to him; so that
+he was kept in hope. After this Dunbar tunes forth a song of welcome to
+"his ain Lord Thesaurair," in which terror at this functionary's
+inopportune absence--since quarterday we may suppose--is lost in
+gratulations over his return. "Welcome," he cries--
+
+    "Welcome my benefice and my rent
+    And all the lyflett to me lent,
+    Welcome my pension most preclair,
+          Welcome my awin Lord Thesaurair."
+
+Thus the reckless and jolly priest carols. A little while after he has
+received his money he sings "to the Lordes of the King's Chacker," or
+Exchequer--
+
+    "I cannot tell you how it is spendit,
+    But weel I wat that it is ended."
+
+These peculiarities, however, it need not be said do not belong entirely
+to the sixteenth century. The reader will find a great deal of beautiful
+poetry among the works of Dunbar. These lighter verses serve our purpose
+in showing once more how perennial has been this vein of humorous
+criticism, and frank fun and satire, in Scotland, in all ages, and in
+throwing also a broad and amusing gleam of light upon Edinburgh in the
+early fifteen hundreds, the gayest and most splendid moment perhaps of
+her long history.
+
+All these splendours, however, were hard to keep up, and though
+Edinburgh and Scotland throve, the King's finances after a while seem to
+have begun to fail, and there was great talk of a pilgrimage to the Holy
+Land--it is supposed by the historians as a measure of securing that the
+King might not have the uncomfortable alternative of cutting short his
+splendours at home. This purpose, if it was gravely entertained at all,
+and not one of the proposals of change with which, when need comes, the
+impecunious of all classes and ages amuse themselves to put off actual
+retrenchment, never came to anything. And very soon there arose
+complications of various natures which threw all Christendom into an
+uproar. Henry VIII, young, arrogant, and hot-headed, succeeded his
+prudent father in England, and the treaty with the Scots which made, or
+seemed to make, England safe on the Borders, gave the English greater
+freedom in dealing with the other hereditary foe on the opposite side of
+the Channel; while France on her side began to use all possible efforts
+to draw from the English alliance the faithful Scots, who had always
+been the means of a possible diversion, always ready to carry fire and
+flame across the Border, and call back the warring English to look after
+their own affairs. James, with perhaps his head slightly turned by his
+own magnificence and the prosperity that had attended him since the
+beginning of his career, seemed to have imagined that he was important
+enough to play the part of peacemaker among the nations of Europe. And
+there are many embassies recorded of a bustling bishop, Andrew Forman,
+who seems for some time to have pervaded Christendom, now at Rome, now
+at Paris, now in London, with various confused negotiations. It was a
+learned age, and the King himself, as has been seen, had very
+respectable pretensions in this way; but that there was another side to
+the picture, and that notwithstanding the translator of Virgil, the
+three Universities now established in Scotland, and many men of science
+and knowledge both in the priesthood and out of it, there remained a
+strong body of ignorance and rudeness, even among the dignified clergy
+of the time, the following story, which Pitscottie tells with much
+humour of Bishop Forman, James's chosen diplomatist, will show.
+
+    "This bishop made ane banquet to the Pope and all his cardinals in
+    one of the Pope's own palaces, and when they were all set according
+    to their custom, that he who ought (owned) the house for the time
+    should say the grace, and he was not ane good scholar, nor had not
+    good Latin, but begane ruchlie in the Scottise fashione, saying
+    Benedicite, believing that they should have said Dominus, but they
+    answered Deus in the Italian fashioun, which put the bishop by his
+    intendment (beyond his understanding), that he wist not well how to
+    proceed fordward but happened in good Scottis in this manner,
+    saying, what they understood not, 'The devil I give you all false
+    cardinals to, in nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.'
+    Then all the bishop's men leuch, and all the cardinals themselves;
+    and the Pope inquired whereat they leuch, and the bishop showed that
+    he was not ane good clerk, and that the cardinals had put him by his
+    text and intendment, therefore he gave them all to the devil in good
+    Scottis, whereat the Pope himself leuch verrie earnestlie."
+
+This did not prevent his Holiness, probably delighted with such a racy
+visitor, from making Forman Legate of Scotland; and it is to be feared
+that the meddling diplomatist with his want of education, was perhaps a
+better example of the clergy of Scotland, who about this time began to
+be the mark of all assailants as illiterate, greedy, vicious, and
+rapacious, than such a gentle soul as the other poet of the age,
+afterwards bishop of Dunkeld, the one mild and tranquil possessor of the
+great Douglas name.
+
+[Illustration: WHITE HORSE CLOSE]
+
+The imbroglio of events into which it is unnecessary for us to enter
+grew more and more complicated year by year, until at length it came to
+be a struggle between France and England for the ally who could be of
+most assistance to the one in the special way of injuring the other, and
+whom it was of the first advantage to both to secure. James was bound by
+the treaty of permanent peace which he had made at his marriage, and by
+that marriage itself, and no doubt the strong inclination of his wife,
+to England; but he was bound to France by a traditionary bond of a much
+stronger kind, by the memory of long friendship and alliance, and the
+persistent policy of his kingdom and race. The question was modified
+besides by other circumstances. England was, as she had but too often
+been, but never before in James's experience--harsh, overbearing, and
+unresponsive: while France, as was also her wont, was tender,
+flattering, and pertinacious. Henry refused or delayed to pay Queen
+Margaret a legacy of jewels and plate left to her by her father, and at
+the same time protected certain Borderers who had murdered a Scottish
+knight, and defended them against justice and James, while still
+summoning him to keep his word and treaty in respect to England; while
+on the other hand not only the King but the Queen of France appealed to
+James, he as to an ancient ally, she as to her sworn knight, to break
+that artificial alliance with his haughty brother-in-law. It may well
+have been that James in his own private soul had no more desire for such
+a tremendous step than the nobles who struggled to the last against it.
+But he had _les defauts de ses qualites_ in a high degree. He was
+nothing if not a knight of romance. And though, as the poet has said--
+
+    "His own Queen Margaret, who in Lithgow's bower
+    All silent sat, and wept the weary hour,"
+
+might be more to him than the politic Anne of France, or any fair lady
+in his route, it was not in him, a paladin of chivalry, the finest of
+fine gentlemen, the knight-errant of Christendom, to withstand a lady's
+appeal. Perhaps, besides, he was weary of his inaction, the only prince
+in Europe who was not inevitably involved in the fray; weary of holding
+tourneys and building ships (some of which had been lately taken by the
+English, turning the tables upon him) and keeping quiet, indulging in
+the inglorious arts of peace, while everybody else was taking the field.
+And Henry was arrogant and exasperating, so that even his own sister was
+at the end of her brief Tudor patience; and Louis was flattering,
+caressing, eloquent. When that last embassage of chivalry came with the
+ring from Anne's own finger, and the charge to ride three miles on
+English ground for her honour, it was the climax of many arguments. "He
+loves war," the Spaniard had said. "War is profitable to him and to the
+country"--a curious and pregnant saying. James would seem to have
+struggled at least a little against all the impulses which were pushing
+him forward to his doom. He promised a fleet to his lady in France for
+her aid--a fleet foolishly if not treacherously handled by Arran, and
+altogether diverted from its intended end; finally, that having failed,
+James flung away all precaution and yielded to the tide of many
+influences which was carrying him away.
+
+It is needless to tell over again the tale that everybody knows: how
+both heaven and hell were stirred by this ill-omened undertaking; how an
+aged saint, venerable and stately, suddenly appeared out of the crowd
+when the King was at his prayers in the Cathedral of Linlithgow, with a
+message from on high; and how when James had gone back to Holyrood, the
+High Street of Edinburgh resounded in the dead of night with trumpet
+note and herald's call from the grim Hades of mediaeval imagination,
+summoning by name a long list of the Scottish nobility, of whom one man
+defied the portent and refused the call and was saved. James paid no
+heed to these warnings, whether supernatural or otherwise, or perhaps
+was too far committed to give any heed to them, carried away by the wild
+and fatal stream which had caught his feet, with something of that
+extraordinary impetus of natural tendency long restrained which acts
+with tenfold force when at last yielded to. It is unnecessary either to
+tell the story of all the foolish fatal lingerings upon the ill-omened
+way: trifling with treacherous ladies for whom he cared nothing, cartels
+from Surrey; the abandonment of a strong position, lest it should give
+him an advantage, in ever greater and greater folly of chivalry: the
+refusal to attack, or let his artillery attack, till his foes were all
+safely over the bridge: all exhibitions of high honour gone mad with the
+intoxication of fate. The Spaniard's letter comes back in full
+significance as we watch with aching hearts the fatal fray. "He said to
+me that his subjects serve him with their persons and goods, in just or
+unjust quarrels, exactly as he wishes, and that therefore he does not
+think it right to begin any warlike undertaking without being himself
+the first in danger." The knight-errant kept his _consigne_ of honour to
+the last. He betrayed his people to the most utter defeat they had ever
+encountered, but he was himself the first victim.
+
+Thus died the only Stewart king who ever seemed to have a fair prospect
+of escaping the fate of his unfortunate race. The worm in his
+conscience, the iron belt round his body, were perhaps only symptoms of
+a susceptible nature, of remorse which was excessive for the bewildered
+acquiescence in rebellion of an unawakened mind and an irresponsible
+age. And his life, if soiled by errors which were then and are now but
+lightly thought of in a prince, was in all public matters noble,
+honourable, and enlightened, with always the advantage of his country
+for its aim, even in the midst of the natural gaieties and extravagances
+of a happy temper and exuberant energy. He was extravagant,
+light-hearted, a lover of magnificence and display, all of which things,
+in the face of the political economist, sometimes prove themselves
+excellent for a country when the moment comes to press it forward into
+the ranks of high civilisation out of a ruder and more primitive
+development. The nobility with which his father struggled to the death
+he held in a leash of silk or of gold, often making them the instruments
+of the justice which they had so long resisted. There was peace in his
+time such as had never before been in Scotland, and redress of
+grievances, and extinction or suppression of mortal feuds and intestine
+struggles. It is sometimes given to a man in all light-heartedness, in
+what seems the spontaneous way of his own impulses and pleasures, to do
+what is best for his surroundings and his time, without any apparent
+strain of self sacrifice or gravity of duty. James Stewart, the fourth
+of his name, was one of these happy and beautiful natures: and though
+his life was one of almost unbroken prosperity and brightness, yet no
+man can say that his stewardry was not nobly held, and to the benefit of
+his kingdom and people. But not for this was the doom to pass by. The
+brightness and the prosperity came to an end in a sudden folly,
+infatuation, and madness, which belonged to him as his sunny nature did
+and his generosity of heart. And it was no evil chance, but the
+principle of his life, as we have seen, that in the calamity into which
+he drew his people he himself should be the first to fall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+JAMES V: THE LAST OF THE HEROIC AGE
+
+
+The course of Scottish history during the fifteenth and beginning of the
+sixteenth century is like that of a ship on a long voyage, full of
+vicissitudes and adventures. The little barque amid all the wild
+commotions of the sea, sometimes driven before the wind, sometimes
+stripped of every rag of canvas, sometimes beating helpless in the
+trough of the waves, rights herself when the storm is over, repairs her
+masts, re-strings her cordage, puts forth again sail after sail; and
+with a sure hand at the helm and a moderate breeze in her canvas, rises
+white and strong against the blueness of sea and sky, triumphant over
+all the assaults of external nature, animated by human will and courage,
+the most indomitable of all created things, and affording perhaps the
+best example of the survival and unconquerable power of these masters of
+the world: till again there arises in the heavens another hurricane,
+furious, ungovernable, rousing the sea to madness, striking once more
+the canvas from the yards, the masts from the deck, and leaving a mere
+hulk at the mercy of the waves which rush on her and over her with the
+wild rage of beasts of prey. Again and again these storms overtook the
+vessel of the State in Scotland, returning after every period of calm,
+after every recovery of authority, as wild, as tumultuous, as
+destructive as ever. Again and again they were overcome, the power of
+resistance restored, the equilibrium regained, only to fall once more
+into the raging of the elements. Each successive king, with perhaps one
+exception, had seized the helm as soon as his hand was fit for the
+strain, or even before it was strong enough for that office, and had
+gallantly brought the ship round and re-established the reign of a
+rational will and a certain unity of command over all the forces of the
+storms; but when he fell, left the helpless vessel again to be balloted
+about by all the winds of Fate.
+
+[Illustration: SALISBURY CRAGS]
+
+This was the case almost more wildly than ever when the fourth James
+Stewart died at Flodden. The heir, the helpless infant prince, was not
+two years old, and the flower of Scotland had been slain with their
+king. The mature warriors and statesmen, the wise counsellors, the men
+to whom the country might have looked in such an interregnum, were all
+gone. There remained only Churchmen and boys in the devastated country,
+a passionate English queen of Tudor blood, and no settled centre of
+government or reorganised power. Such lords as were left assembled
+hastily for that pathetic oft-repeated ceremony, the crowning of the
+child, taken out of his cradle to have the fatal circlet put upon his
+head--and committed some sort of regency, such as it was, to the Queen.
+And after a moment in which the country was paralysed with woe and every
+house full of mourning, Scotland plunged once more into the angry waves,
+among the lions of ever-recurring anarchy and strife.
+
+Nothing in all this turbulent and terrible history has ever been so
+tragic as Flodden. The nation which had lost the very flower and
+strength of its fighting men, its defenders and champions, the families
+which had lost their chiefs, their breadwinners--often father and son
+together, the master and his heir--were struck dumb with dismay and
+anguish. It was only a long time after, when despair had sunk into a
+softened recollection, that it was possible even to breathe forth that
+wail over the Flowers of the Forest which all Scotland knows. In the
+first shock of such an appalling event there is no place for elegy.
+There was a broken cry of anguish throughout the country, echoed from
+castle and cottage, where the poor women clung together, mistress and
+maid equal in the flood of common loss: and there was at the same time a
+strained and terrible rallying of all the poor defenders left, the old
+men and rusty arms, those of every house upon the Border and every town
+upon the road who had been left behind, to meet as well as they could
+the no doubt inevitable march of the conquering English army, which
+everybody felt sure must follow. When the news reached Edinburgh the
+magistrates of the town put forth a proclamation calling upon the
+inhabitants to prepare for the defence of the capital, and forbidding
+the women--a most significant and heartrending order, perhaps unique in
+public documents--to spread dismay through the streets by their crying
+and lamentations. The condition into which the community must have
+fallen when this became a public danger it is unnecessary to remark
+upon. The wail that sounded through all the country must have risen to a
+passionate pitch in those crowded streets, where the gates were closed
+and all the defences set, and nothing looked for but the approach of the
+victorious English with swords still dripping with Scottish blood. While
+Edinburgh waited breathless for this possible attack an extension of the
+existing wall was begun to defend the southern suburb, then semi-rural,
+containing the country-houses of the wealthy burghers and lawyers, the
+great convent of the Greyfriars, that of St. Mary in the Field, and many
+other monastic houses. This additional wall greatly increased the
+breadth of the _enceinte_, which now included a considerable space of
+embowered and luxuriant fields on the south side. It was called the
+Flodden Wall, and kept the memory of that great catastrophe and disaster
+before the minds of the citizens for many a day.
+
+But for some reason or other the English army which had cut Scotland to
+pieces at Flodden went no farther. The victory was no doubt a very
+costly one, and perhaps Henry VIII did not wish to drive the kingdom of
+which his sister would now be Regent to extremity, or do anything more
+to increase the desperate hostility of a country which was capable of
+giving him so much trouble. At all events Surrey's army was disbanded,
+and Scotland was left to resume her struggle within herself: which
+proved the wildest and most miserable turmoil and anarchy which her
+troubled records had yet known.
+
+It would be at once hopeless and unnecessary to enter into any sketch of
+the endless tumults of this time of distress. There was a momentary lull
+in which, though all the old personal feuds arose again, the poor little
+King and his mother were left undisturbed--she in possession of a
+regency more or less nominal, and in a state of health which must have
+subdued her activities, for her second son was not born till several
+months after her husband's death. But this child was only a few months
+old when Margaret, young, beautiful, impassioned, and impetuous,
+compromised her position by a sudden marriage with the young Earl of
+Angus--still almost a boy, and with nothing but his good looks to
+recommend him--an event which at once aroused all sleeping enmities and
+precipitated the usual struggle for the possession of the infant king. I
+will attempt nothing but an indication of one or two scenes in Edinburgh
+which took place during this struggle. Undeterred by the evil
+associations which surrounded that name, the Scottish lords bethought
+themselves of the French Duke of Albany, the nearest member of the royal
+family, the son of that duke who had been the terror of James III, who
+had conspired with England, and who finally had established himself in
+France and died there. His son was a French subject, the son of a French
+mother, inheriting through her great estates in France and a position
+which was little inferior in dignity, and much superior in comfort, to
+that of the harassed monarch of a most turbulent kingdom. But he was
+James Stewart, the nearest in blood to the crown, and his name seems,
+temporarily at least, to have united all parties, even the Queen, though
+his presence was fatal to her claims of regency, receiving him with
+courtesy and an apparent welcome. He had not been many months, however,
+in Scotland before, with the sanction of his council, he claimed from
+Margaret the possession of the King and his brother--sending four peers,
+appointed guardians, to the castle, to receive the children. It was in
+July 1515, two years after Flodden, when no doubt Edinburgh had regained
+that common cheerfulness and bustle of a great town which is so little
+interrupted even by the gravest public events. The deputation with their
+attendants proceeded from the Canongate, where they had been sitting in
+assembly, through the Netherbow Port and the bustling crowded High
+Street, to the castle, no doubt gathering with them on their way all the
+eager crowd which could free itself from shop or booth, all the
+passers-by in the streets, a continually-increasing throng. Who the four
+lords were we are not told. The whole incident is recorded in a letter
+of Lord Dacre to the English Council. No doubt he had his information
+either from the Queen herself or from members of her household. Of the
+four men chosen by Albany the Queen was at liberty to reject one, and no
+doubt they were men of weight and gravity, probably not unworthy of the
+trust.
+
+It is not difficult to realise the flying rumour which would go like the
+wind before them announcing their errand, and how windows and doorways
+and stairheads would fill with eager spectators, and all the moving
+population would press up the hill after them to see what was to be
+seen. The high houses full on every story of eager heads thrust forth,
+relieving with unintentional yet lively decoration the many-windowed
+fronts, the shopkeepers crowding at their doors or seizing cap and
+halberd to follow, the hum and excitement of the roused town, surround
+the envoys like the background of a picture. Most probably they went on
+foot, the distance being so short, preceded by a glittering herald and
+pursuivant--perhaps David Lindsay, who can tell? still too young to wear
+the Lion of Scotland on his tabard, but keen and curious to see this
+scene--he who had seen the envoy of heaven in Linlithgow Church and so
+many other wonderful things. The crowd surged upwards, keeping a
+respectful space in the midst for the lords with their train, and filled
+with colour and movement and the murmuring of numbers that great square
+before the castle gates which had held the same excited throng so often.
+And before the heralds could summon the wardens or demand entrance in
+the name of the Regent, the great gates rolled back, and all who were
+near enough to see gazed in amazement at such a group in the gateway as
+must have filled many eyes with tears, and which gave at once the most
+astonishing climax to that wonderful picture. There Margaret stood, a
+young woman of twenty-five, not a noble type of beauty, perhaps, but
+with the fresh and florid Tudor good looks, and no doubt the imperious
+Tudor port imposing to the crowd, with her child in his little cloak and
+plumed bonnet, four years old, holding her hand. Among her little troop
+of attendants, the ladies of her subdued Court, and the cluster of
+cavaliers who surrounded her young husband, there might well be another
+name of gentler fame--the then Provost of St. Giles, Gawin Douglas, poet
+and statesman, who was her counsellor and the negotiator of her many
+troubled affairs. But in this emergency it was the Queen herself who
+bade the startled lords stand and deliver their message. They stepped
+forward in some confusion, one would guess, not having calculated upon
+this sudden encounter with such an unexpected champion, difficult to
+silence--not only a queen with all the prestige both real and
+sentimental which surrounds such a position, but also a mother whose
+children were threatened. When they had finished their explanation, the
+crowd looking on, no doubt impatient of the pause and of the voices that
+could not reach their ears, Margaret stepped back and bade her
+attendants quickly to let down the portcullis. They must have been
+stationed ready with the intention, and no doubt the lords had no
+attendants with them who could have hindered any such step or forced an
+entrance. While the people looked on wondering, the iron bars came
+crashing down, and in a moment the Queen and her child were safe though
+visible within. Then Margaret addressed through that iron trellis the
+astonished deputation. She told them that she was the guardian of the
+castle, enfeoffed in it by her royal husband, and not minded to yield it
+to any man, but that she respected the Parliament and country, and would
+take six days to consider the demand made to her. The lords left outside
+had no alternative but to turn and go back, not we may be sure without a
+chorus of commentaries from the lively crowd, ever quick to note the
+discomfiture of its masters, and delighted with such a novel sensation:
+though the grave burghers would shake their heads at the boldness of the
+Englishwoman who had so confronted the Scots lords in their own city.
+
+The Queen transferred herself and her children to Stirling before the
+six days had expired, but, as might be supposed, her little triumph was
+short-lived. Her boyish husband had already shown signs of deserting
+her, and probably enough her fancy for him was as short-lived as those
+other ephemeral and still more tragical passions which her brother had
+scarcely yet begun to indulge. The excuse which the Regent and his
+council put forth for taking the infant King from his mother was partly
+her second marriage, and partly a supposed plan for carrying off the two
+children to England, which did actually exist, King Henry being, as a
+matter of fact, their nearest of kin and most powerful possible
+guardian, though one who would have been vehemently rejected by all
+Scotland: while on the other hand the little James was as yet the most
+likely heir to the English crown. But this scheme had been opposed both
+by the Queen herself--whose statement that had she been a woman of
+humble condition she might have taken her children in her arms and gone
+unknown to her brother, but that, being a queen, she could not move
+anywhere without observation, is full of homely and natural dignity--and
+by Gawin Douglas, who repeats the same objection. Margaret, however, did
+not long continue to identify herself with the Douglases. The conduct of
+Angus gave her full reason for offence, if, perhaps, she was not
+altogether guiltless on her side; and they were in a state of absolute
+estrangement when the calling of a Parliament early in the year 1520
+brought Angus to Edinburgh, where with his party he had been sometimes
+master and sometimes proscribed man in the innumerable variations of
+politics or rather of personal quarrels and intrigues. Albany had by
+this time returned to France without however resigning his regency, and
+authority was more or less represented by the Earl of Arran, who was at
+the head of the opposite faction. The party of Arran were in possession
+of Edinburgh and of the little King, now eight years old, who was in the
+castle under charge of the peers who had been appointed his guardians,
+when Angus reappeared. Queen Margaret amid all these tumults, finding
+little encouragement from her brother, who was much more intent on
+securing a party in Scotland than on consulting her wishes, had also
+chosen to reside near her boy in the comparative safety of that
+stronghold. Accordingly when Earl Angus came to attend the Parliament he
+was confronted by his adversaries in possession of the town and of the
+castle, with his wife, the most violent adversary of all, in the
+fortress shut up from his access or approach. He was accompanied,
+Pitscottie tells us, "with all his kin and friends to the number of five
+hundred spears, weill accompanied and arrayed." But the city was
+hostile, and perhaps something in the sombre air of all about awakened
+the suspicions of the Douglases, especially as the gates were hastily
+shut behind them and more than usual precautions taken. Awakened thus to
+a sense of alarm, the threatened party sent scouts out into the streets
+during the night, to find out what mischief was brewing. While the
+humbler spies pursued their inquiries by wynd and changehouse, Maister
+Gawin Douglas, the bishop, went out to see what he could discover of the
+real state of affairs--if it was true that the westland lords had held a
+secret meeting and resolved that Angus should not leave Edinburgh now
+that he had put himself in their power--and "if he could find any gude
+way betwixt the two parties." In pursuance of this anxious quest he went
+in search of Archbishop James Beatoun, his brother of St. Andrews, whom
+he found in the church of the Black Friars, assisting, it is to be
+presumed, at some evening service.
+
+    "The said Mr. Gawin desired him to take some pains to labour betwixt
+    this two parties which was at ane sharp point, and meaning little
+    less than that the bishop had most part the wyte (blame) thereof.
+    But the bishop assured him again with ane oath, chopping on his
+    breast, saying, 'By my conscience, my lord, I know not the matter.'
+    But when Mr. Gawin heard the bishop's purgation, and chopping on his
+    breast, and perceived the plates of his jack clattering, he thought
+    the bishop deceaved him, so Mr. Gawin said to him, 'My lord, your
+    conscience is not good, for I hear it clattering.'"
+
+[Illustration: REID'S CLOSE, CANONGATE]
+
+After all these advertisements--the bishop's secret coat of mail, the
+angry discussion between two Hamiltons in the very presence of Arran the
+head of the house, when he was himself willing to grant licence to Angus
+"to speak with the Queen's Grace and thereafter depart out of the
+town"--and all the lesser evidences of danger and conspiracy, the Earl
+and his band prepared themselves for the worst. "This young lord haisted
+him to his armour, and caused his friends and servants to do the same,
+and went right peartlie to the gate, and stood above the Nether Bow in
+arrayed battle." The other party, when they were made aware that the
+Douglases were standing on their defence, came rushing together from
+kirk and market, hastily assembling without discipline or order, to find
+the little mail-clad line arranged in the strongest way against the
+background of the houses, where, no doubt, every shopkeeper had rushed
+to his bolts and bars, and every door clanged to in view of the sudden
+tumult. Sir Walter has given us in _The Abbot_ a glimpse more
+picturesque and graphic than any we can attempt, of the sudden scuffle
+in the street between two passing groups, the armed attendants more
+dangerous and less prudent than their masters, whose strife as to which
+was to hold the centre of the street was enough to produce at once an
+encounter of arms ending in blood, and death for some of the band. The
+struggle known by the name of "Clear the Causeway" was more important,
+yet of a similar kind. Angus and his five hundred spears--in reality a
+much greater number since each spear was accompanied by certain
+men-at-arms--had much the advantage of the other party, hurriedly roused
+from their occupations, who had expected to make an easy end of the
+Douglases, thus betrayed into a sort of ambush in a hostile city, where
+no man would lift a hand to help them. But the tables were completely
+turned upon the Hamiltons and their supporters, when rushing "out of
+their lodging rudlie to the gait in ane furious rage," the peaceable
+driven forward by the taunts of the others, they found Angus and his
+spears in full array of battle. "When the Earl of Angus saw them coming,
+and perceaved Sir Patrick Hamilton foremost, and with him the Maister of
+Montgomerie, and saw them in sic ane furie, he knew well there was
+nothing but fighting, and cryed to his men to save Sir Patrick Hamilton
+if they might; but he came so far before the rest that he was slain
+hastilie, and with him the Maister of Montgomerie, with sundry other
+gentlemen, to the number of twelve score and twelve persons." The end of
+the fray, which was "foughten very hardilie on both sides ane long
+space," was that Arran's men were driven down the side of the hill
+through the narrow wynds that led from the High Street towards the wall,
+and thence made their way out through some postern, or perhaps at the
+gate near the Well-house Tower, where the little well of St. Margaret
+now bubbles up unconsidered, and so across the Nor' Loch, by boat or
+ford. Bishop Beatoun, he whose conscience clattered beneath his robes,
+fled again to the Blackfriars Church, where Mr. Gawin had found him on
+the previous evening prepared for mischief, and took refuge there behind
+the altar, where he was pursued and "his rockit rivin aff him, and had
+been slain," but that Gawin Douglas, following the pursuers, perhaps
+with a sarcastic satisfaction in setting forth the virtues of a peaceful
+robe over the warlike covering that invited as well as preserved from
+danger, interposed, saying, "It was shame to put hand on ane consecreat
+bishop." The encounter of these two priests by evening and morning, the
+supercilious refusal of the mail-clad bishop to interfere, and pretence
+of ignorance--and, as one may imagine, the watch over him from afar of
+his brother of Dunkeld with the full intention of peaceful yet effective
+reprisals, throw a light of grim humour upon the warlike scene. Maister
+Gawin had no mail-coat, and would not fight; but he must have kept an
+eye upon his natural foe through the fray, and it would be strange if he
+had not some pleasure in perceiving the rochet, which Beatoun must have
+donned hastily to save himself, pulled over his head by rude hands in
+scorn of the priestly pretence--and some satisfaction in interposing to
+preserve the "consecreat bishop," whose behaviour was so little saintly.
+
+"Thereafter the Earl of Angus passed to the castle and spoke with the
+Queen at his pleasure," says Pitscottie. It could not be a very gracious
+or affectionate interview. For Margaret and her husband had long before
+come to a complete breach, and the greatest desire in her mind was to
+divorce the young man whom she had married so hastily, who had treated
+her, indeed, with little consideration, and whom she had come to hate
+with a bitterness only possible to husbands and wives ill paired.
+
+After this the young King passed from hand to hand, from one guardian or
+captor to another, according to the custom of his predecessors, with
+many troubled vicissitudes in his life: but it is pleasant to believe
+that though the story leaves a painful impression as of a distracted
+childhood, continually dragged about and harassed between contending
+forces, yet that persistent placidity of nature which plants flowers
+upon the very edge of the fiercest precipices interposed to secure for
+little James as for other children the nursery calm, the infant
+happiness which is the right of childhood. No more delightful picture of
+tender infancy, the babbling of the first baby words, the sweet exigence
+and endless requirements of a child, was ever made than that which Sir
+David Lindsay, the future Lyon King, whom Sir Walter Scott in _gaiete de
+coeur_ (that he should ever be wrong!) introduces in full panoply of
+heraldic splendour before Flodden, but who was but a youth in the new
+James's baby days, gives in his "Epistle to the King's Grace,"
+dedicatory to one of his poems. We will venture, though with
+compunction, once more as we have already done, to modernise the
+spelling as far as possible, so as to present no difficulty to the
+reader in the understanding of these delightful verses.
+
+    "When thou was young I bore thee in mine arme
+        Full tenderlie till thou began to gang,
+    And in thy bed oft happit thee full warme;
+        With lute in hand then sweetly to thee sang.
+        Sometime in dancing wondrously I flang,
+    And sometime playing farces on the floor,
+    And sometime on mine office taking cure.
+
+    "And sometime like a fiend transfigurate,
+        And sometime like the grisly ghost of Gye,
+    In divers forms oft times disfigurate,
+        And sometime dissagyist full pleasantly.
+        So since thy birth I have continually
+    Been occupied and aye to thy pleasoure,
+    And sometime Server, Coppon, and Carvoure."
+
+In another poem he adds, upon the same subject, returning to the
+pleasant memory, the following happy description:--
+
+    "How, as a chapman bears his pack,
+    I bore thy Grace upon my back,
+    And sometime stridling on my neck,
+    Dancing with many a bend and beck.
+    The first syllables that thou didst moote
+    Was '_Pa, Da Lyn_' upon the lute.
+    And aye when thou camest from the school
+      Then I behoved to play the fool."
+
+"Play, Davy Lindsay:" the touch of nature brings the water to one's
+eyes. Davy Lindsay had yet to play many a spring before King James, and
+some that were not gay. But the gentle stripling with the infant on his
+shoulder, the pertinacity of the little babbling cry, the "homely
+springs" played offhand that it was pity to hear, but which the lad
+enjoyed almost as much in laughing at their dashing incorrectness as the
+baby who knew only that it was a pleasant sound--how bright and vivid is
+the picture! Thus while the lords and his mother stormed over him, the
+little King, perhaps in those small state-rooms in well-defended
+Edinburgh, perhaps in the sunshine at Holyrood with his poet, had
+pleasant days.
+
+James was already a growing boy when the last and worst of the tyrannies
+which oppressed his youth began. When the disastrous episode of Albany
+was well over the Douglases again made one last desperate struggle for
+the supreme power. Angus it would seem was not discouraged by the change
+in the Queen from love to hate, nor even by the efforts which she had
+begun to make to divorce and shake him off, and it is evident that he
+must have secured the liking of the little King, to whom in the close
+intimacy of the family as his mother's husband he must have been known
+from earliest childhood. The Earl was handsome and young, one of the
+finest cavaliers of the Court, and probably was kind to the infant who
+could not contradict or cross him, and whose favour it was so expedient
+to secure. It costs a young man little to make himself adored by a boy
+to whom he seems the incarnation of manly strength and splendour. And
+there is every appearance that James accepted Angus's rule at first with
+pleasure, no doubt looking up to him as a guide in the manly exercises
+which could be pursued in his following with more spirit and zeal than
+in the Queen's surroundings. The great power of the Douglases, which it
+took so much bloodshed to break down, and which James II had spent all
+his life in contending with, extinguished in one branch of the family,
+seemed now to have developed in another with increased and extended
+force. Angus was as great, as potent, as universally feared as the Earls
+of Douglas had ever been; and almost as lawless, filling the country
+with his exactions and those of his dependants. He had attained this
+triumph after many drawbacks and downfalls and against the strongest
+opponents, and Scotland was overawed by the terror of that well-known
+name. It was scarcely to be supposed, however, that the young King,
+precociously aware of all the dangers of his position, could remain
+subject willingly as he grew up to the sway of a vassal of the Crown
+however great. There must have been private counsellors ever ready to
+whisper that Douglas was nothing save by the King's authority, and that
+James's favour alone could keep him in his usurped place. A few months
+after he had attained the age of sixteen, the boy over whom everybody
+had intrigued and plotted all his life long, who had been torn from one
+side to another since ever he could remember, and whom a Douglas had but
+recently threatened, at a moment of alarm, that rather than render him
+up they would tear him in two, took at last the matter into his own
+hands. Whether the suggestion was his own, or had in some way been
+breathed into his mind, there is no evidence; but it is clear that he
+had good reason to be very tired of his subjection. He had already
+attempted, we are told, several means of getting free of bondage, but
+had only succeeded in causing the destruction of various lords to whom
+he had appealed. All his friends had been alienated from him. His mother
+was powerless to help, and indeed on her own account in such evil case
+that she is said to have wandered over the country in disguise,
+friendless and out of favour with all. She had hastened into a third
+foolish marriage as soon as she had obtained her divorce from Angus, and
+thus lost all her supporters and champions. His uncle, Henry VIII, was
+more closely bound to Angus, who was strongly in the interest of England
+as against France, than to any other Scot, and the young King was thus
+surrounded by influences hostile to his freedom.
+
+[Illustration: DOORWAY, SIR A. AITCHESON'S HOUSE]
+
+There are moments, however, when the most vigilant watch relaxes, and it
+so happened that Angus left his young prisoner on one occasion at the
+Castle of Falkland, the hunting seat of the Scots kings, to all
+appearance fully occupied with hunting and hawking and thinking of
+nothing more important, in the charge of Archibald Douglas, the Earl's
+uncle, George his brother, and a certain James Douglas of Parkhead, who
+was the captain of the guard. When Angus had been gone a day or two, the
+elder of these guardians asked leave of the King, according to the
+formula, to go to Dundee upon personal business of his own; and George
+Douglas rode off to St. Andrews to see the Bishop on a question of
+taxes, leaving only the captain and his hundred guardsmen to be
+accounted for. Who can doubt that young James was well used to all
+devices for deceiving his gaolers, he who had been held by so many?
+There was nothing in his present expedient which could have offended the
+most tender conscience. He desired that preparations might be made for a
+great hunting, calling upon "the laird of Ferme, forester of the park of
+Falkland, and chamberlain of Fife," to warn everybody about and call all
+the surrounding gentlemen "that had speedie dogs" to hunt with him,
+appointing the meeting next morning at seven o'clock, "for he was
+determined to slay ane deare or two for his pleasure." Pitscottie is
+very particular in his description, and places the economy of the little
+castle before us, among its woods--with its simplicity, its precautions,
+the homeliness of the household. The King desired to have "his
+disjeuner" at four in the morning, and bade James Douglas "gang the
+sooner to his bed that night that he might rise the sooner in the
+morning," and after he had supped, called for a drink and drank to
+Douglas, saying that they should see good hunting on the morn, and
+warning him not to be late; from which it may be guessed that Captain
+James was not fond of early hours. The captain saw as he thought the
+King go to bed, and having set the watch, and arranged everything for
+the night, went to bed himself, as the boy had laughingly bidden him to
+do. As soon as all was quiet, eluding the watch without apparent
+difficulty, the King, attended only by "Jockie Hart, a yeoman of the
+stable," and another "secret servant," escaped in the stillness of the
+night into the freedom of the sleeping country. It is said by one
+authority to have been in June that this evasion was made, but in June
+there is scarcely any night at all in Scotland, and the brief darkness
+could scarcely have served as a screen for the fugitives; probably it
+was earlier in the year, when the night was more to be calculated upon.
+One can imagine the breathless excitement and delight of the long ride,
+with the fresh breeze in his face, and one of the richest valleys in
+Scotland coming softly into sight in the midst of the morning, as the
+young King full of spirit, ambition, and all the rising impulses of
+manhood, left behind him the gentle shadow of the Lomond hills, and
+swept round the base of the Ochils towards the castle, high-standing on
+its rock, where freedom and his crown and all the privileges of royal
+life and independence were awaiting him. He reached Stirling in the
+breaking of the day, and galloping across the bridge, caused its gates
+to be closed after him, that no pursuer might cross the river; and was
+received with great rejoicing in the castle, where everything had been
+prepared for his coming, and where the captain, having let down the
+portcullis and made all secure, "laid the King in his bed, because he
+had ridden all that night." Probably there was no moment in the life of
+the young monarch, who had fallen upon such troubled times, more sweet
+than this when, after the wild excitement of the long night's riding, he
+closed his young eyes, at an hour so unaccustomed, in the clear radiance
+of the morning, feeling his life now free before him, as light and fair
+and unfettered as the rising day. But Pitscottie must continue the tale
+in his own admirable way. He says:--
+
+    "We will lat him sleep in his bed, and return to George Douglas, who
+    came home to Falkland at eleven hours at night, and required at the
+    porters what the King was doing, who answered that he was in his own
+    chamber sleeping, who was to rise tymous to the hunting, and right
+    so said the watchmen. George hearing this went to his bed, till on
+    the morn that the sun rose. Then came Patrick Carmichael, baillie of
+    Abernethie, and knocked at George Douglas's chamber door, and
+    inquired of him what the King was doing. George answered that he was
+    not waked as yet in his own chamber. The baillie answered, 'Ye are
+    deceaved; he is along the bridge of Stirling this night.' Then
+    George Douglas gat up hastilie and went to the porters and watchmen
+    and inquired for the King, who still answered that he was sleeping
+    in his own chamber. Then George Douglas came to the King's chamber
+    door and found it locked, and dang it up, but found no man in it.
+    Then he cryed, 'Fye, treason, the King is gone!'"
+
+The confusion and dismay of the household were great. Some said that the
+King had gone to Bambriefe "to visit a gentlewoman," which explanation
+was received with relief, the question of morality being of small
+consequence in comparison. George Douglas immediately leaped on his
+horse to ascertain if this were true, but had not ridden more than two
+miles when he met the Earl of Rothes, who told him the King was not
+there. By this time the other Douglas who had gone to Dundee had
+returned also, and a hurried council was held what to do. Angus himself
+was immediately summoned from Tantallon by an express, "ane haistie
+post," and instantly answering, set out with his uncle and brother, and
+rode to Stirling with some forlorn hope it would appear of recovering
+their empire over the King. But James had already gathered counsellors
+round him, and was himself too strongly determined to maintain his
+liberty to allow any approach. The road to Stirling would no doubt be
+full of scouts, to give warning of what the discomfited but powerful
+family meant to do, and as soon as their approach was known a herald was
+sent to the town cross to proclaim by sound of trumpet a royal decree
+that neither Angus nor his companions should approach within six miles
+of where the King was under pain of death. It is curious to mark how in
+a moment the great power of the Douglases and their high courage
+collapsed in face of this proclamation. They paused on their hasty ride,
+and held another hasty council, and though some among them were for
+pressing forward and seizing once more the malapert boy who defied them,
+the Earl himself and his brother decided to obey the proclamation and
+withdraw. They fell back upon Linlithgow, where they paused a day or two
+hoping perhaps for better news. But by this time the other nobles were
+crowding round the King. Huntly, Argyle, Athole, Glencairn, Monteith,
+and Rothes, with a still larger company of barons, hastened to Stirling
+to protect and aid with their counsel the liberated prince. Archbishop
+Beatoun, the wily Churchman, who had done all he could to overthrow
+Angus,--who had been for a moment so worsted in the conflict that he
+skulked about his own Fife moors in the disguise of a shepherd, but who
+had lately made friends with the dominant family and entertained the
+King and his guardians together, calling them "to his pasche (Easter) at
+St. Andrews,"--and who had no doubt known of the momentous night
+journey, and probably detained George Douglas late that evening to make
+it more sure, had also joined the King.
+
+With this powerful escort James proceeded to Edinburgh, where for some
+time the lords around him kept watch night and day, keeping their little
+army of attendants under arms in case of any attack on the part of
+Angus. One night, we are told, James himself in full armour took the
+command of the guard, more probably, however, from a boyish desire to
+feel himself at the head of his defenders than for any other reason; and
+even his bedchamber was shared, after an unpleasant fashion of the time,
+by the bastard of Arran, "James Hamilton, that bloody butcherer," as
+Pitscottie calls him, who had precipitated the fray of "Clear the
+Causeway" and was Angus's most inveterate enemy. These extraordinary
+precautions, however, seem to have been unnecessary. The Douglases would
+appear to have accepted their defeat as complete, and to have been
+entirely cowed by it. Another proclamation was put forth on the arrival
+of the King in Edinburgh commanding all true subjects to refrain from
+intercourse of any kind with Angus, his brother, and uncle, not to
+receive them or succour them or hold any communication with them on
+peril of being considered sharers in their crime--in short, a sort of
+interdict after the papal fashion. The impromptu council sat for two
+days in the upper chamber of the Tolbooth, which was the recognised
+Parliament House, chiefly, it would seem, to hear the King's indictment
+against the family of Douglas. James set forth all his grievances, his
+subjection to the will of Angus, his separation from his own friends,
+the appearance he had been made to assume of enmity to his real
+champions, and vowed at the end, says Pitscottie, in the fervour of his
+indignation and resentment, that Scotland should not hold them both. He
+would receive nothing but support in that assembly where all had
+suffered from the supremacy of Angus, and where the too powerful race
+had no friends. The council appointed anew all the high officers of
+State, whose posts had been appropriated by the Douglases, and sent an
+envoy to England to announce that the government of Scotland was
+henceforward in the King's own hands. It was also ordained that a
+Parliament should be called in the month of September, to confirm in a
+more decorous and regular way the decisions of the present hasty
+assembly.
+
+When Parliament met these questions were accordingly discussed over
+again, with confirmation of what had been already done. It was decided
+that Angus should be summoned before them to answer for his misdeeds,
+under the penalty if he did not appear of being "put to the horn and
+banished during the King's will." Angus was not so rash as to trust
+himself within the power of his enemies, as his kinsmen of the house of
+Douglas had already done on two fatal occasions: and as neither he nor
+his retainers put in an appearance, they were accordingly attainted,
+their lands forfeited to the Crown, their name put under the public ban,
+their great castle of Tantallon seized, and themselves proclaimed
+through all the country as traitors whom no man should receive or
+succour.
+
+The complete downfall which overtook this great house after the young
+King's abandonment of it is very remarkable, and shows how important was
+the royal position, notwithstanding the manner in which it had been
+_exploite_, and the mere nominal power of its actual possessor. The
+house of Angus crumbled into the dust as soon as their young prisoner
+escaped their hands. They took refuge in England, where they vainly
+attempted on various occasions to negotiate for their return, but with
+no success. The name continued obnoxious to James during his whole life.
+Sir Walter has done his best to rehabilitate that name in the noble
+Douglas of _The Lady of the Lake_, who has been identified with
+Archibald of Kilspindie, "the uncle of the banished Earl," the story of
+whose appearance at the games at Stirling is said to have some
+foundation of reality. But the historians of the house, who alone
+mention this, state the facts in a very different way.
+
+Thus the Angus branch of the Douglas family fell, as the Earls of
+Douglas had fallen, and for a generation there was little heard of it
+save in mutterings of treason in moments of difficulty, which never came
+to much--until in the following reign the indomitable race rose again in
+another branch and under another name, and furnished in the Regent
+Morton one of the strongest as well as the most questionable figures of
+a deeply disturbed time. Never was a race more difficult to subdue.
+
+The escape of James from Falkland took place between Easter and June in
+the year 1527. In 1528, the Douglases being clean swept out of the
+country, the young King went on a professed hunting expedition to the
+Borders, where, besides innumerable deer, its ostensible reason, his
+ride through the southern district carried punishment and death to many
+a Border reiver and especially to the famous John or Johnnie Armstrong,
+the Laird of Kilnokie, and chief or at least best-known representative
+of his name. Whether it was wise policy to hang the reiver who was the
+terror of the Borders, yet "never molested no Scottis man," it is not
+necessary to decide. He was a scourge to the English, of whom it was
+said that there was none from the Scottish Border to Newcastle who did
+not "pay ane tribute to be free of his cumber." Johnnie Armstrong had
+the folly to come into the King's presence with such a train, his men so
+completely armed and so many in number, as to compete with royal
+magnificence, not very great in Scotland in those days. "What wants yon
+knave that a king should have?" said the young James, who had certainly
+had enough of such powerful subjects: and he would not listen to either
+excuse or explanation from the Borderer, whose defiance as he was led to
+his execution, and the wail of his wild followers after him, sounds
+still in the stirring strains of song and ballad. No doubt it was
+justice that James did--but justice somewhat stern and out of time.
+
+The young Court now blazing out into full splendour, with a legitimate
+head and every prospect of prosperity, became again the resort of
+foreign chivalry and magnificent envoys, among them a legate from the
+Pope to assure the allegiance of James to the Holy See, which his uncle
+of England had deserted. Henry at the same time did not neglect by
+constant messengers and vague promises, now of the hand of the Princess
+Mary, now of an English dukedom, to secure his nephew to his side. After
+that princess, whom her father tried his utmost to put out of the
+succession by divorcing her mother, James was the next heir, and Henry
+did not forget that possibility. The hand of the young princess had
+already been several times offered to the Scots King without any
+certainty either in the proposal or its acceptance. One cannot help
+wondering what might have been the issue had that unhappy Mary, to whom
+history has given so grim a nickname, been thus wedded in early youth to
+a gracious and gallant Stewart. In all history there occurs by times a
+gleam like this of possible deliverance from fate, an opening by which
+the subjects of tragedy might have secured an escape had they but known.
+One wonders had she thus escaped the wrongs and bitterness of her early
+career whether Mary would have got free from those traces of blood and
+madness which have left so dark a shadow upon her name; or whether, in
+the conflict that was to follow, her fierce Tudor passion would have
+embittered every strife. It is wonderful to think that she might have
+been the mother of that other Mary so different yet still more sadly
+fated, who in that case never could have been the Mary Stewart she was.
+We are led to something like a _reductio ad absurdum_ by such
+speculations, very vain yet always attractive as they are. James was
+eager to marry at the earliest possible moment, and all would have
+welcomed the marriage with his kinswoman.
+
+In this respect, however, as in almost every other, Scotland was now at
+a turning-point of the utmost importance in her career. For the first
+time her politics had begun to be troubled by the possibility of an
+alliance with England more strong and lasting than the brief periods of
+truce which had hitherto existed between two nations whose principle and
+tradition were those of enmity. A perpetual peace had indeed been sworn
+and signed at the time of the marriage of Margaret Tudor with James IV,
+but how little lasting that had been is amply demonstrated by the fact
+that no such crushing defeat had ever been inflicted upon Scotland as
+that of Flodden, in which the King and the great part of his nobles
+perished. Perhaps it was the germ of the design to attract the lesser
+country into the arms of the greater by friendship rather than to set
+her desperately at bay against all peaceful influences, which had
+prevented the successful army from taking advantage of the victory; but
+certainly through all the distracted period of James's minority efforts
+had been made by constant envoys to acquire a share in the councils of
+the country, such as had hitherto been considered the right of France,
+who was the old and faithful ally as England was "the auld enemy" of the
+Scots. The alliance with France had been taken for granted on all sides.
+That Scotland should harass England in every war between that country
+and her continental neighbour was a foregone conclusion, and it was
+something still more sure, a proverb on the English side, that when
+France was to be assailed the right thing was to begin with Scotland.
+The position of Henry as brother of the Scottish Queen, and the nearest
+relative of James, who, under circumstances not at all unlikely to
+occur, might be his heir, gave the English king now a natural right to
+interfere; and it is conceivable that had this right been exercised more
+wisely it might have led to fortunate issues. But unhappily King Henry
+had associated his influence with that of Angus, taking the part of his
+sister's discarded husband with great determination, and apparently
+without any sympathy in those changes in Margaret's affections which so
+much resembled his own. Angus was to Scotland the representative of the
+English alliance, and as everything connected with Angus had now become
+hateful to James, it followed that his uncle's desire to obtain an
+influence over him, which was not accompanied by any substantial marks
+of kindness towards himself, did not meet with much success: though it
+might have been otherwise had the vaguely-proposed marriage been carried
+out. But one can scarcely be sorry that the noble and graceful James
+should have escaped such an alliance.
+
+[Illustration: LINLITHGOW PALACE]
+
+Other and still more serious matters were now, however, surging upwards
+in both England and Scotland, which doubled the silent struggle between
+the old ally and the new. On the side of France was the old religion,
+the Church which at this period was the strongest of the Estates of
+Scotland, richer than any of the others, and possessing almost all the
+political ability of the time: on the side of England a new, scarcely
+recognised, but powerful influence, which was soon to attain almost
+complete mastery in Scotland and shatter that Church to pieces. In the
+beginning of James's reign this new power was but beginning to swell in
+the silent bosom of the country, showing here and there in a trial for
+heresy and in the startling fires of execution which cut off the first
+martyrs for the reformed faith. But there is no evidence to show that
+James, a young man full of affairs much more absorbing than religious
+controversy, with more confidence, politically at least, in the Church
+than in any other power of his realm, had ever been awakened to the
+importance of the struggle. The smoke of those fires which blew over all
+Scotland in potent fumes from St. Andrews, on the further side of the
+Firth; and from Edinburgh, where on the Castle Hill in the intervals of
+the tiltings and tourneys, the Vicar of Dollar for example, of whose
+examination we have a most vivid and admirable report, full of
+picturesque simplicity, not without humour even in the midst of the
+tragedy, was burnt--along with several gentlemen of his county: does not
+seem to have reached the young King, absorbed in some project of State,
+or busy with new laws and regulations, or inspecting the portraits of
+the great ladies among whom he had to choose his bride. There is a
+curious story communicated in a letter of one of the English envoys of
+the period of his conversation with a Scotch gentleman, in which we find
+a description of James listening to a play represented before the Court
+at the feast of the Epiphany, 1540, in the Castle of Linlithgow. This
+play is believed to have been Sir David Lindsay's _Satire on the Three
+Estates_, one of the most effective attacks upon the corruptions of the
+Church which had ever been made, and setting forth the exactions of the
+priests from the peasantry and the poor at every event of their lives,
+as well as the wealth and wickedness of the monastic communities, of
+which Scotland was full, and which had long been the recognised object
+of popular satire and objurgation. The performance would seem to have
+had as great an effect upon the young King as had the play in _Hamlet_
+upon the majesty of Denmark. James turned to Beatoun (the Cardinal,
+nephew and successor of Archbishop James) the Chancellor in indignant
+remonstrance. Were these things so? and if they were, would not the
+bishops and other powerful ecclesiastics join to repress them? Let them
+do so at once, cried the sovereign: or if not he should send half a
+dozen of the proudest of them to King Henry to be dealt with after his
+methods. Even Churchmen had occasionally to brook such threats from an
+excited prince. Beatoun answered with courtier-like submission that a
+word from the King was enough, upon which James, not wont to confine
+himself to words, and strong in the success with which he had overcome
+one of his Estates, the lords, now so quiet under his hand, replied that
+he would not spare many words for such an issue. This characteristic
+scene is very interesting. But probably when the memory of what he had
+heard faded from the busy King, and the tumult of public events gained
+possession again of his ear and mind, he forgot the sudden impression,
+or contented himself with the thought that Beatoun and the bishops must
+put order in their own affairs. Pitscottie tells us in respect to a
+projected visit to England, vaguely thought of and planned several years
+before this time, that "the wicked bishops of Scotland would not thole"
+a meeting between James and Henry. "For the bishops feared that if the
+King had met with King Henry that he would have moved him to casten down
+the abbeys, and to have altered the religion as the King of England had
+done before. Therefore the bishops bade him to bide at home, and gave
+him three thousand pounds of yearly rent out of their benefices." It is
+to be feared that history has no evidence of this voluntary munificence,
+but James found the ecclesiastical possessions in Scotland very useful
+for the purposes of taxation, and in this respect did not permit Beatoun
+to have his own way.
+
+When the young King was in his twenty-fourth year he found himself
+able--many previous negotiations on the subject having come to
+nothing--to pay a visit to the Continent in his own person in order to
+secure a wife. It is a greater testimony to the personal power and
+vigour of James than any mere details could give that, within eight
+years of the time when, a boy of sixteen, he had escaped from the power
+of the Douglas, it should be possible for him to leave, after all the
+wild anarchy of his minority, a pacificated and orderly kingdom behind
+him, in the care of a Council of Regency, while he went forth upon a
+mission so important to himself. He had altogether extinguished and
+expelled the house of Douglas; he had subdued and repressed other
+turbulent lords, and convinced them that his authority was neither to be
+neutralised nor made light of; he had settled and calmed the Border by
+the most decisive means; and he was now free to show himself in the
+society of kings, and win his princess, and see the world. He had been
+already the object of many overtures from contemporary Powers. The
+Emperor and the Pope had both sent him envoys and conciliated his
+friendship; and in the imperial house itself as well as in many others
+of the highest rank there had been ladies proposed to share his crown.
+The one more immediately in view when he set out on his journey was a
+daughter of the Duke of Vendome. The defeat of Charles V before
+Marseilles took place almost simultaneously with James's arrival, and
+the Scotch chroniclers do not lose the opportunity of asserting that it
+was the coming of the King of the Scots with a supposed army of twenty
+thousand men to the succour of France which was the reason of the
+Emperor's precipitate withdrawal. Pitscottie narrates, with more evident
+truthfulness, how the Frenchmen on the Norman coast were alarmed by the
+ships, fearing it to be an enemy which hove in sight, "for there were
+many strangers in his companie, so that he appeared ane great army." But
+the sight of the red lion of Scotland changed their alarms into joy, and
+they welcomed the Scots King and party, "at the New Haven beside Diep,"
+with much rejoicing. He would seem to have pushed across France to the
+Court of Vendome without pausing to pay his respects to the King at
+Paris; and we find his movements recorded in a romantic tale, which is
+neither contradicted nor supported by other authorities, but likely
+enough to a romantic young prince upon a love-quest. According to this
+description James did not assume his proper character but appeared only
+as one among the many knights, who probably represented themselves, to
+make his feint successful, as merely a party of cavaliers seeking
+adventure and the exercises of chivalry. He intended thus to see, while
+himself unknown, "the gentlewoman who sould have been his spouse,
+thinking to spy her pulchritud and behaviour unkenned by her."
+
+    "Notwithstanding this fair ladie took suspition that the King of
+    Scotland should be in the companie, wherefore she passed to her
+    coffer and took out his picture, which she had gotten out of
+    Scotland by ane secret moyane, and as soon as she looked to the
+    picture it made her know the King of Scotland incontinent where he
+    stood among the rest of his companie, and past peartlie to him, and
+    took him by the hand, and said, 'Sir, ye stand over far aside;
+    therefore, if it please your Grace, you may show yourself to my
+    father or me, and confer and pass the time ane while.'"
+
+Perhaps it was injudicious of the fair ladie to be so "peart." At all
+events, after much feasting, "nothing but merriness and banquetting and
+great cheer and lovelie communing betwixt the King's grace and the fair
+ladies, with great musick and playing on instruments, and all other
+kinds of pastime for the fields," as well as "jousting and running of
+great horses," the ungrateful James "thought it expedient to speak
+nothing of marriage at that time, till he had spoken with the King of
+France, considering," adds the chronicler, who perhaps sees an excuse to
+be necessary, "he was within his realm he would show him his mind and
+have his counsel thereto before he concluded the matter." Pitscottie
+thus saves the feelings of the lady of whom other historians say curtly
+that she did not please the King. But when the Scottish band reached the
+Court, though it was then in mourning for the Dauphin, recently dead,
+King James was received with open arms. The King of France, sick and sad
+for the loss of his son, was in the country at a hunting seat, and when
+James was suddenly introduced at the door of his chamber as "the King of
+Scotland, sire, come to comfort you," the arrival evidently made the
+best possible impression. The sorrowful father declared, as he embraced
+the young stranger, that it was as if another son had been given him
+from heaven; and after a little interval the royal party, increased by
+James's Scottish train, moved on to another palace. We may be allowed to
+imagine that the Queen and her ladies came out to meet them, as the
+first sight which James appears to have had of his future bride was
+while she was "ryding in ane chariot, because she was sickly, and might
+not ryd upon hors." Magdalen, too, saw him as he rode to meet the fair
+cavalcade in her father's company, who looked so much happier and
+brighter from the encounter with this gallant young prince. The poor
+girl was already stricken for death, and had but a few months to live;
+but it is very likely that her malady was that fatal but deceitful one
+which leaves a more delicate beauty to its victims, and gives feverish
+brightness to the eyes and colour to the cheek. A tender creature, full
+of poetry and imagination, and most likely all unconscious of the fate
+that hung over her, she loved the gallant cavalier from the first moment
+of seeing him, and touched the heart of James by that fragile beauty and
+by the affection that shone in her soft eyes. It was a marriage that no
+one approved, for her days were known to be numbered. But perhaps some
+faint hope that happiness, that potent physician, might arrest disease,
+as it has been known to do, prevailed both with the anxious father and
+the young man beloved, in whom tender pity and gratitude replaced a
+warmer sentiment. At all events the marriage took place in Paris, in the
+noble church of Notre Dame, in the beginning of the year 1537. The King,
+we are told, sent to Scotland to invite a number of other noblemen and
+gentlemen to attend his wedding, which was performed with the greatest
+pomp and splendour. Not until May did the young couple set out for their
+home, and then they were laden with gifts, two ships being presented to
+them, a number of splendid horses fully caparisoned, and quantities of
+valuable tapestries, cloth of silver and gold, and jewels of every
+description. Perhaps the long delay was intended to make the journey
+more safe for the poor young Queen. The voyage from Dieppe to Leith
+lasted five days, and the bridal party was accompanied by an escort of
+"fiftie ships of Scottismen, Frenchmen, and strangers." "When the Queen
+was come upon Scottis eard, she bowed her down to the same, and kissed
+the mould thereof, and thanked God that her husband and she were come
+safe through the seas." There could not be a more tender or attractive
+picture. How full of poetry and soft passion must the gentle creature
+have been who thus took possession of the land beloved for her young
+husband's sake! The Scottish eard indeed was all that she was to have of
+that inheritance, for in little more than a month the gentle Magdalen
+was dead. She was laid in the chapel of the palace which was to have
+been her home, with "ane dolorous lamentation; for triumph and merriness
+were all turned into dirges and soul-masses, which were very lamentable
+to behold."
+
+This sad story is crowned by Pitscottie with a brief note of the death
+of the Duc de Vendome's daughter, "who took sick displeasure at the King
+of Scotland's marriage that she deceased immediately thereafter; whereat
+the King of Scotland was highly displeased, thinking that he was the
+occasion of that gentlewoman's death." Other historians say that this
+tragical conclusion did not occur, but that the Princess of Vendome was
+married on the same day as James. Pitscottie's is the more romantic
+ending, and rounds the pathetic tale.
+
+After such a mournful and ineffectual attempt at married life all the
+negotiations had to be begun over again, and James was at last married,
+to the general satisfaction, to Mary of Guise, a woman, as it turned
+out, of many fine and noble qualities, to which but indifferent justice
+was ever done. It was before this event, however, and immediately after
+the death of the Queen, that a curious and tragical incident happened,
+which furnished another strange scene to the many associations of
+Edinburgh. This was the execution of Lady Glamis upon the Castle Hill
+for witchcraft and secret attempts upon the life of the King by means of
+magic or of poison. No one seems to know what these attempts were.
+Pitscottie gives this extraordinary event a short paragraph. The grave
+Pinkerton fills a page or two with an apology or defence of James for
+permitting such an act. But we are not told what was the evidence, or
+how the sovereign's life was threatened. The supposed culprit was
+however--and the fact is significant--the only member of the family of
+Angus left in Scotland, the sister of the Earl. Once more the Castle
+Hill was covered with an awed or excited crowd, not unaccustomed to that
+sight, for the heretics had burnt there not long before, but at once
+more and less moved than usual, for the victim was a woman fair and
+dignified, such a sufferer as always calls forth the pity of the
+spectators, but her crime witchcraft, a thing held in universal horror,
+and with which there would be no sympathisers. Few, if any, in that
+crowd would be so advanced in sentiment as to regard the cruel
+exhibition with the horrified contempt of modern times. The throng that
+lined that great platform would have no doubt that it was right to burn
+a witch wherever she was found; and the beauty of the woman and the
+grandeur of her race would give a pang the more of painful satisfaction
+in her destruction. But it is strange that thus a last blow should have
+been aimed at that family, once so great and strong, which James's
+resentment had pursued to the end. A little while before, Archibald
+Douglas of Kilspindie had thrown himself upon James's mercy--the only
+member of the Douglas family who can be in any way identified with the
+noble Douglas of _The Lady of the Lake_.
+
+    "'Tis James of Douglas, by St. Serle,
+    The uncle of the banished Earl."
+
+But Archibald of Kilspindie did not meet the same forgiveness with which
+his prototype in the poem was received. He was sent back into banishment
+unforgiven, the King's word having been passed to forgive no one
+condemned by the law. Perhaps the same stern fidelity to a stern promise
+was the reason why Lady Glamis was allowed to go to the stake unrescued.
+But we speculate in vain on subjects so veiled in ignorance and
+uncertainty. Perhaps his counsellors acted on their own authority in
+respect to a crime the reprobation and horror of which were universal,
+and did not disturb the King in the first shock of his mourning. In the
+same week the fair and fragile Magdalen of France was carried to her
+burial, and Lady Glamis was burned at the other extremity of Edinburgh.
+Perhaps it was supposed that something in the incantations of the one
+had a fatal influence upon the young existence of the other. At all
+events these two sensations fell to the populace of Edinburgh and all
+the strangers who were constantly passing through her gates, at the same
+time. Life in those days was full of pictorial circumstances which do
+not belong to ours. One is inclined to wonder sometimes whether the many
+additional comforts we possess make up for that perpetual movement in
+the air, the excitement, the communication of new ideas, the strange
+sights both pleasant and terrible. The burning of a witch or a heretic
+is perhaps too tremendous a sensation to be desired by the most heroic
+spectator; but the perpetual drama going on thus before the eyes of all
+the world, and giving to the poorest an absolute share in every new and
+strange thing, must have added a reality to national life which no
+newspapers can give. That the people remain always eager for this share
+in historical events, the crowds that never weary of gazing at passing
+princes, the innumerable audience of the picture papers, the endless
+reproduction of every insignificant public event, from a procession of
+aldermen to the simplest day's journey of a royal personage, abundantly
+testify. In the days of the Jameses few of the crowd could read, and
+still fewer had the chance of reading. A ballad flying from voice to
+voice across the country, sung at the ingle-neuk, repeated from one to
+another in the little crowd at a "stairhead," in which the grossest
+humorous view was the best adapted for the people, represented popular
+literature. But most things that went on were visible to the crowding
+population. They saw the foreign visitors, the ambassadors, the knights,
+each with his distinguishable crest, who came to meet in encounter of
+arms the knights of the Scottish Court. All that went on they had their
+share in, and a kind of acquaintance with every notability. The public
+events were a species of large emblazoned history which he who ran could
+read.
+
+These ballads above referred to came to singular note, however, in one
+of the many discussions between England and Scotland which were carried
+on by means of the frequent envoys sent to James from his uncle. The
+Borders, it appears, were full of this flying literature sent forth by
+unknown writers, and spread probably by, here and there, a wandering
+friar, more glad of a merry rhyme than disconcerted by a satire against
+his own cloth, or with still more relish dispersing over the countryside
+reports of King Henry's amours and divorces, and of the plundering of
+abbeys and profane assumption of sacred rights by a monarch who was so
+far from sanctified. Popular prophecies of how a new believing king
+should be raised up to disconcert the heretics, and on the northern side
+of the Border of the speedy elevation of James to the throne of England,
+and final victorious triumph of the Scottish side, flew from village to
+village, exciting at last the alarm of Henry and his council, who made
+formal complaint of them at the Scottish Court, drawing from James a
+promise that if any of his subjects should be found to be the authors of
+such productions they should suffer death for it--a heavy penalty for
+literary transgression. In Scotland farther north it was another kind of
+ballad which was said and sung, or whispered under the breath with many
+a peal of rude laughter, the Satires of "Davy Lindsay" and many a lesser
+poet--ludicrous stories of erring priests and friars, indecent but
+humorous, with lamentable tales of dues exacted and widows robbed, and
+all the sins of the Church, the proud bishop and his lemans, the
+avaricious priest and his exactions, the confessors who bullied a dying
+penitent into gifts which injured his family, and all the well-worn
+scandals by which in every time of reformation the coarser imagination
+of the populace is stirred. If James himself was startled into an angry
+demand how such things could be after he had witnessed the performance
+of David Lindsay's play, which was trimmed into comparative decency for
+courtly ears, it may be supposed what was the effect of that and still
+broader assaults, upon the unchastened imagination of the people. The
+Reformation progressed by great strides by such rude yet able help as
+well as by the purer methods of religion. The priests, however, do not
+seem to have made war on the balladmakers, as the great King of England
+would have had his nephew do. Buchanan, indeed, whose classic weapons
+had been brought into this literary crusade, and who also had his fling
+at the Franciscans as well as his coarser and more popular brethren, was
+imprisoned for a time, and had to withdraw from his country, but the
+poets of the people, far more effective, would seem to have escaped.
+
+All this, however, probably seemed of but little importance to James in
+comparison with the greater affairs of the kingdom of which his hands
+were full. When the episode of his marriages was over, and still more
+important an heir secured, he returned to that imperial track in which
+he had acquitted himself so well. All would seem to have been in order
+in the centre of the kingdom; the Borders were as quiet as it was
+possible for the Borders to be; and only the remote Highlands and
+islands remained still insubordinate, in merely nominal subjection to
+the laws of the kingdom. James, we are told, had long intended to make
+one of the royal raids so familiar to Scottish history among his
+doubtful subjects of these parts, and accordingly an expedition was very
+carefully prepared, twelve ships equipped both for comfort and for war,
+with every device known to the time for provisioning them and keeping
+them in full efficiency. We are told that the English authorities
+looking on, were exceedingly suspicious of this voyage, not knowing
+whither such preparations might tend, while all Scotland watched the
+setting out of the expedition almost as much in the dark as to its
+motive, and full of wonder as to where the King could be going. Bonfires
+were blazing on all the hilltops in rejoicing for the birth of a prince
+when James took his way with his fleet down the Firth. Pinkerton, who
+ought to have known better, talks of "the acclamations of numerous
+spectators on the adjacent hills and shores" as if the great estuary had
+been a little river. It might well be that both in Fife and Lothian
+there were eager lookers-on, as soon as it was seen that the fleet was
+in motion, to see the ships pass: but their acclaims must have been loud
+indeed to carry from Leith to Kinghorn. The King sailed early in June
+1540 towards the north. Many a yacht and pleasure ship still follows the
+same route round the Scottish coast towards the wild attractions of the
+islands.
+
+    "Merrily, merrily, bounds the bark,
+      She bounds before the gale,
+    The mountain breeze from Ben-na-darch
+      Is joyous in her sail.
+    With fluttering sound like laughter hoarse
+      The cords and canvas strain,
+    The waves divided by her force
+    In rippling eddies chased her course
+      As if they laughed again."
+
+But it was on no pleasure voyage that James had set out. He had in his
+twelve ships two thousand armed men, led by the most trusted lords of
+Scotland, and his mission was to reduce to order the clans who knew so
+little what a king's dignity was, or the restraints of law, or the
+pursuits of industry. No stand would seem to have been anywhere made
+against him. Many of the chiefs of the more turbulent tribes were
+brought off to the ships, not so much as prisoners in consequence of
+their own misdoings, but as hostages for their clans: and the startled
+isles, overawed by the sight of the King and his great ships, and by the
+more generous motive of anxiety for their own chieftains in pledge for
+them, calmed down out of their wild ways, and ceased from troubling in a
+manner unprecedented in their turbulent history.
+
+An incidental consequence of this voyage sounds oddly modern, as if it
+might have been a transcript from the most recent records. James
+perceived, or more probably had his attention directed to the fact, that
+the fishermen of the north were much molested by fishing vessels from
+Holland, Flanders, and the Scandinavian coasts, who interfered with
+their fishing, sometimes even thrusting them by violence of arms out of
+their own waters. The King accordingly detached one or two of his
+vessels under the command of Maxwell, his admiral, to inquire into these
+high-handed proceedings, with the result that one of the foreign fisher
+pirate-ships was seized and brought to Leith to answer for their
+misdoings. There they were reprimanded and bound over to better
+behaviour, then dismissed without further penalty. How little effectual,
+however, this treatment was, is exemplified by the fact that the
+selfsame offence continues to be repeated until this very day.
+
+There would seem to have been a little pause of calm and comfort in
+James's life after this victorious expedition. Clouds already bigger
+than a man's hand were forming on his horizon; the country had begun to
+be agitated throughout its depths with the rising forces of the reform,
+and the priests who had always surrounded James were hurrying on in the
+truculence of terror to sterner and sterner enactments against heretics:
+while he, probably even yet but moderately interested, thinking of other
+things, and though adding to the new laws which he was persuaded to
+originate in this sense, conditions to the effect that corresponding
+reforms were to be wrought in the behaviour of the priesthood,--had not
+entered at all into the fierce current of theological strife. He
+followed the faith in which he had been bred, revolted rather than
+attracted by the proceedings and pretensions of his uncle of England,
+willing that the bishops, who probably knew best, and who were, as he
+complained to the English ambassador, the only men of sense and ability
+near him, should have their own way in their own concerns; but for
+himself much more intent on the temporal welfare of his kingdom than on
+its belief, or the waves of opinion which might blow over it. He had
+just been very successful in what no doubt seemed to him an enterprise
+much more kingly and important--the subjugation of the islands. He was
+happy and prosperous in his private life, his Queen having performed the
+high duty expected of her in providing the kingdom with an heir, indeed
+with two sons, to make, as appeared, assurance doubly sure; and though
+the burning of a heretic was not a pleasant circumstance, Beatoun and
+the rest of the brotherhood were too clever and helpful as men of the
+world to be easily dispensed with. James had, there can be no doubt,
+much reason to be discontented and dissatisfied, as almost all his
+predecessors had been, with the nobility of his kingdom. Apart from some
+of those young companions-in-arms who were delightful in the camp and
+field but useless in the council chamber, his state of mind would seem
+to have resembled more the modern mood which is represented by the word
+"bored" than any other more dignified expression. The priests might be
+fierce (as indeed were the lords, still more) but they were able, and
+knew something of the necessities of government. The barons disgusted
+him with their petty jealousies, their want of instruction, their
+incapacity for any broad or statesmanlike view, and there would seem
+little doubt that he dispensed with their services as much as possible,
+and turned to those persons who comprehended him with a natural movement
+which unfortunately, however, is never fortunate in a king. Something of
+the severance between himself and those who were nearest to him in rank,
+which had ruined his grandfather, showed itself as he advanced towards
+the gravity of manhood: and the fatal name of favourite began to be
+attached to one man at least in the Court, who would seem to have
+understood better than the others the ways and intentions of James. But
+in the meantime the clouds were only gathering; the darkness had not
+begun. A year or two before, the King had given to the legal faculty of
+Scotland a form and constitution which it has retained to this day. He
+had instituted the Court of Session, the "Feifteen," the law lords in
+their grave if short-lived dignity. He had begun to build and repair and
+decorate at Holyrood and Linlithgow. "He sent to Denmark," says
+Pitscottie, "and brought home great horss and meares and put them in
+parks that their offspring might be gotten to sustein the warres when
+need was. Also he sent and furnished the country with all kinds of
+craftsmen such as Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Dutchmen, which ever was the
+first of their profession that could be had." He went even so far in his
+desire to develop the natural wealth of his kingdom that he brought over
+certain German wise men to see if gold could be found in the mines, of
+which there has always been a tradition, as probably in most countries.
+All these pacific enterprises occupied James's time and helped on the
+prosperity of the country. But evil times were close at hand.
+
+One of the first indications that the dreadful round of misfortune was
+about to begin was the sudden denunciation of James Hamilton, the
+bastard of Arran, as a conspirator against the King, an event which
+Pitscottie narrates as happening in the year 1541. He had been a
+favourite of the King in his youth, and a great champion against the
+Douglas faction, and it was indeed his intemperate and imprudent rage
+which determined the fight called Clear the Causeway, and wrought much
+harm to his own party. He had been high in favour for a time, probably
+on the ground of his enmity to the house of Angus, then had fallen into
+discredit, but had lately been employed in certain public offices, and
+if we may trust Pitscottie, had been put into some such position by the
+priests as that which Saul of Tarsus held in the service of the
+persecuting ecclesiastics of Jerusalem. At all events his sudden
+accusation as plotting against the King's life, and especially as doing
+so in the interests of the Douglases, was evidently as startling and
+extraordinary to the great officials to whom the communication was made
+as it would be to the reader who has heard of this personage only as the
+infuriated opponent of Angus and his party. No credence seems to have
+been given to the story at first, though it was told by another
+Hamilton, a cousin of the culprit. As this happened, however, in the
+King's absence from Edinburgh, the lords thought it a wise precaution to
+secure Sir James, and, according to Pitscottie, proceeded in their own
+dignified persons--the Lord Treasurer, Secretary, and "Mr. Household,"
+preceded by Lyon King-of-Arms--to his lodging in Edinburgh, whence they
+conveyed him to the castle. Such arrestations would probably cause but
+little excitement, only a momentary rush and gazing of the crowd as the
+group with its little band of attendants and defenders passed upward
+along the High Street, the herald's tabard alone betraying its
+character. Sir James Hamilton, however, was very well known and little
+loved, and small would be the sympathy in the looks of the citizens, and
+many the stern nods and whispers of satisfaction that vengeance had
+seized him at length. The King, like his representatives, was astonished
+by the accusation, but when he heard of the terrible "dittay" which had
+been brought against Hamilton "he came suddenly out of Falkland, where
+His Grace was for the time, and brought the said Sir James out of the
+castle to the Tolbooth, and gave him fair assize of the lords and
+barons, who convicted him of sundry points of treason; and thereafter he
+was headed and quartered, and his lands annexed to the Crown."
+
+It is a curious question, which however none of the historians think of
+asking, whether there could be any connection between the scheme, if
+any, for which the Lady Glamis suffered, and this wholly unexpected
+outbreak of murderous intention on the part of Hamilton. The Hamiltons
+and Douglases were sworn enemies, yet greater wonders have been seen
+than the union of two feudal foes to compass the destruction of the
+enemy of both. Angus and his brothers banished, but little forgetful of
+all that had happened, and trusting in the favour of King Henry, were
+soon to show themselves at the head of expeditions hostile to Scotland
+across the Border. Were these two sudden disclosures of unexpected
+treachery the manifestations of a deep-laid plot which might have
+further developments--if with the bastard of Arran also perhaps in still
+more unlikely quarters? It is but a conjecture, yet it is one that might
+seem justified by two isolated events so extraordinary, and by the state
+of discouragement and misery into which James seems soon to have fallen.
+Pitscottie relates that the King "took ane great suspition of his
+nobles, thinking that either one or other of them would deceive him;"
+and then there began to appear to him "visions in his bed." He thought
+he saw Sir James Hamilton, fierce and vengeful, appearing to him in the
+darkness with a drawn sword, with which he cut off the King's right arm.
+Next time the cruel spectre appeared it upbraided him with an unjust
+sentence and struck off the other arm: "Now therefore thou sall want
+both thy armes, and sall remain in sorrow ane while, and then I will
+come and stryk thy head from thee," said the angry ghost. Whatever may
+be the reader's opinion about the reality of these visions, there can be
+little doubt that they show deep depression in the mind of James to whom
+they came. He woke out of his sleep in great excitement and terror, and
+told his attendants what he had dreamed, who were very "discontent of
+his visioun, thinking that they would hear hastily tidings of the same."
+
+    "On the morning word came to the King that the prince was very sick
+    and like to die. When the King heard thereof he hasted to Sanct
+    Andros, but, or he could come there the prince was depairted,
+    whereat the King was verrie sad and dolorous. Notwithstanding
+    immediately thereafter the post came out of Stirling to the King
+    showing him that his second son, the Duke of Albany, could not live;
+    and or the King could be in Stirling he was depairted. Whose
+    departures were both within fortie-eight hours, which caused great
+    lamentations to be in Scotland and in especial by the Queen, their
+    mother. But the Queen comforted the King, saying they were young
+    enough, and God would send them more succession."
+
+There is no suggestion, such as might have been natural enough at that
+age, of poison or foul play in the death of the two infants--nothing but
+misfortune and fatality and the dark shadows closing over a life
+hitherto so bright. James was the last of his name: the childless Albany
+in France, whom Scotland did not love, was the only man surviving of his
+kindred, and it is not wonderful if the King's heart failed him in such
+a catastrophe, or if he thought himself doomed of heaven. When this
+great domestic affliction came to him he was on the eve of a breach with
+England, brought about not only by the usual mutual aggravations upon
+the Border, but by other matters of graver importance. King Henry had
+made many efforts to draw the Scottish King to his side. He had
+discoursed to him himself by letter, he had sent him not only
+ambassadors but preachers, he had done everything that could be done to
+detach the young monarch from the band of sovereigns who were against
+England, and the allegiance of the Pope. Latterly the correspondence had
+become very eager and passionate on Henry's side. He had repeatedly
+invited his nephew to visit him, and many negotiations had passed
+between them on the subject. The project was so far advanced that Henry
+came to York to meet James, and waited there for nearly a week for his
+arrival. But there was great reluctance on the Scottish side to risk
+their King so far on the other side of the Border. They had suggested
+Newcastle as a more safe place of meeting, but this had been rejected on
+the part of the English king. Finally, Henry left York in great
+resentment, which was aggravated by a defeat upon the Border. Pitscottie
+tells us that he sent a herald to James declaring that he considered the
+truce between them broken; that "he should take such order with him as
+he took with his father before him; for he had yet that same wand to
+ding him with that dang his father; that is to say, the Duke of Norfolk
+living that strak the field of Flodden, who slew his father with many of
+the nobles of Scotland." The King of Scotland thought, the chronicler
+adds, that these were "uncouth and sharp words"--an opinion in which the
+reader will agree. But whether Pitscottie is verbally correct or not it
+is very evident that Henry did not hesitate to rate his nephew in
+exceedingly sharp and discourteous terms, as for instance bidding him
+not to make a brute of himself by listening to the priests who would
+lead any man by the nose who gave them credence. The negotiations
+altogether were carried on from the English side in a very arrogant
+manner as comported with Henry's character, made all the more
+overbearing towards James by their relationship, which gave him a
+certain natural title to bully his sister's son.
+
+And everything in Scotland was now tending to the miseries of a divided
+council and a nation rent asunder by internal differences. The new
+opinions were making further progress day by day, the priests becoming
+more fierce in their attempts to crush by violence the force of the
+Reformation--attempts which in their very cruelty and ferocity betrayed
+a certain growing despair. When Norfolk came to Scotland from Henry--an
+ill-omened messenger if what is said above of Henry's threat was
+true--the Scottish gentlemen sought him secretly with confessions of
+their altered faith; and the ambassador made the startling report to
+Henry that James's own mind was in so wavering and uncertain a state
+that if the priests did not drive him into war during the current summer
+he would confiscate the possessions of the Church before the year was
+out. But Norfolk's mission, which was in itself a threat, and the
+presence of the Douglases over the Border, who had never ceased to be
+upheld by Henry, and whose secret machinations, of which Lady Glamis and
+James Hamilton had been victims, were now about to culminate in open
+mischief, all contributed to exasperate the mind of James. That he was
+not supported as his father had been by the nobility, who alone had the
+power of giving effect to his call for a general armament, is evident
+from the first. His priestly counsellors could support him by the
+imposts which he made freely upon the revenues of the Church, not always
+without complaint on their part; but they were of comparatively little
+influence in bringing together the hosts who had to do the fighting; and
+from the first the nobility,--half of which or more was leavened with
+Reformation doctrines and felt that their best support was in
+England--while the whole, almost without exception, resented the
+prominence of the Church in the national councils, hating and scorning
+her interference in secular and especially in warlike matters, as is the
+case in every age,--showed itself hostile. After various incursions on
+the part of England, made with much bravado and considerable damage, one
+of which was headed by Angus and his brother George Douglas (this
+latter, however, being promptly punished and defeated on the spot by the
+brave Borderers), James made the usual call for a general assembly of
+forces on the Boroughmuir: but he had advanced only a little way on his
+march to the Borders when he was stopped by the declaration of the lords
+that they would only act on the defensive, and would on no account go
+out of Scotland. The fathers of these same lords had followed James IV,
+though with the strongest disapproval, to the fatal field of Flodden,
+their loyalty triumphing over their judgment: but the sons on either
+side had no such bond between them. James disbanded in disgust the
+reluctant host, which considered less the honour of Scotland than their
+own safety; but got together afterwards a smaller army under the
+leadership of Lord Maxwell, with which to try over again the old issue.
+Pitscottie's account of the discussions and dissensions, and of all the
+scorns which subdued James's spirit, is very graphic. Norfolk had led a
+great body of men into Scotland, who though not advancing very far had
+done great harm burning and ravaging; but, checked by a smaller force,
+which held him back without giving battle, had finally retired across
+the Border, where James was very anxious to have followed him.
+
+    "The King's mind was very ardent on battel on English ground, which
+    when the lords perceived they passed again to the council, and
+    concluded that they would not follow the Duke of Norfolk at that
+    time for the King's pleasure, because they said that it was not
+    grounded upon no good cause or reasone, and that he was ane better
+    priests' king nor he was theirs, and used more of priests' counsel
+    nor theirs. Therefore they had the less will to fight with him, and
+    said it was more meritoriously done to hang all such as gave counsel
+    to the King to break his promises to the King of England, whereof
+    they perceived great inconvenients to befall. When they had thus
+    concluded, and the King being advertised thereof, the King departed
+    with his familiar servants to Edinburgh; but the army and council
+    remained still at Lauder."
+
+It was a fatal spot for such a controversy, the spot where, two
+generations before, the favourite friends and counsellors of James III,
+whether guilty or not guilty--who can say?--were hanged over the bridge
+as an example to all common men who should pretend to serve a king whose
+peers and the nobles of his realm were shut out from the first of his
+favour. James V had in his train some familiar servants, confidants of
+his many public undertakings, who were not of noble blood or, at least,
+of distinguished rank, and his angry withdrawal might well be explained
+by his determination to save them, if indeed any explanations beyond his
+vexed and miserable sense of humiliation and desertion were necessary to
+account for it. He left the lords, whom he would seem to have had no
+longer either the means or the heart to confront, saying in his rage and
+shame that he would "either make them fight or flee, or else Scotland
+should not keep him and them both," and returned to Edinburgh sick at
+heart to his Queen, who was not in very good health to cheer
+him--passing, no doubt, with a deepened sense of humiliation through the
+crowds which would throng about for news, and to whom the spectacle of
+their King thus returning discomfited was no pleasant sight; if it were
+not, perhaps, that many among them had now begun to think all failures
+and disappointments were so many proofs of the displeasure of heaven
+against one who would not take upon him the office of reformer.
+
+When James heard soon after that his rebellious lords had disbanded
+their host, he collected a smaller army to revenge the ravages of
+Norfolk, issuing, according to Pitscottie, a proclamation bidding all
+who loved him be ready within twenty-four hours "to follow the King
+wherever he pleased to pass"; but even this new levy was little
+subordinate. After it had penetrated a little way into England a fatal
+mistake arose--an idea that Oliver Sinclair, the King's "minion," whom
+he had sent to read a manifesto to the army, had been appointed its
+general--upon which the new bands, disgusted in their turn, fell into a
+forced retreat, and getting involved in the broken ground of Solway Moss
+were there pursued and surrounded by the English, miserably defeated and
+put to flight. "There was but ane small number slain in the field," says
+Pitscottie, "to wit, there was slain on both sides but twenty-four,
+whereof was nine Scottishmen and fifteen Englishmen"; a very great
+number, however, were taken prisoners, many of the gentlemen, it is
+suggested, preferring captivity to the encounter of the King after such
+an inexcusable catastrophe. We are not told why it was that James had
+not himself taken the command of his army. He does not even seem to have
+accompanied it, perhaps fearing that personal opposition which was an
+insult to a king in those days.
+
+    "When these news came to the King of Scotland where he was for the
+    time, how his lords were taken and had in England, and his army
+    defaitt, he grew wondrous dollorous and pensive, seeing no good
+    success to chance him over his enemies. Then he began to remord his
+    conscience, and thought his misgovernance towards God had the wyte
+    therof and was the principal cause of his misfortune; calling to
+    mind how he had broken his promise to his uncle the King of England,
+    and had lost the hearts of his nobles throw evil counsel and false
+    flattery of his bishops, and those private counsellors and his
+    courtiers, not regarding his wyse lords' counsels."
+
+"He passed to Edinburgh," adds the chronicler, "and there remained eight
+days with great dollour and lamentation for the tinsell (loss) of his
+lieges and shame to himself." Discouragement beyond the reach of mortal
+help or hope seemed to have taken hold of the unfortunate King. He saw
+himself alone, no one standing by him, his nobles hostile, his people
+indifferent; he had vowed that Scotland should not be broad enough to
+hold both them and him, but he had no power to carry out this angry
+threat. His life had been threatened in mysterious ways; he had lost his
+children, his confidence in himself and his fortunes; last and worst of
+all, he was dishonoured in the eyes of the world. His army had refused
+to advance, his soldiers to fight. He was the King, but able to give
+effect to none of a king's wishes--neither to punish his enemies nor to
+carry out his promises. He who had done so much for his realm could do
+no more. He who had ridden the Border further and swifter than any
+man-at-arms to carry the terror of justice and the sway of law--who had
+daunted the dauntless Highlands and held the fiercest chiefs in
+check--who had been courted by pope and emperor, and admired and feasted
+at the splendid Courts of France--he who had been the King of the
+Commons, the idol of the people--was now cast down and miserable, the
+most shamed and helpless of kings.
+
+There seems no reason why James should have so entirely lost heart.
+There had already been moments in his life when he had suffered sore
+discouragement and overthrow, yet never had been overcome. But now it is
+clear he felt himself at the end of his resources. How could he ever
+hold up his head again? a man who could not keep his own kingdom from
+invasion, or avenge himself upon his enemies! After he had lingered a
+little in Edinburgh, where the Queen was now near the moment which
+should give another heir to Scotland, he left the capital--perhaps to
+save her at such a time from the sight and the contagion of his
+despair--and crossed the Firth to Falkland, a place so associated with
+stirring passages in his career. But there his sickness of heart turned
+to illness of body; he became so "vehement sick" that his life was
+despaired of; he was "very near strangled to death by extreme
+melancholie." One hope remained, that the Queen might restore some
+confidence to his failing strength and mind by an heir to the crown,
+another James, for whom it might be worth while to live. James sent for
+some of his friends, "certain of his lords, both spiritual and
+temporal," to help him to bear this time of suspense, and advise him
+what might yet be done to set matters right, who surrounded him, as may
+be imagined, very anxiously, fearing the issue.
+
+    "By this the post came out of Linlithgow showing the King good
+    tidings that the Queen was delivered. The King inquired whether it
+    was man or woman. The messenger said it was ane fair dochter. The
+    King answered and said, 'Farewell! it came with ane lass, and it
+    will pass with ane lass,' and so commended himself to Almighty God,
+    and spoke little from thereforth, but turned his back to his lords
+    and his face to the wall."
+
+Even at this bitter moment, however, the dying Prince was not left alone
+with his last disappointment. Cardinal Beatoun, whose influence had been
+so inauspicious in his life, pressed forward, "seeing him begin to fail
+of his strength and natural speech," and thrust upon him a paper for his
+signature, "wherein the Cardinal had writ what he pleased for his own
+particular weill," evidently with some directions about the regency,
+that ordeal which Scotland, unhappily, had now again to go through. When
+James had put his dying hand to this authority, wrested from him in his
+last weakness, a faint light of peace seems to have fallen across his
+death-bed.
+
+[Illustration: FALKLAND PALACE]
+
+    "As I have shown you, he turned him upon his back, and looked and
+    beheld his lords around about, and gave ane little lauchter, syne
+    kissed his hand and gave it to all his lords about him, and
+    thereafter held up his hands to God and yielded the spirit."
+
+There are many pathetic death scenes in history, but few more touching.
+His father, after a splendid and prosperous life, had fallen "in the
+lost battle, borne down by the flying;" he, after a career almost as
+chivalrous and splendid and full of noble work for his country, in a
+still more forlorn overthrow; his hopes all gone from him, his strength
+broken in his youth. Nothing, it would seem, could save these princes,
+so noble and so unfortunate. It was enough to bear the name of James
+Stewart to be weighed down by cruel Fate. But before his spirit shook
+off the mortal coil a ray of peace had shot through the clouds; he
+looked upon the anxious faces of his friends, some of whom at least must
+surely have been true friends, bound to him by comradeship and
+brotherhood, with that low laugh which is one of the most touching
+expressions of weakened and failing humanity--love and kindness in it,
+and a certain pleasure to see them round him; and yet to be free of it
+all--the heavy kingship, the hopes that ever failed, the friends that so
+rarely were true. The lips that touched that cold hand which he kissed
+before he gave to them must have trembled, perhaps with compunction, let
+us hope with some vow of fidelity to his memory and trust.
+
+Thus died the last of the five Jameses--the last in one sense of that
+unfortunate but gallant line. A life more swept by storms, more rent
+asunder by conflicting passions and influences, more tragic still and
+passionate than theirs, was to part them from the singularly changed,
+modified, and modernised successors who, with a difference, were to wear
+yet drop this ancient crown. The Stewarts after Mary are no longer like
+those that went before. James's dying words came in some curious fashion
+true, though not as he thought. It came with a lass and it went with a
+lass that ancient crown. When another James reached the throne Scotland
+was no more as it had been.
+
+It may seem a fantastic chronology to end here the records of the
+Stewards of Scotland: but it is I think justified by this change, which
+altered altogether the character of the history and the circumstances of
+the monarchs. Henceforward new agencies, new powers, were at work in the
+little proud and self-contained kingdom, which had maintained its
+independence and individuality so long. Torn asunder by rival
+influences, by intrigues incessant and profound, by that struggle
+between the old and the new which was never more desperate than in her
+bosom, and which, being a religious change chiefly, was one of life and
+death: and with a monarch no longer native, but of foreign training and
+thoughts, even if she had not been a woman and half a Tudor, the little
+ship of State, the gallant little nation, plunged amid waves and
+billows, not unfamiliar, indeed, but fiercer and wilder than ever
+before, with winds so much increased in force as they raged over wider
+seas.
+
+The Stewards of Scotland here ended their special trust and gave in
+their account. No race was ever more unfortunate, but I think we may say
+that none more nobly endeavoured to discharge that high commission. With
+one exception, and that doubtful--for a man may be weak and may not be
+brave without being a bad man or even king--every bearer of this fated
+name laboured with courage and constancy at the great work of elevating
+his country. "Another for Hector!" cried the Highland warrior when his
+young chief was in danger, and all the world has read the story with
+moistened eyes. Another for Scotland! had been the cry of the house of
+Stewart throughout more than a century. As one man fell he handed the
+sword to another; to an infant hand trained amid feuds and anarchy, but
+always clasping, as soon as it had force enough, the royal weapon with
+royal courage and meaning. None of the Jameses lived beyond the earliest
+chapter of middle age; all of them succeeded in early youth, most of
+them in childhood; and, with but that uncertain exception of James III,
+every one of them was actuated by a noble patriotism, and did his
+_devoir_ manfully for the improvement and development of his country.
+They were noble gentlemen one and all: the bigotry, the egotism, the
+obstinacy of the later Stewarts were not in them. Knights and paladins
+of an age of romance, they were also stern executors of justice, bold
+innovators, with eyes ever open to every expedient of progress and
+prosperity. Their faults were those faults of a light heart and genial
+temperament, which are the most easily understood and pardoned. Under
+their sway their country and their little capital came to be known over
+Christendom as not unworthy to hold place among the reigning kingdoms
+and cities through which the stream of chivalry flowed. They invented
+the trade, the shipping, the laws and civic order of Scotland. Among her
+heroes there are none more worthy of everlasting remembrance. They
+fulfilled their stewardry with a unity of purpose and a steadfastness of
+aim which, when we take into account the continually recurring lapses of
+long minorities, is one of the wonders of the time. Edinburgh grew under
+their sway from an angry village, lying between a fierce castle and a
+rich monastery, little distinguished above its peers, less favoured than
+Stirling, less wealthy than the town of St. John, to one of the most
+noted of cities, picturesque and splendid, full of noble houses, the
+centre of national life and government. And it is curious to record that
+no one of the monarchs who brought it such nobility and fame left any
+sadness of death to the associations of Edinburgh. They lived and were
+wedded and filled with the brightness of their happier moments the town
+which afforded so beautiful a scene for all rejoicings: they died on the
+field of battle or in other places in conflict or violence or despair.
+But Edinburgh only retains the brighter memories, the triumphal
+processions, the bridal finery, the jousts and the feasts, the
+Parliaments and proclamations of laws and high alliances. The reigns of
+the Jameses contain the history of her rise, her splendour, her climax
+of beauty and stateliness, without any association of downfall or decay.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+THE TIME OF THE PROPHETS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+UNDER THE QUEEN REGENT
+
+
+There is perhaps among the many historical personages attached by close
+association to Edinburgh no one so living, so vigorous, so present, as
+the great figure of the Reformer and Prophet, who once filled the air
+with echoes of his vehement and impassioned oratory, who led both Lords
+and Commons, and mated with princes on more than equal terms, the
+headstrong, powerful, passionate Preacher, who was at once the leading
+spirit of his time and its most vigorous chronicler. To fill the circle
+of association, he alone, of all the animated groups who withstood or
+who followed him, has left us not only a number of books which disclose
+his mind with all its powers and imperfections, but the very dwelling in
+which he passed at least the latter part of his life, intact and
+authentic, a memorial more striking and attractive than any "storied urn
+or animated bust." Nor are even the associations of burial wanting; for
+though it is no longer within the solemn enclosure of a churchyard, and
+there is no certainty that the stone which is supposed to mark the
+position of the Reformer's grave is historically exact, it is yet sure
+enough that near by, within reach of the doors of his ancient church,
+beneath the pavement trodden by so many feet, his remains repose in the
+centre of the life of the Scottish capital, a position more appropriate
+than any other that could be imagined. Thus by life and by death this
+singular and most evident and unmistakable man, still alive in every
+lineament, is connected with the city in which his life was passed, and
+in the history of which he can never be forgotten. There may be doubts
+about other localities, and it may be difficult to identify the houses
+which have been inhabited and the floors that have been trod by other
+distinguished personages. Crowding footsteps of the poor have
+obliterated the record in many a noble house abandoned by history; even
+the fated steps of the Queen save in one bloodstained closet have left
+but little authentic trace. But Knox is still present with all the force
+of an indestructible individuality--in the existing life of the country
+which took so strong an impression from him, and in the absolutely
+personal facts of the church in which he preached, the house in which he
+lived, the stone under which he lies.
+
+To estimate the share he had in the foundations of that modern Scotland
+which has so increased and thriven since his day, is perhaps more hard
+now than it was even eighty years ago, when his biography was written by
+Dr. M'Crie to the great interest and enthusiasm of the country. The laws
+of historical judgment are subject to perpetual change, and the general
+estimate of the great personages of the past has undergone various
+modifications since that time. Perhaps even the Church is less sure of
+her share in the record, less certain of the doom once so unhesitatingly
+denounced against "the Paip that Pagan fu' of pride"; less confident of
+her own superiority to all other developments of Christianity. The least
+enlightened are no longer able to feel with a good conscience, as our
+best instructed fathers did, that an important part of religious liberty
+was freedom to curse and pull down every tenet other than their own. No
+belief has been more obstinate or is more time-honoured: but in theory
+at least it has been much subdued in recent times, so that few of us are
+able to hold by our own side with the perfect confidence which once we
+felt. And in these changing views, and in the impulse towards a greater
+catholicity of feeling which has sprung up in Scotland, the influence of
+that uncompromising teacher to whom reform was everything, who had no
+prepossession in favour of what was old and venerable, but desired with
+all the fervour of his fiery soul to make everything new, has doubtless
+waned, save to that sacred simplicity of ignorance which forms no
+judgment. But nothing can obliterate the person and strenuous being of
+John Knox, or make him a less interesting figure on the crowded and
+tragic stage of that epoch which he dominated and chronicled. And
+nothing can unlink the associations which make him ever present and
+living in Edinburgh, which was the capital and centre of his kingdom as
+much as of any king who ever breathed.
+
+John Knox was in every sense of the words a son of the soil, yet came of
+a not unknown family, "kent folk" of East Lothian: if not lairds of any
+great heritage, yet possessing lands and living sufficient to entitle
+them to consideration. They were able to give him the best education of
+the time, which he completed at the University of Glasgow under the
+teaching of Major or Mair, the same whom George Buchanan accompanied to
+France; so that both these great men, as well as various nobles and
+ecclesiastics of the time, were his fellow-students, trained under the
+same influence. Whether Knox followed Major to St. Andrews as Buchanan
+followed him to Paris is not known; but he would seem to have lectured
+on philosophy in St. Andrews at the beginning of his career. It might be
+that he was himself present, and heard some of the bold and familiar
+addresses of the wandering friars, the first rude champions of Reform,
+whose protest against the wickedness of the bishops and the extortions
+of the clergy he quotes with so much enjoyment of their rough humour, in
+the beginning of his history; or even might have witnessed the lighted
+pile and felt across his face the breath of that "reek" which carried
+spiritual contagion with it, as it flew upon the keen breeze from the
+sea over that little centre of life, full of scholars and wits, and keen
+cynical spectators little likely to be convinced by any such means. It
+is curious to hear of Major for instance, one of the Sorbonne, a doctor
+of Paris and man of the world, as present at all those proceedings,
+listening to Friar William's denunciation of the priests, to which he
+gave his assent as "a doctrine that might weill be defended, for it
+contayned no heresye"--and in very different circumstances to the
+sermons of Rough, addressed to the slayers of the Cardinal, and to the
+calling of Knox himself, a crisis of popular emotion and vehement
+feeling. Such a man as Major, a son of the Renaissance, no Reformer nor
+careful of any of these things, must have looked on with strange
+feelings at all the revolutions accomplished before him, the rude jests
+and songs, the half-jocular broadly humorous assaults, the cry of
+heresy, the horror of the burnings, the deadly earnest of both preacher
+and people after Beatoun's well-deserved but terrible end which cut all
+compromises short. One wonders what thoughts were going on in the mind
+of the old scholar who kept his place in his stall as well when mass was
+sung as when every trace of that "idolatrous sacrifice" had been trodden
+under foot. Would it be more or less the same to him whatever they
+preached, those wild religionists, who tore each other in pieces? did he
+look on with a secret smile at the turmoil they made, as if it mattered
+which was uppermost, with a natural horror at the fierce flames of the
+human sacrifice, yet consent in his mind that if they could so stamp the
+heresy out which would otherwise destroy them, the bishops were only
+logical to do it? while on the other side there was not much in point of
+natural justice to be said against Norman Leslie and his men who slew
+the Cardinal. Such spectators there must have been in no small number,
+affording a curious rim and edge of observers to all that the more
+active and violent might do or say. But these lookers-on have said
+nothing on the subject, or their mild voices have been lost in the
+clangour of actors vehement and earnest. It has been reserved for our
+age to bring these dispassionate or, as we are apt to think, cynical
+observers into the front rank.
+
+The first scene in which John Knox comes prominently into sight of the
+world occurs in the midst of that small but urgent and much-agitated
+society on the fierce little headland by the sea, in the great and noble
+cathedral which for most of the intervening time has been nothing but
+ruins. We must in imagination rebuild these lofty walls, throw up again
+the noble piers and clustered pillars, and see the townsfolk streaming
+in--a crowd more picturesque in garb than any Scots assembly nowadays,
+with its provost and councillors in their municipal finery: and the
+grave representatives of the colleges filing in to their stalls--very
+grave now, we may well believe, with many a look at the group of gentry,
+among whom were half a dozen men whose hands were stained with the blood
+of the Cardinal. No doubt to these spectators, beyond even the great
+volume of sound which pealed upward from that vast company, in some
+popular hymn or ancient war-cry of a psalm, the stir of the languid
+besieging army outside, and the guns of the French Fleet, already on its
+way to avenge Beatoun and crush this nest of heretics out, sounded
+ominous in the background. Among the congregation was a dark, vehement
+man, full of repressed fervour and energy, with two or three lads by his
+side, of whom he had charge--strange tutor! flames of zeal and
+earnestness burning in his deep-set eyes; the mark of the tonsure (if it
+was ever there, which is a doubtful question) obliterated by long
+disuse; a man known by the congregation as a zealous instructor of
+youth, catechising his boys publicly of afternoons in the cathedral,
+vacant then of the many services, the vespers and benedictions, of the
+superseded faith.
+
+Knox's gifts and qualities were already well known; he had been a
+devoted friend and follower of Wishart, the martyr whose memory was
+still fresh in the minds of all men; and these public examinations of
+the three boys, and the expositions he addressed to them, but which many
+of mature age also gathered to hear, had given the many competent judges
+then assembled in the beleaguered city a practical knowledge of his
+gifts and endowments. And Rough, who filled the post of preacher in St.
+Andrews, was not a man of learning, and in consequence would seem to
+have been troubled by disputatious members of the priesthood, eager, not
+unnaturally, to defend their own tenets, and with all the authorities at
+their fingers' ends. In this strait John Knox was entreated to accept
+the charge of the congregation, but in vain. Perhaps the memory of
+Wishart's charge to him, "Return to your bairns," was still in his ears;
+perhaps the reluctance and hesitation of a man who felt himself
+incompetent for so great a responsibility--though it is strange to
+associate any idea of shrinking from responsibility with such a
+dauntless spirit, and he was by this time a man of forty-two, with a
+matured mind and some experience of life. At all events he "utterlie
+refused": he "would not run where God had not called him." This being
+so, there was no alternative but to take him by surprise and force him
+into the position which all desired him to assume. And this was the step
+which was accordingly taken by the assembly of the Reformers in St.
+Andrews, an assembly in which were many well-known and distinguished
+men, so illustrious a councillor as Sir David Lindsay, the poet and
+Lyon-King of Scotland, being one of the gentlemen and commoners who
+decided upon this dramatic and picturesque call.
+
+They were all met to the preaching upon a certain day, the date of which
+is not given, but which was presumably in the summer of 1547, Knox
+having arrived with his pupils in St. Andrews in the Easter of that
+year. The principal persons present were aware of what was coming, and
+probably the mass of the congregation knew that some event more than
+ordinary was preparing, which would quicken the eagerness of their
+attention. The sermon was upon the right of the congregation to the
+services of "any man in whom they espied the gifts of God," and the risk
+on his part of refusing their call. Mair, sitting by in his doctor's
+gown, though he had committed himself to no religious heresy, had
+discoursed much to his students upon the rights of the people as the
+source of power--a doctrine, indeed, which Knox did not hold in that
+naked form, though most probably he had been influenced by these
+teachings towards the still more tremendous form of doctrine which sets
+forth the voice of the Christian people as representing the voice of
+God. And no doubt up to this point he gave his adhesion to the words of
+the preacher. But when Rough had reached the crown of his argument he
+suddenly turned to where Knox sat and addressed him individually, while
+the people held their breath.
+
+"Brother," he said, "ye shall not be offended albeit that I speak unto
+you that which I have in charge even from all those that are here
+present: which is this. In the name of God and of His Son Jesus Christ,
+and in the name of those that presently call you by my mouth, I charge
+you that ye refuse not this holy vocation, but that as you tender the
+glory of God, the increase of Christ His kingdom, the edification of
+your brethren, and the comfort of me, whom ye understand well enough to
+be oppressed by the multitude of labours, that you take upon you the
+public office and charge of preaching even as ye look to avoid God's
+heavy displeasure and desire that He shall multiply His grace with you."
+And in the end he said to those present, "Was not this your charge to
+me? and do ye not approve this vocation?" They answered, "It was, and we
+approve it." "Whereat the said John, abashed, burst forth in most
+abundant tears and withdrew himself to his chamber."
+
+It would be difficult to find a more striking scene. Any sudden incident
+of an individual character thus occurring in a public assembly calls
+forth a thrill of interest, and gives at once to the most disconnected
+crowd a pictorial unity. The interest and excitement in those roused and
+eager eyes, the crowd all turned towards the astonished subject of this
+appeal, the soft young faces making a little circle round him, half
+terrified, half flattered by the sudden consciousness that all eyes were
+turned towards them, would make a fine theme for a historical painter.
+And "the said John, abashed," finding no refuge in the great excitement
+and surprise of the moment, he so stern and so strong, but in tears! It
+was thus that the ministry of the great Reformer began.
+
+It is unnecessary to follow in detail a career so well known. Every
+particular of it, and even the sermons with all their heads, may be
+found in the _Historie of the Reformation in Scotland_, which yields in
+interest, in picturesqueness and the most living and graphic power of
+narrative, to none of the primitive chronicles. No professional
+word-painter has ever put a dramatic scene, a contention, a battle, such
+as those which were everyday occurrences in Scotland at that time, upon
+paper with more pictorial force, or with half the fervour of life and
+reality. The writer goes through all the gamut of popular passion. He
+exults sometimes fiercely, laughs sometimes coarsely, throws in "a merry
+jest," which is often grim with savage humour; but throughout all is
+always real, always genuine, writing not impartially, but with the
+strong conviction and sentiment of a man elucidating matters in which he
+has been himself a prominent actor. The arguments of his adversaries
+when he enters upon a public controversy are unaccountably feeble, which
+perhaps may be explained by the fact that the friars were not much
+accustomed to controversy, perhaps by the natural bias of a
+controversialist to lessen the force of his antagonists' arguments; and
+he does not pretend to contemplate his adversaries, either spiritual or
+political, with any tolerance, or permit any possibility that they too
+might perhaps mean well and have a righteous intention, even though it
+was entirely opposed to that of John Knox: such ideas had no currency in
+his day. That Mary of Guise might really mean and wish to avoid
+bloodshed, to strike no blow that was not inevitable, to keep the breach
+from being widened by actual civil war; and that the policy of
+temporising as long as that was possible was anything but wicked wiles
+and intentions of betrayal, was an idea which he would seem to have been
+incapable of conceiving. This is a drawback perhaps common to every
+struggle so important and fundamental as was the strife which began to
+rage in Scotland. Had we a history compiled by the spectators to whom we
+have referred it would probably, unless nature gave them an exceptional
+keenness of vision, be wanting in those qualities of animation and force
+which he who is confident of having every good influence on his side,
+and nothing but the powers of evil against him, is likely to possess.
+Major indeed was a historian, but he did not meddle with the history of
+his own time; and Buchanan, while separated from the reader by the bonds
+and cerements of his Latin, and therefore shut out from a popular
+audience, is as great a partisan as Knox.
+
+The little garrison of St. Andrews was taken, as everybody knows, by the
+French, and carried away to prison and the galleys; but no blood was
+shed to avenge the blood of Beatoun, a point which ought to be put to
+their credit. John Knox suffered all these misfortunes with a steadfast
+soul, still declaring to all who surrounded him, in the extremity of
+suffering, hardship, and sickness, that he should again preach in that
+Church of St. Andrews from which he had been taken. This is the first of
+the many prophecies completely verified afterwards with which he is
+credited. He escaped after about three years of captivity and misery in
+France, during which he would seem to have been actually employed in the
+galleys, and came to England, where it is to be supposed the story of
+his influence and power with the Scotch Reformers had preceded him,
+otherwise the advancement to which he reached, and which might have been
+greater but for his dissatisfaction with the imperfectly Reformed Church
+there, and the bondage of ceremonials and traditions still left in it,
+would have been still more extraordinary. He was one of the chaplains to
+the boy-king Edward, for whom he had the amiable prejudice common to
+those who secure the favour of very young princes, expecting from him
+everything that was great and good. At the death of the young King,
+however, Knox removed hurriedly to the Continent with many others,
+knowing that under the reign of Mary there would be little acceptance
+for men of his views. During his stay in England he had met with a pair
+of ladies who were henceforward to be very closely connected with his
+life--Marjory Bowes, his future wife, and to all appearance still more
+important her mother, Mrs. Bowes, to whom, contrary to the ordinary idea
+of that relationship, he seems to have given much regard and affection,
+notwithstanding that she was a melancholy woman, depressed and
+despondent, sometimes overwhelmed with religious terrors, and requiring
+continued support and encouragement in the faith. One cannot help
+feeling a sort of compassion for the silent Marjory, of whom nothing is
+ever heard, between her solemn lover of fifty and her sad mother. But
+she is voiceless, and though there are letters of religious counsel
+addressed to her under the title of "weill belovit sister," there is not
+among them all, so strange is the abstract effect of religious
+exhortation thus applied, one gleam of anything like individual
+character, or which can throw any light upon what she was; which,
+considering the marked individuality of the writer, is curious
+exceedingly. We must hope that on other occasions, notwithstanding his
+mature years, there were letters calculated to give more satisfaction to
+a young woman than these expositions and addresses.
+
+For the next two years Knox, now it is evident universally known
+wherever the Reformation had penetrated, filled the place of minister to
+a congregation of exiles assembled at Geneva, most of them refugees from
+England, who had fled, as he himself had done, at the accession of Mary.
+But his heart was in his own land, where in the meantime the progress of
+the new Reformed faith was arrested, and silence and discouragement had
+fallen over the country. The leaders were dispersed or destroyed, the
+preachers silenced, and there was no one to gather together the many
+groups of believers all over the country in whose hearts the seed had
+sprung up strongly, but who as yet had made no public profession. In
+1555 Knox suddenly reappeared in Scotland, brought thither at once by
+urgent letters and by the eagerness of his own heart. When he arrived in
+Edinburgh he found that many who "had a zeal to godliness" still
+attended mass, probably finding it more difficult to break the continual
+habit of their lives than the bonds of doctrine--and that the outer
+structure of the Church remained much as it had been, without any such
+shattering and falling asunder as had taken place in regions more
+advanced. That this arose from no want of zeal was proved as soon as the
+preacher appeared: for his arrival was no sooner known than the house in
+which he had alighted from his journey was filled by a stream of
+inquirers, whom he "began to exhort secretly." One night he was called
+to supper with the Laird of Dun, the well-known John Erskine, who was
+one of the most earnest of the Reforming party, and in the grave company
+he found there--among whom were one or two ministers and the young but
+already promising and eminent William Maitland of Lethington--the
+question was fully discussed, Was it lawful to conform while holding a
+faith not only different but hostile? was it permissible to bow down in
+the house of Rimmon? To this Knox answered No, with all the
+uncompromising and stern sincerity of his soul. "Nowise was it lawful."
+The question was very fully defended from the other point of view.
+"Nothing was omitted that might make for the temporiser"; even the
+example of Paul, who went up into the Temple to pay his vow by the
+advice of the Apostle James, which step, however, Knox pronounced at
+once, notwithstanding his absolute reverence for Holy Writ, to have been
+wrong, and not of God--a mistake of both the Apostles, and manifestly
+bringing no blessing with it. His bold and assured argument cut the
+ground from under the feet of the hesitating Reformers, to whom no doubt
+it was very difficult thus to break away from all the traditions of
+their lives.
+
+This scene throws a strange and in some respects new light upon the more
+human side of the great movement. It is easier perhaps to us who are
+acquainted with all that followed to understand the fiery zeal which
+flamed against every accessory of what they conceived to be
+idolatry--the saintly image, which was nothing but a painted board, and
+the "round clipped god" upon the altar which was blasphemously asserted
+to be the very Lord Himself--than to remember that these men had also
+many links of use and wont, of attachment and habit, to the churches in
+which they had been christened, and the position, with all its needs and
+simple duties, to which they had been born. To see them standing there
+for a moment reluctant, with the tremendous breach that must be made in
+life gaping before them, and the sense of universal disruption and
+tearing asunder which must follow, is to me more touching than the stern
+conviction which never pauses nor fears. They were so thoroughly
+convinced, however, of the necessity which he reasoned out with such
+remorseless logic, that Erskine first, and after him many gentlemen
+through Scotland, craved the help of the preacher to put the crown upon
+their convictions, and spread in their halls and private chambers, no
+church being attainable, what was now for the first time called the
+Table of the Lord. Knox went to Dun in Forfarshire across the great
+firths of Forth and Tay, and to Calder, the house of Sir James
+Sandilands, afterwards Lord Torphichen, in Lothian, where many gathered
+to hear him. But it would seem to have been in the West, always the most
+strenuous in doctrine, that he first celebrated the new rite, the holy
+feast as yet unknown in Scotland. During the eventful winter of 1555-56
+he pervaded the country thus, setting forth the special bond of
+evangelical religion, uniting those different groups by the sacred seal
+of the bread and wine--who can doubt received with a profound and
+tremulous awe by lips to which the wafer had been hitherto the only
+symbol of that act of closest communion?
+
+This would seem to have been the chief work of Knox during the visit
+which, in the midst of his Geneva ministry, he paid to his native land:
+and it is easy to perceive that it was of supreme importance as
+identifying and separating the converts into a definite community, bound
+together by that sacrament of fealty, an oath more binding than any
+expressed only in words. Hitherto the preaching and teaching of the
+Word, which was itself a discovery, and came with all the freshness of a
+new revelation, had been the only sacred office carried on by the
+Reformers. The Sacraments were all in the hands of ecclesiastics, who
+had been for generations past losing the confidence and respect of the
+nation--though one cannot but believe there must still have been here
+and there a humble curate, a parish priest like Chaucer's Parsoune, to
+strengthen the hold of the accustomed ordinances upon men's minds, who,
+however strongly they might turn against the miracle of
+transubstantiation, could not cast aside the only means of partaking in
+the great mystery of the body and blood of Christ. To all such here was
+now the answer set forth, and the hope--the holy Table, the communion of
+saints, the bread and wine of the great and ceaseless commemoration. It
+would be doing the greatest wrong to these small devout assemblies, and
+to the fervent preacher, devoured with eagerness to make them all, not
+almost but altogether such men as himself, to call this an act of
+policy. Yet that it was so, and that a bond was thus established to
+consolidate the party, more sacred, more binding than any other, there
+can be no reasonable doubt.
+
+While travelling on this solemn mission from place to place and house to
+house of the religious gentry of Scotland, Knox would seem to have made
+Edinburgh his headquarters, and preached there from time to time, not
+always secretly. He had here "a greater audience than ever before" in
+"the Bishop of Dunkeld's great lodging," that ancient habitation from
+which Gawin Douglas, the poet-bishop, had watched and waited while the
+fight went on within the gates of the Nether Bow, and from which he
+rushed out to rescue the other prelate whose corslet rang under his
+rochet. Strange association, yet not inappropriate; for the mild Bishop
+of Dunkeld had also found many potent words to say against the abuses of
+the Church, though the new presbyter who now took his place was rather
+of Beatoun's warlike mettle than of Douglas's. The nobles who came
+thither to hear the preacher were so "weill contented" with his
+doctrine--which is his own moderate version of what was no doubt an
+enthusiasm of grave approbation--that they seem to have imagined, in
+that solemn simplicity which belongs to fresh conviction, that he might
+perchance, could she but hear him, move the Regent Queen herself, Mary
+of Guise, an unlikely convert no doubt. He was accordingly exhorted by
+three gentlemen, specified as the Earl of Glencairn, the Earl Marischal,
+and Harye Drummond, to write a letter to the Queen, which Knox, always
+eager for the pen, and full of matter boiling to have utterance,
+immediately did. It is difficult not to think of the _sancta
+simpilicitas_, which rarely belongs to such a group of men, when we
+think of the grave trio of advisers, and the still graver but fiery
+prophet-preacher, making this wonderful appeal. It was less wonderful in
+him who loved nothing so much as to write when he could not be
+preaching, to set forth those high-handed arraignments before the
+visionary tribunal of the one true and only faith, of whomsoever he
+could address, queen or peasant; but it is strange that men of the
+world, and of the society of their time, should have thus thought it
+possible to convert a lady so full of policy and cares of government, so
+entirely occupied with the most important matters of statesmanship, not
+to say so determined a Catholic, as the daughter of the Guises, the
+sister of the Cardinal.
+
+The attempt, as was natural, failed completely. "Which letter," resumes
+Knox, "when she had read within a day or two she delivered it to the
+proud prelate, Beatoun, Bishop of Glasgow, and said in mockage, 'Please
+you, my lord, to read a pasquill?'" It is against the perfection of the
+prophet, but not the character of the man, that this scorn stung him as
+no persecution could have done. He made certain additions to the letter,
+and published it in Geneva on his return there. We are not told which
+part of the letter these additions are, but what he tells us seems to
+indicate that the threatening prophesies, of which he says in his
+_Historie_, "lett those very flatterers see what hath failed," had been
+added to the original text. We forgive him his ready wrath, and even the
+"threatenings" which he always considered himself at liberty to launch
+at those who, in his own language, "withstood the truth": but we could
+have wished that Knox had been more magnanimous, and could have
+forgotten the offence after the passage of years. Mary's careless speech
+would have been but "ane merry boord" had it been directed against one
+of his enemies.
+
+When Knox went back to Geneva after this winter's work to resume his
+pastorate there, he left the growing cause of Reform in Scotland with a
+constitution and organisation sanctified by the most sacred rites of
+religion, an advantage quite inestimable in the circumstances, and
+placing the cause as in an ark of safety. And when he returned to
+Edinburgh two years later, the scattered groups to whom in country
+houses and castles he had administered the Lord's Supper had become the
+Congregation, an army existing in all quarters of Scotland, ready to
+rally to the aid of any portion of the body, or eminent individual, who
+might be attacked: and headed by a phalanx of Scots nobility, Lords of
+the Congregation, the heads of a new party in the State, as well as of a
+new Church, an altogether novel development of national life. It would
+have been difficult to have spoken more boldly than Knox had done in his
+letter to the Queen Regent three years before, but the Congregation in
+its established position as a national party took stronger ground, and
+pressed their claims to a hearing with a force of petitioners too strong
+to be gainsaid. Knox had called upon Mary herself in her own person to
+hear the Word and abjure her errors, but the body of Reformers asked for
+measures more comprehensive and still more subversive of the established
+order of things. In their first address to Mary they upbraided
+themselves, with a manly penitence which must have been bewildering to
+royal ears, that they had permitted their brethren in the faith to be
+destroyed by "faggot fyre and sword" without resistance. "We acknowledge
+it," said these strange petitioners, "to have been our bounden duty
+before God either to have defended our brethren from those cruel
+murtherers (seeing we are a part of that power which God hath
+established in this realm) or else to have given open testification of
+our faith with them." This, however, being no longer in their power,
+they besought the Queen to make such horrible accidents impossible in
+the future, and to grant to them permission to establish their worship;
+to meet publicly or privately to make their common prayer, and read the
+Scriptures in the vulgar tongue; to have the assistance of "qualified
+persons in knowledge" to expound to them "any hard places of Scripture,"
+and to have the Sacraments administered "in the vulgar tongue," and the
+Lord's Supper in both kinds. Last of all they desired of the Queen that
+"the wicked, scandalous, and detestable life of prelates and of the
+State Ecclesiastical" should be reformed, stating at the same time their
+wish to have the case between themselves and the priests tried not only
+by the rules of the New Testament, but by the writings of the ancient
+Fathers. In all this there was no intolerance, but a wholly just and
+reasonable prayer, suggesting harm to no one, not even the persecutors
+from whom they had suffered; altogether a claim of justice and native
+right magnanimously as well as forcibly made, with dignified
+recollection of their own position as "a part of that power which God
+hath established in this realm," to which it would have been difficult
+for any reasonable sovereign to return a discourteous or imperious
+answer.
+
+Mary of Guise did no such thing. She did not receive the address of the
+Congregation as she had done the letter of Knox. But she did what was
+worse, she gave no answer at all save fair words and delay. It would
+have been perhaps too much to expect that even those moderate and manly
+petitioners should have taken into consideration the complicated
+circumstances by which she was surrounded, or the difficulties of her
+position, with the "State Ecclesiastical" so strong and wealthy,
+arbiters for the moment of her faith, and France and her kindred
+expectant of impossible things from her, and Rome itself regarding with
+a watchful eye what a Princess of so Catholic a family--defender of the
+faith in a distant but at this moment exceedingly important
+field--should do. Mary temporised, which was perhaps the best thing
+possible for the Reformers if not for herself, and promised to take
+order, to regulate matters for their advantage so soon as it was
+possible, when she should have concluded various matters of more
+importance that were in hand, such, for instance, as that of awarding
+the crown matrimonial to her daughter's husband the young King of
+France, to whom all earthly distinctions were soon to matter so little.
+During this period of delay the Reformers were left unmolested to
+multiply and mature, so that when her other business was despatched, and
+the Queen could no longer avoid some action in the matter, the
+Congregation had attained both numbers and power. When the preachers
+were summoned to appear before her to plead their own cause "it was
+concluded by the whole brethren that the gentlemen of every county
+should accompany their preachers to the day and place appointed." This
+was a proceeding entirely sanctioned by Scotch custom, of which there
+were many historical examples, but it was not perhaps calculated to
+promote the ends of peaceful discussion; for the gentlemen thus
+described were accompanied by their households at least, if not by a
+stout following of retainers, and the result was the assemblage of "such
+a multitude" that even the leaders considered it likely to have "given
+fear" to the Queen, although this multitude was, as the record says,
+with a gleam of grim humour, "without armour as peciable men, minding
+only to give confession with their preachers." Mary wisely interposed
+another period of delay when she was warned what the "peaceable" escort
+was with which the preachers were obeying her call.
+
+It was, however, as little safe to let loose such an army of confessors
+through the country which had to be traversed before they could reach
+their homes, as to receive them in Stirling where the appointment had
+been. For, mild as was their purpose and godly their intentions, it
+proved too much for the sense and moderation even of that religious
+crowd when they found themselves on their way northward masters of St.
+Johnstone (or Perth, as moderns call it) with the fumes of a sermon of
+Knox's still in their brain, and a report about that the Queen meant to
+put the preachers "to the horn," for all so softly spoken as she was.
+Knox's sermon had been "vehement against idolatrie," though preached in
+a church still wealthy and bright with all the adornments of the ancient
+faith, and in which, as the crowd dispersed, a priest appeared in his
+vestments to say his mass. It gives us a curious impression of the chaos
+that reigned, to hear that in the town, which was full to overflowing of
+this Protestant crowd, and in the very church which still rang with the
+echoes of Knox's vehement oratory, he who had no words strong enough to
+denounce that idolatrous rite--there should come forth in the calm of
+use and wont a nameless humble priest with his acolyte to say the mass,
+which was his bounden duty whatever obstacles might be in his way. The
+manner in which it is recorded, with the violent antagonism of the time,
+is this--"That a priest in contempt would go to the masse; and to
+declare his malignant presumption he would open up ane glorious
+tabernacle which stood upon the Hie altar." On the other side no doubt
+the tale would be, that with the faith and courage of a holy martyr this
+venerable confessor ascended the steps of the altar to give his life, if
+needful, for the holy mysteries, and fulfil his sacred office whoever
+might oppose. And which was the more true version who can tell? On
+neither side would it be believed, what was probably the fact, that it
+was a simple brother taking little thought of the commotions round him,
+who, as soon as the clamour of the preaching was over, concerned with
+nothing but his mass which had to be said during canonical hours, had
+come in without other intention to perform his daily duty.
+
+But in any case, the sight of the glorious tabernacle filled with a fury
+of excitement the dregs of the crowd who still lingered there. A child's
+outcry, more "malapert" than the priest, called the attention of the
+lingerers, and before any one knew, the passion of destruction had
+seized like a frenzy upon the people. They flung themselves upon the
+"glorious tabernacle," and all the statues and adornments, and laid them
+in swift and sudden ruin. The rumour flew through the town, along with
+the shouts and crash of metal and stone; and the remainder of the
+lately-dispersed multitude came rushing back to the church which was the
+scene of the outbreak, a mob "not of the gentlemen, neither of them that
+were earnest professors, but of the rasckall multitude," which finding
+nothing to do in the stripped walls and chapels, hurried on, led, no
+doubt, by the first of the iconoclasts, who had become intoxicated with
+the frenzy of destruction, to the convents of the Grey and the Black
+Friars. Their violence grew as they passed on, from one scene of
+destruction to another, many of them finding substantial inducements in
+the shape of booty, in the well-filled meal-girnels and puncheons of
+salt beef in the larders of the monks. By the time they came to these it
+may be presumed that the special rage against idolatry had been
+assuaged; but the demon of destruction had taken its place. And when the
+excited multitude reached the noble Charterhouse with all its
+picturesque buildings, "the fairest abbaye and best biggit of any within
+the realm of Scotland," surrounded by pleasant gardens and noble trees,
+every restraint was thrown aside. It had been founded by James I., and
+there lay the remains of his murdered body along with those of many
+other royal victims of the stormy and tumultuous past. So much
+conscience was left that the terrified monks, or at least the Prior who
+is specially mentioned, was allowed to take away with him as much silver
+and gold as he was able to carry. The rest was beaten down into
+indiscriminating ruin, and "within two days these three great places,
+monuments of idolatrie, to wit the Grey and Black thieves and
+Charterhouse monks (a building of a wondrous cost and greatness), were
+so destroyed that the walls only did remain of all these great
+edifications."
+
+That this was in no way the doing of Knox and his colleagues is evident;
+but it is equally evident that they treated it as a mere accident and
+outrage of the mob, without consequence so far as the greater question
+was concerned. When the Queen, exasperated, threatened in her anger on
+the receipt of the news to destroy St. Johnstone, and began to collect
+an army to march upon the offenders, the Congregation assembled in Perth
+professed astonishment and incredulity, treating her threats as the mere
+utterances of passion, and thinking "such cruelty" impossible. There is
+not a word in the letters to the Queen's Majestie, to the Nobilitie of
+Scotland, and the fierce address to the priests in which they afterwards
+stated their case, of any wrong on their own side or provocation given.
+The Congregation takes at once the highest tone. They declare that,
+faithful servants of the realm as they have always been, if this unjust
+tyranny is carried out they will be constrained to take up the sword of
+just defence, notifying at the same time their innocence not only to
+"the King of France, to our Mistress and to her husband, but also to the
+Princes and Council of everie Christian realm, declaring unto them that
+this cruel, unjust, and most tyrannical murther intended against towns
+and multitudes, was and is the only cause of our revolt from our
+accustomed obedience." Thus they treat the threatened attack throughout
+as wholly directed against their religion and religious freedom, without
+the least reference to the just cause of offence given by riots so
+alarming and destructive, and by the ruin of a national monument so
+important as the Charterhouse. All these are as completely ignored as if
+the population of St. Johnstone had been the most tranquil and
+law-abiding in the world. And they do this with such evident good faith
+that it is impossible not to believe that what had happened was to
+themselves an unimportant incident: though it was something like what
+the destruction of Westminster Abbey would have been in England. In
+these respects, however, the state of feeling produced by the
+Reformation followed no ordinary laws; the fervour of hatred and
+contempt which the priesthood called forth in Scotland being beyond all
+example or comparison, except, indeed, in some parts of France, where
+Farel and his followers had set the example of destruction.
+
+The Queen, however, did little more than threaten. Before she could move
+at all, the Westland lords, who had gone home, had heard the news and
+turned back in hot haste to succour their brethren. Even without that
+reinforcement the French general had hesitated to approach too near the
+town occupied by so many resolute men, no longer "peaceable," but
+determined to defend themselves. It is very apparent that Mary wished
+above all things to avoid bloodshed and any step which would precipitate
+the beginning of a civil war: and she sent embassy after embassy,
+selected sometimes from her own side, sometimes from that of the
+Reformers, to exhort them to submission. If her part in the matter was
+that of an anxious and in many ways considerate ruler, bent, so far as
+in her lay, upon keeping the peace, the attitude of the Congregation
+was, at the same time, a perfectly manly and moderate one, granting
+their dulness of conscience in respect to the real outrage. "If the
+Queen's grace would suffer the religion then begun to proceed, and not
+trouble their brethren and sisters that had professed Christ Jesus with
+them," they declared themselves ready to submit in any way to the
+Queen's commandment; but without this promise they would not stir. Knox
+himself, however, who was the soul of the party, was, according to his
+wont, less self-controlled. He considered it his duty to make a special
+statement to Argyle and the Lord James, the future Earl of Murray, who
+were the Queen's first envoys, and to send a message to the Regent in
+his own name, with a curious assumption of the prophet's office, which
+is exceedingly remarkable so near the beginning of his career, and is at
+once an evidence of the enormous influence which he had acquired, and of
+the astonishing confidence in his own mission and powers which must have
+helped him to acquire it. "Say to the Queen's Grace Regent," he required
+them, "in my name, that we whom she in her blind rage doth persecute are
+God's servants, faithful and obedient subjects to the authority of this
+realm: that that religion which she pretendeth to maintain by fire and
+sword is not the religion of Christ Jesus, but is express contrarie to
+the same, ane superstition devised by the brain of man: which I offer
+myself to prove against all that within Scotland will maintain the
+contrarie--liberty of tongue being granted to me, and God's written word
+being admitted for judge."
+
+Thus the preacher flung down his glove like a knight of the old
+chivalry, with a fiery and eager hardihood which we could the better
+admire had he done more justice to his adversaries, especially the
+Queen, whose good intentions it seems so difficult to misconstrue. He
+warns her also, in the same high tone, that her enterprise will not
+succeed, and that the end shall be her confusion, "onless betimes she
+repent and desist," with all the stern certainty of an inspired prophet.
+Whether the serious emissaries, who, though they were Protestants, "had
+begun to muse," and perhaps could not keep their eyes from remarking the
+smoke and dust of the ruins behind the energetic figure of the Reformer,
+conveyed this message in full we may be permitted to doubt. They were
+both young men, and it is unlikely they would prejudice their own career
+by repeating to the Queen's Grace anything about her blind rage or the
+confusion which would follow. Lord Sempill, who accompanied them, and
+who was of the Queen's party--"a man sold under sin," says Knox--perhaps
+did more justice to the message; but Knox's sole desire was that it
+should be repeated word by word.
+
+We need not, however, follow the advances and retreats, the always
+imminent encounter for which the Congregation was fully ready, but from
+which the Queen and her general constantly retired at the last moment,
+before the gates of Perth, on Cupar Muir, and other places, making
+agreement after agreement of which nothing came. In the course of this
+curious dance of the two powers confronting each other much ink was
+shed, however, if no blood, and the representations, letters, bonds, and
+assurances must have kept the scribes on either side in constant
+occupation. The Congregation was certainly the more argumentative and
+long-winded of the correspondents, and never seems to have lost an
+opportunity of a letter. They pervaded the country, an ever-increasing
+band, which, whenever an emergency occurred, was multiplied from every
+quarter at the raising of a finger on the part of the reforming lords.
+That the violent beginning made in Perth had given to the populace a
+taste for the pleasures of destruction, however, is very fully evident,
+and it soon became clear that when the preachers and their protectors
+moved "to make reformation," the mob who followed them would leave
+nothing but ruins behind. This and the method of it is very well set
+forth in the case of Scone, a place of great historical interest, where
+the ancient kings of Scotland had been crowned. It would seem to have
+been a raid of private vengeance which directed the operations, "four
+zealous men," irrestrainable, it would seem, by the leaders, having set
+out from Perth, "to take order with that place," considering how
+obstinately proud and despiteful the Bishop of Murray had been. The
+lords had already sent a letter of warning to the Bishop, who was housed
+in some abbey near, advertising him that unless he would come and join
+them they could neither spare nor save his place. But while the answer
+lingered the town of Dundee took up the quarrel and set forth to carry
+out the work.
+
+    "To stay them was first sent the Provost of Dundee and his brother
+    Alexander Halliburton Capitain, who little prevailing was sent unto
+    them John Knox; but before his coming they were entered to the
+    pulling down of the idols and dortour (dormitory). And albeit the
+    said Maister James Halliburton, Alexander his brother, and the said
+    John, did what in them lay to have stayed the fury of the multitude,
+    yet were they not able to put order universalie; and therefore they
+    sent for the lords, Earl of Argyle and Lord James, who coming with
+    all diligence laboured to have saved the palace and the kirk. But
+    because the multitude had found buried in the kirk a great number of
+    idols, hid of purpose to have reserved them for a better day (as the
+    Papists speak) the towns of Dundee and St. Johnstone could not be
+    satisfied till that the whole reparation and ornaments of the church
+    (as they term it) were destroyed. And yet did the lords so travel
+    that they saved the Bishop's palace with the church and place for
+    that night; for the two lords did not depart till they brought with
+    them the whole number of those who most sought the Bishop's
+    displeasure. The Bishop, greatly offended that anything should have
+    been enterprised in reformation of his place, asked of the lords his
+    bond and handwriting, which not two hours before he had sent to them
+    (this was a promise to come immediately to arrange for the safety of
+    his see, and also to support them in Parliament in gratitude for the
+    warning they had given him); Which delivered to his messenger, Sir
+    Adam Brown, advertisement was given that if any further displeasure
+    chanced unto him that he should not blame them. The Bishop's
+    servants that same night began to fortify the place again, and began
+    to do violence to some that were carrying away such baggage as they
+    could come by. The Bishop's girnel was kept the first night by the
+    labours of John Knox, who by exhortation removed such as would
+    violentlie have made irruption. The morrow following, some of the
+    poor in hope of spoil, and some of Dundee to consider what was done,
+    passed up to the said Abbey of Scone; whereat the Bishop's servants
+    offended began to threaten and speak proudly, and as it was
+    constantly affirmed one of the Bishop's sons stogged through with a
+    rapier one of Dundee because he was looking in at the girnel door.
+    This bruit noised abroad, the town of Dundee was more enraged than
+    before, who putting themselves in armour sent word to the
+    inhabitants of St. Johnstone, 'That unless they should support them
+    to avenge that injury, that they should never from that day concur
+    with them in any action.' They, easilie inflambed, gave the alarm,
+    and so was that abbey and palace appointed to the saccage; in doing
+    whereof they took no long deliberation, but committed the whole to
+    the merriment of fire; whereat no small number of us was so
+    offended, that patientlie we could not speak to any that were of
+    Dundee or Saint Johnstone."
+
+The reader will see in this frank narrative how many elements were
+conjoined to bring about the outrage. Local jealousy and despite, the
+rage against the Bishop and his priests, the eagerness of the needy in
+hope of spoil, the excitement of a fray in which the first blow had been
+struck by the adversary with just the crown of a supposed religious
+motive to give the courage of a great cause to the rioters: while on the
+other hand the Bishop's rashness in taking the defence upon himself and
+slighting the assistance offered him is equally apparent. It is evident
+enough, however, that the lords themselves had no urgent interest in the
+preservation of the ancient buildings, and that Knox cared little for
+any of these things. The watch of the preacher at the door of the
+Bishop's girnel or storehouse, keeping back the rioters by his
+exhortations, is a curious illustration of this point. He would not have
+the people soil their souls with thieving, with the Bishop's meal and
+malt; as for the historical walls, the altar where the old kings had
+been anointed or the sanctuary where their ashes lay, what were they?
+Knox was too much intent on setting Scotland loose from all previous
+traditions--from the past which was idolatrous and corrupt, and in which
+till it reached to the age of the Apostles he recognised no good
+thing--to be concerned about the temples of Baal. What he wanted was to
+cut all these dark ages away, and affiliate himself and his country
+direct to Judaea and Jerusalem, to the Jewish church, not the Gothic or
+the papal, or any perverted image of what he believed primitive
+Christianity to have been. He served himself heir to Peter and Paul, to
+Elijah and Ezekiel, and perhaps in the strong prepossession of his soul
+against contemporary monks and ecclesiastics did not even know that the
+Church which was so corrupt, and the religious orders which had fallen
+so low, had ever brought or preserved light and blessing to the world.
+Scottish history, Scottish art, were corrupted too, and woven about with
+associations of these hated priests and their system which was not true
+religion, but "devised by the brain of man"; and though he was himself
+the most complete incarnation of Scotch vehemence, dogmatism, national
+pride, and fiery feeling, he was indifferent to their national records.
+His pride was involved in making his country stand, alone if need was,
+or if not alone, then first, in passionate perfection in the new order
+of things in the kingdom of Christ: not to keep her a place in the unity
+of nations by preserving the traces of an old civilisation and
+institutions as venerable and noteworthy as any in Christendom, but to
+make of her a chosen nation like that people, long ago dispersed by a
+sufficiently miserable catastrophe, to whom was given of old the mission
+of showing forth the will of God before the world. Whether what he
+gained for his country was not much more important than what he thus
+deliberately sacrificed is a question that will never be answered with
+any unanimity. He gained for his race a great freedom, which cannot be
+justly called religious freedom, because it was, in his intention at
+least, freedom to follow their own way, with none at all for those who
+differed from them. He set up a high standard of piety and probity, and
+for once made the business of the soul, the worship of God and study of
+His laws, the most absorbing of public interests. He thrilled the whole
+country through and through with the inspiration of a fervent spirit,
+uncompromising in its devotion to the truth, asking no indulgence if
+also, perhaps, giving none, serving God in his own way with a fidelity
+above every bribe, scornful of every compromise. But he cut Scotland
+adrift so far as in him lay from the brotherhood of habit and tradition,
+from the communion, if not of saints, yet of many saintly uses, and much
+that is beautiful in Christian life. He made his country eminent, and
+secured for her one great chapter in the history of the world; but he
+imprinted upon her a certain narrowness uncongenial to her character and
+to her past, which has undervalued her to many superficial observers,
+and done perhaps a little, but a permanent, harm to her national ideal
+ever since. A small evil for so much good, but yet not to be left
+unacknowledged.
+
+More interesting in its human aspect is Knox's appearance in St.
+Andrews, whither the Congregation now crowded to "make reformation,"
+though doubtful if even the populace were on their side. The Bishop
+"hearing of reformation to be made in his cathedral church, thought time
+to stir, or else never"--which was very natural. He was accompanied by a
+hundred spears, which must have meant a company at least of four or five
+hundred armed men, while the Lords of the Congregation had "their quiet
+households," no doubt a very adequate escort. The Bishop threatened that
+if John Knox showed his face in the cathedral he should be saluted with
+a dozen of culverins, and the gentlemen with him hesitated much to
+expose him to such a risk: but their doubts were not shared by the
+preacher. He had himself given forth, when in the galley labouring at
+the oar in sight of the beloved town and sanctuary, a prophecy that he
+should yet preach there, unlikely as it looked; and to recoil from any
+danger, when such an opportunity arose, was not in him. "To delay to
+preach the morrow (unless the bodie be violentlie witholden) I cannot,"
+he said. He preached upon the casting out of the money-changers from the
+Temple--a very dangerous subject for such an occasion, and "applied the
+corruption that was there to the corruption that is in the Papestrie" so
+well that the magistrates of the town, and also the commonalty "for the
+most part, did agree to remove all monuments of idolatrie, which also
+they did with expedition." But it was not on that day that the great
+church shining from afar on its rocky headland, a splendid landmark over
+the dangerous bay, was reduced to the condition in which it now remains,
+with a few forlorn but graceful pinnacles rising against the misty blue
+of sea and sky. No harm would seem to have been done except to the
+altars and the decorations; and according to all evidence it is more to
+the careless brutality of the eighteenth century, which found an
+excellent storehouse of materials for building in the abandoned shrine,
+than to any absolute outrage that its present state of utter ruin is
+due.
+
+[Illustration: ST. ANDREWS]
+
+The Congregation set forth on its march to Stirling, and thence to
+Edinburgh in June, and so great was the commotion which had been raised
+by the rumour of the "reformation" wrought in the north in Scone and St.
+Johnstone that the mere news of their approach roused "the rasckall
+multitude" to the mood of destruction. They had cleared out and
+destroyed the convents in Stirling, and those of the Black and Grey
+Friars in Edinburgh, before the Reformers came--a result which Knox at
+least in no way pauses to deplore: they had left nothing, he says, "but
+bare walls, yea, not so much as door or windok: wherthrou we were the
+less troubled in putting order in such places." Thus the flood of
+Revolution, of Reformation, of fundamental, universal change flowed on.
+The victory was not assured, however, as perhaps they had hoped when
+they entered Edinburgh, for though for a time everything went well, and
+the preaching seems to have been followed by the greater part of the
+city, the Queen, ever active, though never striking any decisive blow,
+had received reinforcements from France, and to the great alarm of the
+Congregation had begun to fortify Leith, forming a strong garrison there
+of French soldiers, and making a new stronghold near enough to be a
+perpetual menace to Edinburgh almost at her door. The position of
+affairs at this moment was curious in the extreme. The Queen in Leith,
+surrounded by the newly arrived forces of France, with Frenchmen placed
+in all the great offices, fulminated forth decrees, commands,
+explanations, orders, from within the walls that were being quickly
+raised to make the fort a strong place, and from amidst the garrison of
+her own countrymen, in whose fidelity she could fully trust. In
+Edinburgh the Congregation were virtually supreme, but very uneasy;
+their substantial adversaries quieted, but ever on the watch; the
+populace ready to pull down and destroy at their indication, but not to
+change their life or character--an unstable support should trouble come;
+while in the castle Lord Erskine sat impartial, a sort of silent umpire,
+taking neither side, though ready to intervene with a great gun on
+either as occasion moved him. The fire of words which was kept up
+between the two parties is one of the most amazing features of the
+conflict. For every page the Queen's secretaries wrote, John Knox was
+ready with ten to demonstrate her errors, her falsehood, the
+impossibility that any good could come from an idolater such as she.
+Other persons take part in the great wrangle, but he is clearly the
+scribe and moving spirit. He writes to her in his own person, in that of
+the Lord James, in that of the Congregation. She accuses them of
+rebellion and treasonable intentions against herself--and they her of
+her Frenchmen and her fortifications. She summons them to leave
+Edinburgh on peril of all the penalties that attend high treason; they
+demand from her that the Frenchmen should be sent away and the
+proceedings stopped. She accuses the Duke Chatelherault--the head of the
+Hamiltons, the next heir to the throne--of treasonable proceedings, and
+he vindicates himself by sound of trumpet at the Cross of Edinburgh. The
+correspondence grows to such a pitch that when she loses patience and
+bids them be gone before a certain day, they meet in solemn conclave, to
+which the preachers are called to give their advice, to discuss whether
+it is lawful to depose her from her regency: and all consent with one
+voice to her deprivation. The excitement of this continual exchange of
+correspondence, the messages coming and going, from the Queen's side the
+Lyon King himself, all glorious among his pursuivants, advancing from
+Leith with his brief letter and his "credit" as spokesman, the others
+replying and re-replying, scarcely ever without a response or a
+denunciation to read over and talk over, must have kept the nerves and
+intelligence of all at a perpetual strain. At St. Giles's and the
+Tolbooth close by, which were the double centre of life in the city,
+there was a perpetual alternation of preachings, to which Lords and
+Commons would crowd together to listen to Knox's trumpet peals of fiery
+eloquence, always upon some appropriate text, always instinct with the
+most vehement energy, and consultations upon public affairs and how to
+promote the triumph of religion; the lords pondering and sometimes
+doubtful, the preacher ever uncompromising and absolute. A question of
+public honesty had arisen in the midst of the struggle for the faith,
+and the Reformers had seized the Mint to prevent the coining of base
+money, which the Regent was carrying on for her necessities, and which
+the Congregation, no doubt justly, considered ruinous to the trade of
+the country; and the determined struggle with the Queen in respect to
+her scheme for fortifying Leith and establishing a French garrison
+there,--a continual check upon and menace to the freedom of the
+capital,--was at least as much a question of politics as religion.
+
+The Congregation, however, was not yet strong enough to be able to meet
+the French forces, and when they attempted to besiege Leith and put a
+forcible stop to the building they were defeated with shame and loss. A
+curious sign of the inevitable "rift within the lute," which up to this
+time had been avoided by the concentration of all men's thoughts upon
+the first necessity of securing the freedom of the preachings, becomes
+visible before this futile attempt at a siege. When the leaders of the
+Congregation, among whom on this occasion the contingent from the towns,
+and especially from Dundee, seems foremost, began to prepare for their
+expedition, they chose St. Giles's Church as the most convenient for the
+preparation of the scaling ladders, a practical evidence that sacredness
+had departed from the church as a building, not at all to the mind of
+the preachers, who probably saw no logical succession between the
+hammers of the destroyers pulling down the "glorious tabernacles" and
+those of the craftsmen occupied with secular work. They did not, indeed,
+put their objections on this ground, but on that of the neglect of the
+"preaching," a name now characteristically applied to the public worship
+of God. "The Preachers spared not openly to say that they feared the
+success of that enterpryse should not be prosperous because the
+beginning appeyred to bring with it some contempt of God and of His
+word. Other places, said they, had been more apt for such preparations
+than where the people convened to common prayer and unto preaching, and
+they did not hesitate to affirm that God would not suffer such contempt
+of His word." Whether these objections stole the heart out of the
+fighting men, who had hitherto felt themselves emphatically the soldiers
+of God, it is impossible to say. They had hitherto overawed the Queen's
+party by their numbers, and had never outwardly made proof of their
+powers or sustained the attack of regular soldiers. And the assault of
+Leith ended in a disastrous defeat. The expedition set out rashly
+without leaders, while the lords and gentlemen "were gone to the
+preaching," and had consequently no accompanying cavalry, and few, if
+any, experienced soldiers. They were driven back with loss, and pursued
+into the very Canongate, to the foot of Leith Wynd--that is, into the
+cross-roads and narrow wynds which were immediately outside the city
+walls. Argyle and the rest, as soon as they were aware of what had
+happened, got hastily to horse, and did all they could to stop the
+flight, but even this turned to harm, since the horsemen coming out to
+the aid of their friends proved an additional danger to the fugitives,
+and "over-rode their poor brethren at the entrance of the Nether Bow."
+
+After this all was confusion and trouble in Edinburgh. The castle fired
+one solitary gun, which stopped with a note of sudden protest the French
+pursuit, coming with extraordinary dramatic effect into the always
+graphic and picturesque narrative, over the heads of the flying,
+discomfited crowd which was struggling among the horses' hoofs at the
+narrow gate, and the Frenchmen straggling behind, up all the narrow
+passages into the Canongate, snatching a piece of plunder where they
+could find it, "one a kietill, ane other ane pettycoat, the third a pote
+or a pan." "Je pense que vous l'avez achete sans argent," the Queen is
+reported to have said with a laugh as the pursuers came back to Leith
+with their not very important booty. "This was the great and motherlie
+care she took for the truth of the poor subjects of this realm," says
+Knox bitterly; and yet it was very natural that she should have been
+overjoyed, after all these controversies, to feel herself the stronger,
+if not in argument at least in actual fight.
+
+This defeat told greatly upon the spirits of the Congregation which had
+hitherto been kept together by success, and which was in fact a mere
+horde of men hastily collected, untrained in actual warfare, and in no
+position for taking the offensive though strong in defence of their
+rights. And money had failed. It was determined that each gentleman
+should give his plate to be made into coin to supply the needs of the
+Congregation, as they had the Mint in their hands: but the officials
+stole away with the "irons" and this was made impracticable. They then
+sent for a supply to the English envoys who were anxiously watching the
+progress of events at Berwick: but the sum sent to them in answer to
+their application was intercepted by the Earl of Bothwell--his first
+appearance in history, on which he was to leave thereafter such traces
+of disaster. And other encounters with the Frenchmen took the heart
+entirely out of the Congregation; the party began to dissolve, stealing
+away on every side. "Our soldiers" (mercenaries it is to be supposed in
+distinction from the retainers of the lords and gentlemen) "could
+skarslie be dang out of the town" to meet a sally from Leith. In
+Edinburgh itself the rasckall multitude, which had been so ready to
+destroy and ravage, began to throw stones at the Reformers and call them
+traitors and heretics. Finally with hearts penetrated by disappointment
+and the misery of defeat the Congregation abandoned Edinburgh altogether
+and marched to Stirling with drooping arms and hearts.
+
+"The said day at nine in the night," says a contemporary authority, "the
+Congregation departed forth of Edinburgh to Linlithgow and left their
+artillerie void upon the causeway lying, and the town desolate." It was
+November, and the darkness of the night could not have been more dark
+than the prospects and thoughts of that dejected band, a little while
+before so triumphant. As the tramp of the half-seen procession went
+heavily down the tortuous streets at the back of the castle, probably by
+the West Bow and West Port, diving down into the darkness under that
+black shadow where the garrison sat grimly impartial taking no part, the
+populace, perhaps frightened by the too great success of their own
+fickle and cruel desertion of the cause, and hoping little from the
+return of the priests, would seem to have beheld with silent dismay the
+departure of the Congregation. The guns which had done them so little
+service which they left on the road, as the preachers would have had
+them leave all the devices and aid of men, were gathered in by the
+soldiers from the castle with little demonstration, and the town was
+left desolate. The anonymous writer of the _Diurnal of Occurrents_ is
+curiously impartial and puts down his brief records without any
+expression of feeling: but a certain thrill is in these words as of
+something too impressive and significant to be passed by.
+
+It is at this miserable moment that John Knox shows himself at his best.
+Hitherto his vehemence, his fierce oratory, his interminable letters and
+addresses, though instinct with all the reality of a most vigorous, even
+restless nature, represent to us rather a man who would if he could have
+done everything,--the fighting and the protocolling as well as the
+preaching, a man to whom repose was impossible, ever ready to draw forth
+his pen, to mount his pulpit, to add his eager word to every
+consultation, and enjoying nothing so much as to press the most
+unpleasant truths upon his correspondents and hearers,--than one of
+sustaining power and wisdom. The uncompromising fidelity with which he
+pointed out the shortcomings of those about him, and the terrible
+penalties laid up for them; and the stern denunciations in his letters,
+even those which he intended to be conciliatory, make his appearance in
+general more alarming than reassuring. An instance which almost tempts a
+smile, grave as are all the circumstances and surroundings, is his
+letter (written some time before the point at which we have now arrived)
+to Cecil whom he had known in England, and whose favour he desired to
+secure and indeed was confident of securing. For once he had something
+to ask for himself, permission to land in England on his way back to his
+native country; and greatly desired that a favourable representation of
+his case might be made to Queen Elizabeth, who was naturally prejudiced
+against him by his famous Blast against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.
+The following letter was written from Dieppe in April 1559 with the hope
+of procuring these favours from the great statesman.
+
+    "As I have no plaisure with long writing to trouble you, Rycht
+    Honourable, whose mind I know to be occupied with most grave
+    matters, so mind I not greatly to labour by long preface to
+    conciliate your favour, which I suppose I have already (howsomever
+    rumours bruit the contrarie) as it becometh one member of Christ's
+    body to have of another. The contents, therefore, of these my
+    presents shall be absolved in two points. In the former I purpose to
+    discharge in brief words my conscience towards you, and in the other
+    somewhat I must speik in my own defence and in defence of that poor
+    flock of lait assembled in the most godly Reformed church and city
+    of the world Geneva. To you Sir, I say, that as from God ye have
+    received life, wisdom, honours and this present estate in which ye
+    stand, so ought you wholly to employ the same to the advancement of
+    His glory, who only is the Author of life, the fountain of wisdom,
+    and who, most assuredly, doth and will honour those that with simple
+    hearts do glorify Him; which, alas, in times past ye have not done;
+    but being overcome with common iniquity ye have followed the world
+    in the way of perdition. For to the suppressing of Christ's true
+    Evangell, to the erecting of idolatrie, and to the shedding of the
+    blood of God's dear children, have you by silence consented and
+    subscribed. This, your most horrible defection from the truth known
+    and once professed, hath God to this day mercifully spared; yea, to
+    man's judgement He hath utterly forgotten and pardoned the same. He
+    hath not entreated you as He hath done others (of like knowledge),
+    whom in His anger (but yet most justly according to their deserts)
+    He did shortly strike after their defection. But you, guilty in the
+    same offences, He hath fostered and preserved as it were in His own
+    bosom. As the benefit which ye have received is great, so must God's
+    justice require of you a thankful heart; for seeing that His mercy
+    hath spared you being traitor to His Majesty; seeing, further, that
+    among your enemies He hath preserved you; and last, seeing that
+    although worthy of Hell He hath promoted you to honour and dignity,
+    of you must He require (because He is just) earnest repentance for
+    your former defection, a heart mindful of His merciful providence,
+    and a will so ready to advance His glory that evidently it may
+    appear that in vain ye have not received these graces of God--to
+    performance whereof of necessity it is that carnal wisdom and
+    worldly policy (to the which both ye are bruited too much inclined)
+    give place to God's simple and naked truth--very love compelleth me
+    to say that except the Spirit of God purge your heart from that
+    venom which your eyes have seen to be destruction to others, that ye
+    shall not long escape the reward of dissemblers. Call to mind what
+    you ever heard proclaimed in the chapel of Saint James, when this
+    verse of the first Psalm was entreated, 'Not so, oh wicked, not so;
+    but as the dust which the wind hath tossed, etc.' ... And this is
+    the conclusion of that which to yourself I say. Except that in the
+    cause of Christ's Evangel ye be found simple, sincere, fervent and
+    unfeigned, ye shall taste of the same cup which politic heads have
+    drunken before you."
+
+This manner of approaching a powerful statesman whose good offices might
+be of the uttermost consequence both to the writer and his party, is
+highly characteristic. There is something almost comic, if we dared to
+interpose such a view between two such personages, in the warning
+against "carnal wisdom and worldly policy to the which both ye are
+bruited too much inclined," addressed to the great Burleigh. It is
+difficult to imagine the outburst of a laugh between such a pair, yet
+grave Cecil surely must have smiled.
+
+The man who wrote this epistle and many another, leagues of letters in
+no one of which does he ever mince matters, or refrain to deliver his
+conscience before conveying the message of State with which he is
+charged--is often wordy, sometimes tedious, now and then narrow as a
+village gossip, always supremely and absolutely dogmatic, seeing no way
+but his own and acknowledging no possibility of error; and the extreme
+and perpetual movement of his ever-active mind, his high-blooded
+intolerance, the restless force about him which never pauses to take
+breath, is the chief impression produced upon the reader by his own
+unfolding of himself in his wonderful history. Though he is too great
+and important to be called a busybody, we still feel sympathetically
+something of the suppressed irritation and sense of hindrance and
+interruption with which the lords must have regarded this companion with
+his "devout imaginations," whom they dared not neglect, and who was sure
+to get the better in every argument, generally by reason, but at all
+events by the innate force of his persistence and daring. But when they
+came to Stirling, after "that dusk and dolorous night wherein all ye my
+lords with shame and fear left the town", the eager nervous form, the
+dark keen face of the preacher, rose before the melancholy bands like
+those of the hero-leader, the standard-bearer of God. It was Wednesday
+the 7th of November 1559 when the dispirited Congregation met for the
+preaching and to consider afterwards "what was the next remedy in so
+desperate a case." Knox took for his text certain verses of the
+eightieth Psalm. "How long wilt thou be angry against the prayers of thy
+people? Thou hast fed us with the bread of tears; and hast given us
+tears to drink in great measure. O God of hosts, turn us again, make thy
+face to shine; and we shall be saved." He began by asking, Why were the
+people of God thus oppressed?
+
+    "Our faces are this day confounded, our enemies triumph, our hearts
+    have quaked for fear, and yet they remain oppressed with sorrow and
+    shame. But what shall we think to be the very cause that God hath
+    thus dejected us? If I shall say our sins and former unthankfulness
+    to God, I speak the truth. But yet I spake more generallie than
+    necessity required: for when the sins of men are rebuked in general,
+    seldom it is that man descendeth within himself, accusing and
+    damning in himself that which most displeaseth God."
+
+To this particular self-examination he then leads his hearers in order
+that they may not take refuge in generalities, but that each man may
+examine himself. "I will divide our whole company," he says, "into two
+sorts of men. The one, those who have been attached to the cause from
+the beginning; the other, recent converts."
+
+    "Let us begin at ourselves who longest has continued in this battle.
+    When we were a few in number, in comparison with our enemies, when
+    we had neither Erle nor Lord (a few excepted) to comfort us, we
+    called upon God, we took Him for our protector, defence, and onlie
+    refuge. Among us was heard no bragging of multitude or of our
+    strength or policy, we did only sob to God, to have respect to the
+    equity of our cause and to the cruel pursuit of the tyraneful enemy.
+    But since that our number has been multiplied, and chiefly since my
+    Lord Duke his Grace with his friends have been joined with us, there
+    was nothing heard but 'This Lord will bring these many hundred
+    spears: if this Earl be ours no man in such and such a bounds will
+    trouble us.' And thus the best of us all, that before felt God's
+    potent hand to be our defence, hath of late days put flesh to be our
+    arm."
+
+This proved, which was an evil he had struggled against with might and
+main, forbidding all compromises, all concessions that might have served
+to attract the help of the powerful, and conciliate lukewarm supporters,
+he turns to the other side.
+
+    "But wherein hath my Lord Duik his Grace and his friends offended?
+    It may be that as we have trusted in them so have they put too much
+    confidence in their own strength. But granting so be or not, I see a
+    cause most just why the duke and his friends should thus be
+    confounded among the rest of their brethren. I have not yet
+    forgotten what was the dolour and anguish of my own heart when at
+    St. Johnstone, Cupar Muir, and Edinburgh Crags, those cruel
+    murderers, that now hath put us to this dishonour, threatened our
+    present destruction. My Lord Duke his Grace, and his friends at all
+    the three jornayes, was to them a great comfort and unto us a great
+    discourage; for his name and authority did more affray and astonish
+    us, than did the force of the other: yea, without his assistance
+    they would not have compelled us to appoint with the Queen upon
+    unequal conditions. I am uncertain if my Lord's Grace hath
+    unfeignedly repented of his assistance to those murderers unjustly
+    pursuing us. Yea, I am uncertain if he hath repented of that
+    innocent blood of Christ's blessed martyrs which was shed in his
+    default. But let it be that so he hath done, as I hear that he hath
+    confessed his offence before the Lords and brethren of the
+    Congregation, yet I am assured that neither he, nor yet his friends,
+    did feel before this time the anguish and grieving of heart which we
+    felt when they in their blind fury pursued us. And therefore hath
+    God justly permitted both them and us to fall in this confusion at
+    once; us for that we put our trust and confidence in man, and them
+    because that they should feel in their own hearts how bitter was the
+    cup which they had made others to drink before them. Rests that both
+    they and we turn to the Eternal, our God (who beats down to death to
+    the intent that He may raise up again, to leave the remembrance of
+    His wondrous deliverance to the praise of His own name), which if we
+    do unfeignedly, I no more doubt that this our dolour, confusion, and
+    fear, shall be turned into joy, honour, and boldness, than that I
+    doubt that God gave the victory to the Israelites over the
+    Benjaminites after that twice with ignominy they were repulsed and
+    dang back. Yea, whatsoever shall come of us and our mortal
+    carcasses, I doubt not but this cause in despite of Satan shall
+    prevail in the realm of Scotland. For as it is the eternal truth of
+    the eternal God, so shall it once prevail, however for a time it may
+    be hindered. It may be that God shall plague some, for that they
+    delight not in the truth, albeit for worldly respects they seem to
+    favour it. Yea, God may take some of His devout children away before
+    their eyes see greater troubles. But neither shall the one or the
+    other so hinder this action but in the end it shall triumph."
+
+When the sermon was ended, Knox adds, "The minds of men began
+wonderfully to be erected." "The voice of one man," as Randolph
+afterwards said, was "able in an hour to put more life in us than six
+hundred trumpets continually blustering in our ears." The boldness with
+which Knox thus exposed that elation in their own temporary success, and
+in the adhesion of the Duke of Hamilton, which had led the leaders of
+the Congregation into self-confidence and slackened their watchfulness,
+was made solemn and authoritative by the force with which he pressed his
+personal responsibility into every man's bosom. No turn of fortune, no
+evil fate, but God's check upon an army enlisted in His name yet not
+serving Him with a true heart, was this momentary downfall; the cause of
+which was one that every man could remove in his degree; not inherent
+weakness or hopeless fate, but a matter remediable, nay, which must be
+remedied and cast from among them--a matter which might quench their
+personal hopes and destroy them, but could not affect the divine cause,
+which should surely, triumph whatever man or Satan might do. More than
+six hundred trumpets, more than the tramp of a succouring army, it rang
+into the men's hearts. Their spirit and their courage rose; the dolorous
+night, the fear and shame, dissolved and disappeared; and the question
+what to do was met not with dejection and despair but with a rising of
+new hope.
+
+The decision of the Congregation in the Senate which was held after this
+stirring address was, in the first place, to address an appeal for help
+to England, the sister-nation which had already made reformation, though
+not in their way, and to fight the matter out with full confidence in a
+happy issue. About this appeal to England, however, there were
+difficulties; for Knox who suggested it, and whose name could not but
+appear in the matter, had given forth, as all the world and especially
+the persons chiefly attacked were aware, a tremendous "blast" against
+the right of women to reign, particularly well or ill timed in a
+generation subject to so many queens; and it was necessary for him to
+excuse or defend himself to the greatest of the female sovereigns whom
+he had attacked. Of course it was easy for him to say that he had no
+great Protestant Elizabeth in his eye when he wrote, but only a bigoted
+and sanguinary Mary, of whom no one knew at the time that her reign was
+to be short, and her power of doing evil so small. It is almost
+impossible to discuss gravely nowadays a treatise which, even in its
+name (which is all that most people know of it), has the air of a
+whimsical ebullition of passion, leaning towards the ridiculous, rather
+than a serious protest calculated to move the minds of men. But this was
+not the aspect under which it appeared to the Queens who were assailed,
+not as individuals, but as a class intolerable and not to be suffered;
+and it was considered necessary that Knox should write to excuse
+himself, and apologise as much as was in him to the Queen, who was now
+the only person on earth to whom the Congregation could look for help.
+Knox's letter to Queen Elizabeth, whom he addressed indeed more as a
+lesser prince, respectful but more or less equal, might do, than as a
+private individual, is very characteristic. He has to apologise, but he
+will not withdraw from the position he had taken. "I cannot deny the
+writing," he says, "neither yet am I minded to retreat or call back any
+principal point or proposition of the same." But he is surprised that
+subject of offence should be found in it by her for whose accession he
+renders thanks to God, declaring himself willing to be judged by
+moderate and indifferent men which of the parties do most harm to the
+liberty of England, he who affirms that no woman may be exalted above
+any realm to make the liberty of the same thrall to any stranger nation,
+"or they that approve whatsoever pleaseth Princes for the time." Leaving
+thus the ticklish argument which he cannot withdraw, but finds it
+impolitic to bring forward, he turns to the Queen's individual behaviour
+in her position as being the thing most important at the present moment,
+now that she has effectively attained her unlawful elevation.
+
+    "Therefore, Madam, the only way to retain and keep those benefits of
+    God abundantly poured now of late days upon you and upon your realm,
+    is unfeignedly to render unto God, to His mercy and undeserved
+    grace, the glory of your exaltation. Forget your birth, and all
+    title which thereupon doth hing: and consider deeply how for fear of
+    your life ye did decline from God and bow till idolatrie. Let it not
+    appear ane small offence in your eyes that ye have declined from
+    Christ in the day of His battle. Neither would I that you should
+    esteem that mercy to be vulgar and common which ye have received: to
+    wit that God hath covered your former offence, hath preserved you
+    when you were most unthankful, and in the end hath exalted and
+    raised you up, not only from the dust, but also from the ports of
+    death, to rule above His people for the comfort of His kirk. It
+    appertaineth to you, therefore, to ground the justice of your
+    authority, not upon that law which from year to year doth change,
+    but upon the eternal providence of Him who contraire to nature and
+    without your deserving hath thus exalted your head. If then, in
+    God's presence ye humble yourself, as in my heart I glorify God for
+    that rest granted to His afflicted flock within England under you a
+    weik instrument: so will I with tongue and pen justify your
+    authority and regiment as the Holy Ghost hath justified the same in
+    Debora that blessed mother in Israel. But if the premisses (as God
+    forbid) neglected, ye shall begin to brag of your birth and to build
+    your authority and regiment upon your own law, flatter you who so
+    list your felicity shall be short. Interpret my rude words in the
+    best part as written by him who is no enemy to your Grace."
+
+It must have been new to Queen Elizabeth to hear herself called "a weik
+instrument," and it is doubtful whether the first offence would be much
+softened by such an address. Neither was Elizabeth a person to be amused
+by the incongruity or impressed by the uncompromising boldness of the
+Reformer to whom the language of apology was so hard. Policy, however,
+has little to do with personal offences, although to some readers, as we
+confess to ourselves, it may be more interesting to see the prophet thus
+arrested, hampered by his own trumpet-blast, and making amends as much
+as he can permit himself to make, though so awkwardly and with so bold a
+return upon the original offence, to the offended Queen. It was far more
+easy for him to warn her of what would happen did she fail in her duty
+than to soothe the affront with gentle words; and his attempt at the
+latter is but halting and feeble. But when he promises with tongue and
+pen to justify her if she does well, Knox is once more on his own
+ground--that of a man whose office is superior to all the paltry
+distinctions of kingship or lordship, a servant of God commissioned to
+declare His divine will, endowed with an insight beyond that of ordinary
+men, and declaring with boundless certainty and confidence the things
+which are to be.
+
+We may, however, pass very shortly over the coming struggle. The English
+army marched into Scotland in April 1560, and addressed itself at once
+to the siege of Leith, the headquarters of the French whom the Queen
+Regent had brought into Scotland, and whom it was the chief aim of the
+Congregation and of their allies to drive out of the country. The siege
+went on for about six weeks, during which little effect seems to have
+been made, though Knox bears testimony that "the patience and stout
+courage of the Englishmen, but principally of the horsemen, was worthy
+of all praise." These proceedings, however, were brought to a pause by
+an event which changed the position of affairs. The Queen Regent, who,
+for some time, had been in declining health, harassed and beaten down by
+many cares, had left Leith and taken up her abode in Edinburgh Castle
+while the Reformers were absent from the capital. In that fortress, held
+neutral by its captain, in the small rooms where, some seven years
+after, her daughter's child was to be born, Mary lingered out the early
+days of summer: and in June, while still the English guns were
+thundering against Leith, her new fortifications resisting with
+diminished strength, and her garrison in danger--died, escaping from her
+uneasy burden of royalty when everything looked dark for her policy and
+cause. Many anecdotes of her sayings and doings were current during her
+lingering illness, such as might easily be reported between the two
+camps with more or less truth. When she heard of the "Band" made by the
+leaders of the army before Leith for the expulsion of the strangers she
+is said to have called the maledictions of God upon them who counselled
+her to persecute the preachers and to refuse the petitions of the best
+part of the subjects of the realm. Shut out from the countrymen and
+advisers in whom she had trusted, with the hitherto impartial Lord
+Erskine alone at her ear, adding his word concerning the "unjust
+possessors" who were to be driven "forth of this land," and overcome by
+sickness, sadness, and loneliness, this lady, who had done her best to
+hold the balance even and to refrain from bloodshed, though she had
+little credit for it, seems to have lost courage. She saw from her
+altitude on the castle rock the great fire in Leith, which probably
+looked at first like the beginning of its destruction, and all the
+martial bands of England, and the Scots lords and their followers, lying
+between her and her friends. After some ineffectual efforts to
+communicate with them otherwise, she sent for the Lords Argyle,
+Glencairn, and the Earl Marischal, with the Lord James, who visited her
+separately, "not all together, lest that some part of the Guysian
+practice had lurked under the colour of friendship." Knox's heart was
+not softened by the illness and isolation, nor even by the regrets and
+repentance, of the dying Queen. She consented to see John Willock, his
+colleague, and after hearing him "openly confessed that there was no
+salvation but in and by the death of Jesus Christ." "But of the Mass we
+had not her confession," says the implacable preacher. She died on the
+9th of June, worsted, overthrown, all that she had aimed at ending in
+failure, all her efforts foiled, leaving those who had been her enemies
+triumphant, and the future fate of her daughter's kingdom in the hands
+of "the auld enemy," the ever-dangerous neighbour of Scotland. "God, for
+His good mercy's sake, rid us from the rest of the Guysian blood," was
+the prayer Knox made over her grave.
+
+And yet, so far as can be judged, Mary of Guise was no persecutor and no
+tyrant. To all appearance she had honestly intended to keep peace in the
+kingdom, to permit as much as she could without committing herself to
+views which she did not share. And nothing could be more touching than
+such an end to a life never too brilliant or happy. She had gone through
+many alternations of gladness and of despair, had stood bravely by her
+sensitive husband when the infant sons who were his hope had been taken
+one after another, had discharged, as faithfully as circumstances and
+the accidents of a tremendous crisis would let her, her duties as
+Regent. Her death, lonely, desolate, and defeated, with no one near whom
+she loved, to smooth her passage to the grave, might have gained her a
+more gentle word of dismissal.
+
+Within little more than a month after her death peace was signed; the
+French forces departed, and the English army, not much more loved in its
+help than the others in their hostility, was escorted back to the Border
+and safely got rid of. On the 19th of July, all being thus happily
+settled, St. Giles's was once more filled with a crowd of eager
+worshippers, "the haill nobilitie and the greatest part of the
+Congregation,"--a number which must have tried the capacity of the great
+church, large as it is. Knox does not give his sermon on the occasion,
+but we have a very noble and devout prayer, or rather thanksgiving,
+which was used at this service, and in which, though there is one
+reference to "proud tyrants overthrown," the spirit of devout
+thankfulness is predominant. He tells us, however, that the subject of
+his discourses, delivered daily, were the prophecies of Haggai, which he
+found to be "proper for the time." Some of his hearers, he informs us,
+spoke jestingly of having now to "bear the barrow to build the house of
+God." "God be merciful to the speaker," cries the stern prophet, "for we
+fear he shall have experience that the building of his ain house, the
+house of God being despised, shall not be so prosperous or of such
+firmity as we desire it were"--so dangerous was it to jest in the
+presence of one so tremendously in earnest. The speaker referred to, of
+this, as of most of the other caustic sayings of the time, is said to
+have been Lethington.
+
+The first thing done by the Parliament was the distribution of the
+handful of ministers then existing among the districts which most needed
+them; the second, the verification and establishment of the Confession
+of Faith. No more curious scene could have been than this momentous
+ceremony. The Parliament consisted of all the nobility of Scotland,
+including among them the bishops and peers of the Church, and the
+delegates from the boroughs. The Confession was read article by article,
+and a vote taken upon each. Three only of the lords voted against it.
+The bishops said nothing. What their feelings must have been, as they
+sat in their places looking on, while the long array of the Congregation
+voted, it is vain to attempt to imagine. There was nothing the Reformers
+would have liked better than that discussion to which Knox had vainly
+bidden his opponents, throwing down his glove as to mortal combat. "Some
+of our ministers were present," he says, "standing upon their feet ready
+to have answered in case any would have defended the Papistrie and
+impugned our affirmations." But no one of all the ecclesiastics present
+said a word. The Earl Marischal, when he rose in his turn to vote,
+commented upon this remarkable abstinence with the straightforwardness
+of a practical man. "It is long since I have had some favour to the
+truth," he said, "and since I have had a suspicion of the Papistical
+religion; but I praise my God this day has fully resolved me in the one
+and the other. For, seeing that my Lord Bishops here present, who for
+their learning can, and for the zeal they should bear to the veritie
+would, I suppose, gainsay anything that directly repugns to the veritie
+of God, speaks nothing in the contraire of the doctrine proposed, I
+cannot but hold it to be the very truth of God." Even this speech moved
+the bishops to no reply. They sat silent, perhaps too much astonished at
+such an extraordinary revolution to say anything; perhaps alarmed at the
+strength of the party against them. It might be that there was little
+learning among them, though they had the credit of it; certainly the
+arguments which Knox reports on several occasions are inconceivably
+feeble on the side of the old faith. But whatever was the meaning there
+they sat dumb, and looked on bewildered, confounded, while the new
+Confession was voted paragraph by paragraph, and the whole scope of the
+Scottish constitution changed.
+
+[Illustration: KNOX'S HOUSE, HIGH STREET]
+
+The next step was the abolition of the mass, an act by which it was
+forbidden that any should either hear or say that office "or be present
+thereat, under the pain of confiscation of all their goods movable and
+immovable, and punishing of their bodies at the discretion of the
+Magistrates." Another edict followed abolishing the jurisdiction of the
+Pope under pain of "proscription, banishment, and never to brook honour,
+office, or dignity within this realm." "These and other things," says
+the Reformer, "were orderly done in lawful and free Parliament," with
+the bishops and all spiritual lords in their places sitting dumb and
+making no sign. The Queen was at liberty to say afterwards, as was done,
+that a Parliament where she was not represented in any way, either by
+viceroy or regent, where there was no exhibition of sceptre, sword, or
+crown, and in short where the monarch was left out altogether, was not a
+lawful Parliament. But the most remarkable feature of this strange
+assembly amid all the voting and "bruit" is the dramatic silence of the
+State ecclesiastical. It is curious that no fervent brother should have
+been found to maintain the cause of his faith. But probably it was
+better policy to refrain. The extraordinary absence of logic as well as
+toleration which made the Reformers unable to see what a lame conclusion
+this was after their own struggle for freedom, and that they were
+exactly following the example of their adversaries, need not be
+remarked. John Knox thought it a quite sufficient answer to say that the
+mass was idolatry and his own ways of thinking absolutely and certainly
+true; but so of course has the Roman Catholic Church done when the
+impulse of persecution was strongest in her. There is one only thing to
+be said in favour of the Reformers, and that is, that while a number of
+good men had been sacrificed at the stake for the Reformed doctrines, no
+one was burned for saying mass; the worst that happened, notwithstanding
+their fierce enactments, being the exposure in the pillory of a priest.
+Rotten eggs and stones are bad arguments either in religion or
+metaphysics, but not so violently bad as fire and flame.
+
+Thus the Reformed religion was established in Scotland, and Knox settled
+in St. Giles's for the remainder of his life. Whether he was at once
+placed in the picturesque house with its panelled rooms and
+old-fashioned comfort and gracefulness which still bears his name,
+standing out in a far-seeing angle from which he could contemplate the
+abounding life of the High Street, the great parish in which half his
+life was spent, is not certain; but it was a most fit and natural
+lodging for the minister of St. Giles's. And for the rest of his life,
+with very few intervals, all the stream of public life in Scotland
+flowed about this dwelling. His importance in every national question,
+the continual references made to him, the appeals addressed to him by
+monarch and noble, as well as by burghers and retainers, show better
+than any statement the unique position he held. He was at this time a
+man of fifty-five. His Marjory Bowes, never I think mentioned but by
+this name, the "weill belovit sister" who is associated with so much of
+his life without one trace of human identity ever stealing through the
+mist that envelops her, was dead; disappearing noiseless into the grave,
+where it would seem her mother, Mrs. Bowes, the religious hypochondriac
+who had required so many solemn treatises in the shape of letters to
+comfort her, had preceded her daughter. Two boys, the sons of Marjory,
+were with their father in these panelled rooms. They both grew up, but
+not to any distinction; he did not spare the rod as appears in an after
+statement, but loved not to see them in tears, and probably was a fond
+father enough. All these things, however, are too petty to find any
+record in what he says of himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+UNDER QUEEN MARY
+
+
+When the Parliament which did these great things was over, the
+newly-established Kirk began to labour at its own development, supplying
+as far as was possible ministers to the more important centres. There
+were but thirteen available in all according to the lists of those
+appointed to independent charges: and though they no doubt were
+supplemented by various of the laymen who had already been authorised to
+read prayers and preach in the absence of other qualified persons--one
+of whom, Erskine of Dun, became one of the superintendents of the new
+organisation--the clerical element must have been very small in
+comparison with the number of the faithful and the power and influence
+accorded to the preachers. When these indispensable arrangements had
+been made the chiefs of the Reformers began to draw up the Book of
+Discipline,--a compendium of the Constitution of the Church establishing
+her internal order, the provisions to be made for her, her powers in
+dealing with the people in general, and special sinners in
+particular,--as the Confession of Faith was of her doctrines and belief.
+But this was a much harder morsel for the lords to swallow. Many a stout
+spirit of the Congregation had held manfully for the Reformed faith and
+escaped with delight from the exactions and corruptions of the Romish
+clergy who yet had not schooled his mind to give up the half of his
+living, the fat commendatorship or priory which had been obtained for
+him by the highest influence, and upon which he had calculated as a
+lawful provision for himself and his family. One would have supposed
+that the meddling and keen supervision of every act of life, which was
+involved in the Church's stern claim of discipline, would also have
+alarmed and revolted a body of men not all conformed to the purest
+models of morality. But this seems to have troubled them little in
+comparison with the necessity of giving up their share of Church lands
+and ecclesiastical wealth generally, in order to provide for the
+preachers, and the needs of education and charity. "Everything that
+repugned to their corrupt affections was termed in their mockage 'devout
+imaginations,'" says Knox: and it was no doubt Lethington from whose
+quiver this winged word came, with so many more.
+
+[Illustration: HOLYROOD PALACE AND ARTHUR'S SEAT]
+
+A number of the lords, however, subscribed to the Book of Discipline
+though with reluctance, but some, and among them several of the most
+staunch supporters of the Reformation, held back. Knox had himself been
+placed in an independent position by his congregation, the citizens of
+Edinburgh, and he was therefore more free to press stipulations which in
+no way could be supposed to be for his own interest: but he evidently
+had not taken into account the strong human disposition to keep what has
+been acquired and the extreme practical difficulty of persuading men to
+a sacrifice of property. In other matters too there were drawbacks not
+sufficiently realised. There can be no grander ideal than that of a
+theocracy, a commonwealth entirely ruled and guided by sacred law: but
+when it is brought to practice even by the most enlightened, and men's
+lives are subjected to the keen inspection of an ecclesiastical board
+new to its functions, and eager for perfection, which does not disdain
+the most minute detail, nor to listen to the wildest rumours, the high
+ideal is apt to fall into the most intolerable petty tyranny. And
+notwithstanding the high exaltation of many minds, and the wonderful
+intellectual and emotional force which was expended every day in that
+pulpit of St. Giles's, swaying as with great blasts and currents of
+religious feeling the minds of the great congregation that filled the
+aisles of the cathedral, it is to be doubted whether Edinburgh was a
+very agreeable habitation in those days of early fervour, when the
+Congregation occupied the chief place everywhere, and men's thoughts
+were not as yet distracted by the coming of the Queen. During this
+period there occurs a curious and most significant story of an Edinburgh
+mob and riot, which might be placed by the side of the famous Porteous
+mob of later days, and which throws a somewhat lurid light upon the
+record of this most triumphant moment of the early Reformation. The
+Papists and bishops, Knox says, had stirred up the rasckall multitude to
+"make a Robin Hood." We may remark that he never changes his name for
+the mob, of which he is always sternly contemptuous. When it destroys
+convents and altars he flatters it (though he acknowledges sometimes a
+certain ease in finding the matter thus settled for him) with no better
+a title. He was no democrat though the most independent of citizens. The
+vulgar crowd had at no time any attraction for him.
+
+It seems no very great offence to "make a Robin Hood": but it is evident
+this popular festival had been always an occasion of rioting and
+disorderly behaviour since it was condemned by various acts of previous
+Parliaments. It will strike the reader, however, with dismay and horror
+to find that one of the ringleaders having been taken, he was condemned
+to be hanged, and a gibbet erected near the Cross to carry this sentence
+into execution. The _Diurnal of Occurrents_ gives by far the fullest and
+most graphic account of what followed. The trades rose in anxious
+tumult, at once angry and terrified.
+
+    "The craftsmen made great solicitations at the hands of the provost,
+    John Knox minister, and the baillie, to have gotten him relieved,
+    promising that he would do anything possible to be done saving his
+    life--who would do nothing but have him hanged. And when the time of
+    the poor man's hanging approached, and that the poor man was come to
+    the gibbet with the ladder upon which the said cordwainer should
+    have been hanged, the craftsman's children (apprentices?) and
+    servants past to armour; and first they housed Alexander Guthrie and
+    the provost and baillies in the said Alexander's writing booth, and
+    syne come down again to the Cross, and dang down the gibbet and
+    brake it in pieces, and thereafter past to the tolbooth which was
+    then steekit: and when they could not apprehend the keys thereof
+    they brought hammers and dang up the said tolbooth door perforce,
+    the provost, baillies, and others looking thereupon; and when the
+    said door was broken up ane part of them passed in the same, and not
+    only brought the said condemned cordwainer forth of the said
+    tolbooth, but also all the remaining persons being thereintill: and
+    this done they passed up the Hie gate, to have past forth at the
+    Nether Bow."
+
+The shutting up of the provost and bailie in the "writing booth"--one of
+the wooden structures, no doubt, which hung about St. Giles's, as round
+so many other cathedrals, where a crowd of little industries were
+collected about the skirts of the great church, the universal centre of
+life--has something grimly comic in it, worthy of an Edinburgh mob.
+Guthrie's booth must have been at the west end, facing the Tolbooth, and
+the impotence of the authorities, thus compelled to look on while the
+apprentices and young men in their leather aprons, armed with the long
+spears which were kept ready in all the shops for immediate use, broke
+down the prison doors with their hammers and let the prisoners go
+free--must have added a delightful zest to the triumph of the rebels,
+who had so lately pleaded humbly before them for the victim's life, but
+in vain. The provost was Archibald Douglas of Kilspindie, a name little
+suitable for such a dilemma. When the rude mob, with their shouts and
+cries, had turned their backs, the imprisoned authorities were able to
+break out and take shelter in the empty Tolbooth; but when the crowd
+surged up again, finding the gates closed at the Nether Bow, into the
+High Street, a scuffle arose, a new "Clear the Causeway," though the
+defenders of order kept within the walls of the Tolbooth, and thence
+shot at the rioters, who returned their fire with hagbuts and
+stones--from three in the afternoon till eight o'clock in the evening,
+"and never ane man of the town stirred to defend their provost and
+baillies." Finally the Constable of the Castle was sent for, who made
+peace, the craftsmen only laying down their arms on condition not only
+of absolute immunity from punishment for the day's doings, but with an
+undertaking that all previous actions against them should be stopped,
+and their masters made to receive them again without grudge or
+punishment--clearly a complete victory for the rioters. This extorted
+guarantee was proclaimed at the Cross at nine o'clock on the lingering
+July night, in the soft twilight which departs so unwillingly from
+northern skies; and a curious scene it must have been, with the
+magistrates still cooped up behind the barred windows of the Tolbooth,
+the triumph of the mob filling the streets with uproar, and spectators
+no doubt at all the windows, story upon story, looking on, glad, can we
+doubt? of something to see which was riot without being bloodshed. John
+Knox adds an explanation of his conduct in his narrative of the
+occurrence, which somewhat softens our feeling towards him. He refused
+to ask for the life of the unlucky reveller not without a reason, such
+as it was.
+
+    "Who did answer that he had so oft solicited in their favour that
+    his own conscience accused him that they used his labours for no
+    other end but to be a patron to their impiety. For he had before
+    made intercession for William Harlow, James Fussell, and others that
+    were convict of the former tumult. They proudly said 'that if it was
+    not stayed both he and the Baillies should repent it.' Whereto he
+    answered 'He would not hurt his conscience for any fear of man.'"
+
+It was not perhaps the fault of Knox or his influence that a man should
+be sentenced to be hanged for the rough horseplay of a Robin Hood
+performance, or because he was "Lord of Inobedience" or "Abbot of
+Unreason," like Adam Woodcock; but the extraordinary exaggeration of a
+society which could think such a punishment reasonable is very curious.
+
+Equally curious is the incidental description of how "the Papists"
+crowded into Edinburgh after this, apparently swaggering about the
+streets, "and began to brag as that they would have defaced the
+Protestants." When the Reformers perceived the audacity of their
+opponents, they replied by a similar demonstration: "the brethren
+assembled together and went in such companies, and that in peaceable
+manner, that the Bishops and their bands forsook the causeway." Many a
+strange sight must the spectators at the high windows, the old women at
+their "stairheads," from which they inspected everything, have seen--the
+bishops one day, the ministers another, and John Knox, were it shade or
+shine, crossing the High Street with his staff every day to St. Giles's,
+and seeing everything, whatever occurred on either side of him, with
+those keen eyes.
+
+This tumult, however, was almost the end of the undisturbed reign of the
+Congregation. In August, Mary Stewart, with all the pomp that her poor
+country could muster for her, arrived in a fog, as so many lesser people
+have done, on her native shores; and henceforward the balance of power
+was strangely disturbed. The gravest of the lords owned a certain
+divergence from the hitherto unbroken claims of religious duty, and a
+hundred softnesses and forbearances stole in, which were far from being
+according to the Reformer's views. The new reign began with a startling
+test of loyalty to conviction, which apparently had not been
+anticipated, and which came with a shock upon the feelings even of those
+who loved the Queen most. The first Sunday which Mary spent in Holyrood,
+preparations were made for mass in the chapel, probably with no
+foresight of the effect likely to be produced. Upon this a sudden tumult
+arose in the very ante-chambers. "Shall that idol be suffered again to
+take its place in this realm? It shall not," even the courtiers said to
+each other. The Master of Lindsay, that grim Lindsay of the Byres, so
+well known among Mary's adversaries, standing with some gentlemen of
+Fife in the courtyard, declared that "the idolatrous priests should die
+the death." In this situation of danger the Lord James, afterwards so
+well known as Murray, the Queen's brother, put himself in the breach. He
+"took upon him to keep the door of the chapel." There was no man in
+Scotland more true to the faith, and none more esteemed in the
+Congregation. He excused himself after for this act of true charity by
+saying that his object was to prevent any Scot from entering while the
+mass was proceeding: but Knox divined that it was to protect the priest,
+and preserve silence and sanctity for the service, though he disapproved
+it, that Murray thus intervened. The Reformers did not appreciate the
+good brother's devotion. Knox declared that he was more afraid of one
+mass than of ten thousand armed men, and the arches of St. Giles's rang
+with his alarm, his denunciation, his solemn warning. He recounts,
+however, how by degrees this feeling softened among those who frequented
+the Court. "There were Protestants found," he says, "that were not
+ashamed at tables and other open places to ask 'Why may not the Queen
+have her mass, and the form of her religion? What can that hurt us, or
+our religion?' until by degrees this indulgence rose to a warmer and
+stronger sentiment. 'The Queen's mass and her priests will we maintain:
+this hand and this rapier shall fight in their defence.'" One can well
+imagine the chivalrous youth or even the grave baron, with generous
+blood in his veins, who, with hand upon the hilt of the too ready sword,
+would dare even Knox's frown with this outcry; and in these days it is
+the champion of the Queen and of her conscience who secures our
+sympathy. But the Reformer had at least the cruel force of logic on his
+side, the severe logic which decreed the St. Bartholomew. To stamp out
+the previous faith was the only policy on either side.
+
+Then, as now, we think, there are few even of those who are forced to
+believe that the after-accusations against Queen Mary were but too
+clearly proved, who will not look back with a compunctious tenderness
+upon that early and bright beginning of her career. So strong a sense of
+remorseful pity, and the intolerableness of such a fate, overcomes the
+spectator, that he who stands by and looks on, knowing all that is
+coming, can scarcely help feeling that even he, unborn, might send a
+shout from out the dim futurity to warn her. She came with so much hope,
+so eagerly, to her new kingdom, so full of pleasure and interest and
+readiness to hear and see, and to be pleased with everything--even John
+Knox, that pestilent preacher, of whom she must have heard so much; he
+who had written the book against women which naturally made every woman
+indignant yet curious, keenly desirous to see him, to question him, to
+put him on his defence. I think great injustice has been done to both in
+the repeated interviews in which the sentimentalist perceives nothing
+but a harsh priest upbraiding a lovely woman and making her weep; and
+the sage of sterner mettle sees an almost sublime sight, a prophet
+unmoved by the meretricious charms of a queen of hearts. Neither of
+these exaggerated views will survive, we believe, a simple reading of
+the interviews themselves, especially in Knox's account of them. He is
+not merciless nor Mary silly. One would almost fancy that she liked the
+encounter which matched her own quick wit against the tremendous old man
+with his "blast against women," his deep-set fiery eyes, his sovereign
+power to move and influence the people. He was absolutely a novel
+personage to Mary: their conversations are like a quick glancing of
+polished weapons--his, too heavy for her young brilliancy of speech and
+nature, crushing with ponderous force the light-flashing darts of
+question; but she, no way daunted, comprehending him, meeting full in
+the face the prodigious thrust. A brave young creature of twenty
+confronting the great Reformer, in single combat so to speak, and
+retiring from the field, not triumphant indeed, but with all the honours
+of war, and a blessing half extorted from him at the end, she secures a
+sympathy which the weaker in such a fight does not always obtain, but
+which we cannot deny to her in her bright intelligence and brave defence
+of her faith. When his friends asked him, after this first interview,
+what he thought of the Queen, he gave her credit for "a proud mind, a
+crafty wit, and an indurate heart." But curiously enough, though the
+effect is not unprecedented, the faithfulness of genius baulks the
+prejudices of the writer, and there is nowhere a brighter or more genial
+representation of Mary than that which is to be found in a history full
+of abuse of her and vehement vituperation. She is "mischievous Marie," a
+vile woman, a shameless deceiver; every bad name that can be coined by a
+mediaeval fancy, not unlearned in such violences; but when he is face to
+face with this woman of sin it is not in Knox to give other than a true
+picture, and that--apart from the grudging acknowledgment of her
+qualities and indication of evil intentions divined--is almost always an
+attractive one.
+
+He, too, shows far from badly in the encounter. In this case, as in so
+many others, the simple record denuded of all gloss gives at once a much
+better and we do not doubt much more true representation of the two
+remarkable persons involved, than when loaded with explanations, either
+from other people or from themselves. It cannot be said that Knox is
+just to Mary in the opinions he expresses of her, as he is in the
+involuntary picture which his inalienable truthfulness to fact forces
+from him. It must be remembered, however, that his history was written
+after the disastrous story had advanced nearly to its end, and when the
+stamp of crime (as Knox and so many more believed) had thrown a sinister
+shade upon all her previous life. Looking back upon the preliminaries
+which led to such wild confusion and misery, it was not unnatural that a
+man so absolute in judgment should perceive in the most innocent bygone
+details indications of depravity. It is one (whether good or bad we will
+not say) consequence of the use and practice of what may, to use a
+modern word, be called society, that men are less disposed to believe in
+the existence of monstrous and hideous evil, that they do not attach an
+undue importance to trifles nor take levity for vice. Knox had all the
+limitations of mind natural to his humble origin, and his profession,
+and the special disadvantage which must attach to the habit of
+investigating by means of popular accusation and gossip, problematical
+cases of immorality. He was able to believe that the Queen, when retired
+into her private apartments with her ladies, indulged in "skipping not
+very comelie for honest women," and that all kinds of brutal orgies went
+on at court--incidents certainly unnecessary to prove her after-guilt,
+and entirely out of keeping with all the surrounding associations, as if
+Holyrood had been a changehouse in "Christ Kirk on the green." It did
+not offend his sense of the probable or likely that such insinuations
+should be made, and he recorded them accordingly not as insinuations but
+as facts, in a manner only possible to that conjoint force of ignorance
+and scorn which continually makes people of one class misconceive and
+condemn those of another. Dancing was in those days the most decorous of
+performances: but if Mary had been proved to have danced a stately _pas
+seul_ in a minuet, it was to Knox, who knew no better, as if she had
+indulged in the wildest bobbing of a country fair--nay, he would
+probably have thought the high-skipping rural performer by far the more
+innocent of the two.
+
+This is but an instance of many similar misconceptions with which the
+colour of the picture is heightened. An impassioned spectator looking on
+with a foregone conclusion in his mind, never apparently able to
+convince himself that vice does not always wear her trappings, but is
+probably much more dangerous when she observes the ordinary modesties of
+outward life, is always apt to be misled in this way. The state of
+affairs in which a great body of public men, not only ministers, but
+noble men and worthy persons of every degree, could personally address
+the Queen, and that almost in the form of an accusation couched in the
+most vehement terms, because of a libertine raid made by a few young
+gallants in the night, on a house supposed to be inhabited by a woman of
+damaged character, is inconceivable to us--a certain parochial
+character, a pettiness as of a village, thus comes into the great
+national struggle. The Queen's uncle, who had accompanied her to
+Scotland, was one of the young men concerned, along with Earl Bothwell
+and another. "The horror of this fact and the raretie of it commoved all
+godlie hearts," said Knox--and yet there was no lack of scandals in that
+age notwithstanding the zeal of purification. When the courtiers,
+alarmed by this commination (in which every kind of spiritual vengeance
+upon the realm and its rulers was denounced), asked, "Who durst avow
+it?" the grim Lindsay replied, "A thousand gentlemen within Edinburgh."
+Yet if Edinburgh was free from disorders of this kind, it was certainly
+far from free of other contentions. The proclamations from the Cross
+during Mary's brief reign give us the impression of being almost
+ceaseless. The Queen's Majestie proclaimed by the heralds now one
+decree, now another, with a crowd hastily forming to every blast of the
+trumpet: and the little procession in their tabards, carrying a moving
+patch of bright colour and shining ornament up all the long picturesque
+line of street, both without and within the city gates, was of almost
+daily occurrence. It was some compensation at least for the evils of an
+uncertain rule to have that delightful pageant going on for ever.
+Sometimes there would arise a protest, and one of the lords, all
+splendid in his jewelled bonnet, would step forward to the Lord Lyon and
+"take instruments and crave extracts," according to the time-honoured
+jargon of law; while from his corner window perhaps John Knox looked
+out, his eager pen already drawn to answer, the tumultuous impassioned
+sentences rushing to his lips.
+
+When it was found that no punishment was to follow that "enormitie and
+fearful attemptal," but that "nightly masking" and riotous behaviour
+continued, some of the lords took the matter in their own hands, and a
+great band known as "my Lord Duke his friends" took the causeway to keep
+order in the town. When the news was brought to Earl Bothwell that the
+Hamiltons were "upon the gait," there were vows made on his side that
+"the Hamiltons should be driven not only out of the town but out of the
+country." The result, however, of this sudden surging up of personal
+feud to strengthen the bitterness of the quarrel between licence and
+repression, was that the final authorities were roused to make the fray
+an affair of State; and Murray and Huntly were sent from the abbey with
+their companies to stop the impending struggle. These sudden night
+tumults, the din of the struggle and clashing of the swords, the
+gleaming torches of the force who came to keep order, were sights very
+familiar to Edinburgh. But this fray brings upon us, prominent in the
+midst of the nightly brawls, the dark and ominous figure whose trace in
+history is so black, so brief, and so disastrous--once only had he
+appeared clearly before, when he intercepted in the interest of the
+Queen Regent the money sent from England to the Congregation. Now it is
+in a very different guise. Bothwell, as probably the ringleader in the
+disorders of the young nobles, was apparently the only person punished.
+He was confined to his own lodging, and it was apparently at this time
+that he sought the intervention of Knox, who seems to have been the
+universal referee. Knox gladly granted his prayer for an interview,
+which was brought him by a citizen of Edinburgh, with whom the riotous
+Earl had dealings. No doubt the Reformer expected a new convert; and
+indeed Bothwell had his preliminary shrift to make, and confessed his
+repentance of his previous action against the Congregation, which he
+said was done "by the entysements of the Queen Regent." But the Earl's
+object was not entirely of this pious kind. He informed Knox that he had
+offended the Earl of Arran, and that he was most anxious to recover that
+gentleman's favour, on the ground, apparently, that a feud with so great
+a personage compelled him to maintain a great retinue, "a number of
+wicked and unprofitable men, to the utter destruction of my living."
+
+Knox received with unusual favour this petition for his intervention,
+and for (to the reader) an unexpected reason: "Albeit to this hour," he
+said, "it hath not chanced me to speak to your lordship face to face,
+yet have I borne a good mind to your honour, and have been sorry in my
+heart of the troubles that I have heard you to be involved in. For, my
+lord, my grandfather, goodsire and father, have served your lordship's
+predecessors, and some of them have died under their standards; and this
+is part of the obligation of our Scottish kindness." He goes on
+naturally to exhort his visitor to complete repentance and "perfyte
+reconciliation with God;" but ends by promising his good offices for the
+wished-for reconciliation with man. In this mediation Knox was
+successful: and as the extraordinary chance would have it, it was at the
+Kirk of Field, doomed to such dismal association for ever with
+Bothwell's name, that the meeting with Arran, under the auspices of
+Knox--strange conjunction!--took place, and friendship was made between
+the two enemies. Knox made them a little oration as they embraced each
+other, exhorting them to "study that amitie may ensure all former
+offences being forgotten."
+
+This is strange enough when one remembers the terrible tragedy which was
+soon to burst these walls asunder; but stranger still was to follow. The
+two adversaries thus reconciled came to the sermon together next day,
+and there was much rejoicing over the new penitent. But four days after,
+Arran, with a distracted countenance, followed Knox home after the
+preaching, and calling out "I am treacherously betrayed," burst into
+tears. He then narrated with many expressions of horror the cause of his
+distress. Bothwell had made a proposal to him to carry off the Queen and
+place her in Dunkeld Castle in Arran's hands (who was known to be half
+distraught with love of Mary), and to kill Murray, Lethington, and the
+others that now misguided her, so that he and Arran should rule alone.
+The agitation of the unfortunate young man, his wild looks, his
+conviction that he was himself ruined and shamed for ever, seem to have
+enlightened Knox at once as to the state of his mind. Arran sent letters
+all over the country--to his father, to the Queen, to Murray--repeating
+this strange tale, but soon betrayed by the endless delusions which took
+possession of him that his mind was entirely disordered. The story
+remains one of those historical puzzles which it is impossible to solve.
+Was there truth in it--a premature betrayal of the scheme which
+afterwards made Bothwell infamous? did this wild suggestion drive
+Arran's mind, never too strong, off the balance? or was it some strange
+insight of madness into the other's dark spirit? These are questions
+which no one will ever be able to answer. It seems to have caused much
+perturbation in the Court and its surroundings for the moment, but is
+not, strangely enough, ever referred to when events quicken and Bothwell
+shows himself as he was in the madman's dream.
+
+The chief practical question on which Knox's mind and his vigorous pen
+were engaged during this early period of Mary's reign was the
+all-important question to the country and Church of the provision for
+the maintenance of ministers, for education, and for the poor--the
+revenues, in short, of the newly-established Church, these three objects
+being conjoined together as belonging to the spiritual dominion. The
+proposal made in the Book of Discipline, ratified and confirmed by the
+subscription of the lords, was that the tithes and other revenues of the
+old Church, apart from all the tyrannical additions which had ground the
+poor (the Uppermost Cloth, Corpse present, Pasch offerings, etc.),
+should be given over to the Congregation for the combined uses above
+described. This in principle had been conceded, though in practice it
+was extremely hard to extract those revenues from the strong secular
+hands into which in many cases they had fallen, and which had not even
+ceased to exact the Corpse present, etc. The Reformers had strongly
+urged the necessity of having the Book of Discipline ratified by the
+Queen on her arrival; but this suggestion had been set aside even by the
+severest of the lords as out of place for the moment. To such
+enlightened critics as Lethington the whole book was a devout
+imagination, a dream of theorists never to be realised. The Church,
+however, with Knox at her head, was bent upon securing this
+indispensable provision, though it may well be supposed that now, with
+not only the commendators and pensioners but the bishops themselves and
+other ecclesiastical functionaries, inspirited and encouraged by the
+Queen's favour, and hoping that the good old times might yet come back,
+it was more difficult than ever to get a hearing for their claim. And
+great as was the importance of a matter involving the very existence of
+the new ecclesiastical economy, it was, even in the opinion of the
+wisest, scarcely so exciting as the mass in the Queen's chapel, against
+which the ministers preached, and every careful burgher shook his head;
+although the lords who came within the circle of the Court were greatly
+troubled, knowing not how to take her religious observances from the
+Queen, they who had just at the cost of years of conflict gained freedom
+for their own. On one occasion when a party of those who had so toiled
+and struggled together during all the troubled past were met in the
+house of one of the clerk registers, the question was discussed between
+them whether subjects might interfere to put down the idolatry of their
+prince--when all the nobles took one side, and John Knox, his
+colleagues, and a humble official or two were all that stood on the
+other. As a manner of reconciling the conflicting opinions Knox was
+commissioned to put the question to the Church of Geneva, and to ask
+what in the circumstances described the Church there would recommend to
+be done. But the question was never put, being transferred to
+Lethington's hands, then back again to those of Knox, perhaps a mere
+expedient to still an unprofitable discussion rather than a serious
+proposal.
+
+While these questions were being hotly and angrily discussed on all
+sides, the preachers and their party growing more and more pertinacious,
+the lords impatient, angry, chafed and fretted beyond bearing by the
+ever-recurring question in which they were no doubt conscious, with an
+additional prick of irritation, that they were abandoning their own
+side, Mary, still fearing no evil, very conciliatory to all about her,
+and entirely convinced no doubt of winning the day, went lightly upon
+her way, hunting, hawking, riding, making long journeys about the
+kingdom, enjoying a life which, if more sombre and poor outwardly, was
+far more original, unusual, and diverting than the luxurious life of the
+French Court under the shadow of a malign and powerful mother-in-law. It
+did not seem perhaps of great importance to her that the preachers
+should breathe anathemas against every one who tolerated the mass in her
+private chapel, or that the lords and their most brilliant spokesman,
+her secretary Lethington, should threaten to stop the Assemblies of the
+Church in retaliation. The war of letters, addresses, proclamations,
+which arose once more between the contending parties is wonderful in an
+age which might have been thought more given to the sword than the pen.
+But it at last became evident that something must be done in one way or
+the other to stop the mouth of the indomitable Knox, with whom were all
+the central mass of the people, not high enough to be moved by the
+influences of the Court, not low enough to fluctuate with every fickle
+popular fancy. Finally it was decided that the Queen should issue a
+decree for a valuation of all ecclesiastical possessions in Scotland--a
+necessary preliminary measure, but turned into foolishness by the
+stipulation that these possessions should be divided into three parts,
+two to remain with the present possessors, while the remaining portion
+should be divided between the ministers and herself. This proposed
+arrangement, with which naturally every one was discontented, called
+forth a flight of furious jests. "Good-morrow, my lords of the
+Twa-pairts," said Huntly to the array, spiritual and secular, who were
+to retain the lion's share; while, on the other hand, Knox in the pulpit
+denounced the division. "I see twa parts partly given to the Devil, and
+the third maun be divided between God and the Devil," he cried. "Bear
+witness to me that this day I say it: ere it be long the Devil shall
+have three parts of the third; and judge you then what God's portion
+shall be."--"The Queen will not have enough for a pair of shoes at the
+year's end after the ministers are sustained," said Lethington; and Knox
+records the "dicton or proverb" which arose, as such sayings do, out of
+the crowd, in respect to the official, the Comptroller, who had charge
+of this hated partition--"The Laird of Pitarrow," cried the popular
+voice, "was ane earnest professor of Christ; but the meikle Deil receive
+the Controller."
+
+About this time Knox had the opportunity he had long coveted of a public
+disputation upon the mass; but it was held far from the centre of
+affairs, at the little town of Maybole in Ayrshire, where Quentin
+Kennedy of the house of Cassilis, Abbot of Crossraguel (upon whose death
+George Buchanan secured his appointment as pensioner), announced himself
+as ready to meet all comers on this subject. Knox would seem to have
+attached little importance to it, as he does no more than mention it in
+his History; but a full report exists of the controversy, which has much
+more the air of a personal wrangle than of a grave and solemn
+discussion. "Ye said," cries the abbot, "ye did abhor all chiding and
+railing, but nature passes nurture with you."--"I will neither change
+nature nor nurture with you for all the profits of Crossraguel," says
+the preacher. These amenities belonged to the period. But the arguments
+seem singularly feeble on both sides. The plea of the abbot rested upon
+the statement in the Old Testament that Melchizedec offered bread and
+wine to God. On the other side a simple denial of this, and reassertion
+that the mass is an idolatrous rite, seems to have sufficed for Knox. It
+is almost impossible to believe that they did not say something better
+worth remembering on both sides. What they seem to have done is to have
+completely wearied out their auditors, who sat for three days to listen
+to the altercation, and then broke up in disgust. It is curious that
+Knox, so unanswerable in personal controversy, should have been so
+little effectual (so far as we can judge) in this. There is a discussion
+in another part of the History upon baptism, in which he denounces the
+Romish ceremonies attached to that rite as unscriptural, precisely as if
+the Apostles had described in full the method to be employed.
+
+It is probable that it was the progress of Knox through the West on this
+occasion which encouraged and stimulated the gentlemen of that district,
+always the most strenuous of Reformers, the descendants of the Lollards,
+the forefathers of the Whigs, to take the law into their own hands in
+respect to those wandering and dispossessed priests who, encouraged by
+the example and support of the Queen, began to appear here and there in
+half-ruined chapels or parish churches to set up a furtive altar and say
+a mass, at peril if not of their lives at least of their liberty. When
+Knox returned to Edinburgh the Queen was at Lochleven, not then a prison
+but a cheerful seclusion, with the air blowing fresh from the pleasant
+loch, and the plains of Kinross and Fife all broad and peaceful before
+her, for the open-air exercises in which she delighted. She sent for
+Knox to this retirement and threw herself upon his aid and charity to
+stop these proceedings. It was not the first time they had met. Two
+previous interviews had taken place, in the first of which Mary gaily
+encountered the Stern author of the "Blast" upon that general subject,
+and won from him a blessing at the end of the brief duel in which there
+was no bitterness. The second had been on the occasion when Knox, in the
+pulpit, objected to the dancing and festivities of Holyrood; but still
+was of no very formidable character. I cannot doubt that Mary found
+something very humorous and original in the obstinate and dauntless
+prophet whom she desired to come to her and tell her privately when he
+objected to her conduct, and not to make it the subject of his
+sermons--a very natural and apparently gracious request: from which Knox
+excused himself, however, as having no time to come to her chamber door
+and whisper in her ear. "I cannot tell even what other men will judge of
+me," he said, "that at this time of day am absent from my buke, and
+waiting upon the Court."--"Ye will not always be at your buke," said the
+Queen. And it was on this second interview that as he left the presence
+with a composed countenance some foolish courtier remarked of Knox that
+he was not afraid, and elicited the answer, noble and dignified if a
+little truculent and exaggerated after an encounter not at all solemn,
+"Why should the pleasing face of a gentlewoman afray me? I have looked
+in the faces of many angry men and yet have not been affrayed above
+measour"--a most characteristic reply.
+
+[Illustration: LOCHLEVEN]
+
+Mary, however, had another purpose when she sent for Knox to Lochleven,
+to help her in a strait. "She travailed with him earnestly two hours
+before her supper that he would be the instrument to persuade the people
+and principally the gentlemen of the West not to put hands to punish
+(the priests) any more for the using of themselves in their religion as
+pleased them." The Reformer perceiving her intention assured her that if
+she would herself punish these malefactors, no one would interfere; but
+he was immovable to any argument founded on the patent fact that he and
+his party had lately called that the persecution of God's saints which
+now they termed the execution of the law. Mary did not enter into this
+controversy; she kept to her point--the vindication of her own
+authority. "Will you," she said, "allow that they should take my sword
+in their hand?" a question to which Knox had his answer plain and very
+full, that the sword was God's, and that Jezebel's priests were not
+spared by Elijah nor Agag by Samuel because the royal authority was in
+their favour. It would be difficult to conceive anything more
+exasperating than such an immovable front of dogmatism; and it was a
+wonder of self-control that Mary should only have shown herself
+"somewhat offended" when she broke off this hopeless argument, and
+withdrew to supper. The Reformer thought he was dismissed; but before
+sunrise next morning two several messengers came to his chamber to bid
+him speak with the Queen before he took his departure. It was a May
+morning, and no doubt there was soon much cheerful commotion in the air,
+boats pushed forward to the landing steps with all that tinkle of water
+and din and jar of the oars which is so pleasant to those who love the
+lochs and streams--for Mary was bound upon a hawking expedition, and the
+preacher's second audience was to be upon the mainland. The Queen must
+have been up betimes while the mists still lay on the soft Lomonds, and
+the pearly grey of the northern skies had scarcely turned to the glory
+of the day: and probably the preacher who was growing old was little
+disposed to join the gay party whose young voices and laughter he could
+hear in his chamber, where he lay "before the sun"--setting out for the
+farther shore with a day's pleasure before them. It would be interesting
+to penetrate what were his thoughts as he was rowed across the loch at a
+more reasonable hour, when the sunshine shone on every ripple of the
+water, and the green hills lay basking in the light. Did he look with
+jealous eyes, and wonder whether the grey walls among the trees on St.
+Serf's isle were giving shelter to some idolatrous priest? or was his
+heart invaded by the beauty of the morning, the heavenly quiet, the
+murmur of soft sound? His mind was heavy we know with cares for the
+Church, fears for the stability of the Reformation itself, forebodings
+of punishment and cursings more habitual to his thoughts, and perhaps
+more congenial to the time, than prosperity and blessing. It might be
+even that a faint apprehension (not fear, for in his own person Knox had
+little occasion for fear even had he been of a timorous nature) of
+further trouble with the Queen overclouded his aspect: and if he caught
+a glimpse of the ladies and their cavaliers on the mainland, the joyous
+cavalcade would rouse no sympathetic pleasure, so sure was he that their
+frolics and youthful pleasure were leading to misery and doom--in which,
+alas! he was too sooth a prophet.
+
+But when Knox met the Queen's Majestie "be-west Kinross," Mary all
+bright with exercise and pleasure had forgotten, or else had no mind to
+remember, the offence of the previous night. She began to talk to him of
+ordinary matters, of Ruthven who had (save the mark!)--dark Ruthven not
+many years removed from that dreadful scene in the closet at
+Holyrood--offered her a ring, and other such lively trifles. She then
+turned to more serious discourse, warning Knox against Alexander Gordon,
+titular Bishop of Athens, "who was most familiar with the said John in
+his house and at his table," and whose professions of faith seemed so
+genuine that he was about to be made Superintendent of Dumfries. "If you
+knew him as well as I do, you would never promote him to that office nor
+to any other within your Kirk," she said. "Thereintil was not the Queen
+deceived," says Knox, though without any acknowledgment of the service
+she did the Church: for on her hint he caused further inquiries to be
+made, and foiled the Bishop. Again, as so often, a picture arises before
+our eyes most significant and full of interest. Mary upon her horse,
+perhaps pausing now and then to glance afar into the wide space, where
+her hawk hung suspended a dark speck in the blue, or whirled and circled
+downward to strike its prey, while the preacher on his hackney paused
+reluctant, often essaying to take his leave, retained always by a new
+subject. Suddenly she broached another and more private matter, turning
+aside from the attendants to tell Knox of the new troubles which had
+broken out in the house of Argyle between the Earl and his wife, who was
+Mary's illegitimate sister. The Reformer had already settled a quarrel
+between this pair, and the Queen begged him to interfere again, to write
+to Argyle and smooth the matter over if possible. Then, the time having
+now arrived when she must dismiss him, the field waiting for her and the
+sport suspended, Mary turned again for a parting word.
+
+    "And now," said she, "as touching our reasoning yesternight I
+    promise to do as ye required. I sall cause summon the offenders, and
+    ye shall know that I shall minister justice."
+
+    "I am assured then," said he, "that ye shall please God and enjoy
+    rest and prosperity within your realm; which to your Majesty is more
+    profitable than all the Pope's power can be."
+
+We have heard enough and to spare about Mary's tears and the severity of
+Knox--here is a scene in which for once there is no severity, but
+everything cheerful, radiant, and full of hope. Was there in all
+Christendom a more hopeful princess, more gifted, more understanding,
+more wise? for it was not only that she had the heart to take (or seem
+to take) in a very hard matter the advice of the exasperating Reformer,
+entirely inaccessible to reason on that point at least as he was--but to
+give it, and that in a matter of real use to himself and his party. Was
+it all dissembling as Knox believed? or was there any possibility of
+public service and national advantage, and as happy and prosperous a
+life as was possible to a queen, before her when she turned smiling upon
+the strand and waved her hand to him as he rode away? Who can tell? That
+little tower of Lochleven, that dark water between its pastoral hills,
+had soon so different a tale to tell.
+
+[Illustration: QUEEN MARY'S BATH]
+
+Had Mary deserted her faith as it would have been such admirable policy
+to do; had she said, like the great Henry, that Scotland was well worth
+a mass or the sacrifice of a mass; had she turned round and persecuted
+the priests of her own Church as she now was about, for their safety and
+with a subterfuge excusable if ever subterfuge was, to pretend to
+do--would posterity have thought the better of her? Certainly it would
+not; but Knox would, and her path would have been a thousand times more
+clear. Only it has to be said at the end of all, that religion had
+little part in the woes of Mary. Had there been no Darnley or Bothwell
+in her path, had it been in her nature to take that wise resolution of
+Elizabeth's, wise for every woman who has great duties and position of
+her own, how wonderfully everything might have been changed! Such
+reflections, however, are very futile, though they are strangely
+fascinating.
+
+Knox wrote to Argyle immediately after with that plain speaking in which
+he delighted, and made the Earl very angry. It might well have been part
+of Mary's "craft," knowing that he was sure to do this, to embroil him
+with her brother-in-law. And she prosecuted her bishops to save them
+from the Westland lords, and imprisoned them gently to keep them out of
+harm's way. Neither of these acts was very successful, and it would seem
+that the mollifying impression that had been made upon Knox soon died
+away; for when the Queen opened the next Parliament he speaks of her
+splendour and that of her train in words more like those of a peevish
+scold than of a prophet and statesman. "All things mislyking the
+preachers," he says with candour, "they spoke boldly against the
+tarjatting of their tails, and against the rest of their vanity, which
+they affirmed should provoke God's vengeance not only against those
+foolish women, but against the whole Realm." God's vengeance was freely
+dealt out on all hands against those who disagreed with the speakers;
+but the silken trains that swept the ground, the wonderful clear
+starching of the delicate ruffs, the embroidered work of pearls and gems
+which the fashion of the time demanded, were but slight causes to draw
+forth the flaming sword. And that Parliament was very unsatisfactory to
+Knox and his friends; they tried to bring in a sumptuary law; they
+endeavoured to have immorality recognised as crime, and subjected to
+penalties as such; and above all, they attempted to obtain the
+ratification of various matters of discipline upon which Knox so pressed
+that the quarrel rose high between him and Murray, and there ensued a
+breach and lasting coolness--Murray being as unwilling to press Queen
+Mary into measures she disliked, as Knox was determined that only by
+doing so was God's vengeance to be averted. When the Parliament was over
+the preacher made his usual commentary upon it in the pulpit; warning
+the lords what miseries were sure to follow from their carelessness, and
+discussing the chances of the Queen's marriage with much freedom and
+boldness. Once more, though with more reason, was God's vengeance
+invoked. "This, my lords, will I say (note the day and bear witness
+after), whensoever the Nobilities of Scotland, professing the Lord
+Jesus, consents that ane infidel (and all Papists are infidels) shall be
+head to your Soverane, ye do so far as in ye lieth to banish Christ
+Jesus from this realm." This sermon was reported to Mary with
+aggravations, though it was offensive enough without any aggravations;
+and once more he was summoned to the presence. The Queen was "in a
+vehement furie," deeply offended, and in her nervous exasperation unable
+to refrain from tears, a penalty of weakness which is one of the most
+painful disabilities of women. "What have ye to do with my marriage?"
+she cried again and again, with that outburst which Knox describes
+somewhat brutally as "owling." His own bearing was manly though dogged.
+Naturally he did not withdraw an inch, but repeated to her the scope of
+his sermon with amplifications, while the gentler Erskine of Dun who
+accompanied him endeavoured to soothe the paroxysm of exasperated
+impatience and pain which Mary could not subdue, and for which no doubt
+she scorned herself.
+
+    "The said John stood still without any alteration of countenance,
+    while that the Queen gave place to her inordinate passion; and in
+    the end he said, 'Madam, in God's presence I speak, I never
+    delighted in the weeping of any of God's creatures; yea, I can
+    scarcely well abide the tears of my own boys whom my own hand
+    corrects, much less can I rejoice in your Majestie's weeping. But
+    seeing that I have offered you no just occasion to be offended, but
+    have spoken the truth as my vocation craves of me, I must sustain,
+    albeit unwillingly, your Majesty's tears rather than I dare hurt my
+    conscience or betray my Commonwealth through my silence.'"
+
+He was ordered to withdraw after this, and retired proud and silent to
+the ante-room where he had immediate proof what it was to lose the royal
+favour. Hitherto he had been, it is clear, a not unwelcome visitor: to
+Mary an original, something new in prickly opposition and eloquence,
+holding head against all her seductions, yet haply, at Lochleven at
+least, not altogether unmoved by them, and always interesting to her
+quick wit and intelligence; and Maister John had many friends among the
+courtiers. But now while he waited the Queen's pleasure, not knowing
+perhaps if she might not send him to the Castle or the Tolbooth in her
+wrath, all his fine acquaintances forsook him. He stood, "the said
+John," for an hour in that bustling ante-room, "as one whom men had
+never seen," only Lord Ochiltree who had come to Holyrood with him, and
+whose daughter he was about to marry, giving any sign of acquaintance to
+the disgraced preacher. And Knox was human: he loved the cold shade as
+little as any man, and the impertinences of all those butterfly
+courtiers moved him as such a man ought not to have been moved. He burst
+out suddenly upon the ladies who sat and whispered and tittered among
+themselves (no doubt) at his discomfiture. He would not have us think
+even then that his mind was disturbed; he merely said--
+
+    "Oh fayr Ladies, how pleasant were this life of yours if it should
+    ever abide, and then in the end that we might pass to heaven with
+    all this gay gear! But fie upon that Knave Death that will come
+    whether we will or not. And when he has laid on his arrest the foul
+    worms will be busy with this flesh be it never so fayre and so
+    tender, and the silly soul, I fear, shall be so feeble that it can
+    neither carry with it gold garnissing, tarjetting, pearls, nor
+    precious stones!"
+
+Knox was never called to the royal presence more, nor did Mary ever
+forgive him the exhibition of feminine weakness into which his severity
+had driven her. It was intolerable, no doubt, to her pride to have been
+betrayed into those tears, to have seen through them the same immovable
+countenance which had yielded to none of her arguments and cared nothing
+for her anger, and to have him finally compare her to his own boys whom
+his own hands corrected--the blubbering of schoolboys to the tears of a
+queen! There is perhaps always a mixture of the tragi-comic in every
+such scene, and this humiliating comparison, obtusely intended as a sort
+of blundering apology, but which brought the Queen's exasperation and
+mortification to a climax, and Knox's bitter assault upon the ladies in
+their fine dresses outside, give a humiliating poignancy to the
+exasperated feeling on both sides such as delights a cynic. It was the
+end of all personal encounter between the Queen and the preacher. She
+did not forgive him, and did her best to punish: but in their last and
+only subsequent meeting, Knox once more had the better of his royal
+adversary.
+
+He had never been during all his career in such stormy waters as now
+threatened to overwhelm him. Hitherto his bold proceedings had been
+justified by the support of the first men in the kingdom. The Lords of
+the Congregation, as well as that Congregation itself, the statesmen and
+"natural counsellors," as they call themselves, of Scotland, had been at
+his back: but now one by one they had fallen away. The Lord James, now
+called Murray, the greatest of all both in influence and character, had
+been the last to leave his side. The preachers, the great assembly that
+filled St. Giles's almost daily, the irreconcilables with whom it was a
+crime to temporise, and who would have all things settled their own way,
+formed, it is true, a large though much agitated backing; but the solid
+force of men who knew the world better than those absolute spirits, had
+for the moment abandoned the impracticable prophet, and the party of the
+Queen was eagerly on the watch to find some opportunity of crushing him
+if possible. It was not long before this occurred. While Mary was absent
+on one of those journeys through the kingdom which had been the constant
+habit of Scottish monarchs, the usual mass was celebrated in the Chapel
+of Holyrood, the priests who officiated there evidently feeling
+themselves authorised to continue their usual service even in the
+Queen's absence, for whose sake alone it was tolerated. But they were
+interrupted by "a zealous brother," and some little tumult rose, just of
+importance enough to justify the seizure of two offenders, who were
+bound under sureties to "underlie the law" at a given date, within three
+weeks of the offence. In the excited state of feeling which existed in
+the town this arrest was magnified into something serious, and "the
+brethren," consulting over the matter with perhaps involuntary
+exaggeration, as if the two rioters were in danger of their lives,
+concluded that Knox should write a circular letter to the Congregation
+at a distance, as had been done with such effect in the early days under
+the Queen Regent, bidding them assemble in Edinburgh upon the day fixed
+for the trial. A copy of this letter was carried to the Court then at
+Stirling and afforded the very occasion required. Murray returned in
+haste from the north, and all the nobility were called to Edinburgh to
+inquire into this bold semi-royal summons issued to the Queen's lieges
+without her authority and in resistance to her will. "The Queen was not
+a little rejoiced," says Knox, "for she thought once to be revenged of
+that her great enemy." And it was evident that Mary did look forward to
+the satisfaction of crushing this arrogant priest and achieving a final
+triumph over the man whom she could neither awe nor charm out of his own
+determined way.
+
+[Illustration: WEST DOORWAY, HOLYROOD CHAPEL]
+
+The commotion produced by these proceedings was unexampled. One after
+another of the men who had by Knox's side led the entire movement of the
+Reformation and to whom he had been spokesman, secretary, and
+counsellor, came with grave looks and anxious urgency to do what they
+could to procure his submission. The Master of Maxwell, hitherto his
+great friend, but who now broke off from him entirely, was the first to
+appear; Then Speirs of Condie (whom he convinced), then Murray and
+Lethington with whom he held one of those long arguments which were of
+frequent recurrence, and which are always highly dramatic--the dour
+preacher holding his own like a stone wall before all the assaults,
+light, brilliant, and varied, of the accomplished secretary, whose smile
+of contempt at the unconquerable personage before him and his "devout
+imaginations" is often mingled with that same exasperation which drove
+Mary to the womanish refuge of tears. But no one could move him. And at
+last the day, or rather night, of the trial came.
+
+It was in December, the darkest moment of the year, between six and
+seven in the evening, when the Lords assembled at Holyrood, and the
+formidable culprit was introduced to their presence. The rumour had
+spread in the town that Knox was to be put on his trial, and the whole
+Congregation came with him down the Canongate, filling the court of
+Holyrood with a dark surging mass of men, who crowded the very stairs
+towards the room in which the council was held. The lords were "talking
+ane with another" in the preliminary moment before the council was
+formed, when Knox entered the room. They were then told to take their
+places, headed on one side by "the Duke" Chatelherault, and on the other
+by Argyle. Murray, Glencairn, Ruthven, the Earl Marischal, Knox's tried
+companions in arms, who had stood with him through many a dark day, took
+their seats with averted looks, his judges now, and judges offended,
+repulsed, their old sympathies aggravating the breach. Then came the
+Queen "with no little worldly pomp," and took the chair between those
+two rows of troubled counsellors, Lethington at one side, Maxwell at the
+other. She gave an angry laugh as she took her place. "Wat ye[4] whereat
+I laugh?" she said (or is reported to have said) to one of these
+intimate supporters. "Yon man gart me greit, and grat never tear
+himself: I will see if I can gar him greit."
+
+[4] It would be curious to know what language Mary spoke when she is
+reported to have made these very characteristic utterances. It is one of
+the points in the discussion about the famous Casket letters that she
+could not write Scots. Did she make love and make war, and hold courts
+and councils of this grave description, in French or in a broken version
+of her native tongue? No one ever says so, and it is surely a thing that
+could not be passed without remark.
+
+The proceedings being opened, Knox's letter was read. It was not a
+conciliatory letter, being in reality a call if not to arms yet to that
+intervention of an army of resolute men which had overawed the
+authorities again and again in earlier times. It contained the usual
+vehement statements about that crime of saying mass which, or even to
+permit it, was the most desperate of public offences in Knox's eyes: and
+there is little doubt that it exaggerated the danger of the crisis, and
+contained at least one misleading statement as to matters of which there
+was no proof. When it was read a moment of silence ensued, and then
+Lethington spoke:--
+
+    "Maister Knox, are ye not sorry from your heart, and do ye not
+    repent that sic ane letter has passed your pen, and from you is come
+    to the knowledge of others?"
+
+    John Knox answered, "My Lord Secretaire, before I repent I must be
+    taught my offence."
+
+    "Offence!" said Lethington; "if there were no more but the
+    convocation of the Queen's lieges the offence cannot be denied."
+
+    "Remember yourself, my lord," said the other, "there is a difference
+    between ane lawful convocation and ane unlawful. If I have been
+    guilty in this, I have often offended since I came last in Scotland;
+    for what convocation of the brethren has ever been to this day with
+    which my pen served not? Before this no man laid it to my charge as
+    a crime."
+
+    "Then was then," said Lethington, "and now is now. We have no need
+    of such convocations as sometime we have had."
+
+    John Knox answered, "The time that has been is even now before my
+    eyes; for I see the poor flock in no less danger now than it has
+    been at any time before, except that the Devil has gotten a vissoure
+    upon his face. Before he came in with his own face discovered by
+    open tyranny, seeking the destruction of all that has refused
+    idolatrie; and then I think ye will confess the brethren lawfully
+    assembled themselves for defence of their lives. And now the Devil
+    comes under the cloke of justice to do that which God would not
+    suffer him to do by strength."
+
+    "What is this?" said the Queen. "Methinks ye trifle with him. Who
+    gave him authoritie to make convocation of my lieges? Is not that
+    treason?"
+
+    "Na, Madam," said the Lord Ruthven, "for he makes convocation of the
+    people to hear prayer and sermon almost daily, and whatever your
+    Grace or others will think thereof, we think it no treason."
+
+    "Hold your peace," said the Queen, "and let him answer for himself."
+
+    "I began, Madam," said John Knox, "to reason with the Secretare,
+    whom I take to be ane far better dialectician than your Grace is,
+    that all convocations are not unlawful; and now my Lord Ruthven has
+    given the instance, which, if your Grace will deny, I shall address
+    me for the proof."
+
+    "I will say nothing," said the Queen, "against your religion, nor
+    against your convening to your sermons. But what authority have ye
+    to convocate my subjects when you will, without my commandment?"
+
+    "I have no pleasure," said John Knox, "to decline from the former
+    purpose. And yet, Madam, to satisfy your Grace's two questions I
+    answer, that at my will I never convened four persons in Scotland;
+    but at the order that the brethren has appointed I have given divers
+    advertisements and great multitudes have assembled thereupon. And if
+    your Grace complain that this was done without your Grace's
+    commandment, I answer, so has all that God has blessed within this
+    Realm, from the beginning of this action. And therefore, Madam, I
+    must be convicted by ane just law, that I have done against the
+    duties of God's messenger in writing this letter, before that either
+    I be sorry or yet repent for the doing of it, as my Lord Secretare
+    would persuade me; for what I have done I have done at the
+    commandment of the general Kirk of this realm; and therefore I think
+    I have done no wrong."
+
+This detailed report is in the form of an addendum to Knox's original
+manuscript, written hurriedly as if from dictation, as though in the
+leisure of his later days the Reformer had thought it well to enrich the
+story with so lifelike and well-remembered a scene. Nothing could be
+more animated than the introduction of the different personages of this
+grave tribunal. The long argument with Lethington which might have been
+carried on indefinitely till now, the hasty interruption of the Queen,
+not disposed to be troubled with metaphysics, to bring it back to the
+practical question, the quibble of Ruthven of which Knox makes use, but
+only in passing, are all as real as though we had been present at the
+council. The Queen, with feminine persistence holding to her question,
+is the only one of the assembly who has any heart to the inquiry. The
+heat of a woman and a monarch personally offended is in all she says, as
+well as a keen practical power of keeping to her point. It is she who
+refers to the _corpus delicti_, carrying the question out of mere vague
+discussion distinctly to the act complained of. Knox had said in his
+letter that the prosecution of the men who had interrupted the service
+at Holyrood was the opening of a door "to execute cruelty upon a greater
+multitude." "So," said the Queen, "what say ye to that?" She received in
+full front the tremendous charge which followed:--
+
+    "While many doubit what the said John should answer he said to the
+    Queen, 'Is it lawful for me, Madam, to answer for myself? Or shall I
+    be dampned before I be heard?'
+
+    'Say what ye can,' said she, 'for I think ye have enough ado.'
+
+    'I will first then desire this of your Grace, Madam, and of this
+    maist honourable audience, whether if your Grace knows not, that the
+    obstinate Papists are deadly enemies to all such as profess the
+    evangel of Jesus Christ, and that they most earnestly desire the
+    extermination of them and of the true doctrine that is taught in
+    this realm?'
+
+    The Queen held her peace; but all the lords with common voice said,
+    'God forbid that either the lives of the faithful or yet the staying
+    of the doctrine stood in the power of the Papists; for just
+    experience tells us what cruelty lies in their hearts.'"
+
+This sudden turn of opinion, coming from her council itself, and which
+already constituted a startling verdict against her, Mary seems to have
+sustained with the splendid courage and self-control which she displayed
+on great occasions: no tear now, no outburst of impatience. She did not
+even attempt to deny the tremendous indictment, but allowed Knox to
+resume his pleading. And when she spoke again it was with a complete
+change of subject. Apparently her quick intelligence perceived that
+after that remarkable incident the less said to recall the first object
+of the council the better. She went back to her original grievance,
+accusing Knox though he spoke fair before my lords (which indeed it was
+a strain of forbearance to say) that he had caused her "to weep many
+salt tears" at their previous meeting. His reply has much homely
+dignity.
+
+    "Madam," he said, "because now the second time your Grace has
+    branded me with that crime I must answer, lest for my silence I be
+    holden guilty. If your Grace be ripely remembered, the Laird of Dun,
+    yet living to testify the truth, was present at that time whereof
+    your Grace complains. Your Grace accused me that I had irreverently
+    handled you in the pulpit; that I denied. Ye said, what ado had I
+    with your marriage? What was I that I should mell with such matters?
+    I answered as touching nature I was ane worm of this earth, and ane
+    subject of this Commonwealth, but as touching the office whereintil
+    it has pleased God to place me, I was ane watchman both over the
+    Realm, and over the Kirk of God gathered within the same, by reason
+    whereof I was bound in conscience to blow the trumpet publicly as
+    oft as ever I saw any upfall, any appearing danger either of the one
+    or of the other. But so it was that ane certain bruit appeared that
+    traffic of marriage was betwixt your Grace and the Spanish Ally;
+    whereunto I said that if your nobilitie and your Estates did agree,
+    unless that both you and your husband shall be so directly bound
+    that neither of you might hurt this Commonwealth nor yet the poor
+    Kirk of God within the same, that in that case I would pronounce
+    that the consenters were troublers of this Commonwealth and enemies
+    to God and to His promise planted within the same. At those words I
+    grant your Grace stormed and burst forth into an unreasonable
+    weeping. What mitigation the Laird of Dun would have made I suppose
+    your Grace has not forgot. But while that nothing was able to stay
+    your weeping I was compelled to say, I take God to witness that I
+    never took pleasure to see any creature weep (yea, not my own
+    children when my own hand bett them), meikle less can I rejoice to
+    see your Grace make such regret. But seeing I have offered your
+    Grace no such occasion, I must rather suffer your Grace to take your
+    own pleasure than that I dare to conceal the truth and so betray
+    both the Kirk of God and my Commonwealth. These were the most
+    extreme words I said."
+
+Having thus repeated his offence (even to the tears of the schoolboys)
+the Reformer's shrift was ended and he was told that he might return to
+his house "for that night." No doubt what he himself said is more
+clearly set forth than what others replied, but that he distinctly
+carried the honours of the discussion with him, and that his mien and
+bearing, as here depicted, are manly, grave, and dignified as could be
+desired, will not be denied by any reasonable reader. That they
+impressed the council in the same way is equally evident; that council
+was composed of his ancient companions in arms, the comrades of many an
+anxious day and of many a triumphant moment. That he had offended and
+broken with several of them would not affect the consideration that to
+condemn John Knox was not a light matter; that through all the hours of
+that winter evening half Edinburgh had been filling the Court of
+Holyrood and keeping up a murmur of anxiety at its gates; and that it
+was a dangerous crowd to whom my lords would have to give account if a
+hair of his head was touched. The conclusion apparently came with the
+force of a surprise upon the Queen's Majestie, and perhaps shook her
+certainty of the sway over her nobility, which she had been gradually
+acquiring, which was sufficient to make them defend her personal freedom
+and tolerate her faith, but not to pronounce a sentence which they felt
+to be unjust.
+
+    "John Knox being departed, the Table of the Lords, and others that
+    were present were demanded every man by his vote, if John Knox had
+    not offended the Queen's Majestie. The lords voted uniformly they
+    could find no offence. The Queen had past to her cabinet, the
+    flatterers of the Court, and Lethington principally, raged. The
+    Queen was brought again and placed in her chair, and they commanded
+    to vote over again, which thing highly offended the haill nobilitie
+    so that they began to speak in open audience--'What! shall the Laird
+    of Lethington have power to control us? or shall the presence of ane
+    woman cause us to offend God and to dampen ane innocent, against our
+    conscience for pleasure of any creature?' And so the haill nobilitie
+    absolved John Knox again."
+
+The Queen was naturally enraged at this decision, and taunted bitterly
+the Bishop of Ross, who joined in the acquittal, with following the
+multitude, to which he answered with much dignity, "Your Grace may
+consider that it is neither affection to the man nor yet love to his
+profession that moved me to absolve him, but the simple truth"--a noble
+answer, which shows that the entire body of prelates in Scotland were
+not deserving of the abuse which Knox everywhere and on all occasions
+pours upon them.
+
+This was his last meeting with Mary. The part he played in public
+affairs was as great, and the standing quarrel with the Court, and all
+those who favoured it, more acrimonious than ever, every slanderous tale
+that came on the idle winds of gossip being taken for granted, and the
+most hideous accusations made in the pulpit as well as in private places
+against the Queen and her lighthearted company. The principles, of such
+profound importance to the nation, which were undoubtedly involved, are
+discredited by the fierce denunciations and miserable personal gossip
+with which they were mingled. That judgment should follow the exhibition
+of "tarjetted tails," _i.e._ embroidered or highly decorated trains, and
+loom black over a Court ball; and that Scotland should be punished
+because the Queen and her Maries loved dancing, were threats in no way
+inconsistent with the temper of the time; but they must have filled the
+minds of reasonable men with many revoltings of impatience and disgust.
+It says much for the real soundness of purpose and truth of intention
+among the exclusive Church party that they did not permanently injure
+the great cause which they had at bottom honestly at heart.
+
+[Illustration: DOORWAY, HOLYROOD PALACE]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE TRIUMPH AND END
+
+
+When the Assembly of the Church met in December shortly after these
+stirring incidents it was remarked that Knox took no part at first in
+the deliberations, an unexampled event. After the first burst of
+discussion, however, on the subject of the provision for the Church, he
+disclosed the reason of his unusual silence, which was that he had of
+late been accused of being a seditious man, and usurping power to
+himself--and that some had said of him, "What can the Pope do more than
+send forth his letters, and require them to be obeyed?" When one of the
+great officials present, no less a person than the Lord Justice-Clerk,
+took upon him to reply, Knox silenced him with a few emphatic words--"Of
+you I ask nothing," he said, "but if the Kirk that is here present do
+not either absolve me or else condemn me, never shall I, in public or in
+private, as ane public minister, open my mouth in doctrine or in
+reasoning." It is needless to say that the Kirk decided that it was his
+duty to advertise the brethren of danger whenever it might appear--but
+not without "long contention," probably moved by the party of the Court.
+At this period all the members of the nobility had been so universally
+acknowledged as having a right to be present at the Assembly sittings,
+that messengers were sent to advertise them of their guilt in absenting
+themselves when in the extremely strained character of the relations
+between Church and State they stayed away. There ensued, some time
+after, a singular conference between the leading ministers and the lords
+upon various matters, chiefly touching the conduct of John Knox, whose
+constant attacks upon the mass, his manner of praying for the Queen, and
+the views he had advanced upon obedience to princes, had given great
+offence not only at Court but among the moderate men who found Mary's
+sway, so far, a gentle and just one. This conference took the form of a
+sort of duel between Knox and Lethington, the only antagonist who was at
+all qualified to confront the Reformer. The comparison we have already
+employed returns involuntarily to our lips; the assault of Lethington is
+like that of a brilliant and chivalrous knight against some immovable
+tower, from the strong walls of which he is perpetually thrown back,
+while they stand invulnerable, untouched by the flashing sword which
+only turns and loses its edge against those stones. His satire, his wit,
+his keen perception of a weak point, are all lost upon the immovable
+preacher, whose determined conviction that he himself is right in every
+act and word is as a triple defence around him. This conviction keeps
+Knox from perceiving what he is by no means incapable by nature of
+seeing, the grotesque conceit, for instance, which is in his prayer for
+the Queen. During the course of the controversy he repeats the form of
+prayer which he is in the habit of using--being far too courageous a
+soul to veil any supposed fault. And this is the _salvam fac_ employed
+by Knox:--
+
+    "Oh Lord! if Thy pleasure be, purge the heart of the Queen's Majesty
+    from the venom of idolatry, and deliver her from the bondage and
+    thraldom of Satan in the which she has been brought up and yet
+    remains, for the lack of true doctrine; that she may avoid that
+    eternal damnation which abides all obstinate and impenitent unto the
+    end, and that this poor realm may also escape that plague and
+    vengeance which inevitably follow idolatrie maintained against Thy
+    manifest Word and the open light thereof." "This," Knox adds, "is
+    the form of my common prayer as yourselves were witness. Now what is
+    worthy of reprehension in it I would hear?"
+
+    "There are three things," said Lethington, "that never liked me; but
+    the first is, 'To pray for the Queen's Majestie with ane condition
+    saying, "Illumine her heart if Thy good pleasure be," whereby it may
+    appear that ye doubt of her conversion.' Where have ye the example
+    of such prayer?"
+
+    "Wheresoever the examples are," said the other, "I am assured of the
+    rule which is this, 'If we ask anything according to His will He
+    will hear us'; and our Maister Christ Jesus commanded us to pray
+    unto our Father 'Thy will be done.'"
+
+After this discussion has gone on for some time, Lethington, impatient,
+returns to the original question.
+
+    "But yet," said Lethington, "why pray ye not for her without moving
+    any doubt?"
+
+    "Because," said the other, "I have learnt to pray in heaven. Now
+    faith, as ye know, depends upon the words of God, and so it is that
+    the word teaches me that prayers profit the sons and dochters of
+    God's election, of which number whether she be ane or not I have
+    just cause to doubt; and therefore I pray God illuminate her heart
+    if His good pleasure be."
+
+    "But yet," said Lethington, "ye can produce the example of none that
+    has so prayed before you."
+
+    "Thereto I have already answered," said John Knox, "but yet for
+    further declaration I will demand ane question, which is
+    this--Whether ye think that the Apostles prayed themselves as they
+    commanded others to pray?"
+
+    "Who doubts of that?" said the haill company that were present.
+
+    "Weil then," said John Knox, "I am assured that Peter said these
+    words to Simon Magus, 'Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and
+    pray to God that if it be possible the thought of your heart may be
+    forgiven thee.' Here we may clearly see that Peter joins ane
+    condition with his commandment."
+
+With such extraordinary arguments, unconscious it would seem of the
+absolute incongruity of his illustrations, obtusely perverse in the
+dogmatism which destroys both Christian charity and sound perception,
+though he was as far from obtuse as ever man was by nature--the preacher
+stood immovable, nay, unassailable. The perception which defines and
+sets apart things that differ was as much beyond his great intellectual
+abilities, at least in those personal questions, as was the charity
+which thinketh no evil. The tongues of angels could not have convinced
+him that what was said to Simon Magus had no fitness to be applied to
+Mary Stewart. Such distinctions might be for the profane, they were not
+for him, to whom one example of Scripture was like another, always
+applicable, of equal authority in every case. It is not difficult to
+understand the exasperation of so modern a mind as that of Lethington,
+while he attempted in vain to bring this astounding debate to a
+conclusion. For Knox always, so to speak, proves his case. Granting the
+twist in all his logic, the confusion of things between which there was
+no just comparison--and this twist and confusion belonged to his period
+as well as to himself--his grotesque argument has an appearance of
+reality which carried away those who agreed with him, and confounded in
+their inability to come to any ground of comprehension those who did
+not.
+
+The debate was long and minute, and Knox was no more shaken from his
+determination that the mass was idolatry and that every idolater should
+die the death, than from his conviction that he did his utmost for the
+Queen in praying that God might convert her, if it were possible. The
+argument as to resisting princes is still longer and more elaborate, but
+as it involves only large and general questions is argued out with much
+more justice and perception. It was one of the subjects most continually
+under discussion among all who held the Reformed faith, and Lethington
+himself and all his audience had both in profession and practice held
+the popular view in the time of Mary of Guise. It is like enough,
+indeed, that somewhere among the crowd of faces turned towards the
+disputants there was that long head and saturnine countenance, still one
+of the best-known effigies of his time, of the scholar who was at that
+period proud to be Queen Mary's tutor, reading Livy with her in the
+afternoons, and who upon this question had views as clear as a crystal,
+waiting for the moment when they could be set forth. But George
+Buchanan, though he held office in the Assembly, had no warrant to claim
+a hearing between such men as the learned and lively Lord Secretary and
+the great prophet and preacher John Knox.
+
+The discussion ended in nothing, as may be supposed, except a deepened
+offence on the part of the Court with the impracticable Reformer, and an
+additional bitterness of criticism on the part of the Congregation
+touching all that went on at the abbey--the gaieties, and the beautiful
+dresses, as well as the mass, and now and then a whisper of scandal,
+unproved but taken for granted with that miserable eagerness which such
+opposition brings. Edinburgh, between these two conflicting powers, was
+no doubt able, with the wonderful impartiality of common life, to carry
+on its usual existence much less affected than we could imagine possible
+by any of the disorders, which almost reached the height of civil war
+when Murray and the other lords were banished, and the tide of Mary's
+fate began to rise darkly between the unhappy fool she had chosen for
+her husband, and all the wild conflicting elements which had been enough
+to tax her strength without that aggravation. Even Knox acknowledges
+that "the threatenings of the preachers were fearful," though he himself
+had been the first to warn the people of national judgments to be looked
+for because of the offences in costume and other matters of their Queen.
+We lose, however, here the picturesque and dramatic scenes which added
+so much interest to the history during the brief period when she and he
+were friends. The debate with Lethington, indeed, is the conclusion of
+the brilliant and vivid piece of history in which we have been made to
+see all that was going on in the centre of Scottish life--the continual
+tumults, the great gatherings in the Church, the sermons, daily orations
+full of burning eloquence and earnestness in which every occurrence of
+the moment was discussed, as well as the sacred subjects which were
+familiar in the mouths of all. That vigorous and trenchant pen falls
+from the hand of the preacher. The fifth book of his History is prepared
+it is said from his notes and under his eyes, but it is no longer the
+same as when the very diction was his own, and his vivid memory, to
+which all these incidents were present as when he acted in them, was the
+storehouse upon which he drew. He himself appears but on one occasion
+after the marriage of Mary. Darnley, with perhaps an effort to hold the
+balance even and propitiate the Church, attended the service at St.
+Giles's, or, as the writer now calls it, the High Kirk of Edinburgh,
+where Knox was preaching in his ordinary course unprepared for such an
+honour. In the course of his sermon it chanced that he characterised as
+one of the punishments with which God follows national sins, that boys
+and women should rule over the nations. The young King (as he was
+called) was passionately offended, and Knox was called next day to the
+council to answer for himself, and at the same time forbidden to preach
+for a stipulated time. He replied that he had spoken only according to
+his text, and that if the Church commanded him to abstain from preaching
+he would obey. This is all the formal record; but the following marginal
+note is added which gives a faint but not altogether ineffective glimpse
+of the Knox we know:--
+
+    "In answering he said more than he preached, for he added, that as
+    the King had, to pleasure the Queen, gone to mass and dishonoured
+    the Lord God, so should God in His justice make her an instrument of
+    his ruin; and so it fell out in a very short time; but the Queen
+    being incensed with these words fell out in tears, and to please her
+    John Knox must abstain from preaching for a time."
+
+As a matter of fact this penalty meant nothing. Knox was enjoined to
+silence as long only as the Queen and Darnley were in Edinburgh; and as
+they took their departure that week, his work was scarcely interrupted
+at all.
+
+During several eventful years after this Knox remained in the shade,
+separated from his friends, the enemy of the Court, and much denuded of
+his national importance. It was at this period that he married for the
+second time. He was nearly sixty, in shattered health and worn with many
+fatigues, and it was scarcely wonderful that his enemies should have
+said that nothing but witchcraft could have induced a noble young lady,
+Lord Ochiltree's daughter, a Stewart not far from the blood royal, to
+bestow her youth upon the old preacher. So it was, however, whether
+seemly or not. The lady must at least have known him well, for her
+father had long been his faithful friend; and no doubt domestic comfort
+and care were doubly necessary to a man whose labours were unending, and
+who had never spared himself during his whole public life.
+
+It is doubly unfortunate that we should have no record from himself of
+the first chapter of that tragedy which was soon to make Scotland the
+centre of curiosity and horror to Christendom, and which came into the
+already troubled national life like a thunderbolt. Nothing, perhaps,
+will ever fully clear up the dark death-scene of Rizzio, the darker
+conspiracies and plots that led to it. The fact that the return of the
+banished lords was simultaneous with his murder, and that Murray and the
+rest had bound themselves in a covenant of duty and service to Darnley
+for his good offices in procuring their recall, of the same date with
+the other and darker bond which bound that wretched boy to the
+executioners of the favourite, will always make it possible for the
+partisans of the Queen to make out a certain case against the lords. And
+that Knox should have left Edinburgh suddenly and without a word when
+that dark deed was accomplished is once more a painful presumption
+against him. But there seems no absolute evidence that either one or the
+other were involved. It is extremely possible, since the English envoy
+knew beforehand of some such dark purpose, that they too may have known.
+But it is also evident that so summary a conclusion to the matter was
+not in the mind even of Ruthven when he first presented himself like a
+ghost in the Queen's closet. Persistent tradition will have it still, in
+spite of demonstration to the contrary, that Signor Davie was killed in
+Mary's presence at her feet; but the evidence would seem to prove that
+immediate execution had not even been determined on, and that but for
+the fury of the party among whom the struggling Italian was flung, and
+who could not wait for their vengeance, there might have been some
+pretence at legality, some sort of impeachment and condemnation, to
+justify the deed, in which proceedings had they been taken both Knox and
+Murray would have concurred. It is satisfactory, however, to see that
+Sir James Melville, Mary's trusted and faithful friend, who was in
+Holyrood during the night of the murder, and who had previously urged
+upon the Queen, with all the zeal and earnestness of a man who felt his
+mistress's dearest interests to be at stake, to recall and pardon Murray
+(which had been done also in the strongest terms by Sir N. Throgmorton,
+the English envoy), had evidently not the slightest suspicion of any
+complicity on his part, and even recorded the disappointment of Ruthven
+and the rest to find that the returned exiles looked coldly on them.
+Melville does not even mention Knox, nor is there any further proof of
+guilt on his part than is involved in the fact that he left Edinburgh on
+the afternoon of the day which saw the flight, early in the morning, of
+Ruthven and his band. This hurried departure must always be to the
+prejudice of the Reformer; for he had been in circumstances more
+apparently dangerous before and had never flinched. He had the town of
+Edinburgh at his back and all the Congregation. Murray, with whom his
+friendship had been renewed, was again in Edinburgh, and for the moment
+at least in favour with the Queen, who had need of all the supporters
+she could find. Why should Knox have fled? He promises in his History to
+write one day a full account of the death of Davie, but never did so.
+Evidence, indeed, either of one kind or other, is entirely wanting; but
+why did he fly?
+
+Whatever was the reason, Knox at this period disappeared entirely from
+the scene where so long he had occupied the very foreground of affairs;
+and until that cruel and terrible chapter of history was completed, he
+was not again visible in Scotland. We cannot help feeling that though
+inexplicable on other grounds, this was well for his fame. His violent
+tongue and pen, no doubt, would have been in the heat of the endless
+controversy. As it is, he was not only absent from the scene, but, what
+is still more singular, took no part whatever in it. The veil of age was
+falling over the prophet, and the penalties of a weak constitution
+overstrained. Perhaps the comparative calm of England, where, strangely
+enough, he chose this time to visit his boys (brought up in a manner
+extraordinary for the sons of such a father, in the obscure and
+comfortable quiet of English life, and evidently quite
+insignificant--one of them dying unknown, a fellow of his college, the
+other a country clergyman), had something to do in taming his fiery
+spirit. To see the two lads with such blood in their veins in the tame
+security and insignificance of an existence so different from his own,
+looking at their famous father with wonder, perhaps not unmixed with
+youthful disapproval, as a Presbyterian and a firebrand, must have given
+that absolute soul a curious lesson. And how strange is his appearance
+altogether, first and last, in the midst of that substantial,
+respectable county family of Bowes--carrying off the two ladies in his
+wild train: the mother to whom he was spiritual physician, director, and
+guide; the gentle and silent daughter who was his wife; flaming over the
+Continent and through all the troubles in Scotland with these
+incongruous followers behind him, then coming back to drop the two tame
+sparrows in the quiet nest which their mother had left for love of him!
+All we know of them is that in their early childhood he did not spare
+the rod; yet was grieved to see them weep. It would be strange if it
+were not a disappointment to him, if perhaps a relief as well, to find
+no sympathy in his sons for his own career. The daughters whom the young
+wife of his old age brought him lived to be like him; which it is said
+is the only good fortune in paternity likely to so great a man.
+
+[Illustration: MORAY HOUSE, CANONGATE]
+
+When Knox emerged out of the silence which here falls so strangely upon
+his life (broken but by one energetic protest and appeal to the
+community against the re-erection of the bishopric of St. Andrews, which
+is full of all his old force) he was a weakened and ailing man, not less
+ready in spirit to perform all his ancient offices as standard-bearer
+and champion, but sadly unable in body to bear the fatigues and
+excitement of such an agitated life. He reappeared in public for the
+first time when the infant James was crowned in Stirling, preaching the
+sermon which preceded that melancholy ceremony. He then returned to
+Edinburgh, where for a brief period he saw the accomplishment of all his
+desires under the Regent Murray's government: the mass banished; the
+Kirk re-established; a provision, though still limited to a third of the
+old ecclesiastical property, securely settled for the maintenance of
+religion, and every precaution taken for the stability of the
+settlement. He was no longer able to take the part he had done in the
+affairs of the time and the guidance of the Assemblies, but he was still
+able to conduct, at least, the Sunday services at St. Giles's, and to
+give his strenuous advice and help in all the difficulties of
+government. It must have seemed to him that the light which comes at
+eventide had been fully granted to his prayers. But the death of Murray
+changed all this like the end of a happy dream. His sermon in St.
+Giles's, after that terrible event, is a wail of impassioned
+lamentation. "He is at rest, O Lord! but we are left in extreme misery,"
+he cries, his grief redoubled by the thought that it was he who had
+procured from Murray the pardon of the assassin. St. Giles's was full of
+the sound of weeping when the old man, worn with labour and trouble,
+pronounced those beautiful words which have breathed like the tone of
+the silver trumpets over so many a grave: "Blessed are the dead that die
+in the Lord." It was one of the last of his appearances in that great
+cathedral which he had made his own, and to which he had given the only
+compensation and adornment which could make up for its old sanctities
+and decoration sacrificed--the prodigious crowd of eager and sympathetic
+listeners, the great voice not without discords and broken notes, but
+full of natural eloquence and high religious feeling, of an orator and
+prophet.
+
+A few months after Knox was prostrated by a fit of apoplexy, it is said;
+but it would rather seem of paralysis, since his speech was affected. He
+recovered and partially resumed preaching, but never was the same again;
+and the renewed troubles into which Scotland and Edinburgh were plunged
+found the old leader of the Church unequal to the task of making head
+against them. The curious complication of affairs which had already
+existed on several occasions in the capital when the castle and its
+garrison were hostile to the city at their feet, ready to discharge a
+gun into the midst of the crowded streets or threaten a sally from the
+gates which opened directly upon the very centre of the town, was now
+accentuated to the highest degree by the adoption of the Queen's cause
+by its Captain, Kirkaldy of Grange. We cannot pause now to give any
+sketch of that misplaced hero and knight of romance, the Quixote of
+Scotland, who took up Mary's quarrel when others deserted her, and for
+much the same reasons, because, if not guilty, she was at least supposed
+to be so, and at all events was tragically unfortunate and in
+circumstances wellnigh hopeless. These views brought him into desperate
+opposition to Knox, once his friend and leader; and though it is
+impossible to believe that a man so chivalrous and honourable would have
+injured the old Reformer, yet there were many partisans of less repute
+who would no doubt have willingly struck a blow at Knox under shelter of
+the Captain's name. As was natural to him, however, the preacher in
+these circumstances redoubled his boldness, and the more dangerous it
+was to denounce Mary under the guns of the fortress held in her name,
+was the more anxious with his enfeebled voice to proclaim, over and over
+again, his opinion of her, and of the punishment which, had there been
+justice in the world or faith in Zion, she must have undergone. Knox's
+failing life was assailed at this agitated period by a kind of
+persecution much more trying to him than anything he had undergone in
+the past. He was assailed by anonymous libels, placards affixed to the
+church doors, and thrown into the Assembly, charging him over again with
+railing against the Queen, refusing to pray for her, seeking the support
+of England against his native country, and so forth. These accusations
+had no doubt a foundation of truth. But whatever one may think of the
+matter as a question of fact, there can be no doubt that the very air
+must have rung with the old man's words when he got up under those lofty
+vaults of St. Giles's, and, with his grey hair streaming and his deep
+eyes, deeper sunk with age and care than nature, blazing from under
+their shaggy eyebrows, gave "the lie in his throat to him that either
+dare or will say that ever I sought support against my native country."
+"What I have been to my country," he went on, with a courage and dignity
+that calls forth all our sympathies, "albeit this unthankful age will
+not know, yet the ages to come will be compelled to bear witness to the
+truth. And thus I cease, requiring of all men that have to oppose
+anything against me that he will do it so plainly as I make myself and
+all my doings manifest to the world; for to me it seems a thing most
+unreasonable that in my decrepit age I should be compelled to fight
+against shadows and howlets that dare not abide the light."
+
+These flying accusations against him, to which, however, he was well
+accustomed, were followed, it is said, by more startling warnings, such
+as that of a musket ball which came through his window one evening, and
+had he been seated in his usual place would have killed him; a thing
+which might have been accidental, though no one believed so. He was
+persuaded at last to leave Edinburgh only by the representations of the
+citizens that were he attacked they were resolved to defend him, and
+their blood would consequently be on his head. On this argument he moved
+to St. Andrews, the scene of his first ministry, and always a place
+beloved; leaving Edinburgh at the darkest moment of her history, the
+Church silenced with him, and all the order and peace of ordinary life
+suspended. At this crisis of the struggle, when Kirkaldy's garrison was
+reinforced by all the party of the Hamiltons, and the city lay, overawed
+and helpless, at the mercy of the fortress, the life of the Edinburgh
+citizens underwent an extraordinary change. The churches were closed,
+and all the pious habits of the time suspended: "neither was there any
+sound of bell heard in the town, except the ringing of the cannon." How
+strange this was among a population which had crowded daily to the
+sermon and found the chief excitement of its life in the orations of the
+preacher, it is scarcely necessary to point out.
+
+The picture of Knox in St. Andrews, where he went in May 1571, after all
+these agitations, is wonderfully soothing and subdued. He was far from
+being without agitation even there. The new institution of "Tulchan"
+bishops--called so by the popular wit, men who bore the title alone of
+their supposed bishopric, transferring the revenue to the lay patron,
+and who officiated, it would appear, much as pleased them, according to
+the old rule, or to the form of the Reformed service--had just been
+invented; and Knox was called upon to instal the nominal bishop of St.
+Andrews, a thing which he refused to do. He was in consequence accused
+by some foolish person of himself desiring to have the bishopric (such
+as it was), an accusation of which it is extraordinary that he
+condescended to take any notice. But apart from these rags and remnants
+of familiar conflict, his life in the little city by the sea has a
+pleasant repose and calm. "He ever spoke but sparingly against the mock
+bishop, because he loved the man." This softer note is carried out in
+the two glimpses of him which appear to us chiefly through the
+recollections of the gentle James Melville, then a youth studying at St.
+Andrews. The old man seems to have taken pleasure in the sight of the
+boys about, who were carrying on their education in the place where he
+himself had taught those "bairns," whom Wishart had sent him back to in
+his fervid manhood. "He would sometimes come in and repose him in our
+college yard, and call us scholars to him, and bless us and exhort us to
+know God and His work in our country, and stand by the good cause--to
+use our time well and learn the guid instructions and follow the guid
+examples of our maisters. Our haill college (St. Leonard's) maister and
+scholars were sound and zealous for the good cause, the other two
+colleges not so." Nor did he disdain the amusements of the young men,
+for when one of the professors made a play at the marriage of Mr. John
+Colvin, it was performed in Mr. Knox's presence. Alas! truth compels us
+to add that the subject of the play was grim and not so peaceful as the
+occasion, for it represented the imaginary siege and taking of the
+Castle of Edinburgh--then in full activity, and carrying fire and flame
+to the houses of the Edinburgh burghers--and "the Captain with ane or
+twa with him hanged in effigies." It would seem, however, that Knox
+loved the young scholars better than their instructors, for in one of
+his few letters written from St. Andrews, to the Assembly meeting at
+Perth, he charges the brethren above all things "to preserve the Kirke
+from the bondage of Universities," neither to subject the pulpit to
+them, nor to exempt them from its jurisdiction.
+
+[Illustration: THE PENDS, ST. ANDREWS]
+
+Knox was lodged in the abbey of which there now remains nothing but a
+portion of the enclosing wall, and it was but an old man's saunter in
+the sunny morning, with his staff and his servant's arm, through the
+noble gateway of the Pends to where St. Leonard's stood, looking away to
+the East Neuk over the ripening fields. St. Leonard's, however, has
+shared the fate of the abbey and exists no more.
+
+Still more characteristic is the description given by the same pen of
+Knox's public appearances. It was young Melville's greatest privilege,
+the best of all the benefits he received during that year, to hear "that
+maist notable prophet and apostle of our nation preach."
+
+    "I had my pen and my little book and took away such things as I
+    could comprehend. In the opening of his text he was moderate for the
+    space of half an hour, but when he entered to application he made me
+    so to grew and tremble that I could not hold a pen to write. In St.
+    Andrews he was very weak. I saw him every day of his doctrine go
+    hulie and fear (hooley and fairly, gently and with caution), with a
+    furring of martins about his neck, a staff in the ane hand, and gude
+    godlie Richart Ballenden holding up the other oxter, from the Abbey
+    to the Parish Kirk; and by the same Richart and another servant
+    lifted up to the pulpit, where he behoved to lean at his first
+    entry; but ere he had dome his sermon, he was sae active and
+    vigorous that he was like to ding the pulpit in blads and flie out
+    of it."
+
+Melville says much, as indeed most of the narratives of the time do, of
+Knox's prophecies, especially in respect to the Castle of Edinburgh,
+which he said would run like a sand-glass--a prediction supposed to be
+fulfilled by a shower of sand pouring from some portion of the rock; and
+its Captain, Kirkaldy, who was to escape over the walls, but to be taken
+and to hang against the sun. All of which things, and many more,
+occurred precisely as the seer said, after his death, striking great awe
+to the hearts of those to whom the predictions were made. The special
+prophecy in respect to Grange was softened by the announcement that "God
+assures me there is mercy for his soul." And it is at once pathetic and
+impressive to read of the consolation which this assurance gave to the
+chivalrous Kirkaldy on the verge of the scaffold; and the awe-inspiring
+spectacle presented to the believers, who after his execution saw his
+body slowly turn and hang against the western sun, as it poured over the
+Churchyard of St. Giles's, "west, about off the northward neuk of the
+steeple." But this was after the prophet himself had passed into the
+unseen.
+
+Knox returned to Edinburgh in 1572, in August, the horrors of the
+struggle between the Queen's party and the King's, as it was called, or
+Regent's, being for the moment quieted, and the banished citizens
+returning, although no permanent pacification had yet taken place. He
+had but a few months remaining of life, and was very weary of the long
+struggle and longing for rest. "Weary of the world, and daily looking
+for the resolution of this my earthly tabernacle," he says. And in his
+last publication dated from St. Andrews, whither the printer Lekprevik
+had followed him, he heartily salutes and takes good-night of all the
+faithful, earnestly desiring the assistance of their prayers, "that
+without any notable scandal to the evangel of Jesus Christ I may end my
+battle: for," he adds, "as the world is weary of me, so am I of it." He
+lived long enough to welcome his successor in St. Giles's, to whom, to
+hasten his arrival, he wrote the following touching letter, one of the
+last compositions of his life:--
+
+    "All worldlie strength, yea even in things spiritual, decayes, and
+    yet shall never the work of God decay. Belovit brother, seeing that
+    God of His mercy, far above my expectation, has callit me over again
+    to Edinburgh, and yet that I feel nature so decayed, and daylie to
+    decay, that I look not for a long continuance of my battle, I would
+    gladly ance discharge my conscience into your bosom, and into the
+    bosom of others in whom I think the fear of God remains. Gif I had
+    the abilitie of bodie, I suld not have put you to the pain to the
+    whilk I now requyre you, that is, ance to visit me that we may
+    confer together on heavenly things; for into earth there is no
+    stability except the Kirk of Jesus Christ, ever fighting under the
+    cross; to whose myghtie protection I heartilie commit you. Of
+    Edinburgh the VII. of September 1572.
+
+            JHONE KNOX.
+
+    "Haist lest ye come too lait."
+
+He lived to induct this successor, and to hear the terrible news of that
+massacre in France, which horrified all Christendom, but was of signal
+good to Scotland by procuring the almost instantaneous collapse of the
+party which fought for the Queen, and held the restoration of Roman
+Catholic worship to be still possible. That hope died out with the first
+sound of the terrible news which proved so abundantly Knox's old
+assertion that in the hands of the Papists there was no safety for his
+life, or the life of any who believed with him. Almost, however, before
+this grain of good in the midst of so much evil became apparent the
+prophet had taken his departure from this world. After the simple
+ceremonial at which he had officiated, of his successor's installation,
+John Knox returned home in the light of the brief November day, as
+Melville had seen him, supported by the arm of his faithful servant. The
+crowd which had filled St. Giles's hurrying out before him lined the
+street, and watched the old man as he crept along down the hill to his
+house, with many a shaken head and many a murmured blessing. In this
+last scene all were unanimous; there was no one to cast a gibe or an
+unkindly look upon that slow aged progress from the scene of his
+greatest labours to the death-bed which awaited him. When the spectators
+saw him disappear within his own door, they all knew that it was for the
+last time. He lay for about a fortnight dying, seeing everybody, leaving
+a charge with one, a prophecy with another, with a certain dignified
+consciousness that his death should not be merely as other men's, and
+that to show the reverential company of friends who went and came how to
+die was the one part of his mission which had yet to be accomplished. He
+ended his career on the 24th November 1572, having thus held a sort of
+court of death in his chamber and said everything he had to say--dying a
+teacher and prophet to men, as he had lived.
+
+[Illustration: INTERIOR OF ST. GILES'S]
+
+No man has been more splendidly applauded, and none more bitterly
+dispraised. It is in one sense the misfortune of our age that it is
+little able to do either. If steadfast adherence to what he thought the
+perfect way, if the most earnest purpose, the most unwearying labour,
+the profoundest devotion to his God and his country are enough to
+constitute greatness, John Knox is great. He was at the same time a man
+all faults, bristling with prejudices, violent in speech, often
+merciless in judgment, narrow, dogmatic, fiercely intolerant. He was
+incapable of that crowning grace of the imagination and heart which
+enables a man to put himself in another's place and do as he would be
+done by. But even this we must take with a qualification; for Knox would
+no doubt have replied to such an objection that had he been a miserable
+idolater, as he considered the upholders of the mass to be, he could not
+but have been grateful to any man who had dragged him by whatever means
+from that superstition. He was so strong in the certainty of being right
+that he was incapable even of considering the possibility that he might
+be wrong. And there was in him none of those reluctances to give pain,
+none of those softening expedients of charity which veil such a harsh
+conviction and make men hesitate to condemn. He knew not what hesitation
+was, and scorned a compromise as if it had been a lie, nor would he
+suffer that others should do what was impossible to himself. His
+determination to have his own way was indeed justified by the conviction
+that it was the way of God, but his incapability of waiting or having
+patience, or considering the wishes and convictions of others, or
+contenting himself with a gradual advance and progression, have no such
+excuse.
+
+These were, however, of the very essence of his character. A perfectly
+dauntless nature fearing nothing, the self-confidence of an inspired
+prophet, the high tyrannical impulse of a swift and fiery genius
+impatient of lesser spirits, were all in him, making of him the
+imperative, absolute, arrogant autocrat he was; but yet no higher
+ambition, no more noble purpose, ever inspired a man. He desired for his
+countrymen that they should be a chosen people like those of old whom
+God had selected to receive His revelation; his ambition was to make
+Scotland the most pure, the most godlike, of all countries of the earth.
+In many things he was intolerable, in some he was wrong and
+self-deceived. He was too eager, too restless, too intent upon doing
+everything, forcing the wheels of the great universe and clutching at
+his aim whatever conditions of nature might oppose--to be wholly heroic.
+Yet there are none of the smoother or even more lovable figures of
+history whom it would be less possible to strike from off the list of
+heroes. The impression which he left upon the religion and character of
+Scotland remains to this day; and if we think, as many have done during
+all these ages, that that development of national life is the highest
+that could be aimed at, John Knox was one of the greatest of men. But if
+he transmitted many great qualities to his country, he also transmitted
+the defects of these qualities. He cut Scotland adrift in many respects
+from the community of Christendom. He cut her off from her ancestors and
+from those hallowing traditions of many ages which are the inheritance
+of the universal Church. He taught her to exult in that disruption, not
+to regret it; and he left an almost ineradicable conviction of
+self-superiority to a world lying in wickedness, in the innermost heart
+of the nation. It is a wonderful testimony to a man that he should have
+thus been able to imprint his own characteristics upon his race: and no
+doubt it is because he was himself of the very quintessence of its
+national character to start with, that he has maintained this prodigious
+power through these three hundred years.
+
+[Illustration: KNOX'S PULPIT. In the Antiquarian Society's Museum,
+Edinburgh.]
+
+He lies, it is thought, if not within the walls of St. Giles's under the
+flags between the Cathedral and the Parliament House, with all the busy
+life of modern Edinburgh, the feet of generations of men treading out
+the hours and years over his head; a more appropriate bed for him than
+green mound or marble monument. That stony square is consecrated ground
+blessed near a thousand years ago by ancient priests who cared little
+more for Rome than do their modern successors now. But little heeded
+Knox for priestly blessing or consecrated soil. "The earth is the Lord's
+and the fulness thereof" was the only consecration of which he thought.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE SCHOLAR OF THE REFORMATION
+
+
+The age of Mary Stewart is in many ways the climax of Scottish national
+history, as well as one of the most interesting and exciting chapters in
+the history of the world. The Stewarts of Scotland had been up to this
+point a native race entirely Scots in training as in birth, and bent
+above all things upon the progress and consolidation of their own
+ancient kingdom, the poor but proud; a speck all but lost in the
+distance of the seas, yet known all over Christendom wherever errant
+squires or chivalrous pretensions were known. But the new sovereign of
+Scotland was one whose heart and pride were elsewhere, whose favourite
+ambitions were directed beyond the limits of that ancient kingdom with
+which she had none of the associations of youth, and to which she came a
+stranger from another Court far more dazzling and splendid, with hopes
+and prospects incapable of being concentrated within the boundary of the
+Tweed. There is no indication that the much-contested history of Mary
+Stewart has lost any of its interest during the progress of the
+intermediate centuries; on the contrary, some of its questions are
+almost more hotly contested now than they were at the moment when they
+arose. Her chivalrous defenders are more bold than once they were, and
+though the tone of her assailants is subdued, it is from a natural
+softening of sentiment towards the past, and still more from the fashion
+of our time, which finds an absorbing interest in the manifestations of
+individual character and the discussion of individual motives, rather
+than from any change of opinion. I do not venture to enter into that
+long-continued conflict, or to attempt to decide for the hundredth time
+whether a woman so gifted and unfortunate was more or less guilty. Both
+parties have gone, and still go, too far in that discussion; and Mary
+would not have thanked (I imagine) those partisans who would prove her
+innocence at the cost of all those vigorous and splendid qualities which
+made her remarkable. She could scarcely be at once an unoffending victim
+and one of the ablest women of her time.
+
+As this is the most interesting of all the epochs of Scottish
+history--and that not for Mary's sake alone, but for the wonderful
+conflict going on apart from her, and in which her tragic career is but
+an episode--so it is the most exciting and picturesque period in the
+records of Edinburgh, which was then in its fullest splendour of
+architectural beauty and social life; its noble streets more crowded,
+more gay, more tumultuous and tragical; its inhabitants more
+characteristic and individual; the scenes taking place within it more
+dramatic and exciting than at any other part of its history. Fine
+foreign ambassadors, grave English diplomates trained in the school of
+the great Cecil, and bound to the subtle and tortuous policy of the
+powerful Elizabeth; besides a new unusual crowd of lighter import but
+not less difficult governance, the foreign artists, musicians, courtiers
+of all kinds, who hung about the palace, had come in to add a hundred
+complicating interests and pursuits to the simpler if fiercer
+contentions of feudal lords and protesting citizens: not to speak of the
+greatest change of all, the substitution for the ambitious Churchman of
+old, with a coat of mail under his rochet, of the absolute and
+impracticable preacher who gave no dispensations or indulgences, and
+permitted no compromise. All these new elements, complicated by the
+tremendous question of the English succession, and the introduction of
+many problems of foreign politics into a crisis bristling with
+difficulties of its own, made the epoch extraordinary; while the very
+streets were continually filled by exciting spectacles, by processions,
+by sudden fights and deadly struggles, by pageants and splendours, one
+succeeding another, in which the whole population had their share. The
+decree of the town council that "lang weapons," spears, lances, and
+Jedburgh axes, should be provided in every shop--so that when the town
+bell rang every man might be ready to throw down his tools or his
+merchandise and grip the ready weapon--affords the most striking
+suggestion of those sudden tumults which might rise in a moment, and
+which were too common to demand any special record, but kept the town in
+perpetual agitation and excitement--an agitation, it is true, by no
+means peculiar to Edinburgh. No painter has ever done justice to the
+scene which must have been common as the day, when the beautiful young
+Queen, so little accustomed to the restraints and comparative poverty of
+her northern kingdom, and able to surround herself with the splendour
+she loved out of her French dowry, rode out in all her bravery up the
+Canongate, where every outside stair and high window would be crowded
+with spectators, and through the turreted and battlemented gate to the
+grim fortress on the crown of the hill, making everything splendid with
+the glitter of her cortege and her own smiles and unrivalled charm.
+Sadder spectacles that same beautiful Queen provided too--miserable
+journeys up and down from the unhappy palace, sometimes through a stern
+suppressed tumult of hostile faces, sometimes stealthily under cover of
+night which alone could protect her. Everything in Edinburgh is
+associated more or less with Mary's name. There is scarcely an old house
+existing, with any authentic traces of antiquity, in which she is not
+reported to have taken refuge in her trouble or visited in her pleasure.
+The more vulgar enthusiasts of the causeways are content to abolish all
+the other associations of old Edinburgh for Mary's name.
+
+But I will not attempt to revive those pageants either of joy or sorrow.
+There are other recollections which may be evoked with less historical
+responsibility and at least a little more freshness and novelty. No
+figure can be introduced out of that age who has not some connection one
+way or other with the Queen; and the great scholar, whose reputation has
+remained unique in Scotland, had some share in her earlier and happier
+life, as well as a link, supposed of treachery, with her later career.
+George Buchanan was the Queen's reader and master in her studies when
+all was well with her. He is considered by some of her defenders to be
+the forger of the wonderful letters which, if true, are the most
+undeniable proof of her guilt. But these things were but incidents in
+his career, and he is in himself one of the most illustrious and
+memorable figures among the throngs that surrounded her in that brief
+period of sovereignty which has taken more hold of the imagination of
+Scotland, and indeed of the world, than many a longer and, in point of
+fact, more important reign.
+
+It is difficult to understand how it is that in later days, and when
+established peace and tranquillity of living might have been supposed to
+give greater encouragement to study, accurate and fine scholarship
+should have ceased to be prized or cultivated in Scotland. Perhaps,
+however, the very advantages upon which we have plumed ourselves so
+long, the general diffusion of education and higher standard of
+knowledge, is one of the causes of this failure--not only the poverty of
+Scotch universities and want of endowments, but the broader and simpler
+scale on which our educational systems were founded, and which have made
+it more important to train men for the practical uses of teaching than
+permit to them the waywardness and independence of a scholar. These
+results show the "_defauts de nos qualites_," though we are not very
+willing to admit the fact. But in the earlier centuries no such reproach
+rested upon us. Although perhaps, then as now, the Scotch intelligence
+had a special leaning towards philosophy, there was still many a learned
+Scot whose reputation was in all the universities, whose Latinity was
+unexceptionable, and his erudition immense, and to whom verses were
+addressed and books dedicated in every centre of letters. One of the
+most distinguished of these scholars was George Buchanan, and there
+could be no better type of the man of letters of his time, in whom the
+liberality of the cosmopolitan was united with the exclusiveness of the
+member of a very strait and limited caste. He had his correspondents in
+all the cities of the Continent, and at home his closest associates were
+among the highest in his own land. Yet he was the son of a very poor
+man, born almost a peasant and dying nearly as poor as he was born. From
+wandering scholar and pedagogue he became the preceptor of a King and
+the associate of princes; but he was not less independent, and he was
+scarcely more rich in the one position than the other. His pride was not
+in the high consultations he shared or the national movements in which
+he had his part, but in his fine Latinity and the elegant turn of those
+classical lines which all his learned compeers admired and applauded.
+The part that he played in history has been made to look odious by
+skilled critics; and the great book in which he recorded the deeds of
+his contemporaries and predecessors has been assailed violently and
+bitterly as prejudiced, partial, and untrue. But nobody has been able to
+attack his Latin or impair the renown of his scholarship; and perhaps
+had he himself chosen the foundation on which to build his fame, this is
+what he would have preferred above all. History may come and politics
+go, and the principles of both may change with the generations, but
+Latin verse goes on for ever: no false ingenuity of criticism can pick
+holes in the deathless structure of an art with which living principles
+have had nothing to do for a thousand years and more.
+
+Buchanan was born in a farmhouse, "a lowly cottage thatched with straw,"
+in the year 1506, in Killearn in the county of Stirling; but not without
+gentle blood in his veins, the gentility so much prized in Scotland,
+which makes a traceable descent even from the roughest of country lairds
+a matter of distinction. His mother was a Heriot, and one wonders
+whether there might not be some connection between the great scholar and
+the worthy goldsmith of the next generation, who did so much for the
+boys of Edinburgh. Buchanan's best and most trustworthy biographer, Dr.
+Irving,[5] pictures to his readers the sturdy young rustic trudging two
+miles in all weathers to the parish school, with his "piece" in his
+pocket, and already the sonorous harmonies of the great classic tongues
+beginning to sound in his ears--a familiar picture which so many country
+lads born to a more modest fame have emulated. In the parish school of
+Killearn, in that ancient far-away Scotland before the Reformation,
+which it is hard to realise, so different must it have been from the
+characteristic Scotch school of all our traditions, the foundations of
+Buchanan's great scholarship and power were laid. His father died while
+he was still a mere child, and the future man of letters had plenty of
+rough rustic work, helping his mother about the farm on the holidays,
+which must have been more frequent while all the saints of the calendar
+were still honoured. Trees of his planting, his biographer says, writing
+in the beginning of this century, still grow upon the banks of the
+little stream which runs by the beautiful ruins of Dunblane, and which
+watered his mother's fields. When he had reached the age of fourteen an
+uncle Heriot seeing his aptitude for study sent him off, it would seem
+alone, in all his rusticity and homeliness, to Paris--a curious sign of
+the close connection between Scotland and France--where he carried on
+his studies or, a phrase more appropriate to his age, learned his
+lessons amid the throngs of the French schools. Before he was sixteen,
+however, his uncle died, leaving him desolate and unprovided for amongst
+strangers; and the boy had to make his way home as best he could, half
+begging, half working his passage, stopping perhaps here and there to
+help a schoolboy or to write a letter for the unlearned, and earning a
+bed and a meal as poor scholars were used to do. He remained a year in
+his mother's house, but probably was no longer wanted for the uses of
+the farm, since his next move was to the wars. He himself informs us in
+the sketch of his life which he wrote in his old age that he was "moved
+with a desire to study military matters," a desire by no means unusual
+at seventeen. These were the days when the fantastic French Albany was
+at the head of affairs in Scotland, during the childhood of James V, and
+the country was in great disorder, torn with private quarrels and
+dissensions. It is evident that, the kind uncle being dead and affairs
+in general so little propitious, there would be little chance in the
+resources of the farm of securing further university training for the
+boy who had his own way to make somehow in the world; and perhaps his
+experience of Paris and possession of the French language (no
+inconsiderable advantage when there were so many French adventurers and
+hangers on about the Court) might be expected to give him chances of
+promotion; while his service perhaps exempted an elder brother, of more
+use than he upon the farm, from needful service, when his feudal lord
+called out his men on the summons of the Regent.
+
+[5] I must explain that this chapter was written before the publication
+of the recent, and I believe excellent, biography of Buchanan by Mr. P.
+Hume.
+
+[Illustration: NORTH DOORWAY, HERIOT'S HOSPITAL]
+
+George Buchanan accordingly followed the Laird's flag upon one of the
+wildest and most fruitless of Albany's expeditions to the Border, for
+the siege of Wark. The great Border stronghold, the size and wonderful
+proportions of which astonished the Scots army, stands forth again,
+clear as when it first struck his boyish imagination, in the description
+which Buchanan gives of it nearly half a century later in his history of
+that time--where the reader can still see the discomfited army with its
+distracted captains and councils, and futile leader, straggling back
+through the deep snow, each gloomy band finding its way as best it could
+to its own district. Buchanan would seem to have had enough of fighting;
+and perhaps he had succeeded in proving to his relatives that neither
+arms nor agriculture were his vocation; for we next find him on his way
+to St. Andrews, "to hear John Major who was then teaching dialectics or
+rather sophistry." Here he would seem to have studied for two years;
+taking his degree in 1525 at the age of nineteen. After this he followed
+Major to France, whether for love of his master, or with the idea that
+Major's interest as a doctor of the Sorbonne might help him to find
+employment in Paris, we are not told. One of the many stories to his
+prejudice which were current in his after-career describes Buchanan as
+dependent on Major and ungrateful to him, repaying with a cruel epigram
+the kindness shown him. But there seems absolutely no foundation for
+this accusation which was probably suggested to after-detractors anxious
+for evidence that ingratitude, as one of them says, "was the great and
+unpardonable blemish of his life"--by the epigram in question, in which
+he distinguishes his professor as "solo cognomine Major." It might very
+well be, however, that Buchanan expected a kind recommendation from his
+St. Andrews master, such as the habit of the kindly Scots was apt to
+give, and some help perhaps in procuring employment, and that the
+failure of any aid of this description betrayed the youth into the
+national tendency to harshness of speech and the bitter jeer at one who
+was great only in his name.
+
+A stranger with nothing but his learning and his Latin epigrams (though
+these last were a more marketable commodity then than now) would no
+doubt be forlorn enough, struggling to find himself standing-ground and
+a living, subsisting hardly on what chance employment might fall in his
+way, and reflecting, as most adventurers are apt to do, how easy it
+would be for his prosperous countryman to befriend him. Paris, always
+full of stir and commotion, had at this moment a new source of agitation
+in the rising force of the Reformation principles or, as Buchanan calls
+it, "the Lutheran controversy, which was already spreading far and
+wide," and into the midst of which he fell on his return. Whether his
+interest in the new creed did him harm in his search for an
+establishment we are not told: and probably the "struggle with adverse
+fortune for about two years" which he records was merely the difficulty
+in making himself known which affects every young man. At the end of
+that time he got an appointment in the College of St. Barbe as Professor
+of Grammar, and was henceforward exempted at least from the
+heart-sickening conflict with absolute poverty.
+
+Buchanan would seem to have had already high ambitions and a certainty
+that he was fit for something better than the post of schoolmaster in a
+French college--for notwithstanding his eagerness to get this post we
+soon find him lamenting, in the abstract indeed, but in a manner too
+particular to be without special meaning, the small profit of
+intellectual labour and the weariness of a continual toil which was so
+little rewarded. His plaint of the long night's work, the burning of the
+midnight oil, the hunt through dusty and rotting manuscripts, seems
+touched with a tone of bitterness unusual in the student's murmurs over
+a lot which after all brings him as much pleasure as weariness. The
+ambitious lad was already, it is evident, longing for more brilliant
+scenes.
+
+    "Pervigil in lucem lecta atque relecta revolves
+      Et putri excuties scripta sepulta situ:
+    Saepe caput scalpes, et vivos roseris ungues,
+      Irata feries pulpita saepe manu."
+
+At St. Barbe, however, he secured a noble young pupil of his own
+country, the future Earl of Cassilis, who opened to him a brighter way,
+and finally led him back to his own country and for a time to higher
+fortune. When young King James came to Paris to meet Magdalen of
+France--with the sudden pathetic result of a hasty romantic marriage
+soon followed by the poor young lady's death--young Cassilis was still
+there with his tutor, who was himself but little advanced in life beyond
+his patron. And it was presumably in the train of the royal pair that
+the young men returned home. In that case Buchanan must have witnessed
+the touching scene that took place at the poor young Queen's
+disembarkation when she kissed the soil of her new country, the land
+which was to afford her only a grave. Whether dreams of Court favour and
+advancement were beginning to germinate in the young scholar's brain as
+he was thus suddenly swept into the train of royalty there is nothing to
+say; but at all events he observed everything with keen attentive eyes,
+unconsciously collecting the best materials for the history he was yet
+to write. And it is clear that this accidental connection with the King
+bore after-fruit. Buchanan went to Ayrshire with his young patron who
+had come of age, and whose studies were over it is to be supposed: and
+in the leisure of that relaxation from former duties amused himself with
+compositions of various sorts, and in particular with the _Somnium_, a
+lively poetical satire upon the Franciscans. The monks, who had been the
+favourite butt of all the ages, were more than ever open to the assaults
+of the wits now that the general sentiment had turned so strongly
+against them, and Buchanan said no more than Dunbar with full
+permission, before any controversy arose, had said, nor half so much as
+David Lindsay was privileged to say. And Lord Cassilis' tutor had all
+the freedom of a private individual responsible to no one while he
+lingered at his young patron's castle, pleased to make as many as
+comprehended his Latin laugh, though probably there were few capable of
+appreciating its classical beauty. This, however, was but a pastime, and
+his mind again began to turn towards Paris, where alone perhaps there
+was to be found the kind of work for which he was most fit and the
+literary applause and emulation which were dear to his soul.
+
+He was about to set out when the King, who doubtless had owed some
+entertainment to Buchanan on the lingering homeward journey, and who
+must have been well aware of his character and gifts, made him pause by
+offering him the tutorship of his illegitimate son, one among several
+for whom James, so young as he was, not more than twenty-five, was
+already responsible, another James Stewart, though not the notable James
+who was afterwards the Regent Murray. This appointment brought Buchanan
+at once within the charmed circle of the Court, and probably prepared
+the way for all his after-honours. But his career in Edinburgh at this
+moment was not especially glorious. Delighted by the _Somnium_, which
+had been read to him and applauded by all the obsequious audience round,
+James, who though a good Catholic liked a clever assault upon the
+priests as much as any one, recommended the new member of his household
+to resume the subject. It is supposed that the Grey Friars from their
+great lodgment so near the Court had found fault with the appointment of
+Buchanan and assailed himself as a profane and scoffing heretic. It was
+certainly strange that a man who had adopted the heresies of Luther
+should be appointed to the care of the son of a Catholic King, but
+Buchanan it is probable kept his religious opinions to himself, and it
+was not necessary to be a Protestant to give vent to the broadest
+satires against the monks and friars who had been for so long the least
+defensible portion of the Catholic establishment. Buchanan, however, was
+not bold enough to fall upon his enemies as Sir David Lindsay did. A
+poor man and a dependant, had he the highest spirit in the world, must
+still bear traces of the yoke to which circumstances have accustomed
+him, and a scholar is not necessarily brave. He shrank from encountering
+the great and powerful community of the Grey Friars in the eye of day,
+and instead of the lively assault expected from him, temporised and
+wrote something which was neither satisfactory to the King who wanted a
+laugh at the expense of the monks, nor to the monks who were more
+enraged by the covert character of a satire which could be read both
+ways, than they would have been by straightforward abuse. The
+dissatisfaction of James moved Buchanan to bolder measures, and after
+his halfhearted attempt to compromise himself as little as possible, he
+was goaded into the most virulent use of his pen, and cut down his
+adversaries with the sharp shafts of his _Franciscanus_ with a vigour
+and malice which left nothing to be desired. The Court had its laugh
+which was resounding and long, but neither King nor courtiers had any
+penalty to pay for the pranks which the classical Samson wrought for
+their pleasure.
+
+Though they were thus mocked in high places, the Churchmen, however, had
+lost none of their power, and even the protection of the royal household
+did not avail the audacious poet. In the raid upon heretics which was
+made in the beginning of the year 1539 Buchanan's name was included
+among the guilty. He himself tells us that "Cardinal Beatoun bought his
+life from the King with money": making it probably the price of some
+concession that this audacious assailant should be delivered into the
+hands of the Church. At all events the terrified scholar had no
+confidence in the power or will of his Sovereign to protect him, and,
+scared by the flames of various burnings which had taken place
+throughout the kingdom, directed his best wits to finding a way of
+safety. He escaped through a window while his keepers were asleep, some
+say from the Castle of St. Andrews, some from that of Edinburgh. His own
+account is more simple and goes into no detail. "He made his way into
+England, eluding the guards set for him." But England was not more
+secure than Scotland. The quick-witted fugitive found Henry VIII
+impartially burning victims from both sides, on the same day at the same
+stake, and considered this sublime indifference as still more dangerous
+than the strife of Scotch affairs. "His old familiarity with the French,
+and the singular hospitality of that nation," led him back to the city
+which was then the favourite resort of all the Muses. When, however,
+Buchanan arrived in Paris he found that his special enemy, Cardinal
+Beatoun, had preceded him there as ambassador from King James, and,
+alarmed by so dangerous a vicinity, he accepted at once an offer made to
+him by Andrew Govra, one of his colleagues of former times, who had been
+appointed to the charge of a college in Bordeaux, and removed thither
+with the greatest expedition before his foe could be made aware of his
+presence in Paris.
+
+This was in the end of the year 1539, when Buchanan had attained the age
+of thirty-three. His residence in the capital of the famous province of
+Gascony seems to have been active and happy. He was Professor of Latin
+in the college; perhaps the terms would be more just if we said he was
+Latin master in one of the most flourishing and successful of French
+schools; but our neighbours still prefer the more high-sounding
+nomenclature. The great Garonne was not full of ships and trade at that
+period as it is now; but Bordeaux was one of the old capital cities of
+France, possessing a rank which now belongs to no French provincial
+town, and had its own characteristic society, its scholars and
+provincial statesmen. But the most important and notable human being of
+all whom Buchanan found in his new sphere was a certain small seigneur
+of Gascony, six years old, and already an accomplished Latinist, having
+learned no other language from his cradle, bearing the name of Michel de
+Montaigne and already a little philosopher as well as scholar. The great
+essayist speaks afterwards of "George Buchanan, the celebrated Scotch
+poet," as one of his masters, but he does not say whether Buchanan was
+the enlightened pedagogue who connived at his endless reading and let
+him off as much as was possible from other less congenial studies.
+
+Buchanan, however, must have found the cheerful southern city, with its
+Parliament and its colleges, and all the teeming life and restless
+energies of the Gascon race, not unlike a kind of warmer and more
+brilliant Scotland, full of national brag and gallantry, a congenial
+sphere. He had been for a long time shedding complimentary verses,
+sonnets, dedications, about him after the manner of the time, serving
+out to everybody who was kind to him a little immortality in the shape
+of classic thanks or compliment: but in Bordeaux he began to produce
+works of more apparent importance, "four tragedies" intended primarily
+for the use of his college, where it was the custom to represent yearly
+a play, generally of an allegorical character--one of the fantastical
+miracle plays which delighted the time, and which were often as profane
+in reality as they were religious in pretence. The great classicist
+considered his boys to be wasting their faculties in representing such
+inferior performances, but humoured the prevailing taste so much as to
+choose two Scriptural subjects, Jephthah and John the Baptist,
+alternately with the Medea and Alcestis. He "was successful beyond his
+hopes," he says, in these efforts. In all of the plays the little
+Montaigne was one of the chief performers. "Before a fit age, _Alter ab
+undecimo tum me vix ceperat annus_," says that great writer, "I
+sustained the first parts in the Latin tragedies of Buchanan, which were
+played in our College de Guienne, with dignity." The little scene is
+pleasant to think of, not too long out of date to recall the scholastic
+pastimes of to-day, though there is no Buchanan to produce plays for
+Eton or Harrow, and probably no young Montaigne to play the hero. The
+learned Scot, with his peasant breeding no doubt making him still more
+conscious of the strain of gentle blood in his veins, a little rough,
+irascible, and impatient in nature, notwithstanding the elegance of his
+Latin speech, and the little noble, gentilhomme to his fingers' end,
+half respectful, half contemptuous of the pedagogue, make a picturesque
+contrast.
+
+Buchanan, however, did not feel himself safe even in Bordeaux, where he
+remained only three years. It is said that Cardinal Beatoun wrote to the
+Archbishop recommending his arrest, and the Franciscan community in the
+Gascon city, which had heard from their brethren of his offences against
+the Order, kept an unfriendly eye upon him, ready to take advantage of
+any hostile opportunity. He therefore returned to Paris, where in a
+similar but apparently more obscure position he spent some years. In
+1547 he was very glad to accompany Govra, who had brought him to
+Bordeaux, and whom Montaigne describes as "beyond comparison the
+greatest Principal in France," to his native country Portugal, whither
+his King had summoned him in order that his talents might be of use to
+his own nation as the head of the new University of Coimbra. It would
+seem that Govra carried his whole staff along with him to Portugal.
+"Most of them," Buchanan says, "were men bound to him (Buchanan) for
+many years in the ties of closest friendship, men who were renowned for
+their works all over the world," and in whose society the Scottish
+scholar felt that he would be not among strangers but among kinsmen and
+friends. A still stronger inducement was, that while all Europe was
+ablaze with wars and religious controversies, that one little kingdom
+was at peace. The band of scholars thus removed together to their new
+sphere, like a hive of bees, and at first all went well with them; but
+they had not been long in Portugal when Govra died, leaving them without
+any powerful patronage or protection, a band of strangers, no doubt
+appearing in the aspect of supplanters of native talent to many hostile
+lookers-on. Men of their pursuits and modes of thought, aliens in an
+unknown country, perhaps sufficiently free of speech to alarm the
+narrow-minded, no great observers of ritual or ceremony, were too likely
+under any circumstances to attract the notice of the Inquisition in a
+place so wholly given over to its sway.
+
+Buchanan was probably the most distinguished among this band of
+scholars; and a vague report that he had written something against the
+Franciscans attached to him a special prejudice. As nobody knew what
+this work was, it could not be brought formally against him, but lesser
+crimes were found, such as that of eating meat in Lent and speaking
+disrespectfully of monks, sins which even in Portugal most people were
+more or less guilty of. Buchanan, however, had no very dreadful penalty
+to bear. He was imprisoned for some months in a monastery, that he might
+be brought by the monks' instruction to a better way of thinking. The
+prisoner was fair enough to admit that he found his jailors by no means
+bad men or unkindly in their treatment of him--an acknowledgment which
+is greatly to his credit, since prejudice was equally strong on both
+sides and a persecuted scholar was as little apt to see the good
+qualities of his persecutors as they were to accept his satires. It
+would be interesting to know what the homely fathers thought of him,
+this dreadful freethinker and satirist committed to their care for
+instruction. He found them "entirely ignorant of religious questions,"
+though evidently so much less hostile than he had expected, and occupied
+his enforced leisure in making his translation of the Psalms, a monument
+of elegant verse and fine Latinity, for which the quiet of the convent
+and the absence of interruptions must have been most favourable. He
+would seem to have corrected the bad impression he had at first made, by
+these devout studies and his behaviour generally; for when he was
+released the King would not let him go, but gave him a daily allowance
+for his expenses until some fit position could be found for him. But
+there was evidently nothing in Lisbon which tempted Buchanan to stay. He
+languished in the little capital separated from all congenial society,
+and sighed for his beloved Paris which he addressed as his mistress,
+writing a poem, _Desiderium Lutetiae_, in praise of and longing for the
+presence of that nymph whom so many have wooed.
+
+At last he contrived to escape in a ship bound for England, which,
+however, he found as little congenial as Portugal, and with as short a
+delay as possible he returned to that Lutetia which he loved. Arrived
+there, he would seem to have resumed his old work as schoolmaster in one
+of the colleges, no way advanced, despite his fame and adventures, from
+the first post he had held when little more than a boy, though he was
+now between forty and fifty, and one of the best-known scholars of his
+time. A few years later he became a member of the household of the
+Marechal de Brissac as tutor to his son, and with him spent five years,
+partly in Italy in the province of Liguria where the Marechal was
+governor. For the first time he would seem to have been treated with
+honour, and his advice taken in affairs of state and public business
+generally, and here he tells us he devoted much of his time to the study
+of sacred literature, so that he might be able to form a matured
+judgment as to the controversies which were tearing the world asunder.
+In the year 1560, his services being no longer required by his pupil,
+Buchanan at last decided upon returning to his native country. "The
+despotism of the Guises," he says, "was over, and the religious
+excitement had begun to calm down." It would appear that though his
+convictions had so long been on the side of the Reform, he had not yet
+publicly made himself known as a member of that party. And his return to
+Scotland was made with the full intention so to do.
+
+Such was the wandering and uncertain career of the scholar and man of
+letters of the sixteenth century. Perhaps Buchanan's temper was less
+compliant, his character less easily adaptable to the society in which
+he found himself, than most; but it may be doubted whether this was the
+cause of the very small advancement in life to which he had come, since
+he was complaisant enough to indite many fine verses in praise of people
+who gave him a banquet or a shelter, and he seems to have gone nowhere
+without making friends. He had got abundant reputation, however, if not
+much else, and was known wherever he went as the celebrated poet, which
+doubtless was agreeable to him if not very profitable. But it gives us a
+certain insight into the life of the literary class in his time to see
+so notable a man wandering from one place to another, professor or
+regent or private tutor as it happened, never well off, never secure,
+often in the position of a dependant. When Milton speaks of the
+"others," poets whom he thus adopts into a kind of equality, who "use"
+
+    "To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
+    Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair,"
+
+it is supposed to be Buchanan whom he refers to, which is perhaps honour
+enough for a modern classicist; though Amaryllis, the critics say, was
+no more individual a love than the Lutetia before mentioned, for whom he
+pined. Yet though all the scholars of his time admired and followed him,
+he had to return again and again to his Latin grammar, and to small boys
+not so wonderful as Michel of Montaigne; and when he returned to
+Edinburgh at the age of fifty-five his worldly position was scarcely
+better than when he got his first appointment at twenty-one to the
+College of St. Barbe. His life was now, however, to take another form.
+
+Buchanan's return to Scotland "after the despotism of the Guises was
+over" corresponded very nearly with the return of Queen Mary. It is
+surmised that he may have travelled in the suite of "the Lord James,"
+the future Earl of Murray, who paid his sister a visit very soon after
+the death of her husband, King Francis: certainly nothing could be more
+probable than that the Scotch scholar, seeking an opportunity to return
+to his native country, should have joined himself to the train of the
+prince, who probably had been acquainted in his childhood with his
+brother's tutor, and who was himself a man of education and a patron of
+literature. If this guess should be correct it would account for
+Buchanan's rapid promotion to Court favour. Edinburgh was in a state of
+happy expectation when the poet came back. What was virtually a new
+reign, though Mary had been the nominal possessor of the throne from her
+birth, was about to begin; the fame of the young Queen had no doubt been
+blown far and wide about the country on every breeze--that fame of
+beauty, sweetness, and grace which is the most universally attractive of
+all reputations, and which made the proud Scots prouder still in the
+possession of such a prodigy. That there were graver thoughts among the
+very serious and important party, who felt the safety of their
+newly-established and severely-reformed Church to be in doubt if not in
+danger, and who hated and feared "the mass" and the priests who
+performed it as they did the devil (with whom indeed they were more
+amiably familiar), does not alter the fact that the anticipation of
+Mary's return was a happy one, and her welcome cordial and without
+drawback. Nobody knew that there had been a project of a landing at
+Aberdeen, where Huntly and the other northern lords had proposed to meet
+her with twenty thousand men, thus enabling her to march upon her
+capital as a conquering heroine of the old faith, putting Satan, in the
+shape of John Knox, under her feet. Had she accepted this proposal how
+strangely might the face of history have been changed! But there is no
+reason to suppose that Mary desired to come to Scotland with fire and
+flame, any more than there is that her destruction was a foregone
+conclusion. She came with many prognostics of success, though also with
+a continual possibility that "terrible tragedies" might come of it; and
+for some time it would appear that her Court was as seemly and pleasant
+as any Court could be, full of youthful pleasure and delight as became
+her years and the gay youthful company that surrounded her, but also of
+graver matters and thoughts and purposes becoming a noble Queen.
+
+The first notice we have of Buchanan after his return to Scotland is
+conveyed in a letter from Randolph, the English envoy in Edinburgh, in
+which the question, "Who is fittest to be sent from this Queen to
+attende upon the Queen's Majesty (Elizabeth) for the better continuance
+of intelligence with her Highness?" is discussed. "Of any that I know,"
+says the representative of England, "David Forrest is likeliest, and
+most desireth it. There is with the Queen one called Mr. George
+Buchanan, a Scottishe man very well learned that was schollemaster unto
+Monsieur de Brissac's son, very godly and honest, whom I have always
+judged fitter than any other I know." This was written in January 1562,
+and shows that Buchanan was at that time about the Court and in the way
+of employment, though he was not then chosen as confidential messenger
+between the two queens. A little later he is visible in the exercise of
+his old vocation as the tutor of Mary herself. "The Queen readeth daily
+after her dinner," says the same careful narrator, "instructed by a
+learned man, Mr. George Buchanan, somewhat of Lyvie." These few words
+set before us a curious scene. Mary at the height of her good
+resolutions and good beginning, keeping up her literature as well as all
+her pleasures, her hunting, her riding, her music, her embroideries, all
+the accomplishments of her royal training--makes a delightful picture.
+She had the habit of working with her needle like any innocent lady in
+her bower, while the lords of her Council, grim lords whom it is strange
+to associate with this pretty pose of royal simplicity, discussed around
+her the troublous affairs of the most turbulent kingdom in Christendom:
+and after her dinner, in the languor of the afternoon, one wonders if
+the lovely lady was diligent over her Livy or rather seduced her
+preceptor to talk about Paris, that much-desired Lutetia which he had so
+longed for, as no doubt in the bottom of her heart she too was sometimes
+doing. The two so unlike each other--the beautiful young princess not
+quite twenty, the old scholar and schoolmaster though a poet withal,
+drawing near the extreme boundaries of middle age, and worn with much
+struggling against the world and poverty--would yet find a subject and
+mutual interest far apart from the book, which made endless conversation
+possible, and many a pleasant comparison of experiences so different.
+Buchanan had dedicated a book to one of those fair and famous Margarets
+who adorned Paris at that epoch, and presumably knew her or something of
+her state, and could understand her Majesty of Scotland's allusions, and
+knew something of the gossip of the Court, or at least could pretend to
+do so, as a man who was aware what was expected of a courtier. It is
+possible indeed that Mary was truly studious, and liked her Livy as her
+contemporary did, the gentle Lady Jane who had so sad a fate; but it is
+much more likely, we think, that the big volume lay open, while the
+scholar's eyes glowed and shone with cherished reminiscences of that
+enchanting city in which his best days had flown, and Mary Stewart
+responded to his recollections with all her gay wit and charm of
+pleasant speech. Many are the tragic associations of Holyrood: it is
+well to note that other companions more sober than Signor Davie, more
+calm than Chastelar, shared now and then the Queen's leisure. Grave
+commentators conclude that it spoke well for her Majesty's Latinity that
+Buchanan put her on Livy; for my part I have no doubt that these two
+unlikely gossips, after perhaps a sentence or two, forgot about Livy,
+and talked of their Paris all the time.
+
+Buchanan took the opportunity of this quiet and prosperous period, when
+all was hopeful in the nation as well as in his own prospects, to
+publish the poetical version of the Psalms which had occupied his
+enforced leisure in the Portuguese monastery years before. They had not
+yet seen the light in a complete form, although several of them had been
+included by the well-known printer Etienne, or Stephanus as he is more
+generally called, in a collection of similar translations by several
+learned hands, among which he gives in a flattering preface by far the
+highest place to Buchanan. The terms of laudation in which he speaks,
+and which it was the fashion of the time to employ, may be judged from
+the following extracts quoted by Irving. After commenting upon the
+general excellence of his friend's work, superior to all others, he
+adds,--
+
+    "There is nothing more honourable, nothing more splendid, than after
+    excelling all others, at length to excel one's self; so in my
+    judgment you have most happily attained to this praise in your
+    version of these psalms. For in translating the other odes of this
+    sacred poet, you have been Buchanan, that is, you have been as
+    conspicuous among the other paraphrasists as the moon among the
+    smaller luminaries; but when you come to the hundred and fourth
+    psalm you surpass Buchanan; so that you do not now shine like the
+    moon among the lesser luminaries but like the sun you seem to
+    obscure all the stars by your brilliant rays."
+
+The community of letters in these days was in the habit of expressing
+the intensest mutual admiration, except when a contrary feeling not less
+strong animated their minds and pens. Buchanan dedicated his psalms to
+his beautiful pupil and patron in terms as highflown but more elegant,
+and with a justifiable wealth of hyperbolical adulation. It would be an
+undue demand upon humanity to require nothing more than plain fact in a
+poetical address to a young Sovereign so gracious, so accomplished, and
+so fair. And yet in the extraordinary circumstances, so soon to be
+swallowed up in the abyss of a catastrophe still more extraordinary,
+there is little extravagance in Buchanan's address, of which we shall
+attempt a translation though most unworthy.
+
+    "Lady, who bears the sceptre of this land
+        By endless forefathers transmitted down,
+    Whose worth exceeds thy fortune far, as stand
+        Thy virtues o'er thy years, and the renown
+    Of noble gifts over thy noble line,
+        And spirit o'er thy sex:--without a frown
+    Accept in this poor Latin garb of mine
+          The noble songs of Israel's prophet king.
+        Far from Parnassus and the classic shore,
+          From under northern stars my gift I bring;
+          Nor had I ventured such an ill-born thing
+        To lay before thee, but for fearing more
+    To miss the little chance of pleasing thee,
+    Whose understanding gives a merit not in me."
+
+Buchanan followed this publication by various others, and strangely
+enough, while still enjoying the royal favour brought out his
+_Franciscanus_, his _Fratres Fraterrimi_, and other satires specially
+directed against the monks: which, however, seem to have done him no
+harm, for he talks in 1567 of "the occupations of a court," which kept
+him from bestowing the time and trouble he wished on the preparation of
+his various books for the press. Whether the readings from Livy went on
+all this time we have no record; but when Queen Mary married Darnley,
+and when her son was born, Buchanan would still seem to have occupied
+the position of Court poet, and celebrated both events by copies of
+verses as flattering, as well as elegant, as the dedication. From the
+first of these we may quote the lines in which Buchanan proves,
+notwithstanding his long absence and cosmopolitan training, that the
+native brag of the Scot was as strong in him as if he had never left his
+native shores. It could scarcely be to flatter either of the bridal pair
+that he burst forth into this celebration of "the ancient Kingdom."
+
+    "For herein lies the glory of the Scot,
+    To fill the woods with clamour of the chase;
+    To swim the stream, and cold and heat defy,
+    And hunger and fatigue. To guard their land
+    Not with deep trench or wall, but with the force
+    Of arms, contemning life for honour's sake;
+    To keep their troth, to reverence the bonds
+    Of friendship, to love virtue and not gifts.
+    Such acts as these secured throughout the land
+    Freedom and peace, when war raged o'er the world,
+    And every other nation was constrained
+    To change its native laws for foreign yoke,
+    The fury of the Goth stopped here; the onslaught fierce
+    Of the strong Saxon, and the tribes more strong,
+    The Dane and Norman, who had conquered him,
+    Nay, in our ancient annals live the tales
+    Of Roman victory stayed--the Latin tide
+    Which neither south wind checked, nor Parthia bleak,
+    Nor waves of Meroi, nor the rushing Rhine,
+    Was here arrested by this only race
+    Before whose face the Roman paused and held
+    The frontier of his empire, not by lines
+    Of hill and river, but by walls and towns,
+    By Caledonian axes oft assailed,
+    Laying all hope of further gain aside."
+
+In the meantime, while these poetical performances went on, and the
+scholar occupied his leisure in preparing for publication his scattered
+works--an occupation which of itself proved the quiet and good hope in
+which he was living--more serious labours also occupied his mind.
+Notwithstanding his tutorship at Court, Buchanan took advantage of the
+moment to declare himself an adherent of the newly formed and very
+belligerent Church, now settled and accepted on the basis of the
+Reformation, but with little favour at Court as has been seen. He not
+only put himself and his erudition at once on that side in the most open
+and public way, but sat in the General Assembly, or at least in one of
+the Assemblies which preceded the formal creation of that great
+ecclesiastical parliament, in 1563, less than two years after his
+arrival in Scotland. Nor was his position that of a simple member taking
+part in the debates; he seems to have sat upon various special
+committees, and to have been entrusted, along with several others, to
+revise the Book of Discipline, the standard of order and governance: and
+this while he was still a courtier, Mary's tutor and gossip, holding his
+place in her presence, and celebrating the events of the time in courtly
+and scholarly verse--a curious instance of toleration in a time which
+scarcely knew its name.
+
+To recompense Buchanan's services Queen Mary granted him, in the year
+1564, an allowance from the forfeited Church property, making him
+pensioner of the Abbey of Crossraguel, with an income of five hundred
+pounds Scots--a sum very different, it need not be said, from the same
+sum in English money. The abbey had been held by a Kennedy, the brother
+of Buchanan's first pupil, the Earl of Cassilis, and very probably he
+had thus some knowledge of and connection with the locality, where he
+had gone with Cassilis many years before. The grant would seem for some
+years to have profited him little, the then Earl of Cassilis, son of his
+gentler Gilbert, having little inclination to let go his hold of the
+rents which his uncle had drawn, either in favour of a new abbot or of
+the pensioner; and the cruelties with which this fierce Ayrshire lord
+treated the functionary who succeeded his uncle seem incredible to hear
+of. George Buchanan kept out of his clutches; but it was not till some
+years afterwards that we find the local tyrant bound over in sureties to
+leave the two lawful proprietors of these funds alone. So far as can be
+made out, Mary's grant to Buchanan was almost identical in date with the
+publication of the Psalms and the sonnet which he placed at their head:
+a graceful and royal return for the compliment, quite in harmony with
+the customs of the time. Both events occurred, as would appear, in the
+year 1564, when all was still well with the unfortunate Queen.
+
+Buchanan has been accused of great ingratitude to Mary, because at one
+time he served and flattered her, and received as a recompense for the
+incense he offered, a substantial benefit: but afterwards turned from
+her party to that of her brother, and condemned her with unsparing blame
+in his History, as well as acted against her after her downfall. But the
+ingratitude is quite incapable of proof. To be devoted to a royal
+personage in his or her youth, and to maintain unbroken, however he or
+she may change, this early devotion through evil and through good
+report, is a romantic grace which is given to few. It was given to very
+few of those who received with enthusiasm the young Queen of Scotland,
+when she came unsullied, with all her natural fascination and charm,
+into the country which hoped everything from her, yet knew nothing of
+her. After the half-dozen years of disaster and tragedy, of which a much
+greater number of her people believed her the guilty cause than the
+innocent victim, there were few indeed who maintained their faith. And
+Buchanan was neither romantic nor young; he had none of the elements of
+an enthusiast in him. A caustic man of the world, a self-absorbed
+scholar without domestic ties or usage in the art of loving, it would
+have been wonderful indeed had he constituted himself the champion of
+his beautiful pupil in her terrible adversity because she had shown him
+a little favour and he had laid poetical homages at her feet in a
+brighter time. It would be hard indeed if such a passage of mutual good
+offices were to bind a man's judgment for ever, and prevent him from
+exercising the right of choosing whom he will serve to all time. Mary's
+bounty would suffice to give to her tutor the independence which he had
+struggled for all his life, if it had been paid; but it was not paid for
+several years; and it was a bounty which cost the giver nothing, so that
+the claim for eternal gratitude is overweening in any case.
+
+At the same time, both then and ever, Buchanan's patron and backer was
+the Lord James, a man with whom he was very much more likely to find
+himself in sympathy than with the young Queen. A grave temper and some
+learning, and also the charm of early association, would naturally
+attract the elderly scholar more than Mary's feminine gifts, however
+great their charm. It was Murray, no doubt, who presented him to the
+Queen, and procured him his position at Court; and just as the tragic
+moment approached, when Mary's brilliant life was about to plunge into
+darkness, Murray bestowed on Buchanan the place of all others best
+suited for him, and to which his whole previous existence tended--that
+of Principal of the College of St. Leonard's in the University of St.
+Andrews. A more fit position, as the best field for his great gifts and
+dignified retirement for his old age, could not be imagined. Buchanan
+was sixty; he was of all the scholars of his time _facile princeps_,
+according to the opinion of the great French printer and scholar, whose
+expressions were adopted in the register of the University as describing
+the qualifications of the new Principal. It might well have been
+supposed that in the reconstitution and improvement of that old
+University, in the supervision of his students, in the periodical visit
+to Edinburgh for Church matters or educational duties, which has
+afforded the necessary relaxation to many a succeeding principal, the
+peaceful days of the greatest scholar in Europe would now have passed
+tranquilly, until he found his resting-place, like so many others, under
+the soft green mantle of the turf which, broken only by solemn
+mounds--the last traces of individuality--encircled the great Cathedral
+of St. Andrews as it now encircles the ruins of that once splendid
+shrine.
+
+The events of the time, however, permitted no such dignified and calm
+conclusion. One can imagine the horror and dismay with which the little
+community at St. Andrews heard the dreadful news, carried far and wide
+on every breeze, with every kind of whispered comment and
+suggestion--soon to be no longer whispered with pale face and bated
+breath, but proclaimed from the housetops--of Darnley's murder. Buchanan
+had poured forth his celebrations of Mary's marriage and of the birth of
+the heir while still a member of her household. And no doubt he had
+become aware of the dissensions in that royal house, of Darnley's
+ingratitude and folly and the Queen's impatience, before he escaped from
+all the talk and endless gossip to the quiet of his college. But it
+would seem equally clear that when the action of the sombre tragedy
+quickened he was absent from the scene and knew of it only by the
+rumours and reports that came across the Firth. First Rizzio's murder,
+which the distant spectators would discuss, no doubt, with a thrill not
+entirely of horror, a stern sense that justice had been done, a
+satisfied prejudice--and no doubt some patriotic, if still prejudiced,
+hope that now the Italian was removed there would be less of foreign
+policy, and a more entire regard for the welfare of affairs at home.
+Then would come the rumours of the Queen's vengeance, lightly held at
+first, of Bothwell always in the foreground, her chief supporter and
+partisan--Bothwell who, though loved by nobody, was yet a Protestant,
+and therefore not altogether beyond hope. And then with ever-quickening
+haste event after event--the murder of the King, for whom no one would
+have mourned much had it been attended by circumstances less terrible;
+the mad proceedings of the Queen, whether constrained or free, her
+captivity, outrage, or conspiracy, whichever it was, her insane and
+incomprehensible marriage, which no force or persuasion could account
+for. As the posts arrived at uncertain intervals, delayed by weather,
+strong winds and heavy seas, by breaking down of conveyances, by the
+very agitations and tumults in the capital which made them so terribly
+interesting, the eager spectators in Fife must have congregated to await
+their arrival with an intensity of excitement, of which, with our
+endless sources of information and constant communication, we can form
+little idea now.
+
+And there would seem to be no doubt of the strong immediate feeling
+which arose against the Queen, the instant conclusion of the bystanders
+as to her guilt. There have been no greater fluctuations in historical
+opinion than those that have arisen around the facts of Mary's life.
+Historians of the eighteenth century considered it as a test of a man's
+moral sanity whether he persisted in believing in Mary's innocence or
+not. Among her contemporaries the progress of time which softened
+impression, and the many pathetic situations of her later history, the
+terrible misfortunes under which she fell, her endless miseries and
+troubles, and the brave spirit with which she met them, turned some
+hearts again towards her, an ever-troubled but ever-devoted body of
+partisans. But at the moment when these terrible events occurred there
+can be little doubt that the horror and condemnation were almost
+unanimous. No reasoning could explain away those wild and mad acts, no
+discussion of probability come in. The mob in Edinburgh which raged
+against her was checked in its fierceness and subdued to pity at sight
+of the wretched lady in her despair, at that awful moment when she
+appeared at the window of the Provost's lodging in the High Street, and
+made her wild appeal, in all the force of impassioned and terrible
+emotion, to the overawed and excited crowd. They saw her in the
+carelessness of misery half-dressed, unadorned, disenchanted, and
+delivered from the maddening delusion which had carried her away,
+recognising in its full extent the horrors of the result--and their
+hearts were rent with pity. But notwithstanding that pity and all the
+innate chivalry which her sufferings called forth, Edinburgh and
+Scotland, the whole alarmed and terrified nation, believed at first the
+evidence of their senses. There seems nothing more distinct than this
+fact throughout all the trouble and tumult of the moment. It is not to
+be taken as an absolute proof of Mary's guilt. Such impressions have
+existed in other though less conspicuous cases and have been proved
+untrue. But that it did exist universally there can be little doubt.
+
+The scene at the window of the Provost's lodging where the unfortunate
+Queen was lodged, near the Nether Bow of Edinburgh, when brought back
+from Dunbar after the flight of Bothwell by the angry lords, with the
+mob clamouring underneath, and her enemies holding her fate in their
+hands, seems to me one of the most significant in her history. No woman
+was ever in circumstances more terrible. The situation is stronger if we
+suppose her guilt, and that what we see before us is a great spirit
+carried away by passion--that something beyond reason, beyond all human
+power to restrain, which sometimes binds an angelic woman to a villain,
+and sometimes a man of the highest power and wisdom to a lovely trifler
+or a fool. It seems to me as at once more consistent with the facts and
+with human nature to realise the position of the unhappy Queen as
+transported by that overwhelming sentiment, and wrought on the other
+side to an impatience almost maddening, by the injuries, follies,
+treacheries, and universal provocation of her unworthy husband, until
+the force of the bewildering current carried her in a disastrous moment
+over a precipice worse than any Niagara, in a headlong course of mingled
+misery, exasperation, love, and despair. Before she had even
+accomplished the terrible circle of events, and become Bothwell's wife,
+it requires no strong effort of the imagination to perceive that the
+despair might well have come uppermost, and that Mary fully recognised,
+not only the horror, but the futility and wretched failure into which
+she had plunged. We do not pretend to believe that there was much to
+cause remorse in the mind of such a woman in such an age in the death,
+however brought about, of the miserable Darnley. Mary could have brushed
+him from her memory like a fly, had that been all. But the rage of
+despair and failure was in her soul when she raved like a caged lion
+from door to window, imprisoned, trapped, and betrayed, expressing her
+incoherent transport of pain to the mob which would have had her blood,
+but which, overcome by the spectacle of that supreme and awful passion,
+became silent with awe or hushed by a spasm of pity and tears.
+
+So it has remained, a spectacle to all the earth, which the fiercest
+assailant and the most rigid judge cannot long contemplate without
+yielding to a painful compassion which rends the heart. Why should all
+that faculty and force, all that wonderful being, with every capacity
+for happiness and making happy, for wise action and beneficent dealing,
+for boundless influence and power--why such youth, such strength, such
+spirit, equal to every enterprise, should they have been swept away by
+that remorseless fate? We can still see the trapped and ruined
+Queen--exasperated still further by the consciousness that many of the
+men now holding her in bonds were at least as guilty as she, guilty of
+Darnley's blood, guilty if not of favouring yet of fearing Bothwell and
+yielding their countenance to his plans--pacing that chamber, appearing
+at that window, her loveliness, her adornments, and all the wiles of
+triumphant beauty forgotten, throwing forth to the earth that was as
+brass and the skies that were as iron, like a wild animal in its
+torment, her hoarse inarticulate cry. And, whatever we may think of her
+merits, that terrible spectacle is more than flesh and blood can bear.
+Pity takes the place of wrath and indignation that she alone should
+suffer: why not Lethington, Huntly, Athole, and the rest, all those
+stern peers who counselled with her upon the most effectual way of
+having Darnley removed, the thankless fool who disturbed every man's
+peace--why were not they tried along with her, they who took such high
+ground as her judges? Why should she bear the brunt of all? Even
+Bothwell had escaped, and Mary stood at the bar of the world alone.
+
+But such thoughts would not seem to have moved the first spectators, to
+whom all that damning sequence of events, one precipitated on the heels
+of another, came fresh as they occurred day by day. As for Buchanan, he
+would be less prone to doubt than any. He knew something of the Court of
+France and of the atmosphere in which Mary had received her training. He
+was acquainted with many a royal scandal, and had much experience of a
+world in which vice was the rule and good behaviour a mere exception,
+due to a cold temperament, or a wariness uncongenial to generous youth.
+Such an old man of the world is slow to believe in innocence at all, and
+it is very likely that to him who knew her so well it was impossible to
+conceive of Mary as an example of weak but spotless virtue. The
+Principal of St. Leonard's went over to Edinburgh a few days after the
+completion of that tragic chapter, when Mary had been consigned to
+Lochleven, and Murray had assumed the Regency. The city was still
+agitated by much discussion of the dreadful questions which occupied all
+minds yet was slowly calming down like an angry sea, with long seethings
+and swellings of excitement. The object of Buchanan's visit was not
+curiosity or desire to be in the centre of that excitement, but a
+simpler matter, which has drawn many a Principal of St. Andrews since to
+the capital of Scotland, an Assembly of the Church, which opened "in the
+Nether Tolbooth" on the 25th of June. Of this Assembly he, though a
+layman, was appointed Moderator "for eschewing of confusion in
+reasoning"--a curious motive, which proves at least that his
+contemporaries had great confidence in his judgment, and also that the
+passion of this excited and tumultuous time ran so high in the Church
+that a stronger authority than usual was wanted to keep it within
+bounds. The sentiment of the Church, or at least of the dominant party
+in it, would seem to have been rather satisfaction that the Sovereign,
+foreign alike in training and religion, had been set aside than any
+distress at the cause. The Assembly congratulates itself that "this
+present has offered some better occasion than in times bygane, and has
+begun to tread down Satan under foot," which is not a very amiable
+deliverance: but kindness and charity were not the Christian virtues
+most approved in those days.
+
+From this time Buchanan took up with vehemence, and indeed with
+violence, the prosecution of Mary, acting often as her accuser, and
+always as an active agent, secretary, or commissioner, in the conduct of
+the indictment against her. He has been subject on this account to very
+hard treatment especially from the recent defenders of the Queen. Mr.
+Hosack, in his able book _Mary Queen of Scots and her Accusers_,
+denounces him as having offered verses and adulations to the Queen at a
+time when, according to his own after-statement, everybody knew her to
+be living in shameless vice and corruption. This, however, is not at all
+a necessary inference. It might, on the contrary, very well have lent
+bitterness to Buchanan's historical record, written after the dreadful
+catastrophe which so many accepted as a revelation of Mary's real
+character, that he had himself been one of the deceived, who for years
+had entertained no suspicion, but accepted the fair seeming as truth.
+Such a sentiment is one of the most common in human nature. The friend
+deceived becomes the bitterest enemy; and he who has been seduced into
+undeserved approval is apt to go farther than the fiercest adversary
+when he learns that his own utterances have helped to veil the crime
+which he had never suspected the existence of. This motive is enough, we
+think, to account for the special virulence with which Buchanan
+certainly does assail the Queen, and the passion which thrills through
+the _Detectio_, a sort of fury and abhorrence which makes every
+paragraph tingle. She had done nothing to Buchanan to rouse any desire
+for individual vengeance; and it is more rational, certainly, to believe
+that the horror of the discovery inspired with a sort of rage the bosom
+of the scholar--rage which was perfectly genuine in its beginning,
+though it might, no doubt, be raised to whiter heat by the continually
+increasing fervour of partisanship. The curious description of him given
+by Sir James Melville (the courtier, not the divine) that "he was easily
+abused, and so facile that he was led with any company that he haunted
+for the time, which made him factious in his old days; for he spoke and
+writ as they that were about him for the time informed him," would, if
+accepted, give a still easier solution to this question. But it is a
+little difficult to accept such a character of Buchanan, who does not
+seem to have been a man easily put off from his own way, especially when
+taken in conjunction with the Assembly's minute, recording his election
+as president "for eschewing of confusion in reasoning." It is more easy
+to believe the statement that he was "extreme vengeable against any man
+that offended him, which was his greatest fault."
+
+The much darker accusation against Buchanan, that he was a party to, or
+indeed the most active agent in, the forging of certain letters reported
+to have been sent by Mary to Bothwell before Darnley's murder, and known
+far and wide as the Casket Letters, seems to rest upon nothing but
+conjecture. He was one of the few members of the party who possessed the
+literary gift, the only one, perhaps, except Lethington, whom Mr.
+Skelton has presented to us as not only a very enlightened statesman,
+but at all times the faithful servant of Mary, but who is accused by
+earlier writers of much tergiversation and falsehood. He it was,
+according to Chalmers, who was the forger, reaching the summit of
+wickedness "in forging his mistress's handwriting for the odious purpose
+of convicting her of the crime of aggravated murder." Chalmers was as
+sturdy a champion of Mary's innocence in the eighteenth as Mr. Skelton
+is in the nineteenth century, but the conduct of historical research has
+very much altered in the meantime. The changes have been rung between
+Lethington and Buchanan by various critics, but the last light upon the
+subject seems to be that there is none, and that if the letters were
+forged the forger at least cannot be identified by any art known to
+history.
+
+It is unnecessary to pursue the question, or to bring further arguments
+to prove that nothing else in Buchanan's writings indicates the
+possession of such dramatic and constructive power as would be necessary
+for the production of such a letter as that professedly written from
+Glasgow, which is by far the most important of the contents of the
+Casket. A woman's distracted soul, divided between passion and shame,
+the very exaltation of guilty self-abandonment and the horror of
+conscious depravity and despair, is not a thing which can be imagined or
+embodied by the first ready pen, or even able intellect. No one of all
+the tumultuous band that directed affairs in Scotland has given us any
+reason to suppose that he was capable of it. Its very contradictions,
+those changes of mood and feeling which the most ignorant reader can
+perceive, are quite beyond the mark of ordinary invention. Mr. Froude
+has said that only Shakespeare or Mary Stewart could have written it--at
+all events the writer, supposing it to be forged, must have been of
+unquestionable imaginative genius. It is one of the most wonderful
+compositions ever given to the world. We look on with awe while those
+dark secrets of the heart are unfolded. The revelation is too
+tremendous, too overwhelming, and far too true to nature, to call forth
+mere horror and condemnation. It is a proof of the often-repeated
+statement that could we but see into the heart of the greatest criminal
+pity would mingle with our judgment. Nothing could be more criminal and
+horrible than the acts therein anticipated, yet we think it would be
+impossible for any unbiassed mind to read this letter for the first time
+without an increase at least of interest in the writer, so transported
+by her love, ready almost to brag of the falsehood and treachery into
+which it leads her, till sick shame and horror of herself breathes over
+her changing mood, and she feels that even he for whose love all is
+undertaken must loathe her as she loathes herself. To imagine Buchanan,
+an old man of the world, somewhat coarse, fond of a rough jest, little
+used to women, and past the age of passion, as producing that tragical
+and terrible revelation, is almost more than impossible, it is an insult
+to the reader's intelligence. And accordingly the latest writers on this
+subject have relinquished that accusation; they no longer charge the old
+pedagogue with such an effort of genius; they confine themselves to
+accusing him of ingratitude towards his benefactress, which is as much
+as to say that a little personal favour, even when well earned, is to
+compel a man to shut his eyes henceforward to the character and conduct
+of the person who has conferred it, and that both patriotic feeling and
+political policy are to be quenched by a pension, which is a strange
+view.
+
+There can be no doubt, however, that Buchanan made out the case against
+the Queen with all the rhetorical force of which he was capable; that
+the accusation was bitter, as of a man who had been personally deceived
+and injured, as indeed it is quite possible that he may have felt
+himself to be; and that there was no pity, no mercy, nor compunction
+towards her, such as arose in many men's bosoms after a little time, and
+have been rife ever since both in writers and readers. The _Detection_
+is without ruth, and assumes the most criminal and degrading motives
+throughout. Its intention clearly is to convince Scotland, England, and
+the world of Mary's utter depravity, and the impossibility of any excuse
+for her or argument in her favour. The strong and fiery indignation in
+it is indeed lessened in effect, at least to us in these latter days, by
+the over strength of the indictment; and the reader who turns from the
+perusal of the Glasgow letter--which damns indeed yet rouses a world of
+conflicting feelings, awe and terror and pity for the lost soul thus
+tragically self-condemned--to the historical document in which the
+charges against the Queen are authoritatively set forth, cannot fail to
+be struck by the difference. It is far from being simple abhorrence with
+which we regard the revelation of the one, but in the other there is no
+light; the picture is inhuman and impossible in its utter blackness, the
+guilt imputed to the Queen is systematic, unimpassioned, the mere
+commonplace of an utterly depraved nature. The wild emotion and terrible
+impulse in her becomes mere vulgar vice in her accuser's hands. In this
+there is nothing wonderful, nothing out of the common course of nature,
+which is prone to make every indictment more bitter than the facts that
+prove it.
+
+But it may well be believed that it was something of a fierce
+consolation to the high-tempered and strong-speaking Scots, in the rush
+of universal popular condemnation, to believe and assert that the Queen,
+who had so disappointed and disenchanted all her well-wishers, had been
+bad through and through, indecent and shameless. The inclination, almost
+the wish, to think the worst of every fallen idol has not died out with
+the generation which condemned Mary Stewart; and Buchanan was the
+spokesman, the advocate of the other party, whose conduct could only be
+justified by the establishment of her guilt. If she were not guilty,
+they were traitors. If all the proof against her was but a mass of
+distorted facts and false swearing, nothing in the way of punishment was
+too bad for her unfaithful subjects. A mistake was impossible, the
+struggle was one of life and death. The spokesman in such a tremendous
+issue, the narrator and setter forth of the terrible question,
+especially if he is a person whose trade it is to write, and who can be
+accused of doing his work for hire, is always at a disadvantage. It can
+never be proved to the vulgar mind that he has not formed his opinions
+to order, that he does not give them out to the world according as they
+may best benefit and satisfy his employers. His masters may be hated,
+but he is both hated and despised. If it could be proved that Murray was
+solely actuated by ambition and the hope of getting the throne for
+himself, he would still be a belligerent with the honours of war due to
+him; but the scribe, the hireling who is employed to state the whole
+matter, has no position but that of a venal dependant ready to set forth
+whatever is for his master's interests. Thus the historian of a party,
+who makes money by his work, the literary advocate whose office it is to
+make the strongest statement possible of his employer's case, is
+subject--or at least was subject in more primitive times--to the worst
+reproaches. His testimony was seldom taken as conscientious or true.
+
+Buchanan's _Detection_ was peculiarly subject to this reproach. It was
+written for the purpose of proving the case of the lords by demolishing
+entirely that of the Queen--before England and the commissioners of
+England first, seated in session to investigate the subject, and after
+them before the world in general. The inquiry which was opened at York
+in October 1568, six months after Mary's escape to England, was the most
+like a trial of anything in which her history was discussed. She was
+represented by commissioners, while Murray and several of his colleagues
+were present in person, along with Buchanan and other secretaries or
+minor commissioners. It was at this inquiry that the Casket Letters were
+first produced under, we are bound to say, if we judge by the rules of a
+period of settled law and order like our own, very suspicious
+circumstances. Even the question of the language in which they were
+written is a very difficult one. All through, indeed, this question is
+difficult, though it is never formally discussed until that tragical
+occasion. In what language did Mary and Knox hold their discussions?
+Could it be always in French that this accomplished Queen wrote and
+spoke? When she is reported to have said, as recorded in a previous
+chapter, "That man gart me greet sore, and grat never tear," is this
+expression, so distinctively and strongly Scots, a translation from some
+more elegant murmur in another language? She who had so many tongues,
+had she left out that in which she had been born, the language of her
+childhood and of her country? This problem is only considered by the
+historians when it is required to prove that a letter must be forged
+because it is apparently first written in Scots. There is also a very
+great point made of the difference between Scots and English, which
+seems to have been very slight indeed, a difference of spelling more
+than anything else, nothing that could confuse any but the most ignorant
+reader. The following sentences from Buchanan's "_Admonition direct to
+the Trew Lordis, maintaineris of justice_" will throw some light on the
+latter question, the difference between the written speech of the two
+different kingdoms, which one writer tells us would have made it easier
+for Queen Elizabeth to read letters in French than Scots:--
+
+    "It may seme to zour lordshippis," says Buchanan, "yat I, melling
+    with heich materis of governing of comoun welthis do pass myne
+    estait, being of sa meane qualitie, or forgetting my dewtie geveing
+    counsal to ye wysest of yis realme. Not the les seeing the miserie
+    sa greit appeiring, and the calamitie sa neir approching, I thocht
+    it les fault to incur the cryme of surmounting my private estait
+    than the blame of neglecting the publict danger."
+
+From this the reader will be able to judge what extraordinary difficulty
+there was in the Scotch to an English reader of those days. The use of z
+instead of y, of y instead of th, are matters very easily mastered; and
+it is surely the utmost folly to suppose that Queen Elizabeth could have
+found the slightest difficulty in deciphering this northern version of
+the common tongue.
+
+The document quoted above is a very powerful and no doubt also violent
+assault upon the Hamiltons, especially called forth by the murder of the
+Regent Murray, the slackness of the succeeding Government in the
+punishment of his assassin, and the powerful reasons there were for
+destroying--a measure which Buchanan thought imperative both for the
+safety of the realm and the child-king--that powerful family, the head
+of which was next in succession to the Scotch Crown, and had been
+popularly believed to be ready for any crime to obtain it. Now that
+there was nothing but the life of a child between the Hamiltons and this
+elevation, Buchanan lifted up his testimony against the supineness which
+left the race undisturbed to carry out its evil designs. Murray had been
+murdered in the beginning of 1570, and the _Admonition_ was printed at
+Stirling a few months later. In the same year Buchanan wrote that
+curious tract called the _Chameleon_, a satirical attack upon
+Lethington, which is not very brilliant either in language or
+conception, and fails altogether in the incisive bitterness which
+characterises most of Buchanan's other political papers. "It is at least
+equal in vigour and elegance to that of most compositions in the ancient
+Scottish language," says Buchanan's biographer, but few modern readers
+will agree in this verdict. Buchanan's hand had not the lightness
+necessary for such a performance. The guilt of Mary and the death of
+Murray furnished him with more emphatic motives than the iniquities of
+Maitland, and he was evidently stronger in assault and invective than in
+the lighter methods of composition.
+
+It might have been supposed that his hopes of preferment would have been
+seriously injured by Murray's death. But it was after this event that he
+was selected for the greatest office which Scotland could bestow upon a
+scholar--the education of the young King. Buchanan's services were no
+doubt well worthy of such a reward: at the same time it may be allowed
+that a scholar so renowned, the first of contemporary poets according to
+the judgment of his class, and the greatest of lettered Scotsmen beyond
+all question, could not be passed over. During the intervening time he
+had retained the appointment of Principal of St. Leonard's College, his
+frequent absences being made possible by the fact that though he had
+much to do with the government and regulation of the University of St.
+Andrews, he was not actively employed in giving instruction. But after
+this we float at once into a halcyon time. It was in the end of 1569 or
+beginning of 1570 that he was appointed the governor of the King, and in
+this capacity and amid peaceful surroundings more appropriate to his
+character than the rage of politics, the old scholar becomes more
+distinctly visible than it was possible he could be in the midst of
+contention and under the shadow of greater men. He was about sixty-four
+at the time he entered upon the active duties of the office. "A man of
+notable endowments for his knowledge of Latin poesie--much honoured in
+other countries, pleasant in conversation, rehearsing on all occasions
+moralities short and instructive, whereof he had abundance, inventing
+when he wanted," says Sir James Melville. _Sandford and Merton_ had not
+been written for the advantage of schoolboys in Melville's days, yet the
+picture is that of an antiquated Mr. Barlow never forgetting the art of
+instruction. The particular anecdotes, however, told of Buchanan, do not
+recall Mr. Barlow or his "moralities" at all.
+
+[Illustration: STIRLING CASTLE]
+
+The little King James, a precocious and clever child like all the
+infantile monarchs of the house of Stewart, had been established at
+Stirling, always a favourite residence of the Scotch Kings, where he
+held his baby Court in peace while his mother pined in England, and the
+Scotch lords struggled for the mastery, and succeeded each other as
+Regents at home. The troubles of the world outside seem to have been
+kept far from the surroundings of the boy, to whom both the kingdoms
+looked as their heir, the child in whom the glories of his race came to
+a climax, and the union of the warring kingdoms was at last secured.
+Personally, he was by far the least distinguished of his name, but no
+one as yet suspected this fact or thought of Buchanan's pupil as less
+hopeful than any of the gallant Jameses who had preceded him. The little
+Court at Stirling was presided over at this early period by the Lady
+Mar, a dignified matron who was "wise and sharp and kept the king in
+great awe," although at the same time very tender of the child and
+respectful of his royal dignity. Almost all James's immediate
+surroundings seem to have belonged to this powerful race. The master of
+the household was a certain Laird of Drumwhasel, to whom no other name
+is given, and who is described as ambitious and greedy, a man whose
+"greatest care was to advance himself and his friends." Alexander
+Erskine, another member of the household, calls forth something like
+enthusiasm in the courtly narrative as "a gallant, well-nurtured
+gentleman, loved and honoured by all men for his good qualities and
+great discretion, no ways factious nor envious, a lover of all honest
+men, desiring to see men of good conversation about the prince rather
+than his own nearest friends if he found them not so meet." In addition
+to this official household were the tutors charged with James's
+education, two of them being members of the Erskine family, abbots of
+Cambuskenneth and Dryburgh, though those titles were no doubt merely
+fictitious, meaning only that the "temporalities," the endowments of the
+extinct monasteries, were in their hands. The other and principal
+masters of James were Sir Peter Young and Mr. George Buchanan. Young was
+"gentle, loth to offend the king at any time, carrying himself warily as
+a man who had a mind to his own weal by keeping of his majesty's
+favour"--"but Mr. George," adds the historian, "was a Stoick philosopher
+who looked not far before him." He "held the king in great awe," so that
+James "even trembled" as he himself says elsewhere, "at his approach,"
+and did not spare either rod or word in the interests of his pupil. Some
+of the anecdotes of this severe impartiality are amusing enough. At one
+time annoyed by the noise which the King and his playfellows were
+making, Buchanan bade them be silent under certain penalties if the
+offence were repeated, and provoked by a childish impertinence from
+James, took up the little culprit and whipped him with exemplary
+impartiality, notwithstanding that his companion, the little Master of
+Mar, stood by, on whom vicarious chastisement might have been applied.
+Lady Mar, rushing to the scene of action at the sound of "the wailing
+which ensued," took the child from his master's hands and consoled him
+in her motherly arms, asking Buchanan indignantly how he dared to touch
+the Lord's anointed. The incident is very natural and amusing in its
+homely simplicity; the child crying, the lady soothing him, the sardonic
+old master in his furred nightgown and velvet cap, looking on unmoved,
+bidding her kiss the place to make it well. The Master of Mar no doubt
+would cry too for sympathy, and the old gentleman take up his big book
+and move off to seek a quieter place for study. On another occasion,
+when the little King tried to get a sparrow from his companion and
+crushed the bird in the struggle, Buchanan rated him as himself a bird
+out of a bloody nest. He was an old man and alone in the world,
+indifferent to future favours from a king whose reign he would probably
+not live to see, and treating him with impartial justice.
+
+There was, however, no indifference to James's education in this austere
+simplicity: indeed it would seem that Buchanan, like other preceptors of
+monarchs, had some hope of forming an ideal prince out of the boy. A few
+years after his appointment to his office, and when James was still too
+young to profit by it, he began to write his famous treatise, in the
+form of a dialogue, upon the laws of the kingdom, the duty respectively
+of kings and subjects. The _De Jure Regni_, published when the King was
+about twelve, was dedicated to him in a grave and dignified letter in
+which Buchanan describes his work as an attempt to expound the
+prerogatives of the Scottish Crown, "in which," he says, "I endeavoured
+to explain from their very cradle, so to speak, the reciprocal rights
+and privileges of kings and their subjects." He goes on to say that the
+book was written in the midst of the public troubles with a view to
+enlightening the disturbers of the commonwealth as to their duties: but
+that peace beginning to be established he had sacrificed his argument
+for the sake of public tranquillity. Now, however, that it may be useful
+to the development of the King he brings it forth again. The direct
+address to James is full of that curious self-deception or defective
+insight which is so common among those who have the training of a pupil
+of great importance in the world. The boy had grown beyond the age of
+personal chastisement; he had reached that in which the precocious
+facility of comprehension, which is so strongly fostered by the
+circumstances of such a position as his, looks to the dazzled pedagogues
+and attendants like genius, and there seems no prognostic too happy or
+too brilliant for the new career in which at last there is about to be
+fulfilled all that men have dreamed of a king.
+
+    "Many circumstances tend to convince me that my present exertions
+    will not prove fruitless, especially your age, yet uncorrupted by
+    perverse opinions; a disposition beyond your years, spontaneously
+    urging you to every noble pursuit; a facility in obeying not only
+    your preceptors, but all prudent monitors; a judgment and dexterity
+    in disquisition which prevent you from paying much regard to
+    authority, unless it be confirmed by solid argument. I likewise
+    perceive that by a kind of natural instinct, you so dislike
+    flattery, the nurse of tyranny, and the most grievous pest of a
+    legitimate monarchy, that you as heartily hate the courtly solecisms
+    and barbarisms as they are relished and affected by those who
+    consider themselves as the arbiters of every elegance, and who, by
+    way of seasoning their conversation, are perpetually sprinkling it
+    with majesties, lordships, excellencies, and, if possible, with
+    other expressions still more nauseous. Although the bounty of nature
+    and the instruction of your governors may at present secure you
+    against this error, yet am I compelled to entertain some slight
+    degree of suspicion lest evil communication, the alluring nurse of
+    the vices, should lend an unhappy impulse to your still tender mind,
+    especially as I am not ignorant with what facility the external
+    senses yield to seduction. I have therefore sent you this treatise,
+    not only as a monitor, but even as an importunate and sometimes
+    impudent dun, who in this turn of life may convoy you beyond the
+    rocks of adulation; and may not merely offer you advice, but confine
+    you to the path which you have entered, and if you should chance to
+    deviate may reprehend you and recall your steps. If you obey this
+    monitor you will ensure tranquillity to yourself and your family,
+    and will transmit your glory to the most distant posterity."
+
+That James VI should be described as disliking flattery and despising
+authority, if not enforced by solid argument, is strange to hear; and
+that he should be so boldly called upon to consider a plea for national
+freedom and a constitutional rule, as the chief guarantee of
+tranquillity and honour, is still more remarkable. Certainly it was not
+from Buchanan that he got those high pretensions of divine right, which
+had never flourished in Scotland; although by a not uncommon paradox the
+most faithful partisans of the family which was brought to ruin by these
+pretensions were found in the northern kingdom. Very different were the
+doctrines upon which Buchanan nourished the royal child. James
+acknowledged afterwards not ungracefully the distinction of his
+instructor in letters. "All the world," he says, "knows that my master
+George Buchanan was a great master in that faculty." But his opinions in
+politics found no favour in his pupil's eyes when James emerged from his
+youthful subjection and began to show his native mettle. At twelve,
+individuality in that respect would scarcely be developed, and a
+reverence for his tutor's sharp tongue and ready hand would keep the
+King from premature opposition.
+
+While this work was going on in the comparative quiet of Stirling,
+Scotland was lost in the turmoil of one of the most wild and terrible
+portions of her history. It is indeed rather from the glimpse we have of
+the little royal household in the foreground of all that strife and
+bloodshed, the Lady Mar in her matronly dignity, Buchanan in his furred
+gown among his books, and the clamour and laughter of the two boys
+interrupting the quiet, that we can believe in any semblance of peace or
+domestic life at all in the distracted country. The Regent Lennox, the
+King's grandfather, was killed under the very rocks of the castle where
+James learned his lessons. His young companion's father, the Earl of
+Mar, was taken from the family at Stirling and raised to a brief and
+agitated Regency, through all of which a civil war was raging. And till
+from beyond the seas there came the still more horrible news of that
+French massacre which convulsed the world, and made an end of Mary's
+party, nothing was secure from one day to another in Scotland. It was in
+the midst of that very tumult and endless miserable conflict, in which
+Mary's followers had at last set up the doctrine of her irresponsibility
+and divine right to retain her position as Queen whatever might be her
+guilt as Mary Stewart--that the scholar set himself to compose his work
+upon the rights of the kingdom and the duties of kings. His high temper,
+his strong partisanship, his stern logic, would find an incitement and
+inspiration in those specious arguments on the other side which were so
+new to Scotland, and had been contradicted over and over again in her
+troublous history, where no one was so certain to be brought to book for
+his offences as the erring or unsuccessful monarch. It must be difficult
+for a great classicist to be at the same time a believer in the divine
+right of kings; and it was a new idea for the mediaeval Scot accustomed
+to reverence the name, but to criticise in the sharpest practical way
+the acts of his sovereign. And we may imagine that the old scholar, who
+could not but hear from his window the shouts of the warfare between the
+Queen's party and the King's, would have a grim satisfaction as he sat
+high above them, protected more or less by the royal name, in forging at
+his leisure those links of remorseless argument which, though they had
+no effect upon the pupil to whom they were dedicated, had their share in
+regulating that great rebellion which had so important an effect upon
+the after-history of the two kingdoms.
+
+During this period, however, Buchanan had other occupations besides his
+tutorship and his literary work. He was made "director of the Chancery,"
+whatever that may mean, and in 1570 was elevated to the post of Keeper
+of the Privy Seal, in which capacity he served in various Parliaments:
+and was also a member of the Privy Council. When the conspiracy arose
+against the Regent Morton which ended in his temporary deprivation of
+the regency, Buchanan seems to have taken part against him, though on
+what argument we are not told: for it was Morton's power which had
+brought about the re-establishment of peace and order to which he refers
+in the dedication of his book. And it is a feasible conjecture that it
+was by his crafty suggestion that the Regent's fictitious plaints of
+being weary of his high office and desiring nothing more than that the
+King's Majesty should take the government into his own hand, were
+ingeniously twisted so as to give his dismissal the air of a gracious
+consent to Morton's own wishes. An old man like Buchanan, well
+acquainted with the wiles of logic and the pretexts of state, was more
+likely to use an advantage in which there is a certain grim humour, and
+to take the adversary in his own toils, than such an inexperienced
+politician as young Mar, or any of the undistinguished nobles who
+carried out that stratagem. Whether Buchanan supported his old pupil,
+Mar, in his attempt to seize the governorship of the castle and the
+King's person out of the hands of his uncle, or in what aspect he was
+regarded when Morton returned to the head of affairs, we have no means
+of knowing. Whatever his influence might be at the King's ear or amid
+the secret meetings of the malcontents, neither as Lord Privy Seal nor
+as King James's tutor did he come in public collision with any public
+authority. His action, whenever he appears publicly, is perfectly
+characteristic of his real position and faculties. He took part in a
+commission for the establishment of a system of municipal law: he was
+one of the Church's commissioners on two occasions in determining her
+policy and discipline. When the reform of the Universities of Scotland,
+so often taken up since then, and so slow to be accomplished, was
+brought under the consideration of Parliament, Buchanan was one of the
+chief of the commissioners appointed to consider it. He is reported to
+have been the author of a scheme of reconstruction to be employed in the
+University of St. Andrews; and it is interesting to find in this new
+system that special attention was enjoined to be given to Greek, and
+that the study of Hebrew was also recommended to the students. The
+latter language, we believe, still remains an established part of the
+studies of young men in preparation for the ministry in the Church of
+Scotland. Buchanan desired that the Principal of his own College, St.
+Leonards, should lecture on Plato. And he made a present of a number of
+Greek books, still carefully preserved, to Glasgow University, though
+why he should have chosen to send them there, instead of to his own
+smaller and poorer University, we have nothing to show. It is thus
+apparent that in his active public work Buchanan's chief attention was
+given to his own proper subjects. There is no evidence that he did more
+than was indispensable to his official character in matters more
+exclusively political.
+
+His old age thus passed, in a certain learned leisure which it is very
+difficult to imagine as existing in so tumultuous a period and amid so
+many violent changes and vicissitudes. He had many learned
+correspondents throughout the world, almost all the great scholars of
+the time being numbered among his friends; and the letters which he
+received from all quarters implied a considerable amount of
+letter-writing on his side. He sent copies of his books to his friends
+as if he had been the most modern of novelists, and it is curious to
+think of the big laborious volume of solemn Latin dramas, or that thin
+but weighty tome, instinct with another and more living kind of
+interest, which set forth the rights of nations--sent by some trusty
+messenger, a young scholar finding in the packet entrusted to his charge
+the best introduction to one of the lights of learning on the Continent,
+or some adventurer making his way to a commission in the Scottish
+Archers or other service of arms more profitable for a younger son than
+the frays and feuds of Scotland. The learned doctors of the Sorbonne,
+the scholars of Geneva, and the printers of Holland, replied on their
+side not only with elaborate thanks and eulogies, but with responsive
+presents, treatises or translations of their own, some of them dedicated
+to the royal boy who was the pupil of their friend, and of whom he gave
+so wonderful a description. "I have been guilty of trifling with a
+sacred subject," wrote Berger with his volume of poems, "and I have
+dedicated my trifles to a king." Another learned correspondent sends a
+Plato which he has edited, one volume of which he had also inscribed to
+James, begging that his friend would present it to his Majesty. They
+would seem to have shared Buchanan's satisfaction in his princely pupil,
+and it is chiefly by way of reflection, through these responses, that we
+perceive what his opinion of the young King was, and how much proud
+delight, expressed no doubt in the most classical language, he took in
+the boy's aptitude and promise. The following letter, however, which is
+not classical at all, but written in choice Scots and addressed to Queen
+Elizabeth's envoy, Sir Thomas Randolph, gives a less dignified but very
+graphic description of his own circumstances and occupations. It is
+written from Stirling during Morton's Regency, when peace prevailed and
+even prosperity had returned in some measure to the distracted kingdom.
+
+    "To Maister Randolph, Squiar, Maister of Postes to the Queen's Grace
+    of England.
+
+    "Maister, I haif rescevit diverse letters frome you, and yit I haif
+    answerit to nane of them--of the quhilk albeit I haif mony excuses
+    such as age, forgetfulness, business, and disease, yet I will use
+    nane as now, except my sweirness (reluctance) and your gentleness:
+    and gif ye think nane of them sufficient, content you with ane
+    confession of the falt without fear of punition to follow on my
+    onkindness. As for the present I am occupied in writyng of our
+    historie, being assured to content few, and to displease many
+    therethrow. As to the end of it if ye gett it not or (before) this
+    winter bepassit lippen (trust) not for it, no nane other writyngs
+    from me. The rest of my occupation is with the gout quhilk halds me
+    busy both day and night. And quhair ye say ye have not lang to lyif
+    I trust to God to go before you, albeit I be on foot, and ye ryd
+    _the post_: praying you also not to _dispost_ my hoste at Newark,
+    Jone of Kelsterne. This I pray you partly for his awyn sake quhame I
+    tho't ane gude fellow, and partly at request of such as I dare not
+    refuse. And thus I take my lief shortly at you now, and my lang lief
+    when God pleases, committing you to the protection of the Almighty.
+    At Stirling, xxv. day of August, 1577.--Yours to command with
+    service,
+
+            G. BUCHANAN."
+
+The mild, aged jest about preceding his friend out of life though he
+must go on foot and Randolph had the advantage of commanding the Post,
+and his recommendation of the erring postmaster at Newark, who was a
+good fellow, throw a pleasant light of kindly humour into this letter.
+And we thus hear for the first time of the History, the greatest work of
+his life, which he seems to have begun in the tranquillity of the
+palace-castle, notwithstanding the hostile influence of gout and
+years--hostile above all to so great a piece of work. He was now over
+seventy, and the end of his career seemed near at hand, although he had
+but recently taken in hand so great an enterprise. Buchanan's History is
+not, more than other great histories which have succeeded it, an
+absolutely impartial work; but it is, throughout all his own stirring
+and momentous age, the record of a bystander with abundant means of
+knowledge and a keen apprehension of all the controversies and struggles
+of his time. If he may perhaps glorify too much the character of his
+patron and friend the Regent Murray, and take the darkest view of Mary,
+we can only say that he would have been more angel than man had he kept
+himself absolutely without bias in that hot and still unexhausted
+debate. And there was nothing angelical about the old scholar who had
+taken a part in so many historical events, from the siege of Wark
+Castle, where he was present as a boy, to the Conferences at York and
+Westminster, which were matters of yesterday. The science of history has
+so much developed since his time that it may almost be said to have made
+a new beginning; and much that was considered authoritative and
+convincing then has fallen into the limbo of uncertainty, when not
+rejected altogether. The many differing motives and agencies which can
+only be fully estimated when the period of discussion is past, have come
+to occupy a far greater space in the mind of the historian than had been
+dreamed of in Buchanan's days; and the careful examination of evidence
+with which we are now familiar was unknown either in the study of the
+writer or the courts of law during a time which has left endless
+questions from both to be debated and re-debated by succeeding
+generations. But yet Buchanan's History remains the most important and
+dignified record of the national existence up to his time; and no one
+would now venture to treat the story of ancient Scotland, the chronicles
+of her kings, or even the still undecided questions of Mary Stewart's
+life and reign, without the guidance more or less of this great
+authority. It was a bold step to dedicate to King James a record in
+which his mother's life was denounced and condemned with such unsparing
+freedom; but the astonishing absence of sympathy or human understanding
+shown in this was shared by the greater part of Buchanan's
+contemporaries, who evidently felt the facts of the mother's guilt to be
+too abundantly demonstrated and universally consented to, to demand any
+delicacy of statement as addressed to her son. No one, we think, can
+entertain any doubt of the historian's own strong conviction on this
+subject. Among the many fables current about Buchanan, there was one
+circumstantial and oft-repeated, of his repentance on his deathbed of
+his judgment of the Queen; but this is entirely set at rest by the
+affecting record which we shall quote farther on of a last visit paid to
+him by certain of his friends who had taken fright at the boldness of
+his statements, and feared that the King, now grown up and developing
+his own individual sentiments, might stop the issue of the book when he
+saw these uncompromising records.
+
+We must add one pretty story of Buchanan's kindness to his brethren in
+scholarship and literature which shows the sharp and cautious scholar in
+a very pleasant light. A certain Thomas Jack, a schoolmaster in Glasgow,
+had composed in Latin verse a little book upon the ancient poets, called
+the _Onomasticon Poeticum_, and encouraged by the friendship already, as
+he says, shown to him by Buchanan, carried the book to him for revision.
+
+    "I found him in the royal palace of Stirling, diligently engaged in
+    writing his History of Scotland. He was so far from being displeased
+    by the interruption that he cheerfully took my work from my hands,
+    and after reading two or three pages of it, collected together his
+    own papers which were scattered on the table, and said, 'I will
+    desist from my work till I have done what you wish.' This promise he
+    accurately fulfilled; and within a few days gave me a paper written
+    with his own hand, and containing such corrections as he thought
+    necessary."
+
+One can imagine the old scholar seated with his documents before him in
+the light of a broad window, perhaps arrived at some knotty point which
+wanted consideration, and turning from the crabbed papers, which would
+not fit themselves in, with that delight in a lawful interruption and
+temptation to idleness which only hard-working students know. Much has
+been said about the misery of such interruptions to the absorbed writer,
+but no one has pointed out the occasional relief and comfort which they
+bring. Buchanan must have hailed this occasion of evading for a moment
+his legitimate work with all the pleasure of an old critic and
+connoisseur suddenly appealed to with such a congenial demand. Even in
+our ashes live their wonted fires, and where is the scholar who does not
+turn with delight from his history or his sermon to criticise a copy of
+verses, to _savourer_ a fine latinism or dig his pen through a false
+quantity as if he were cutting down an enemy? Thomas Jack has departed
+into oblivion along with his _Onomasticon_: but this record of the
+friendly reception he and his book met with affords a delightful gleam
+of light upon the historian's waning days.
+
+It is more remarkable when we find another witness describing our
+somewhat irascible and sharp philosopher as growing young again in the
+boys who surrounded him, and adapting his mind to all ages and classes
+of men. Probably by the time he came to be the King's preceptor Buchanan
+had ceased to be so compliant, or very probably conceived it
+appropriate, on principle, to be less indulgent to a pupil whose danger
+it would be to have too many flatteries and caresses.
+
+We have no very clear record when it was that the tutelage of James was
+supposed to be over, or if Buchanan was ever formally freed from his
+office. Informally the King would have seemed to be more or less his own
+master at the end of Morton's Regency, when, though subject to "raids"
+like that of Gowrie and the contending influence of one party after
+another, there was no longer any Regent thought of, and the business of
+the country was conducted formally in the King's name. It would seem,
+however, from the dedication of the History, that Buchanan had ceased
+for some time before its publication to take an active part in James's
+education. He speaks in this of "the incurable illness" which made him
+incapable of "discharging the office entrusted to me of cultivating the
+genius" of the young King; and presents the book as making up in some
+degree for that personal failure. The History ends with the death of the
+Regent Lennox, he who was killed in Stirling almost under the
+historian's eyes, and when Scotland was still distracted between two
+parties, and in a state of civil warfare. It has been made a subject of
+reproach to Buchanan that he stopped his chronicle before the beginning
+of the Regency of Morton, because of his personal hatred to that brave
+and able personage--a singular charge, seeing that Buchanan lived only a
+few months after the last Regent of Scotland; and he has expressly
+mentioned in one of his dedications the increased tranquillity which was
+the result of Morton's government.
+
+It is in Edinburgh we find the old man of letters in the last scene of
+his long and laborious life. In September 1581 he was visited by three
+gentlemen from St. Andrews, one of whom gives us the most lifelike and
+interesting account of this last interview. It would have been still
+more interesting had they afforded some indication where they found him,
+whether he had some pleasant room granted to him in Holyrood, after so
+many years with the King, a suitable retreat for his old age; or if he
+had retired to some private lodging in the Canongate to end his days.
+His visitors make no mention of such unimportant circumstances, but they
+leave us a most touching and faithful picture of the end of his life.
+These visitors were the famous Andrew Melville, Principal of the New
+College at St. Andrews, a scholar almost as distinguished as himself,
+who had at an earlier period been Buchanan's pupil, and who had acquired
+his great knowledge in the same way, in the famous schools of the
+continent; James Melville, his nephew, minister of Kilrenny on the
+shores of Fife; and Thomas Buchanan, the cousin of the dying historian.
+James Melville relates this last visit as follows:--
+
+    "That September in time of vacans, my uncle Mr. Andrew, Mr. Thomas
+    Buchanan and I, hearing that Mr. George Buchanan was weak, and his
+    Historie under the press, past over to Edinbruck annes errand
+    (expressly) to visit him and see the work. When we came to his
+    chalmer we found him sitting in his chair, teaching his young man
+    that servit him in his chalmer, to spell a, b, ab, and e, b, eb,
+    etc. Efter salutation Mr. Andro says, 'I see, sir, ye are not
+    idle.'--'Better this,' quoth he, 'nor stealing sheep--or sitting
+    idle which is as ill.' Thereafter he shew us the Epistle Dedicatorie
+    to the King, the which when Mr. Andro had read he told him that it
+    was obscure in some places, and wanted certain words to perfeyt the
+    sentence. Sayes he, 'I may do na mair for thinking on another
+    matter.'--'What is that?' sayes Mr. Andro. 'To die,' quoth he; 'but
+    I leave that and manie more things for you to help.'
+
+    "We went from him to the printer's workhouse, whom we found at the
+    end of the 17 book of his Cornicle at a place which we thought verie
+    hard for the tyme, which might be an occasion for staying the haill
+    work, anent the burial of Davie. Therefore staying the printer from
+    proceeding, we came to Mr. George again, and fand him bedfast by his
+    custom, and asking him how he did, 'Ever going the way of weilfare,'
+    says he. Mr. Thomas, his cousin, shawes him of the hardness of that
+    part of his Storie, that the King would be offendit with it, and it
+    might stay all the work. 'Tell me, man,' says he, 'gif I have told
+    the truth?'--'Yes,' says Mr. Thomas, 'Sir, I think so.'--'I will
+    bide his feud and all his kin's then;' quoth he. 'Pray, pray to God
+    for me, and let Him direct all.' So by the printing of his Cornicle
+    was endit, that maist learned, wyse, and godly man endit this mortal
+    life."
+
+He was a pedagogue, perhaps something of a pedant, a hot partisan, a
+special pleader; but few lives can show a more dignified and noble end.
+If it was the truth he had written this old man cared for nothing else,
+not even for that fame which is the last infirmity of noble minds. The
+King might keep back the great work of his life, but he could not
+silence the lips in which no fear of man was. Whatever might happen
+afterwards, Buchanan's record was clear; to have told the truth was all
+with which he had anything to do.
+
+There is a touch of what for want of a better word we must call cynicism
+in the humorous indifference with which the old philosopher is said to
+have discussed his own burial. Finding, as the story goes, that there
+was not money enough in the house for the last expenses, he ordered what
+there was to be given to the poor, declaring that he was not concerned
+as to what was to become of his remains. If they did not choose to bury
+him they might let him lie, he said in grim jest. He was, however,
+reverently buried by the authorities of Edinburgh, in the historical
+churchyard of the Greyfriars, attended by "a great company of the
+faithful," though no stone seems ever to have been placed to indicate
+the spot where he was laid. Thus in some unknown corner he rests, like
+so many other illustrious persons--a man who never rested in his life,
+and carried down his labours to the very verge of the grave. It is a
+curious satire upon human justice that his name should have been kept
+green in Scotland by the rough jests of an imaginary Geordie Buchanan,
+commonly supposed to have been the King's fool, as extraordinary a
+travesty as it is possible to conceive. It is almost as strange a twist
+of all the facts and meaning of life that the only money of which he
+could be supposed to be possessed at his death should have been one
+hundred pounds (Scots, no doubt), _arrears_ of the pension due to him
+from the Abbey of Crossraguel, given by Queen Mary to that learned pupil
+of the Sorbonne and lover of Lutetia with whom she read Latin at
+Holyrood in the early days before trouble came.
+
+[Illustration: GREYFRIARS CHURCHYARD]
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+THE MODERN CITY
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A BURGHER POET
+
+
+After the extraordinary climax of dramatic interest which brought the
+history of Edinburgh and of Scotland to the knowledge of the whole
+world, and which has continued ever since to form one of the most
+exciting chapters in general history, it was inevitable that when that
+fated Court dispersed, and the lady who was its charm and head
+disappeared also under the tragic waves which had been rising to engulf
+her, there should fall a sudden blank into the record, a chill of
+dulness and tedium, the charm departed and the story done. In fact, it
+was not at all so, and the metropolis of Scotland continued to seethe
+with contending elements, and to witness a continued struggle,
+emphasised by many a martyrdom and deed of blood, and many a desperate
+battle both hand to hand and head to head in the streets and in the
+council chambers, all with more or less the religious question involved,
+and all helping to work out the final settlement. When that final
+settlement came after all the tumults and blood it had cost, it is
+scarcely possible not to feel the downfall from those historical
+commotions to the dead level of a certain humdrum good attained, which
+was by no means the perfect state hoped for, yet which permitted peace
+and moderate comfort and the growth of national wellbeing. The little
+homely church towers of the Revolution, as they are to be seen, for
+instance, along the coast of Fife, are not more unlike the Gothic spires
+and pinnacles of the older ages, than was the limited rustical provision
+of the Kirk, its restricted standing and lowered pretensions, unlike the
+ideal of Knox, the theocracy of the Congregation and the Covenant.
+Denuded not only of the wealth of the old communion, but of those
+beautiful dwelling-places which the passion of the mob destroyed and
+which the policy of the Reformers did not do too much to
+preserve--deprived of the interest of that long struggle during which
+each contending presbyter had something of the halo of possible
+martyrdom about his head--the Church of the Revolution Settlement lost
+in her established safety, if not as much as she gained, yet something
+which it was not well to lose. And the kingdom in general dropped in
+something like the same way into a sort of prose of existence, with most
+of the picturesque and dramatic elements gone. Romance died out along
+with the actual or possible tragedies of public life, and Humour came
+in, in the development most opposed to romance, a humour full of mockery
+and jest, less tender than keen-sighted, picking out every false
+pretence with a sharp gibe and roar of laughter often rude enough, not
+much considerate of other people's feelings. Perhaps there was something
+in the sudden cessation of the tragic character which had always
+hitherto distinguished her history, which produced in Scotland this
+reign of rough wit and somewhat cynical, satirical, audacious mirth, and
+which in its turn helped the iconoclasts of the previous age, and
+originated that curious hatred of show, ceremony, and demonstration,
+which has become part of the Scottish character. The scathing
+sarcasm--unanswerable, yet false as well as true--which scorned the
+"little Saint Geilie," the sacred image, as a mere "painted bradd," came
+down to every detail of life; the rough jokes of the Parliament House at
+every trope as well as at every pretence of superior virtue; the grim
+disdain of the burgher for every rite; the rude criticism of the fields,
+which checked even family tendernesses and caresses as shows and
+pretences of a feeling which ought to be beyond the need of
+demonstration, were all connected one with another. Nowhere has love
+been more strong or devotion more absolute; but nowhere else, perhaps,
+has sentiment been so restrained, or the keen gleam of a neighbour's eye
+seeing through the possible too-much, held so strictly in check all
+exhibitions of feeling. Jeanie Deans, that impersonation of national
+character, would no more have greeted her delivered sister with a
+transport of kisses and rapture than she would have borne false
+testimony to save her. There is no evidence that this extreme
+self-restraint existed from the beginning of the national history, but
+rather everything to show that to pageants and fine sights, to dress and
+decoration, the Scots were as much addicted as their neighbours. But the
+natural pleasure in all such exhibitions would seem to have received a
+shock, with which the swift and summary overthrow of Mary's empire of
+beauty and gaiety, like the moral of a fable, had as much to do as the
+scornful destruction of religious image and altar. The succeeding
+generations indemnified themselves with a laugh and a gibe for the loss
+of that fair surface both of Church and Court: and the nation has never
+given up the keen criticism of every sham and seeming which exaggerated
+the absolutism of its natural character, and along with the destruction
+of false sentiment imposed a proud restraint and restriction upon much
+also that was true.
+
+[Illustration: EDINBURGH: GENERAL VIEW]
+
+[Illustration: ALLAN RAMSAY'S SHOP]
+
+To come down from the age when Mary still reigned in Holyrood and Knox
+in St. Giles's--and Edinburgh saw every phase of passion and tragedy,
+wild love, hatred, revenge, and despair, with scarcely less impassioned
+devotion, zeal, and fury of Reformation, and all the clang of opposed
+factions, feuds, and frays in her streets--to the age when the
+Parliament House and its law courts were the centre of Edinburgh, when
+Holyrood was the debtors' sanctuary, and St. Giles's a cluster of parish
+churches, even its distinctive name no longer used: and when the
+citizens clustered about the Cross of afternoons no longer to see the
+heralds in their tabards and hear the royal proclamations, but to tell
+and spread the news from London and discuss the wars in the Low
+Countries, and many a witty scandal, gibes from the Bench and repartees
+from the Bar, the humours of the old lords and ladies in their "Lodging"
+in the Canongate, and the witticisms of the favourite changehouse--is as
+great a leap as if a whole world came between. The Court at St. Germains
+retained the devotion of many, but Anne Stewart was on the throne, and
+rebellion was not thought of, while everything was still full of hope
+for the old dynasty, so that Edinburgh was at full leisure to talk and
+jeer and gossip and make encounter of wits, with nothing more exciting
+in hand. In this tranquil period, his apprenticeship being finished, a
+certain young man from the west, by the name of Allan Ramsay, opened a
+shop in the High Street "opposite Niddry's Wynd" as a
+"weegmaker"--perhaps, if truth were known, a barber's shop, in all ages
+known as the centre of gossip wherever it appears. It is odd, by the
+way, that a place so entirely dedicated to the service of the male
+portion of the population, and where women have no place, should have
+this general reputation; but so it has always been. He had spent his
+early years as a shepherd on Crawford Moor in the Upper Ward of
+Clydesdale, and no doubt had there learned every song that floated about
+the country-side. "Honest Allan" was in every respect a model of the
+well-doing and prosperous Edinburgh shopkeeper of his time--a character
+not too entirely engrossed by business, always ready for a frolic, a
+song, a decorous bout of drinking, and known in all the haunts of the
+cheerful townsmen: tolerant in morals yet always respectable, fond of
+gossip, fond of fun, and if not fond of money yet judiciously disposed
+to gain as much as he could make, or as his apprentices and careful wife
+could make for him: and gradually progressing from a smaller to a larger
+shop, from a less to a more "genteel" business, and finally to a
+comfortable retirement.
+
+In such a life there was plenty of room for enjoyment, for relaxation,
+and no want of leisure to tell a good story or compose a string of
+couplets where that gift existed, even when most busy. We may imagine
+that he did not sit much at his block, but rather in the front of the
+shop amusing his customers, while their periwigs were curled or fitted,
+with Edinburgh gossip and wit in the familiarity of common citizenship,
+or with anecdotes which enlightened the country gentlemen, especially
+those from the west, the last _bon mot_ of the Parliament House, or the
+Lord Advocate's latest deliverance. And his clubs were as numerous as
+those of a young man of fashion. The "Easy Club" was composed of "young
+anti-unionists," which indicates the politics which the wigmaker mildly
+held in cheerful subjection to the powers that were. No doubt he would
+have gone to the death (in verse) for the privileges of Edinburgh: but
+the anti-unionism or sentimental Jacobitism of his class was not of a
+kind to trouble any Government. And except the question of the Union,
+which was settled early in his career, politics do not seem to have been
+of an exciting character in Edinburgh. Local matters, always the most
+interesting of any to the inhabitants of a town not great enough to be
+cosmopolitan but full of distinct and striking individuality, furnished
+the poetical wigmaker with his first themes. It would seem that he only
+learned to rhyme from the necessity of taking his part in the high jinks
+of the club; at least all his early productions were intended for its
+diversion. An "Elegy on Maggie Johnstone," mistress of a convenient
+"public" at Morningside, then described as "a mile and a half west from
+Edinburgh," a suburb on "the south side," though now a part of the
+town--which would lie in the way of the members when they took their
+walks abroad, and no doubt formed the end of many a Sabbath day's
+ramble--was almost the first of his known productions; and we may well
+believe that the jovial shopkeepers were delighted with the sensation of
+possessing a poet of their own, and held many a discussion upon the new
+verses--brimful of local allusions and circumstances which everybody
+knew--over their ale as they rested in the village changehouse, or among
+the fumes of their punch in their evening assemblies. Verses warm from
+the poet's brain have a certain intoxicating quality akin to the toddy,
+and no doubt the citizens slapped their thighs and snapped their fingers
+with delight when some well-known name appeared, the incidents of some
+story they knew by heart, or the features of some familiar character.
+The satisfaction of finding in what they would call poetry a host of
+local allusions about which there was no ambiguity, which they
+understood like their ABC, would rouse the first hearers to noisy
+enthusiasm. And thus encouraged, the cheerful bard (as he was called in
+those days) went on till his fame penetrated beyond the club. Another
+elegy of a more serious description was so highly thought of that it was
+printed and given to the world by the club itself. That world meant
+Edinburgh, its many tradesmen, the crowded inhabitants of all the lofty
+"lands" about that centre of busy social life where the Cross still
+stood, and the old Tolbooth gloomed over the street, cut in two by its
+big bulk and the fabric of the Luckenbooths, a sort of island of masonry
+which divided what is now the broad and airy High Street opposite St.
+Giles's into two narrow straits. The writers and the advocates, the
+professors and the clergy, Councillor Pleydell and his kind, were not
+the first to discover that Ramsay the wigmaker had something in him more
+than the other rough wits of the shops and markets. And by and by the
+goodwives in their high lodgings, floor over floor, ever glad of
+something new, learnt to send one of the bairns with a penny to the
+wigmaker's shop in the afternoon to see if Allan Ramsay had printed a
+new poem: and received with rapture the damp broadsheet brought in fresh
+from the press, with a fable or a song in "gude braid Scots," or a witty
+letter to some answering rhymester full of local names and things. There
+was no evening paper in those days, and had there been it was very
+unlikely it would have penetrated into all the common stairs and crowded
+tenements. But Allan's songs, of which Jean or Peggy would "ken the
+tune," and the stories that would delight the bairns, were better worth
+the penny than news from distant London, which was altogether foreign
+and unknown to that humble audience.
+
+This no doubt was the sort of fame and widespread popular appreciation
+which made the statesman of that day--was it Fletcher of Saltoun or
+Duncan Forbes the great Lord President?--bid who would make the laws so
+long as he might make the songs of the people. He had in all likelihood
+learnt Allan's widely flying, largely read verses, which every _gamin_
+of the streets knew by heart, in his childhood. And though they might
+not be in general of a very ennobling quality, there are glimpses of a
+higher poetry to come in some of these productions, and a great deal of
+cheerful self-assertive content and local patriotism, as well as of
+rough fun and jest. If it were not for the very unnecessary introduction
+of Apollo as the god to whom "the bard" addresses his wishes, there
+would be something not unworthy of Burns in the following lines. The
+poet has of course introduced first, as a needful contrast, "the master
+o' a guid estate that can ilk thing afford," and who is much "dawted
+(petted) by the gods"--
+
+    "For me, I can be weel content
+    To eat my bannock on the bent,
+        And kitchen't wi' fresh air;
+    O' lang-kail I can make a feast
+    And cantily haud up my crest,
+        And laugh at dishes rare.
+    Nought frae Apollo I demand,
+        But through a lengthened life,
+    My outer fabric firm may stand,
+        And saul clear without strife.
+          May he then, but gi'e then,
+            Those blessings for my share;
+          I'll fairly, and squarely,
+            Quit a', and seek nae mair."
+
+It was no doubt after he had achieved this reputation of the streets--a
+thing more difficult than greater fame--that his imagination developed
+in more continuous and refined effort. Whether he himself printed his
+penny broadsheet as well as sold it we are not informed, but as he began
+after a while to combine bookselling with wigmaking we may be allowed to
+imagine that the press which produced these flying leaves was either in
+or near his shop. It is difficult to realise the swarming of life and
+inhabitation within the high houses of the old town in an age when
+comfort was little understood: and even the concentration within so
+small a space, of business, work, interest, idleness, and pleasure, is
+hard to comprehend by people who have been used to appropriate a
+separate centre to each of the great occupations or exercises of
+mankind. When London was comparatively a small town it had still its
+professional distinctions--the Court, the Temple, the City, the place
+where law was administered and where money was made, where society had
+its abode and poverty found a shelter. But in old Edinburgh all were
+piled one on the top of another--the Parliament House within sight of
+the shops, the great official and the poor artificer under the same
+roof: and round that historical spot over which St. Giles's crown rose
+like the standard of the city, the whole community crowded, stalls and
+booths of every kind encumbering the street, while special pleaders and
+learned judges picked their steps in their dainty buckled shoes through
+the mud and refuse of the most crowded noisy market-place, and all the
+great personages of Edinburgh paced the "plainstanes" close by at
+certain hours, unheeding either smell or garbage or the resounding cries
+of the street.
+
+[Illustration: CROWN OF ST. GILES'S]
+
+In such a crowded centre the sheets that were being read so eagerly,
+laughed over by the very cadgers at their booths, conned by the women at
+the stairheads, lying on every counter, where Allan's new verses would
+be pulled to pieces by brother wits who had known him to do better, or
+heard a livelier witticism from his lips no farther gone than yestreen,
+must very soon have come to the notice of the westland lads at the
+college, and from them to the learned professors, and still more
+directly to the lively groups that went and came to the Parliament
+House. Already the wigmaker's shop had thriven and prospered; the little
+man, short and fat and jovial, who had begun to lay out books in his
+window under the shadow of the curled and powdered periwigs, found the
+results of his double traffic more satisfactory than poets use. He
+boasts in one of his rhymed addresses that he thatches the outside and
+lines the inside of many a douce citizen, "and baithways gathers in the
+cash." He adds--
+
+    "And fain would prove to ilka Scot,
+    That poortith's no the poet's lot."
+
+It must have been altogether an odd little establishment--the wigs set
+out upon their blocks, perhaps, who knows, the barber's humbler craft
+being plied behind backs; the books multiplying daily on shelves and in
+windows, and the ragged boys with their pennies waiting to see if there
+was a new piece by Allan Ramsay; while perhaps in the corner, where lay
+the lists of the new circulating library--the first in Scotland--Miss
+Lydia Languish with her maid, or my lady's gentlewoman from some fine
+house in the Canongate, had come in to ask for the last new novel from
+London, the Scotch capital having not yet begun to produce that article
+for itself.
+
+One may be sure that Allan, rotund and smiling, was always ready for a
+crack with the ladies, and to recommend the brand new _Pamela_, the
+support of virtue, or some contemporary work of lesser genius. Though
+the general costume was like that worn in the other parts of the island,
+perhaps a little behind London fashions, the fair visitors would still
+be veiled with the plaid, the fine woven screen of varied tartan which
+covered the head like a hood, and could on occasion conceal the face
+more effectually than Spanish lace or Indian muslin--a singular
+peculiarity not ancient and scarcely to be called national, since the
+tartan came from the still-despised Highlands, and these were Lowland
+ladies who wore the plaid. This fashion would seem to have begun to be
+shaken by Ramsay's time, for he pleads its cause with all the fervour of
+a poetical advocate. There is something grotesque in the arguments, and
+still more grotesque in the names by which he distinguishes the wearers
+of the plaid.
+
+    "Light as the pinions of the airy fry
+    Of larks and linnets who traverse the sky,
+    Is the Tartana, spun so very fine
+    Its weight can never make the fair repine;
+    Nor does it move beyond its proper sphere,
+    But lets the gown in all its shape appear;
+    Nor is the straightness of her waist denied
+    To be by every ravished eye surveyed;
+    For this the hoop may stand at largest bend,
+    It comes not nigh, nor can its weight offend.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "If shining red Campbella's cheeks adorn,
+    Our fancies straight conceive the blushing morn,
+    Beneath whose dawn the sun of beauty lies,
+    Nor need we light but from Campbella's eyes.
+    If lined with green Stuarta's plaid we view,
+    Or thine, Ramseia, edged around with blue,
+    One shews the spring when nature is most kind,
+    The other heaven whose spangles lift the mind."
+
+The description of the manner in which this engaging garment is worn has
+all the more reason to be quoted that it was not only a new piece by
+Allan Ramsay, but affords a glimpse of the feminine figures that were to
+be seen in the High Street of Edinburgh going to kirk and market in the
+beginning of the eighteenth century. There is, too, a pleasant touch of
+individuality in the musical street cry that wakes the morn.
+
+    "From when the cock proclaims the rising day,
+    And milkmaids sing around _sweet curds and whey_,
+    Till grey-eyed twilight, harbinger of night,
+    Pursues o'er silver mountains sinking light,
+    I can unwearied from my casements view
+    The Plaid, with something still about it new.
+    How are we pleased when, with a handsome air,
+    We see Hepburna walk with easy care!
+    One arm half circles round her slender waist,
+    The other like an ivory pillar placed,
+    To hold her plaid around her modest face,
+    Which saves her blushes with the gayest grace;
+    If in white kids her slender fingers move,
+    Or, unconfined, jet through the sable glove.
+
+    "With what a pretty action Keitha holds
+    Her plaid, and varies oft its airy folds!
+    How does that naked space the spirits move,
+    Between the ruffled lawn and envious glove!
+    We by the sample, though no more be seen,
+    Imagine all that's fair within the screen.
+
+    "Thus belles in plaids veil and display their charms,
+    The love-sick youth thus bright Humea warms,
+    And with her graceful mien her rivals all alarms."
+
+The fair Hepburna, Humea, Campbella, and the rest may tempt the reader
+to a smile; but the picture has its value, and is a detail of importance
+in the realisation of that animated and crowded scene. By this time
+probably Ramsay had removed his shop to the end of the Luckenbooths,
+which faced "east" to the unencumbered portion of the High Street, where
+the City Cross stood, and where all the notable persons made their daily
+promenade. It was here that he was visited by a kindred spirit, the poet
+Gay, who had been brought to Edinburgh by his patroness the Duchess of
+Queensberry, and soon formed acquaintance with the local poet. The two
+little roundabout bards used to stand together at the door of the shop
+to watch the crowd, in which no doubt Ramsay would be gratified by a
+friendly nod from the Lord President, and swell with civic and with
+personal pride to point out to the English visitor that distinguished
+Scotsman the loyal and the learned Forbes. The Cross, round which this
+genteel and witty crowd assembled daily, stood then, according to the
+plans of the period, in the centre of the High Street, where it had been
+removed for the advantage of greater space in the previous century. And
+the view from Ramsay's shop--from which by this time the wigs had
+entirely disappeared, and which was now a refined and cultured
+bookseller's, adorned outside with medallions of two poets, Scotch and
+English, Ben Jonson and Drummond of Hawthornden--was bounded by the gate
+of the Netherbow with its picturesque tower, and glimpses through the
+open roadway, of the Canongate beyond, and the cross lines of busy
+traffic leading to Leith. It was thus a wide space between the lines of
+high houses, more like a Place than a street, upon which the two gossips
+gazed, no doubt with a complacent thought that their living presence
+underneath carried out the symbol of the two heads above--the poets of
+England and of Scotland--and that in the teeming street below them were
+many who pointed out to each other this new and delightful combination.
+They were not great poets, either of these round, fat, oily men of
+verse. And yet the association was pleasant. Perhaps the duchess's
+coach-and-six, in which the English bard had been conveyed from London,
+might drive through the open port, as the two stood delighted, watching
+the pedestrians hurry out of the way and the great lawyers and officials
+preparing to pay their devoirs to her Grace as she drew up before the
+bookshop. No doubt they thought it a scene to be remembered in the
+history of letters. She was at Penicuik House on a visit to the Clerks,
+who were friends and patrons of Allan, and no doubt had supped or drunk
+a dish of tea at New Hall, where the Lord President (who was only the
+Lord Advocate in those days) often took his case in his cousin's house,
+where Ramsay was a familiar and frequent guest. When Allan made wigs no
+longer, when all his occupations were about books, and everybody in
+Edinburgh, gentle and simple, knew him as the poet, he would be still
+more free to make his jokes and his compliments to all those fine
+people. But at no time was the genial little poet "blate," as he would
+himself have said. There was no shyness in him. He "braw'd it," as he
+says, with no doubt the finest of periwigs, long before he had ceased to
+be a skull-thatcher, and swaggered through the wynds and about the Cross
+with the best. The Edinburgh shopkeeper has never been "blate." He has
+always maintained a freedom of independence which has nothing of the
+obsequiousness of more common traders, and which gave the greater value
+to the sly compliment which he would insinuate between two jests. No
+doubt Campbella and Hamilla would laugh at the little man's compliments,
+his bows and admiring glances, yet would not object to his exposition of
+the tartan screen, the delicate silken plaid under which they shielded
+their radiant complexions and golden locks.
+
+Allan must have seen many curious sights from those windows. The riding
+of the Parliament, when in gallant order two by two--the commissioners
+of the boroughs and the counties leading the way, the peers following,
+through the guards on either side who lined the streets--they rode up
+solemnly from Holyrood to the Parliament House, with crown and sword and
+sceptre borne before them, the old insignia, without which the Acts of
+the ancient Parliaments of Scotland were not considered valid--marching
+for the last time to their place of meeting to give up their
+trust--would be one of the most remarkable. The commoners had each two
+lackeys to attend him, the barons three, the earls four, a blue-coated
+brigade, relic of the old days when no gentleman moved abroad without a
+following; and Lyon King-at-arms in his finery to direct the line. With
+lamentation and humiliation was the session closed; even wise men who
+upheld the Union consenting to the general pang with which the last
+Scots Parliament went its way. And the glare of the fire must have
+lighted up the poet's rooms, and angry sparks fallen, and hoarse roar of
+voices drowned all domestic sounds, when the Porteous Mob turned
+Edinburgh streets into a fierce scene of tragedy for one exciting night.
+It would be vain indeed to describe again what Scott has set before us
+in the most vivid brilliant narrative. Such a scene breaking into the
+burgher quietude--the decent households which had all retired into
+decorous darkness for the night waking up again with lights flitting
+from story to story, the axes crashing against the doors of the
+Tolbooth, the wild procession whirling down the tortuous gloom of the
+West Bow--was such an interruption of monotonous life as few towns in
+the eighteenth century could have equalled; and it is curious to
+remember the intense national feeling and keen patriotic understanding
+of how far the populace would or could endure interference, which made
+Duncan Forbes in his place in Parliament stand up as almost the defender
+of that wild outburst of lawlessness, and John of Argyle turn from the
+royal presence to prepare his hounds, as he said, against the Queen's
+threat of turning the rebellious country into a desert. These proud
+Scotsmen had supported the Union: they had perceived its necessity and
+its use: but there was a point at which all their susceptibilities took
+fire, and Whig lords and politicians were at one with every high-handed
+Tory of the early times.
+
+Allan Ramsay must also have seen, though he says nothing of it, the
+brief occupation of Edinburgh by the unfortunate Prince Charles Edward,
+and at a distance the pathetic little Court in Holyrood, the Jacobite
+ladies in their brief glory, the fated captains of that wild little
+army, in which the old world of tradition and romance made its last
+outbreak upon modern prose and the possibilities of life. One would
+imagine that for a man who had lived through that episode in the heart
+of the old kingdom of the Stewarts, and whose house lay half-way between
+the artillery of the castle, where a hostile garrison sat grimly
+watching the invaders below, and the camp at Holyrood--there would have
+been nothing in his life so exciting, nothing of which the record would
+have been more distinct. But human nature, which has so many
+eccentricities, is in nothing so wonderful as this, that the most
+remarkable historical scenes make no impression upon its profound
+everyday calm, and are less important to memory than the smallest
+individual incident. The swarm of the wild Highlanders that took sudden
+possession of street and changehouse, the boom of the cannon overhead
+vainly attempting to disperse a group here and there or kill a rebel,
+and the consciousness which one would think must have thrilled through
+the very air, that under those turrets in the valley was the most
+interesting young adventurer of modern times, the heir of the ancient
+Scots kings, their undoubted representative--how could these things fail
+to affect the mind even of the most steady-going citizen? But they did,
+though we cannot comprehend it. Allan has a word for every little
+domestic event in town or suburbs, but there is not a syllable said
+either by himself or his biographers to intimate that he knew what was
+going on under his eyes at that brief and sudden moment, the "one
+crowded hour of glorious life," which cost so much blood of brave men,
+and which the hapless Prince paid for afterwards in the disenchanted
+tedium of many a dreary year.
+
+[Illustration: SMOLLETT'S HOUSE]
+
+It was before this time, however, that Ramsay reached the height of his
+fame and of his productions in _The Gentle Shepherd_. He had written
+some years before "A Pastoral Dialogue between Patie and Roger,"
+published as usual in a sheet for a penny, and no doubt affording much
+pleasure to the great popular audience to whom the "new piece" was as
+the daily _feuilleton_, that friendly dole of fiction which sweetens
+existence. It was evidently so successful that after a while the poet
+composed a pendant--a dialogue between Jenny and Peggy. These two
+fragments pleased the fancy of both the learned and the simple, and no
+doubt called forth many a flattering inquiry after the two rustic pairs
+and demands for the rest of their simple history, which inspired the
+author to weave the lovers into the web of a continuous story, adding
+the rural background, so fresh and true to nature, and the rustic and
+humorous characters which were wanted for the perfection of the pastoral
+drama. Few poems ever have attained so great and so immediate a success.
+It went from end to end of Scotland, everywhere welcomed, read, conned
+over, got by heart. Such a fame would be indeed worth living for. The
+fat little citizen in his shop became at once the poet of his country,
+as he had been of the Edinburgh streets. It was nearly two centuries
+since Dunbar and Davie Lyndsay had celebrated their romantic town: and
+though the name of the latter was still a household word ("You'll no
+find that in Davie Lyndsay" being the popular scornful dismissal of any
+incredible tale), yet their works had fallen into forgetfulness. The new
+poet was received accordingly with acclamation. People did not talk of
+sales and profits in those days, and we have no information as to the
+numbers issued, or the time they took to find a home in every cottage,
+as well as to receive the distinction of illustration and critical
+discussion, which proved that it was not only the people who interested
+themselves in the new poet, but a more highly trained and difficult
+audience as well. We have before us two goodly octavos in which the
+little rustical comedy is enshrined in hundreds of pages of notes; and
+where the argument as to its localities, identifying every spot,
+occupies chapter after chapter of earnest discussion, proving exactly
+where every cottage is situated, and that New Hall, the home of the
+Forbeses, was the mansion of the poem, with its little farm-steading
+round. Shakspeare could not have been more closely followed, and we
+doubt if the localities which he has made famous were ever discussed at
+such length. I can remember nearly fifty years ago investigating, with
+the eagerness of a child to whom books were the most precious objects in
+existence, the little shelf high on the wall at the bedhead, where a
+very old woman, an old nurse in her retirement, kept her treasures, and
+mounted high upon a chair, finding a much-thumbed unbound copy of _The
+Gentle Shepherd_ in the dim twilight, ruddy with the glimmer of the
+fire, of the cottage room. In such places it was never absent; it was
+the one book which held its ground by the side of the Bible and perhaps
+a volume of old-world devotion, _The Crook in the Lot_, or _The Saint's
+Rest_. Such a distinction is a far more true and genuine triumph than
+the sale of many editions. It went straight into the heart of the
+peasant, who understood and appreciated every scene and line. And it was
+discussed by all the Edinburgh clubs, and by the literati who knew their
+Theocritus and could write dissertations on pastoral poetry. The
+greatest poet could have hoped for no more.
+
+And pastoral poetry was the fashion of the time. Ramsay himself had made
+various other attempts before he lighted upon this quite legitimate
+strain. We read with a shudder of comic horror a dialogue "On the Death
+of Mr. Addison," in which the interlocutors are "Richy and Sandy," to
+wit, Sir Richard Steele and Mr. Alexander Pope! who bewail their loss,
+which is far worse than misfortune to their flocks, or the scorn of
+their lasses, being no less than this, that "Addie, that played and sang
+so sweet, is dead"! The poet received, indeed, a complimentary copy of
+verses upon this production, in which he is thus addressed--
+
+    "Well fare thee, Allan, who in mother tongue
+    So sweetly hath of breathless Addy sung:
+    His endless fame thy nat'ral genius fired,
+    And thou hast written as if he inspired.
+    'Richy and Sandy,' who do him survive,
+    Long as thy rural stanzas last, shall live."
+
+The grotesque in poetry could scarcely go farther. Mr. Burchett, who
+addressed good Allan in these rhymes, was the refined gentleman who put
+the wigmaker's poems into English. "Richy and Sandy" was contained in a
+volume which Ramsay published by subscription, and which brought him in,
+to the immense admiration of his biographer, four hundred guineas
+sterling, which no doubt was a very admirable recompense indeed for so
+many foolish verses. This volume contained, among other things, Ramsay's
+bold continuation of "Christ's Kirk on the Green," which the same
+biographer describes as "King James the First's ludicrous poem," in
+which the poet of the High Street skilfully turns the poet-monarch's
+rustic revel into a vulgar village debauch. But these pieces of
+presumption and non-comprehension are happily all dead and gone, and
+Ramsay's reputation rests upon a happier basis. It is not a small matter
+to have pervaded a whole country with the simple measures of a rural
+idyll--a poem in which there are not perhaps five lines of poetry, but
+which is fragrant of the moors and fields, full of rustic good sense and
+feeling, and as free of harm or offence as the most severe moralist
+could desire. This latter quality is all the more remarkable as it
+belongs to an age not at all squeamish in these matters, and to which
+the frankest assaults upon a heroine's virtue were supposed to be quite
+adapted for the treatment of fiction. But there is no Lovelace in _The
+Gentle Shepherd_; the rustic love-making is ardent, but simple and
+without guile. The swains respect as much as they admire their nymphs:
+the nymphs are confident in their frank innocence, and fear no evil; the
+old fathers sit cheerful and sagacious at their doors and indulge in
+their cracks, not less pleased with themselves and their share of life
+than are the young ones with their livelier pleasures: the cows breathe
+balmy breath into the wild freshness of the pastoral scenery. There is
+scarcely anything affected, false, or even stilted in the poetical
+dialogues which, with a little licence for the verse and something for
+the sentiment, come naturally and simply from the wholesome, genial
+young shepherds and their sweethearts. To say this is to say as much as
+the most fastidious critic could desire from such a composition.
+
+Nor is it spoiled by classic models or similes. How Ramsay succeeded in
+keeping Venus and Cupid out of it, in forgetting all eclogues and
+pastorals, Virgil or Theocritus, and indulging in nothing that was out
+of place in Scotland, it is hard to tell. The Mantuan bard, the oaten
+reed, Philomela and her songs, Hymen, Ganymede, Bacchus, and all the
+Olympian band disport themselves in his other verses: but _The Gentle
+Shepherd_ is void of those necessary adjuncts of the eighteenth-century
+muse. The wimpling burn is never called Helicon nor the heathery braes
+Parnassus, and nothing can be more genuine, more natural, and familiar
+than the simple scenery of Habbie's Howe--in which the eager critics
+identified every scene, and the sensible poet enhanced his art by a
+perfect truth to nature. _The Gentle Shepherd_ is perhaps the only
+so-called Pastoral of which this can be said, and it must have required
+no small amount of self-denial to dispense with all those accustomed
+auxiliaries. Even the sentiments are not too highflown for the locality.
+If they are perhaps more completely purified from everything gross or
+fleshly than would have been the case in fact, the poet has not been
+afraid to temper passion with those considerations which naturally rise
+to the mind of the young farmer in choosing his mate. His Peggy, though
+she has beauty enough to make up for every deficiency, has also "with
+innocence the wale of sense."
+
+    "In better sense without a flaw,
+    As in her beauty, far excels them a'."
+
+She, on her part, anticipates not raptures and blisses in her marriage,
+but the hallowed usages of life.
+
+        "I'll employ with pleasure all my art
+    To keep him cheerful, and secure his heart.
+    At e'en, when he comes weary frae the hill,
+    I'll have a' things made ready to his will;
+    In winter when he toils through wind and rain,
+    A bleezin' ingle, and a clean hearth-stane;
+    And soon as he's flung by his plaid and staff,
+    The seething pot's be ready to tak' aff."
+
+Ramsay's sobriety here shines in comparison with all the fables and
+idylls of his age. It is entirely natural, living, and of his time.
+Patie plays upon a flute of "plum-tree made with ivory virls round,"
+which he bought from the proceeds of "sax good fat lambs" sold at the
+West Port, instead of the rustic pipe or oaten reed, which in his heart
+of hearts no doubt our wigmaker thought much finer. Thus he secured his
+audience, who knew nothing about oaten reeds, and instead of the
+plaudits of the dilettanti secured the true fame of popular
+comprehension and knowledge. Burns was far higher and nobler in genius,
+and the worship awarded to him by his countrymen is one of the favourite
+subjects of gibe and jest among writers on the other side of the Tweed.
+But even Burns had not the universal acceptance, the absolute command of
+his audience, which belonged to honest Allan. There were politicians and
+there were ecclesiastics, and good people neither one nor the other, who
+shook their troubled heads over the ploughman who would not confine
+himself to the daisy of the field or the Saturday night's observances of
+the Cottar, but was capable of Holy Willie and the Holy Fair. But Ramsay
+had no gainsayer, and _The Gentle Shepherd_ was the first of books in
+most Lowland homes. Its construction, its language and sentiments, are
+all as commonplace as could be imagined, but it is a wholesome, natural,
+pure, and unvarnished tale, and the mind that brought it forth (well
+aware of what pleased his public) and the public who relished and bought
+it, give us a better view of the honest tastes and morals of the period
+than anything else which has come to us from that time. There has always
+been a good deal of drinking, and other vices still less consistent with
+purity of heart, in Scotland. Now and then we are frightened by
+statistics that give us a very ill name; but it is difficult to believe
+that if the national heart had been corrupt _The Gentle Shepherd_ could
+have afforded it such universal and wholesome delight.
+
+It is curious to find two very ordinary and prosaic tradesmen thus in
+the front of popular literature in the beginning of the eighteenth
+century. There is no comparison between Allan Ramsay and Samuel
+Richardson in respect to genius. That humdrum old bookseller evoked by
+some miraculous art the most delicate and lovely of creations out of the
+midst of revolting and disgusting circumstances. Fielding was a far
+finer gentleman, a much more accomplished writer, even a greater genius;
+but there are none of his women who are fit to tie the shoes of Clarissa
+Harlowe, to whom indeed there exists no fit companion out of Shakspeare.
+Our good-humoured Allan had no such gift, but he had the art of
+producing one spotless and lifelike tale, absolutely true to nature and
+within the power of verification by any reader, which was accepted by a
+whole country with enthusiasm as the best rendering of its rural life.
+We doubt if there ever was a greater literary triumph.
+
+Ramsay would not have been the true man he was to every tradition and
+inheritance of his class had he not shown a modest complacency in his
+own success. He was assailed, we are told, by nameless critics, who put
+forth "A Block for Allan Ramsay's Wigs," "Remarks on Ramsay's Writings,"
+and so forth--and retaliated, not without dignity: "Dull foes," he says,
+"nought at my hand deserve."
+
+    "The blundering fellows ne'er forget,
+      About my trade to sport their fancies,
+    As if, forsooth, I would look blate,
+      At what my honour most advances.
+
+    "Auld Homer sang for's daily bread;
+      Surprising Shakspeare fin'd the wool;
+    Great Virgil creels and baskets made;
+      And famous Ben employed the trowel.
+
+    "Yet Dorset, Lansdown, Lauderdale,
+      Bucks, Stirling, and the son of Angus,
+    Even monarchs, and o' men the wale,
+      Were proud to be enrolled amang us."
+
+It is true that Homer and Shakspeare might be surprised to find
+themselves rubbing elbows with the wigmaker of the High Street. Still,
+he shows a fine spirit, and his very strut is respectable.
+
+[Illustration: ALLAN RAMSAY'S HOUSE]
+
+In the end of his life, when the author of _The Gentle Shepherd_ by all
+his trades, both as poet and shopkeeper, had amassed a fortune, he built
+himself a house in the most glorious position which poet could have
+chosen. It is on the crest of the hill, a little way below the castle,
+and is still to be seen from Princes Street--a distinct feature in the
+picturesque and varied line of building. He is said, though on what
+authority we are not told, to have applied to the Crown for ground
+enough to build a cage for _his burd_, meaning his wife: which is
+supposed to be the reason why he built his house in an octagonal shape
+like a cage: his wife, however, did not live long enough to inhabit it.
+Additions and emendations have been made, so that there is no great
+peculiarity in the form of the old square house on the summit of the
+green slope, just clear of the rocks of the castle, as it is visible
+to-day. When it was built the new town of Edinburgh was not yet dreamed
+of, and nothing disturbed the panorama of green fields that lay between
+Edinburgh and the Firth. The town wall was falling into ruin, yet still
+existed in fragmentary towers and ramparts here and there, and low down
+in the depths of the descent, which was not so precipitous there as
+under the castle, the high houses and green braes were reflected in the
+quiet waters of the North Loch. From thence the fields and scattered
+farmhouses, the Calton Hill in unadorned greenness, a church spire and a
+cluster of village roofs here and there, led the eye to the shining of
+the Scottish Sea, the great water with its islands, the coast of Fife
+with its dotted line of little fishing towns, the two green Lomonds
+standing softly distinct against the misty line of more distant hills.
+It was the same view that moved Fitz-Eustace to ecstasy, still but
+little changed in the eighteenth century from what it had been in the
+sixteenth. And picturesque as Edinburgh still continues to be in spite
+of many modern disadvantages, it was no doubt infinitely more
+picturesque then, crowning the rocky ridge, with straggling lanes and
+wynds dropping steeply down into the valley--opening here and there a
+glimpse of the green country and the shimmer of the Firth--while on the
+edge of the hill, from all the high windows, the wide landscape softened
+into distance on every side, into the far-off broken ranges of mountains
+and cloudy rolling vapours, and the far-retiring sweep of a horizon
+traversed by all the lights and all the storms--a wide world of air and
+space and infinite variety. The life of our busy modern world had
+scarcely yet invaded that city on the hill. It stood isolated on the
+height of its rock, reigning from that domination over all the tranquil
+country: while within its lines still thronged and clamoured an active
+noisy population cooped up and packed together as if it were still
+unsafe to stray away out of shelter of the walls, all the faculties and
+trades, all the wit and the wealth, one above another, with the
+concentration, the picturesqueness, the universal acquaintance and
+familiarity of a mediaeval town. And beautiful as the prospect must have
+been from those high-built houses, it could scarcely have exceeded the
+sight of the old Edinburgh of the kings from without, standing high
+above the level of the soil, with the open crown of St. Giles's rising
+over its grey heights, its walls broken down by careless peace and
+wellbeing, its tall tenements standing up like a line of castles. And in
+the night with its glimmer of household lights at every window hanging
+high in mid air, repeated with a gleam in the waters beneath and in the
+stars above, which sparkled keen out of the northern blue, and the mist
+of habitation, the smoke of the fires and the lamps hanging over
+all--confusing outlines, yet revealing all the more brightly a higher
+and a higher altitude of human lights--what a wonderful sight rising
+sheer out of the green and silent champaign below!
+
+Such was royal Edinburgh still, when the shopkeeper-poet, with his jokes
+and his quips, and his good-humoured self-esteem, and certainty of his
+own power, settled down in Ramsay Lodge. It would be well if all poets
+had as prosperous and as fair a retirement for their old age. He lived
+for some time in his quaint self-contained (according to the equally
+quaint Scotch phraseology) birdcage upon the top of the hill, and
+enjoyed his celebrity and his ease and the pleasant conviction that "I
+the best and fairest please." His only son, the second Allan Ramsay, was
+a painter of some reputation, and he had daughters to care for him and
+keep his home cheerful as long as he lived. A man more satisfied with
+his lot could not be. His chirrup of self-satisfaction, the flattery,
+yet familiarity, of his address to all the noble lords and lairds, the
+judges and advocates, his laugh of jovial optimism and personal content,
+belong perfectly to the character of the comfortable citizen, "in fair
+round belly with good capon lined," and the shopkeeper's rather than the
+poet's desire to please. One can better fancy him at the door of his
+shop looking down the High Street jocose and beaming, with a joke for
+the Lord President and for the Cadie alike, hand in glove with all the
+Town Council, with a compliment for every fair lady or smiling lass that
+tripped by under her tartan screen, delighted with himself and all
+around him--than retired in his garden on the Castle Hill, though with
+all the variations of the heavens and magnificence of the landscape
+before his eyes. He had no doubt the admiration of that landscape which
+is never wanting to an Edinburgh citizen, a part of the creed to which
+he is born; but the homely limits of the green glens and knowes, the
+wimpling burn, the washing-green, the laird's hospitable house behind,
+were more in Allan's way when he wanted any relaxation from the even
+more attractive town. The High Street and Habbie's Howe are the true
+centres of his soul.
+
+It would be wrong not to note the collections of songs which made his
+name dear to all the pleasant singers both of drawing-room and cottage.
+It is a strange peculiarity in a nation possessing a characteristic and
+melodious popular music of its own like Scotland, to find how little
+place music as a science, or even in its more serious developments, has
+ever had in the country. Nothing can be more sweet, more touching, more
+tender, than the native growth of Scottish song--nothing more full of
+fun and spirit than the brilliant dance music which, like the song,
+seems to have sprung spontaneous from the soil. And no country has ever
+more loved both songs and strathspeys, or clung to them with greater
+devotion. It would be perhaps impossible for the most learned to decide
+between the rival claims of Scotland and Ireland in respect to the airs
+which seem native to both; but Ireland has always laboured under the
+disadvantage of being far less homogeneous than Scotland, and certainly,
+before the time of Moore at least, her native songs did not belong to
+all classes as in the sister country. And Scotland has always through
+all ages (previous to the present age) preferred her own songs to every
+other. During the eighteenth century, when Edinburgh was almost more
+completely the centre of society than ever before, the old tunes were
+sung by ladies as much as by maid-servants, and the delicate old spinets
+performed a soft accompaniment to ballads of the "Ewebuchting" and of
+the "Corn Rigs," and prolonged the pathetic notes of "Waly, waly" and
+the trembling wail of the "Flowers of the Forest" in the finest houses
+as in the humblest. Music, more properly so called, the art which has
+gradually made its way from being a modest handmaiden of poetry to full
+rivalship, if not a half-implied superiority, was already a scientific
+pursuit in England; and though the Italian opera aroused a violent
+opposition, and Tweedledum and Tweedledee called forth the gibes of the
+wits, there existed a vigorous English school of learned musicians, and
+Handel and Haydn found an audience not incapable of appreciating their
+best works. But while this development went on in London, Scotland still
+sang her ancient simple melodies, and contemned everything else with
+that audacious superiority which is born of ignorance. One might almost
+imagine that this was the penalty of a national inheritance so ample and
+so sweet, and that the comparative absence of traditionary music in
+England opened the heart of the country to strains more ambitious and
+classical. However it came about, there is no denying that so it was. If
+there was any Scottish composer at all, his productions were only
+imitations or modifications of the old airs. Music continued to be
+represented by the songs of immemorial attraction, the woodnotes wild of
+nameless minstrels, pure utterance of the soil. Perhaps the absence of
+music, except in the kindred shape of psalm tunes, which was but another
+form of popular song, in the Church, was one great prevailing cause of
+the national insensibility to all more lavish and elaborate strains. But
+this peculiarity and insensibility had at least one advantage--they kept
+in constant cultivation a distinct branch of national literature, and
+one that is always attractive and delightful. I do not think it is too
+strong an utterance of national partiality to say that the songwriters
+of Scotland are beyond comparison with those of either of the other
+united kingdoms. The simplest of the old ditties brought out of the
+ancient poets contain a grace of genuine poetry and real feeling far
+above the unmeaning jingle of verse which is the most common utterance
+of popular song; and the cultivation of this delightful gift has called
+forth the most tender and artless poems from gentle writers whom nothing
+but that inspiration could have made to produce what was in them. The
+pathetic wail of the poor lady who found to her cost that
+
+    "Love is bonnie, a little time when it is new,"
+
+but that
+
+    "When love's auld it waxeth cauld,
+    And fades away like morning dew";
+
+and that touching lullaby in which the mother hushes the babe whose
+
+    "Father wrought her great annoy,"
+
+with its tender and simple refrain--
+
+    "It grieves me sore to hear thee weep,"
+
+breathe out of the ancient depths of human trouble with a reserve and
+simplicity of feeling that seem almost personal. But the kindred
+inspiration which called forth the two versions of the "Flowers of the
+Forest" and the ballad of "Auld Robin Gray," along with many more, shows
+how warm was the impulse to this expression of feelings, which were at
+once intensified and drawn out of the sphere of revelations too
+individual by the breath of the melody which carried them forth.
+
+Allan Ramsay has the merit of being the first collector of Scottish
+song. He was remorseless, like his century, and made the wildest havoc
+with some of his originals, cutting and slashing as suited his fancy,
+and adding of his own whenever it pleased him so to do. But with the
+exception of a number of Strephons and Chloes, not always ungraceful, in
+the newer fashion, and a sprinkling of ruder verses in which there is
+more indecency than immorality, the first two volumes of the _Tea-table
+Miscellany_ are full of merit, and include many delightful simple
+lyrics, songs which compare most advantageously with the insipid "words"
+which at this present advanced age are used as a sort of necessary evil
+to serve the purpose of the music. "Say that our way is only an
+harmonious speaking of many witty or soft thoughts after the poet has
+dressed them in four or five stanzas," says Ramsay, with the apology
+which is a veiled assertion of higher aims, "yet undoubtedly these must
+relish best with people who have not bestowed much of their time in
+acquiring a taste for that downright perfect music which requires none
+or very little of the poet's assistance." And he tells us in the same
+preface of a letter he has had from America informing him that there too
+his manual of song has gone, and that his
+
+    "Soft verse made to a Scottish air
+    Is often sung by our Virginian fair."
+
+The book is dedicated to the ladies--the _Donne qui hanno intelletto
+d'amore_, long supposed to be the final critics and judges of such
+productions: and is confidently recommended to these "fair singers" for
+whose "modest eyes and ears," according to the poet (but with notable
+exceptions, as has been said), they were prepared. The third volume
+consisted almost exclusively of English songs, among which are many
+classic verses. If it were but as a stepping-stone to those perfect
+lyrics, so full of natural truth and feeling, with which Burns
+afterwards brought to a climax the songs of his country, the _Tea-table
+Miscellany_ would have a merit of its own.
+
+Ramsay died in 1758, when the troubles of the country were over, the
+last seeds of insurrection stamped out, and the powerful revolution
+begun which made the clans loyal to Government and Scotch politicians
+faithful to the Union. He was buried in the Greyfriars Churchyard, where
+so many of the most notable of the citizens of Edinburgh were laid. A
+hundred years or so after, the enlightened community placed his statue
+in the gardens that lie between the old town and the new. And thus the
+poet's career was run; it was a prosperous one, full of the success that
+was most sweet to him; comfort and competence and reputation, at once
+that of a warm and well-to-do citizen and that of a poet. Few poets have
+lived to see their productions so popular. _The Gentle Shepherd_ may be
+said to have been in every cottage in Scotland in its author's lifetime,
+and his songs were sung by everybody. Nor did this fame interfere with
+the citizen's well-earned and more substantial reward. The shop in which
+he began his prosperous career, and which was crowded so continually by
+eager messengers with their pennies in search of Allan Ramsay's last new
+piece--the most immediate and one of the most pleasant evidences of
+success--still exists, with its high steps and broad low windows, in the
+heart of the old town with which his name is so completely associated;
+and the quaint square house in which his later days of ease and
+retirement were spent still keeps its place on the east of the Castle
+Hill, surveying from its windows the enriched and amplified yet
+unalterable panorama so dear and beautiful to all Scottish eyes.
+
+[Illustration: ALLAN RAMSAY'S MONUMENT]
+
+[Illustration: DOORWAY, LADY STAIR'S CLOSE]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE GUEST OF EDINBURGH
+
+
+Royal Edinburgh, the city of the Scots kings and Parliament, the capital
+of the ancient kingdom, would seem to have become weary somewhere in the
+eighteenth century of dwelling alone upon her rock. There were, to be
+sure, reasons more prosaic for the construction of the New Town, the
+partner and companion of the old historical city. The population had
+increased, the desire for comfort and space, and many luxuries unknown
+to the early citizens of Edinburgh, had developed among the new. It was
+no longer agreeable to the lawyers and philosophers to be crowded up
+with the other inhabitants of a common stair, to have the din of street
+cries and commotion ever in their ears, and the lowest of the population
+always about their feet, as was inevitable when gentle and simple were
+piled together in the High Street and Canongate. The old houses might be
+noble houses when they were finally got at, through many drawbacks and
+abominations--though in those days there was little appreciation even of
+the stately beauty of old masonry and ornament--but their surroundings
+became daily more and more intolerable. And it was an anachronism to
+coop up a learned, elegant, and refined class, living under the
+Hanoverian Georges in peace and loyalty, within the circle of walls now
+broken down and useless, which had been adapted to protect the subjects
+of the old Scottish Jameses from continual attacks.
+
+Happily the nature of the situation prevented any amalgamation or loss
+of the old boundaries and picturesque features of the ancient city, in
+the new. There was no question of continuation or enlargement. Another
+Edinburgh rose at the feet of the first, a sober, respectable, modern,
+and square-toed town, with wide streets and buildings solid and strong,
+not without pretensions to a certain stateliness of size and design, but
+in strong contrast with the architecture and fashion native to the
+soil--the high gables and turreted stairs of the past. The old town had
+to throw a drawbridge, permanent and massive, over the hollow at her
+feet before she could even reach the terraced valley on which the first
+lines of habitation were drawn, and which, rounding over its steep
+slope, descended towards another and yet another terrace before it stood
+complete, a new-born partner and companion in life of the former
+capital, lavish in space as the other was confined, leisurely and
+serious as the other was animated--a new town of great houses, of big
+churches--dull, as only the eighteenth century was capable of making
+them--of comfort and sober wealth and intellectual progress. The
+architects who adorned the Modern Athens with Roman domes and Greek
+temples, and placid fictitious ruins on the breezy hill which possessed
+a fatal likeness to the Acropolis, would have scoffed at the idea of
+finding models in the erections of the fourteenth century--that
+so-called dark age--or recognising a superior harmony and fitness in
+native principles of construction.
+
+Yet though the public taste has now returned more or less intelligently
+to the earlier canons, it would be foolish not to recognise that there
+is a certain advantage even in the difference of the new town from the
+old. It is not the historical Edinburgh, the fierce, tumultuous,
+mediaeval city, the stern but not more quiet capital of the Reformers,
+the noisy, dirty, whimsical, mirth-loving town, full of broad jest and
+witty epigram, of the eighteenth century. The new town has a character
+of its own. It is the modern, not supplanting or effacing, but standing
+by the old. Those who built it considered it an extraordinary
+improvement upon all that Gothic antiquity had framed. They were far
+more proud of these broad streets and massive houses than of anything
+their fathers had left to them, and flung down without remorse a great
+deal of the antiquated building after which it is now the fashion to
+inquire with so much regret. Notwithstanding the change of taste since
+that time, the New Town of Edinburgh still regards the old with a little
+condescension and patronage; but there is no opposition between the two.
+They stand by each other in a curious peacefulness of union, each with a
+certain independence yet mutual reliance. London and Paris have rubbed
+off all their old angles and made themselves, notwithstanding the
+existence of Gothic corners here and there, all modern, to the
+extinction of most of the characteristic features of their former
+living. But happy peculiarities of situation have saved our northern
+capital from any such self-obliteration. Edinburgh has been fortunate
+enough to preserve both sides--the ancient picturesque grace, the modern
+comfort and ease. And though Mr. Ruskin has spoken very severely of the
+new town, we will not throw a stone at a place so well adapted to the
+necessities of modern life. Those bland fronts of polished stone would
+have been more kindly and more congenial to the soil had they cut the
+air with high-stepped gables and encased their stairs in the rounded
+turrets which give a simple distinctive character to so many Scottish
+houses; and a little colour, whether of the brick which Scotch builders
+despise or the delightful washes[6] which their forefathers loved, would
+be a godsend even now. But still, for a sober domestic partner, the new
+town is no ill companion to the ancient city on the hill.
+
+[6] In this respect I venture to think all Scotland errs. Many houses
+throughout the country, built roughly with a rude and irregular but solid
+mason-work, were made points of light in the landscape by these washes of
+colour which poor dwellings retain. There is a yellow which I remember on
+many old houses in which the stains of time and weather produced
+varieties of tone almost as agreeable as the mellowing of marble under
+the same influences, which are now stripped into native roughness and
+rise in sombre grey, sometimes almost black, abstracting a much-needed
+warmth from the aspect of the country round.
+
+This adjunct to the elder Edinburgh had come into being between the time
+when Allan Ramsay's career ended in the octagon house on the Castle
+Hill, and another poet, very different from Ramsay, appeared in the
+Scotch capital. In the meantime many persons of note had left the old
+town and migrated towards the new. The old gentry of whom so many
+stories have been told, especially those old ladies who held a little
+court, like Mrs. Bethune Balliol, or made their bold criticism of all
+things both new and old, like those who flourish in Lord Cockburn's
+lively pages--continued to live in the ancestral houses which still kept
+their old-fashioned perfection within, though they had to be approached
+through all the squalor and misery which had already found refuge
+outside in the desecrated Canongate; but society in the Scotch
+metropolis was now rapidly tending across the lately erected bridge
+towards the new great houses which contemplated old Edinburgh across the
+little valley, where the Nor' Loch glimmered no longer and where fields
+lay green where marsh and water had been. The North Bridge was a noble
+structure, and the newly-built Register House at the other end one of
+the finest buildings of modern times to the admiring chroniclers of
+Edinburgh. And the historians and philosophers, the great doctors, the
+great lawyers, the elegant critics, for whom it was more and more
+necessary that the ways of access between the old town and the new might
+be made more easy, presided over and criticised all those wonderful new
+buildings of classic style and unbroken regularity, and watched the
+progress of the Earthen Mound, a bold and picturesque expedient which
+filled up the hollow and made a winding walk between, with interest as
+warm as that which they took in the lectures and students, the books and
+researches, which were making their city one of the intellectual centres
+of the world.
+
+This is a position to which Scotland has always aspired, and the pride
+of the ambitious city and country was never more fully satisfied than in
+the end of last and the beginning of the present century. Edinburgh had
+never been so rich in the literary element, and the band of young men
+full of genius and high spirit who were to advance her still one step
+farther to the climax of fame in that particular, were growing up to
+take the places of their fathers. A place in which Walter Scott was just
+emerging from his delightful childhood, in which Jeffrey was a
+mischievous boy and Henry Brougham a child, could not but be overflowing
+with hope, especially when we remember all the good company there
+already--Dugald Stewart, bringing so many fine young gentlemen from
+England to wonder at the little Scotch capital, and a crowd of Erskines,
+Hunters, Gregories, Monroes, and Dr. Blair and Dr. Blacklock, and the
+Man of Feeling--not to speak of those wild and witty old ladies in the
+Canongate, and the duchesses who still recognised the claims of
+Edinburgh in its season. To all this excellent company, whose fame and
+whose talk hung about both the old Edinburgh and the new like the smoke
+over their roofs, there arrived one spring day a wonderful visitor, in
+appearance like nothing so much as an honest hill farmer, travelling on
+foot, his robust shoulders a little bowed with the habit of the plough,
+his eyes shining, as no other eyes in Scotland shone, with youth and
+genius and hope. He knew nobody in Edinburgh save an Ayrshire lad like
+himself, like what everybody up to this time had supposed Robert Burns
+to be. The difference was that the stranger a little while before had
+put forth by the aid of a country printer at Kilmarnock a little volume
+of rustic poetry upon the most unambitious subjects, in Westland Scotch,
+the record of a ploughman's loves and frolics and thoughts. It is
+something to know that these credentials were enough to rouse the whole
+of that witty, learned, clever, and all-discerning community, and that
+this visitor from the hills and fields in a moment found every door
+opened to him, and Modern Athens, never unconscious of its own
+superiority and at this moment more deeply aware than usual that it was
+one of the lights of the earth, at his feet.
+
+[Illustration: LADY STAIR'S CLOSE]
+
+Burns was but a visitor, the lion of a season, and therefore we are not
+called upon to associate with Edinburgh the whole tragic story of his
+life. And yet his appearance was one of the most remarkable that has
+distinguished the ancient town. He arrived among all the professors, the
+men of letters, the cultured classes who held an almost ideal
+pre-eminence, more like what a young author hopes than is generally to
+be met with among men--his heart beating with a sense of the great
+venture on which he was bound, and a proud determination to quit himself
+like a man whatever were the magnitudes among which he should have to
+stand. Mere Society so called, with all its bustle of gaiety and endless
+occupation about nothing, might have exercised upon him something of the
+fascination which fine names and fine houses and the sweep and whirl of
+hurried life certainly possess; but he who expresses almost with
+bitterness his disgust to see a blockhead of rank received by one of his
+noble patrons with as much, nay more, consideration than is given to
+himself, would probably have had very little toleration for the
+butterflies of fashion: whereas Edinburgh society impressed him greatly,
+as of that ideal kind of which the young and inexperienced dream, where
+the best and brightest are at the head of everything, where poetry is a
+passport to the innermost sanctuary and conversation is like the talk of
+the gods. They were all distinguished for one literary gift or grace or
+another, philosophers golden-mouthed, poets of the most polished sort:
+their knowledge, their culture, their intellectual powers, were the
+foundation upon which their little world was built. The great people who
+were to be found among them were proud to know these scholars and
+sages--it was they, and not an occasional family of rank, or still more
+rare man of wealth, who gave character and meaning to Edinburgh. To be
+received in such society was the highest privilege which a young poet
+could desire; and it was worthy to receive and foster and encourage that
+new light that came from heaven.
+
+On their side the heads of society in Edinburgh were much interested in
+this young man. There had been an article in the _Lounger_, fondly
+deemed a Scotch _Spectator_, an elegant literary paper widely read not
+only in Scotland but even beyond the Border, upon him and his works.
+"The Ayrshire Ploughman" was the title of the article, and it set forth
+all the imperfections of his breeding, his want of education, his
+ignorance both of books and of the world, and yet the amazing verses he
+had produced, which, though disguised in a dialect supposed to be
+unknown to the elegant reader, and for which Henry Mackenzie, the Man of
+Feeling, supplied a glossary--living, he himself, in an old-fashioned
+house in the South Back of the Canongate and within the easiest reach of
+those wonderful old ladies who spoke broad Scotch, and left no one in
+any doubt as to the strong opinions expressed therein--were certified to
+be worthy the perusal of the most fastidious critic. Lord Monboddo, who
+was the author of speculations which forestalled Darwin and who
+considered a tail to be an appendage of which men had not long got rid,
+on the one side, and the metaphysicians and philosophers on the other,
+would no doubt prick up their ears to hear of this absolutely new being
+in whom there might be seen some traces of primeval man. We forget which
+of the early Jameses it was who is said to have shut up two infants with
+a dumb nurse in one of the islands of the Firth to ascertain what kind
+of language they would speak when thus left to the teaching of nature.
+The experiment was triumphantly successful, for the heaven-taught babies
+babbled, the chroniclers tell us, a kind of Hebrew, thus proving beyond
+doubt that the language of the Old Testament was the original tongue of
+man. The Edinburgh savants must have received Burns with something of
+the same feeling: for here was a new soul which had been shut up amid
+the primeval elements, and the language it spoke was Poetry! yet poetry
+disguised in imperfect dialect which might yet be trained and educated
+into elegance. They asked him to dinner as a first step, and gathered
+round him to hear what he would have to say; to observe the effect
+produced by the sight of learning, criticism, knowledge; to enjoy his
+awe, and note the improvement that could not but ensue. This curiosity
+was full of kindness; their hearts were a little touched by the
+ploughman, by his glowing eyes, and by the strange sight of him there
+among them in the midst of their high civilisation, a rustic clown who
+knew nothing better than a thatched cottage and a clay floor. No doubt
+they had the sincerest desire that he should be made to understand how
+much he was deficient, what a great deal he had to learn, and be taught
+to use fine language, and turn his attention to higher subjects, and be
+altogether elevated and brought on in the world. The situation is very
+curious and full of human interest, even had the stranger been less in
+importance than he was. It is wonderfully enlightening in any
+circumstances to see such an encounter from both sides, to perceive the
+light in which it appears to them, and the very different light in which
+it is seen by _him_. There was the usual great divergence between the
+views of the visitor and the highly-cultured community to which he came.
+For he indeed did not come there at all to be enlightened and trained
+and put in the way he should go. He came full of delightful hope that he
+was coming among his own kind, that he was for the first time to meet
+his own species, and recognise in other human faces the light that shone
+about his own path, but in none of the other muddy ways of the
+country-side; to make friends with his natural brethren, and be
+understood of them as no one yet had been found to understand him. In
+his high anticipations, in his warm enthusiasm of hope, he himself
+figured dimly as a sort of noble exile coming back to his father's
+house. So does every child of fancy regard the world of which he knows
+nothing, the world of the great and famous, where to dazzled fancy all
+the beautiful things, words, and thoughts for which he has been sighing
+all his life are to be found.
+
+They met, and they were, if not mutually disappointed, yet strangely
+astonished and perplexed. Burns would seem to have been always on his
+guard, too much on his guard we should be disposed to say, suspicious of
+the intention to guide, to chasten, to educate and refine, which was
+indeed in the kindest way at the bottom of everybody's thoughts. He was
+determined to be astonished by nothing, to keep his head so that no one
+should ever be able to say that it was turned by his new experiences--an
+attitude which altogether bewildered the good people, who were willing
+to give him every kind of education, to excuse any rudeness or roughness
+or imperfection, but not to see a man at his ease, appearing among them
+as if he were of them, requiring no allowance to be made for him,
+holding his head high as any man he met. All the accounts we have of his
+appearance in Edinburgh agree in this. He was neither abashed nor
+embarrassed; no rustic presumption or vulgarity, but quite as little any
+timidity or awkwardness, was in the Ayrshire ploughman. His shoulders a
+little bent with the work to which he had been accustomed, his dress
+like a countryman, a rougher cloth perhaps, a pair of good woollen
+stockings rig and fur, his mother's knitting, instead of the silk which
+covered limbs probably not half so robust--but so far as manners went,
+nothing to apologise for or smile at. The accounts all agree in this. If
+he never put himself forward too much, he never withdrew with any
+unworthy shyness from his modest share in the conversation. Sometimes he
+would be roused to eloquent speech, and then the admiring ladies said he
+carried them "off their feet" in the contagion of his enthusiasm and
+emotion. But this was a very strange phenomenon for the Edinburgh
+professors and men of letters to deal with: a novice who had not come
+humbly to be taught, but one who had come to take up his share of the
+inheritance, to sit down among the great, as in his natural place. He
+was not perhaps altogether unmoved by their insane advices to him, one
+of the greatest of lyrical poets, a singer above all--to write a
+tragedy, to give up the language he knew and write his poetry in the
+high English which, alas! he uses in his letters. Not unmoved, and
+seriously inclining to a more lofty measure, he compounded addresses to
+Edinburgh:
+
+    "Edina, Scotia's darling seat!"
+
+and other such intolerable effusions. One can imagine him roaming
+through the fields between the old town and the new, and looking up to
+the "rude rough fortress," and on the other side to the brand-new
+regular lines of building, where
+
+    "Architecture's noble pride
+      Bids elegance and splendour rise,"
+
+and musing in his mind how to celebrate them in polished verse so that
+even the critics may be satisfied--
+
+    "Thy sons, Edina! social, kind,
+      With open arms the stranger hail;
+    Their views enlarged, their liberal mind,
+      Above the narrow, rural vale;
+    Attentive still to sorrow's wail,
+      Or modest merit's silent claim;
+    And never may their sources fail!
+      And never envy blot their name!"
+
+One wonders what the gentlemen said to this in the old town and the
+new--whether it did not confuse them still further, as well intended
+perhaps, but not after all like the "Epistle to Davie," though they had
+all advised him to amend that rustic style. A very confusing business
+altogether--difficult for the kind advisers as well as for the poet, and
+with no outlet that any one could see.
+
+[Illustration: DUGALD STEWART'S MONUMENT]
+
+We have, however, a more agreeable picture of the visitor on another
+occasion when he walked out into the country with Dugald Stewart in a
+spring morning to the hills of Braid and talked that gentle
+philosopher's heart away, not now about Edina's palaces and towers. "He
+told me ... that the sight of so many smoking cottages gave a pleasure
+to his mind which none could understand who had not witnessed like
+himself the happiness and worth which they contained." It is more
+pleasant to think of the poet's dark eyes lighting up as he said this
+than to watch him proud and self-possessed in the drawing-rooms holding
+his own, taking such good care that nobody should divine how his heart
+was beating and his nerves athrill.
+
+But after all there is no such account given of this wonderful visitor
+to Edinburgh as that we have from the after-recollections of a certain
+"lameter" boy who was once present in a house where Burns was a guest.
+The Scott boys from George Square had been admitted to the party which
+they were too young to join in an ordinary way, in order that they might
+see this wonder of the world, the ploughman-poet who was not afraid, but
+behaved as well as any of the gentlemen. And it befell by the happiest
+chance that Burns inquired who was the author of certain verses
+inscribed upon a print which he had been looking at. No one knew but
+young Walter, who we may be sure had not lost a look or a word of the
+stranger, and who had read everything in his invalid childhood. The boy
+was not bold enough to answer the question loud out, but he whispered it
+to some older friend, who told the poet, no doubt with an indication of
+the blushing and eager lad from whom it came, which procured him a word
+and a look never forgotten. But there passed at the same time a thought
+through young Walter's mind, the swift reflection of that never-failing
+criticism of youth which pierces unaware through all wrappings and veils
+of the soul. "I remember I thought Burns's acquaintance with English
+poetry was rather limited; and also that having twenty times the ability
+of Allan Ramsay and of Fergusson, he talked of them with too much
+humility as his models." The much-read boy was a little shocked, no
+doubt disturbed in his secret soul that the poet--so far above any other
+poet that was to be seen about the world in those days--should not have
+known that verse: though indeed men better read than Burns might have
+been excused for their want of acquaintance with a minor poet like
+Langhorne; but how true was the indignant observation, half angry, that
+with "twenty times the ability" it was Allan Ramsay and the still less
+important unfortunate young Fergusson to whom Burns looked up! Did the
+boy wonder perhaps, though too loyal to say it--for criticism at his age
+is always keen--whether there might be a something not quite real in
+that devotion, and ask in the recesses of his mind whether it was
+possible for such a man to be so self-deceived?
+
+There were no doubt various affectations about Burns, as when he talks
+big in his diary of observing character and finding this pursuit the
+greatest entertainment of his life in Edinburgh, with a pretension very
+general among half-educated persons: but there is no reason to believe
+that he was not quite genuine about his predecessors. A poet is not
+necessarily a critic; and Allan Ramsay's fame had been exactly of the
+popular kind which would attract a son of the soil, whereas Fergusson
+was the object of Burns's especial tenderness, pity, and regard. And it
+is touching to recollect that the only sign he left of himself in
+Edinburgh, where for the first time he learned what it was to mix in
+fine company and to feel the freedom of money in his pocket, from which
+he could afford a luxury, was to place a stone over the grave of
+Fergusson in the Canongate Churchyard, where he lay unknown. His
+application to the Kirk-Session for leave to do this is still kept upon
+the books--a curious interruption amid the minutes of church discipline
+and economics. One wonders if that homely memorial is kept as it ought
+to be. It is a memorial not only of the admiration of one poet for
+another, but of Burns's poignant pity--a wellnigh intolerable pang--for
+a young soul who preceded himself in the way of poetry and despair, one
+whose life, destined to better and brighter things, had been flung away
+like a weed on the dismal strand. Only twenty-three years of poetry and
+folly had sufficed that other reckless boy to destroy himself and
+shatter his little lamp of light. Burns was only a few years older, and
+perhaps, though on the heights of triumph, felt something of that
+horrible tide already catching his own feet to sweep him too into the
+abyss. There are few things in the world more pathetic than this tribute
+of his to the victim who had gone before him.
+
+I may perhaps venture to say, with an apology for recurring to a subject
+dealt with in another book, that this poetic visit to Edinburgh reminds
+me of the visit of another poet in every way very different from Burns
+to another city which cannot be supposed to resemble Edinburgh except in
+the wonderful charm and attraction for devotees which she possesses.
+There is indeed no just comparison between Petrarch at Venice and Burns
+at Edinburgh, nothing but the fantastic link, often too subtle to be
+traced, which makes the mind glide or leap over innumerable distances
+and diversities from one thing to another. The Italian poet came
+conferring glory, great as a prince, and attended by much the same
+honours and privileges, though he was but a half priest, the son of an
+exile, in an age and place where birth and family were of infinitely
+more importance than they are now. He was the perfection and flower of
+learning and high culture, and a fame which had reached the point which
+is high-fantastical, and can mount no farther--and he came to a palace
+allotted to him by the Government, and every distinction which it was in
+their power to bestow, and demeaned himself _en bon prince_, adorning
+with skilful eloquent touches of description the glorious scene beneath
+his windows, the pageants at which he was an honoured spectator. Nothing
+could be more unlike the young, shy, proud, yet genial-hearted rustic,
+holding firmly by that magic wand of poetry which was his sole right to
+consideration, and facing the curious, puzzled, patronising world with a
+certain suspicion, a certain defiance, as of one whom no craft or wile
+could betray or pretension daunt--yet ready to melt into an enthusiasm
+almost extravagant when a lovely young woman or a noble youth pushed
+open with a touch the door always ajar, or at least unfastened, of his
+heart.
+
+    "The mother may forget the child
+      That smiles sae sweetly on her knee;
+    But I'll remember thee, Glencairn,
+      And a' that thou hast done for me!"
+
+What Glencairn had done was nothing but kindness, a warm reception which
+not even the poet's susceptibility could think condescending: but he is
+repaid with an exuberant, extravagant gratitude. Such was the man; ever
+afraid to compromise his dignity, but with no measure for the
+overflowings of his heart. Petrarch, so much more assured in his
+eminence and superiority to all living poets, was driven from his palace
+on the Riva and all his delights by the impertinent gibes of some
+foolish young men. But Burns was flattered and caressed to the top of
+his bent, and--forgotten, or at least dropped, and no more thought of.
+He returned to Edinburgh only to find that, the gloss of novelty having
+worn off, his friends were no longer ready to move heaven and earth in
+order to bring him to their parties, though probably had he chosen he
+might have worked himself back "into society" in a slower but more
+permanent fashion. This, however, he did not choose, but fell back among
+the convivial middle class, the undistinguished and over merry, where
+nobody thought it too great humility to refer to Allan Ramsay and
+Fergusson as his models. It must be recollected, however, that his
+second visit to Edinburgh, and what seems in the telling a foolish and
+almost vulgar flirtation, produced one of the most impassioned and
+exquisite songs of love and despair which has ever been written in any
+language.
+
+    "Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
+    Ae farewell, alas! for ever!"
+
+There is a stillness of exhausted feeling in this wonderful utterance
+which is the very soul of despair.
+
+There has been no more remarkable moment in the experience of the town
+which has known so many strange and striking scenes, though its interest
+has little to do with history or even with national feeling. It is pure
+humanity in an unusual development, an episode in the life of the poet
+such as has many less important parallels, but scarcely any so fully
+representative and typical. It discloses to us suddenly, as by a flash
+of light striking into the darkness, the persons, the entertainments,
+the sentiments of a hundred years ago. We make improvements daily in
+external matters, but society--we had almost said humanity--rarely
+learns. There is not the smallest hope that in Edinburgh or elsewhere a
+young man of genius in Burns's position would now be either more wisely
+noticed or more truly benefited by such a period of close contact with
+people who ought by experience and knowledge to know better than he. The
+only thing that is probable is a falling-off, not an advance. I think it
+highly doubtful whether a ploughman from Ayrshire, however superlative
+his genius, would now be received at all in "the best houses" and by the
+first men and women in Edinburgh; and if not in Edinburgh, surely
+nowhere else would such a reception as that given to Burns await the
+untutored poet. The world has seldom another chance permitted to it, and
+in this case I cannot but think it would be worse and not better used.
+
+[Illustration: BURNS'S MONUMENT]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE SHAKSPEARE OF SCOTLAND
+
+
+There are many variations in degree of the greatest human gifts, but
+they are few in kind. The name we have ventured to place at the head of
+this chapter is one not so great as that of Shakspeare, not so
+all-embracing--though widely-embracing beyond any other second--not so
+ideal, not so profound. Walter Scott penetrated with a luminous
+revelation all that was within his scope, the most different kinds and
+classes of men, those whom he loved (and he loved all whom it was
+possible to love) and the few whom he hated, with the same comprehension
+and power of disclosure. But Shakspeare was not restrained by the limits
+of any personal scope or knowledge. He knew Lear and Macbeth, and Hamlet
+and Prospero, though they were beings only of his own creation. He could
+embody the loftiest passion in true flesh and blood, and show us how a
+man can be moved by jealousy or ambition in the highest superlative
+degree and yet be a man with all the claims upon our understanding and
+pity that are possessed by any brother of our own. Nothing like Lear
+ever came in our Scott's way: that extraordinary embodiment of human
+passion and weakness, the forlorn and awful strength of the aged and
+miserable, did not present itself to his large and genial gaze. It would
+not have occurred to him perhaps had he lived to the age of Methuselah.
+He knew not those horrors and dreadful depths of humanity that could
+make such tragic passion possible. But he had his revenge in one way
+even upon Shakspeare. Dogberry and Verges, as types of the muddle-headed
+old watch--pompous, confused, and self-important--are always diverting;
+but they would have been men not all ridiculous had Scott taken them in
+hand--real creatures of flesh and blood, not watchmen in the abstract.
+Our greater poet did not take trouble enough to make them individual,
+his fancy carrying him otherwhere, and leaving him scarce the time to
+put his jotting down. To Shakspeare the great ideals whom he almost
+alone has been able to make into flesh and blood; to Scott all the
+surrounding world, the men as we meet them about the common
+thoroughfares of life. He knows no Rosalind nor Imogen, but on the other
+hand Jeanie Deans and Jenny Headrigg would have been impossible to his
+great predecessor. Both, we may remark, are incapable of a young
+hero--the Claudios and the Bertrams being if anything a trifle worse
+than Henry Morton and Young Lovel. But whereas Shakspeare is greatest
+above that line of the conventional ideal, it is below that Sir Walter
+is famous. The one has no restriction, however high he may soar; the
+other finds nothing so common that he cannot make it immortal.
+
+[Illustration: ST. GILES'S FROM PRINCES STREET]
+
+It is, however, especially in the breadth and largeness of a humanity
+which has scarcely any limit to its sympathy and understanding that the
+great romancist of Scotland resembles the greatest of English poets.
+They are both so great, so broad, so little restrained by any individual
+limitations, that a perverse criticism has made this catholic and
+all-comprehending nature a kind of reproach to both, as though that
+great and limpid mirror of their minds, in which all nature was
+reflected, was less noble than the sharp face of a stone which can catch
+but one ray. They were both subject to political prejudices and
+prepossessions. Shakspeare has made of many a youth of the nineteenth
+century an ardent Lancastrian, ready to pluck a red rose with Somerset
+and die for Margaret and her prince; and Scott in like manner has made
+many a Jacobite, though in the latter case our novelist is too full of
+sense even in the midst of his own inclinations to become ever an
+out-and-out partisan. But, except these prepossessions, they have no
+_parti pris_. Every faction renders up its soul of meaning, the most
+diverse figures unclose themselves side by side. The wit, the scholar,
+the true soldier, the braggart and thief, the Jew and the Christian, the
+Hamlet, hero of all time, and Shallow and Slender from the fat pastures
+of English rural life, come all together, each as true as if on him
+alone the poet's eye had fixed. And Scott is like him, setting before us
+with unerring pencil the old superstitious despot of mediaeval France,
+the bustling pedant of St. James's, the ploughmen and shepherds, the
+churchmen, the Border reivers and Highland caterans, the broad country
+lying under a natural illumination, without strain or effort, large and
+temperate as the day. Neither in the greatest poet nor the great
+romancer is there any force put upon the natural fulness of life to
+twist its record into a narrow circle with one motive only. It is the
+round world and all that it inhabits, the grandeur and divinity of a
+universe, that delights them. Their view is large as the vision of God,
+or as nearly so as is given to mortal eyes. It is in this, above all,
+that they resemble each other. In degree Shakspeare, it need not be
+said, is all-transcendent, reaching heights such as no other man has
+reached in delineation and creation: but Scott is of his splendid
+species, one of his kind, the only one among all the many sons of genius
+with whom this island has been blessed, for whom the boldest could make
+such a claim.
+
+Walter Scott belongs to all Scotland. He was, no man more, a lover of
+the woods and fields, of mountain-sides and pastoral braes, of the river
+and forest, Ettrick and Tweed and Yarrow, and Perthshire--that princely
+district, half Highland, half Lowland--and the chain of silvery lochs
+that pierce the mountain shadows through Stirling and Argyle: every
+league of the fair country he loved. From the Western Isles and the
+Orkneys to the very fringe of debatable land which parts the northern
+and the southern half of Great Britain--is his, and has tokens to show
+of his presence. When he came home to die at the end of almost the most
+tragic yet most noble chapter of individual history which our century
+has known, it was the longing of his sick heart above all other that he
+should not be so unblest as to lay his bones far from the Tweed.
+
+But yet, above all other places, it was to Edinburgh that Scott
+belonged. His birth, his growth, the familiar scenes of his youth, his
+education and training, the business and work of his life, were all
+associated with the ancient capital. George Square--with its homely and
+comfortable old-fashion, which has nothing to do with antiquity, the
+first breaking out of the Edinburgh citizens into large space and air
+outside the strait boundaries of the city, with the Meadows and their
+trees beyond, and all the sunshine of the south side to warm the deep
+_corps de logis_, the substantial and solid mansions which are so grey
+without yet so full of warmth and comfort within--was the first home he
+knew, and his residence up to manhood. No boy could be more an Edinburgh
+boy. Lame though he was, he climbed every dangerous point upon the
+hills, and knew the recesses of Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags by
+heart before he knew his Latin grammar. His schoolboy fights, his
+snowballing, the little armies of urchins set in battle array, the
+friendly feuds of gentle and simple (sometimes attended by hard knocks,
+as among his own Liddesdale farmers), fill the streets with amusing
+recollections. And when he was promoted in due time to the Parliament
+House and to all the frolics of the youthful Bar, and his proud father
+steps forth in the snuff-coloured suit which Mr. Saunders Fairford wore
+after him, to tell his friends that "my son Walter passed his private
+Scots law examination with good approbation," and on Friday "puts on the
+gown and gives a bit chack of dinner to his friends and acquaintances,
+as is the custom," how familiar and kindly is the scene, how the sober
+house lights up, and the good wine about which we have known all our
+lives comes out of the cellar and the jokes fly round--Parliament House
+pleasantries and recollections of the witticisms of the Bench gradually
+giving place to the sallies of the wild young wits, the shaft from the
+new-bent bow of the young advocate himself. Nothing can be more true and
+simple than he is through all the tale, or more real than the Edinburgh
+atmosphere; the fun that is mostly in the foreground; the work that is
+pushed into corners yet always gets done, though it has not the air of
+being important except to the excellent father whose steps on the stair
+are the signal for the disappearance of a chess-board into a drawer or a
+romance under the papers,--well-known tricks of youth which we have all
+been guilty of. There is a curious evidence, however, in Lockhart's
+_Life_, less known than the usual tales of frolic and apparent idleness,
+of the professional trick of Scott's handwriting, which showed how
+steadily he must have laboured even in his delightful, easy, innocently
+irregular youth. "I allude particularly to a sort of flourish at the
+bottom of the page, originally, I presume, adopted in engrossing as a
+safeguard against the intrusion of a forged line between the legitimate
+text and the attesting signature. He was quite sensible," adds his
+biographer, "that this ornament might as well be dispensed with; and his
+family often heard him mutter after involuntarily performing it, 'There
+goes the old shop again!'" Which of us now could see that flourish
+without the water coming into our eyes?
+
+[Illustration: THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH]
+
+It is impossible to eradicate, from the minds of youthful students at
+least, the admiration which always attends the performances of the young
+man who gains his successes without apparently working for them. As a
+matter of fact, it is the work which we ought to respect rather than
+that apparently fortuitous accidental result: but nothing will ever cure
+us of our native delight in an effect which appears to have no vulgar
+cause, and great has been the misery produced by this prejudice to many
+a youth who has begun with the tradition of easy triumph and presumed
+upon it to the loss of all his after-life. But when there shows in the
+apparent idler a sign like this of many a long hour's labour ignored and
+lightly thought of, covered over with a pleasant veil of fun and ease
+and happy leisure, the combination is one that no heart can resist.
+
+Scott had read everything he could lay his hands on while he was still a
+child, and boasted himself a virtuoso, that is, according to his
+explanation, at six years old, "one who wishes and will know
+everything;" but his boyish tastes and triumphs became more and more
+athletic as he gained a firmer use of his bodily powers. No diseased
+consciousness of disability in respect to his lameness, like that which
+embittered Byron, could find a place in the rough wholesome atmosphere
+of the Edinburgh High School and playgrounds, where nobody was too
+delicate about reminding him of his infirmity, and the stout-hearted
+little hero took it like a man, offering "to fight mounted," and being
+tied upon a board accordingly for his first combat. "You may take him
+for a poor lameter," said one of the Eldin Clerks, a sailor, with equal
+friendly frankness to a party of strangers, "but he is the first to
+begin a row, and the last to end it." To such a youth the imperfection
+was a virtue the more. When the jovial band strolled forth upon long
+walks the cheerful "lameter" bargained for three miles an hour, and kept
+up with the best. They would start at five in the morning, beguiling the
+way with endless pranks, on one occasion at least without a single
+sixpence in all their youthful pockets with which to refresh themselves
+during a thirty miles' round. "We asked every now and then at a cottage
+door for a drink of water; and one or two of the goodwives, observing
+our worn-out looks, brought forth milk instead of water, so with that
+and hips and haws we came in little the worse." Little they cared for
+fatigue and inconvenience; they were things to laugh over when the lads
+got back. Scott only wished he had been a player on the flute, like
+George Primrose in the _Vicar of Wakefield_, and his father shook his
+head and doubted the boy was born "for nae better than a gangrel
+scrapegut"--reproach of little gravity, as the expedition so poorly
+provisioned was of little harm. Thus the young gentlemen bore cheerfully
+what would have been hardship to a ploughman, and gibed even at each
+other's weaknesses without a spark of unkindness, which made the
+weakness itself into a robust matter of fact not to be brooded over.
+High susceptibility might have suffered from the treatment, but high
+susceptibility generally means egotism and inordinate self-esteem,
+qualities which it is the very best use of public school and college to
+conjure away.
+
+Nothing indeed more cheerful, more full of endless frolic and enjoyment,
+fresh air and fun and feeling, ever existed than the young manhood of
+Walter Scott. Talk of Scotch gravity and seriousness! The houses in
+which they were received as they roamed about--farmers' or lairds', it
+was all the same to the merry lads--were only too uproarious in their
+mirth; with songs and laughter they made the welkin ring. At home in
+Edinburgh the fun might be less noisy, but it was not less sincere. In
+the very Parliament House itself the young men clustered in their
+corner, telling each other the last good things, and with much ado to
+keep their young laughter within the bounds of decorum. The judge on the
+Bench, the Lord President himself, greatest potentate of all, was not
+more safe from the audacious wits than poor Peter Peebles. There was
+nothing they did not laugh at, themselves and each other as much as Lord
+Braxfield, and all the humours of a town more full of anecdote and jest,
+laughable eccentricity and keen satire and amusing comment, than any
+town in literature. The best joke of all perhaps was Sydney Smith's
+famous _bon mot_ about the surgical operation, which no doubt he meant
+as an excellent joke in the midst of that laughing community, where the
+fun was only too fast and furious. Nowadays, when life is more temperate
+and the world in general has mended its manners, the habits of that
+period fill us with dismay; but perhaps after all there was less harm
+done than appears, and not more of the fearful tribute of young life
+which our fated race is always paying than is still exacted amid a
+population much less generally addicted to excess. But that of course
+increased rather than diminished the jovial aspect of Edinburgh life
+when Walter Scott was young, and when the few cares he had in hand, the
+occasional bit of work, interfered very little with the warm and lively
+social life in the midst of which he had been born. He dwelt, in every
+sense of the word, among his own people, his friends, the sons of his
+father's friends, his associates all belonging to families like his own,
+of good if modest rank and lineage, the "kent folk" of whom Scotland
+loves to keep up the record. This, which is perhaps one of the greatest
+advantages with which a young man can enter on life, was his from his
+infancy. He and his companions had been at school together, together in
+the college classes, in frequent social meetings, on the floor of the
+Parliament House. Familiar faces and kind greetings were round him
+wherever he went. No doubt these circumstances, so genial, so friendly
+and favourable, helped to perfect the most kind, the most generous and
+sunshiny of natures. And thus no man could be more completely at once
+the best product and most complete representative of his native soil.
+
+His life too was as prosperous and full of good fortune and happiness as
+a man could desire. He married at twenty-six, and a few years later
+received the appointment of Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire, which
+rendered him independent of the precarious incomings of his profession,
+and made the pleasure he always took in roaming the country into a
+necessary part of his life's work. He had begun a playful and
+pleasurable authorship some time before with some translations from the
+German, Buerger's _Lenore_ and Goethe's _Goetz von Berlichingen_--the
+first of which was hastily made into a little book, daintily printed and
+bound, in order to help his suit with an early love, so easy, so little
+premeditated, was this beginning. With equal simplicity and absence of
+intention he slid into the Border Minstrelsy, which he intended not for
+the beginning of a long literary career, but in the first place for "a
+job" to Ballantyne the printer, whom he had persuaded to establish
+himself in Edinburgh--the best of printers and the most attached of
+faithful and humble friends--and for fun and the pleasure of scouring
+the country in pursuit of ballads, which was a search he had already
+entered upon to his great enjoyment. From this nothing was so easy as to
+float into original poetry, inspired by the same impulse and inspiration
+as his ballads. One of the ladies of the house of Buccleuch told him the
+story of the elfin page, and begged him to make a ballad of it; and from
+this suggestion the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ arose. The time was ripe
+for giving forth all that had been unconsciously stirring in his teeming
+fertile imagination. It came at once like a sudden bursting into flower,
+with a splendid _eclosion_, out-bursting, involuntary, unlaborious,
+delightful to himself as to mankind. From henceforward his name stood in
+one of the highest places of literature and his fame was assured.
+
+[Illustration: PLAYFAIR'S MONUMENT, CALTON HILL]
+
+Nothing could be more unintentional, more spontaneous, almost careless;
+a thing done for his pleasure far more than with any serious purpose;
+nothing--except the later beginning, equally unintentional, of a still
+more important stream of production. The poems of Scott will always be
+open to much criticism; even those who love them most--and there are
+many whose love for this fresh, free, spontaneous, delightful fountain
+of song is strong enough to repress every impulse of criticism and
+transport it beyond the reach of comment to a romantic enchanted land of
+its own, where it flows in native sunshine and delight for
+ever--declining to pronounce any definite judgment as to their
+greatness. But to Scott in his after-work we are inclined to say no man
+worthy of expressing an opinion can give any but the highest place. It
+is true, and the fact has to be admitted with astonishment and regret,
+that one great writer, his countryman, speaking the same language and in
+every way capable of pronouncing judgment, has failed to appreciate Sir
+Walter. We cannot tell why, nor pretend to solve that amazing question.
+Perhaps it was the universal acclaim, the consent of every voice, that
+awoke the germ of perversity that was in Thomas Carlyle: an impulse of
+contradiction, especially in face of an opinion too unanimous, which is
+one of our national characteristics: perhaps one of those prejudices
+pertinacious as the rugged peasant nature itself, which sometimes warps
+the clearest judgment; perhaps, but this we find it difficult to
+believe, a narrower intensity and passion of meaning in himself which
+found little reflection in the great limpid mirror which Scott held up
+to nature. The beginning of Scott's chief and greatest work was as
+fortuitous, as accidental (if we may use the word), as the poetry. He
+took up by some passing impulse the idea of a prose story on the events
+of the 'forty-five, which perhaps he considered too recent to be treated
+in poetry; wrote (everybody knows the story) half a volume, read it to a
+trusted critic, who probably considered it foolish for a man who had
+risen to the heights of fame by one kind of composition to risk himself
+now with another. It is very likely that Scott himself was easily moved
+to the same opinion. He tossed the MS. into a drawer, and gave it up.
+There had been no special motive in the effort, and it cost him nothing
+to put it aside, to whistle for his dogs, and go out for a long round by
+wood and hill, or to take his gun or rod, or to entertain his
+visitors--all of which were more rational, more entertaining, and
+altogether important things to do than the writing of a dull story,
+which after all was not his line. For years the beginning chapters of
+_Waverley_ lay there unknown. They lay very quietly, we may well
+believe, not bursting the dull enclosure as they might have done had the
+Baron of Bradwardine been yet born; but that good young Waverley was
+always a little dull, and might have slept till doomsday had nothing
+occurred to disturb his rest. One day, however, some fishing tackle was
+wanted for the use of one of Scott's perpetual visitors at
+Ashiestiel--not even for himself, for some chance man taking advantage
+of the Shirra's open house. Visitor arriving in a good hour! fortunate
+sorner, to be thereafter blessed of all men! Let us hope he got just the
+lines he wanted and had a good day's sport. For in his search Scott's
+eyes lighted upon the bundle of written pages. "Hallo!" he must have
+said to himself, "there they are! Let's see if they're as bad as Willie
+Erskine thought." In his candid soul he did not think they were very
+good, unless it was perhaps the description of Waverley Honour, a great
+mild English mansion which he would admire all the more that it was so
+unlike Tully Veolan. Perhaps it was the contrast which brought into his
+teeming brain a sudden vision of that "Scottish manor-house sixty years
+since," which he went off straightway and built in his eighth chapter
+with the baron and all his surroundings, which must have been awaiting
+impatient that happy moment to burst into life.
+
+And thus by spontaneous accident, by delightful, careless chance, so to
+speak, the thing was done. One wonders by what equally, nay more
+fortunate unthought-of haphazard it was, that the country rogue
+Shakspeare, his bright eyes shining with mock penitence for the wildness
+of his woodland career, and the air and the accent of the fields still
+on his honeyed lips, first found out that he could string a story
+together for the theatre and make the old knights and the fair ladies
+live again. Of this there is no record, but only enough presumption, we
+think, to make it sufficiently clear that the discovery which has ever
+since been one of the chief glories of the English name, and added the
+most wonderful immortal inhabitants to the population, was made, like
+Scott's, by what seems a divine chance, without apparent preparation or
+likelihood. In our day much more importance is given to a development
+which the scientific thinker would fondly hope to be traceable by all
+the leadings of race and inheritance into an evolution purely natural
+and to be expected; while, on the other hand, there is nothing which
+appears more splendid and dignified to others than the aspect of a life
+devoted to poetry, in which the man becomes but a kind of solemn
+incubator of his own thoughts. It will always be, however, an additional
+delight to the greater part of the human race to see how here and there
+the greatest of all heavenly tools is found unawares by the happy hand
+that can wield it, no one knowing who has put it there ready for his
+triumphant grasp when the fated moment comes.
+
+Everybody will remember as a pendant--but one so much more grave that we
+hesitate to cite it, though the coincidence is curious--the pause made
+by Dante in the beginning of the _Inferno_, which resembles so exactly
+the pause in Scott's career. The great Florentine had written seven
+cantos of his wonderful poem when the rush of his affairs carried him
+away from all such tranquil work and left the Latin fragment, among
+other more vulgar papers, shovelled hastily into some big cassone in the
+house in Florence from which he was a banished man. It was found there
+after five years by a nephew who would fain have tried his prentice hand
+upon the poem, yet finally took the better part of sending it to its
+author--who immediately resumed _Io dico sequitando_, in a burst of
+satisfaction to have recovered what he must have begun with far more
+zeal and intention than Scott. The resemblance, however, which is so
+curiously exact, the seven cantos and the seven chapters, the five
+years' interval, the satisfaction of the work resumed, is, different as
+are the men and their work, one of those fantastic parallels which are
+delightful to the fantastic soul. Nothing could be more unlike than that
+dark and splendid poem to Scott's sunshiny and kindly art; nothing less
+resembling than the proud embittered exile with his hand against every
+man, and the genial romancer whose heart overflowed with the milk of
+human kindness. Yet this strange occurrence in both lives takes an
+enhanced interest from the curious dissimilarity which makes the
+repetition of the fact more curious still.
+
+The sudden burst into light and publicity of a gift which had been
+growing through all the changes of private life, of the wonderful stream
+of knowledge, recollection, divination, boundless acquaintance with and
+affection for human nature, which had gladdened the Edinburgh streets,
+the Musselburgh sands, the Southland moors and river-sides, since ever
+Walter Scott had begun to roam among them, with his cheerful band of
+friends, his good stories, his kind and gentle thoughts--was received by
+the world with a burst of delighted recognition to which we know no
+parallel. We do not know, alas! what happened when the audience in the
+Globe Theatre made a similar discovery. Perhaps the greater gift, by its
+very splendour, would be less easily perceived in the dazzling of a
+glory hitherto unknown, and obscured it may be by jealousies of actors
+and their inaptitude to do justice to the wonderful poetry put into
+their hands. But of that we know nothing. We know, however, that there
+were no two opinions about _Waverley_. It took the world by storm, which
+had had no such new sensation and no such delightful amusement for many
+a day. It was not only the beginning of a new and wonderful school in
+romance, a fresh chapter in literature, but the revelation of a region
+and a race unknown. Scotland had begun to glow in the sunshine of
+poetry, in glimpses of Burns's westland hills and fields, of Scott's
+moss-troopers and romantic landscapes, visions of battle and old
+tradition: but the wider horizon of a life more familiar, of a broad
+country full of nature, full of character, running over with fun and
+pawky humour, thrilling with high enthusiasm and devotion, where men
+were still ready to risk everything in life for a falling cause, and
+other men not unwilling to pick up the spoils, was a discovery and
+surprise more delightful than anything that had happened to the
+generation. The books flew through the island like magic, penetrating to
+corners unthought of, uniting gentle and simple in an enthusiasm beyond
+parallel. How the multitude got at them at all it is difficult to
+understand, for these were the days of really high prices, before the
+actual cost of a book got modified by one-half as now, and when there
+were as yet no cheap editions. _Waverley_ was printed in three small
+volumes at the cost of a guinea. We believe that to buy books was more
+usual then than now, and there were circulating libraries everywhere,
+conveying perhaps the stream of literature more evenly over the country
+than can be attained by one gigantic Mudie. At all events; by whatever
+means it was procured, _Waverley_ and its successors were read
+everywhere, not only in great houses but in small, wherever there was
+intelligence and a taste for books; and the interest, the curiosity, the
+eagerness, were everywhere overwhelming. I have heard of girls in a
+dressmaker's workroom who kept the last volume in a drawer, from whence
+it was read aloud by one to the rest, the drawer being closed hurriedly
+whenever the mistress came that way. From this humble scene to the
+highest in the land, where the Prince Regent sat--
+
+    "His table spread with tea and toast,
+    Death-warrants, and the _Morning Post_,"
+
+these volumes went everywhere. One of them lies before me now in rough
+boards of paper, with the "blue back" of which one of Scott's
+correspondents talks, not a prepossessing volume, but independent of
+externals and all things else except its own native excellence and
+power.
+
+For fifteen years after, this stream of living literature poured forth
+in the largest generous volume like a great river, through every region
+where English was spoken or known. His work was as the march of a
+battalion, always increasing, new detachments appearing suddenly, now an
+individual, now a group, to join the line. The Baron of Bradwardine with
+his attendant bailie; Vich Ian Vohr and noble Evan Dhu, and all the
+clan; the family at Ellangowan and that at Charlieshope, good Dandie and
+all his delightful belongings; Jock Jabos and the rest; Monkbarns and
+Edie Ochiltree, and all the pathos of the Mucklebackits; Bailie Nicol
+Jarvie and the Dougal Cratur; humours of the clachan and the hillside;
+Jeanie Deans in her perfect humbleness and truth. It would be vain to
+attempt to name the new inhabitants of Scotland who appeared out of the
+unseen wherever Scott moved. Neither to himself nor to his audience
+could it seem that these friends of all were new created, invented by
+any man. Scott, who alone could do it, withdrew the veil that had
+concealed them. He opened up an entire country, a full world of men and
+women, so living, so various, with their natural garb of fitting
+language, and their heart of natural sentiment, and the thoughts which
+they must have been thinking, by inalienable right of their humanity.
+There might have been better plots or more carefully constructed
+stories; as indeed in life, heaven knows, all our stories might be much
+better constructed; but could we conceive it possible that these, our
+country-folk and friends, could be dismissed again off the face of the
+earth, how impoverished, how diminished, would Scotland be! The want of
+them is more than we could contemplate, and we can well understand how
+our country must have appeared to the world a poor little turbulent
+country, without warmth or wealth, before these representatives of a
+robust and manifold race were born.
+
+Yet, amid the delightful enrichment of these productions to the nation
+and the world, the man himself who produced them was perhaps the finest
+revelation of all. And here he transcends for once the larger kindred
+genius of whom we do not know, yet believe, that he was such a man as
+Scott, though better off in one way and less well in others. Shakspeare
+must have been somewhat oppressed with noble patrons, which Scott never
+was--patrons to whom his own splendid courtesy and the magnifying
+glamour in his poetic eyes must sometimes have made him more flattering
+than was needful, overwhelming them with magnificent words; but on the
+other hand he had not those modern drawbacks under which Scott's great
+career was so bitterly burdened, the strain for money, the constant
+combat with debt and liability. To bear the first yoke must have taken
+much of a man's strength and tired him exceedingly: but to bear the
+second is perhaps the severest test to which any buoyant spirit can be
+put. And from the very beginning of his career as a novelist Scott had
+this burden upon his shoulders. He bore the chains very lightly at first
+with a hundred hairbreadth 'scapes which made the struggle--as even that
+struggle can be made while the sufferer is strong and young--almost
+exhilarating, with a glee in the relief and the power to surmount every
+difficulty, and a faith strengthened by numberless examples of the
+certainty--however dark things might seem up to the very last moment--of
+bursting through, with an exquisite sensation of success, the hardest
+coil of circumstance. But as Scott grew older these obstacles grew
+stronger; he could not put sense or prudence into the heads of his
+colleagues, and it was hard to teach himself, the most liberal, the most
+hospitable and princely of entertainers, those habits of frugality which
+are never harder to learn than by a Scots gentleman of the ancient
+strain accustomed to keep open house. I do not think it has ever been
+acknowledged that there is in this desperate struggle to keep afloat a
+certain intoxication of its own. To foil your pursuers, your enemies,
+whether they take the form of armed assailants or of pressing creditors,
+by ever another and another daring combination, by sudden reliefs
+unthought of, by a bold _coup_ executed at the very moment when the
+crisis seems inevitable, by all the happy yet desperate chances of
+warfare, has a fascination in it which no one could conceive as
+attending a sordid struggle for money. The pursuit becomes exciting,
+breathless, in proportion as it becomes desperate. Sometimes, when all
+the stars in their courses have seemed to be fighting against the
+combatant, a sudden aid like the very interposition of heaven will bring
+him safety; and a confidence in this interposition takes possession of
+him. He does not see how deliverance can come, but it will come. His
+labouring breast strains, his brain whirls, he is at his last gasp: when
+all at once the heart leaps up in his bosom, the wheels in his head
+stand still, a flash of satisfaction comes over him. Once more and once
+more, again and again, at the last gasp of the struggle he is saved.
+
+No doubt something of this was in the long and desperate fight which
+Scott waged with the creditors of the Ballantynes, who were also his
+own. The worst of the struggle is that it almost legalises a prodigality
+which to men always fixed on solid ground would be impossible. The
+conviction that the money will come somehow, added to the still more
+intoxicating conviction that this somehow depends oftenest upon your own
+unrivalled power of work, and the confidence which all men have in you,
+permits, almost sanctions, a yielding to personal temptations, and the
+indulgence of a little taste and inclination of your own in the midst of
+so many burdens for others. Thus Abbotsford grew, of which all the
+critics have talked as if its, alas! somewhat sham antiquity and its few
+acres had been the cause of all the trouble. One could have wished that
+Scott's taste had been more true, that he had so dearly bought and so
+fondly collected curiosities more worthy, that he should have had a
+genuine old house, a direct and happy lineage, son and son's son, to
+bear his name--not to posterity, with whom it was safe, but on Tweedside
+among the other Scotts,--a kindly and not ignoble ambition. But he has
+himself forestalled the criticisms of the antiquarians by that
+delightful record of good Monkbarns's mistakes and deceptions which
+would make us forgive him for any "lang ladle" or fictitious relic; and
+it would be a hard heart that would be otherwise than thankful that he
+had so much as Abbotsford to indemnify him for his labours and trials.
+As the time approached when he was no longer able to maintain that
+gallant struggle, and the power of labour failed and confidence was
+lost, the position of the man becomes more tragical than the spectator
+can well bear to look upon. Who can read unmoved the story of the time
+when his faithful friends (though it was their necessities that had
+pulled him down to the ground of this bitter failure) had to come and
+tell him that his last romance was scarcely worth paper and print? who
+could refrain from going down on his knees to kiss that failing hand
+which could now only bring forth Count Robert of Paris where once it had
+set out in glorious array of battle Sir Kenneth of Scotland, and the
+stout old Constable of Chester, and Front de Boeuf, and the Scottish
+archers--and which still could not be inactive, but would struggle on,
+on--to pay that miserable money and leave behind a spotless name!
+
+There is one melancholy and almost terrible consolation in such a
+heartbreaking record, terrible from the light it throws upon the
+constitution of human nature and the conditions of that supreme sympathy
+which is the noblest kind of fame. Had Sir Walter been able to throw his
+burdens from him, had he loosed the millstone from his neck and retired
+in full credit and comfort to his Abbotsford to pass the conclusion of
+peaceful and glorious days on the banks of the Tweed--had we known him
+only as the greatest romancist of the world, the next to Shakspeare in
+large creation and revelation of mankind, proud had every Scotsman been
+of his name, and fondly had the nation cherished his memory. But when
+his brilliant and wonderful life fell under the shadow of all these
+tragical clouds, when its course was arrested by obstacles which are
+usually unsurmountable, before which any other man must have broken
+down, when he stood in the face of fate, in the face of every
+misfortune, broken in health, in hope, in power, a lonely man where he
+had been the centre of every joy in life, an enchanter with his magic
+wand broken and his witchery gone--then, and then only, does Scott
+attain his highest greatness and give the world most noble assurance of
+a man. His diary as his life dwindles away, that life once so splendid
+and so full, is like the noblest poem--its broken and falling sentences
+go direct to the heart. _Fuimus_ was never written more grandly, with
+more noble patience and valour. Without this downfall his triumph might
+have been but as the other triumph--the tragedy of the conclusion is a
+sight for men and angels. Lockhart, who preserves the record for us,
+becomes for the time the greatest, with a subject more moving, more
+noble, than any that his hero had selected from the records of the ages.
+The pity and anguish grow too much for the spectator. We are spectators
+no longer, but mournful and devoted retainers standing about, all hushed
+and silent, scarcely able either to shed or to restrain the choking
+tears.
+
+One asks one's self, Is this the cost of supreme human power? is it to
+be bought by nothing but the agony in which failure, real or apparent,
+is a part, and in which all the exquisite tenement of reputation,
+happiness, and delightsome life seems to crumble down like a house of
+cards before our eyes? Dread question for the genius of the future, sad
+yet sublime problem of the past! At all events it was so in the life of
+Scott, which in all its greatness was never so great, so touching, so
+secure of love and honour, as in the moment when his weapons fell from
+his hands and his genius and being alike failed, breaking down in a last
+supreme struggle for justice and honour and fair dealing, to avoid what
+he thought disgrace and the intolerable stigma of having done any man
+wrong.
+
+It is a penalty of such greatness, especially in the midst of an
+enthusiastic and unanimous country, that it becomes more or less a thing
+to trade upon, the subject of vague patriotic vapourings, and much froth
+of foolish talk from uninstructed lips in the following generations. As
+Stratford-on-Avon is in respect to Shakspeare all Scotland is in respect
+to Burns and Scott. It has even become a mark of culture and superiority
+among certain fine spirits in consequence to pretend to despise the
+former of these names--perhaps really to despise it, for there is no
+fathom that can sound the depths of human foolishness even in the
+learned and wise. The vulgarity of fame when it becomes the cry of the
+most prosaic is, however, calculated justly to alarm the literary soul,
+and in the excess of Scott monuments, and wooden quaighs, and tartan
+paper-knives, there is a damping and depressing quality which we must
+all acknowledge.
+
+[Illustration: SIR WALTER SCOTT'S HOUSE]
+
+We need not, however, in these follies forget the illuminating presence
+of Scott in the midst of all the picturesque scenes of what he has
+proudly called "mine own romantic town." From the High School Yards and
+"the kittle nine steps," from George Square, lying cosy but grey in the
+hollow amid the enlarged and beautiful openings of the Meadows, to the
+Parliament House, withdrawn in the square, once blocked by the Old
+Tolbooth, now confronted solely by an embellished and restored
+cathedral, and to the sober street on the other side of the hollow,
+where to 39 North Castle Street he took his bride and set up his
+independent home, there is no corner of Edinburgh where his step and
+voice have not been. And some of the most characteristic scenes which we
+can call to mind in recent history rise before us in his narrative as if
+we had been there. The Porteous Mob riots in our ears, the flare of the
+sudden fire at the gates of the Tolbooth, the blinding smoke, the tramp
+of the crowd, the sudden concentrated force of that many-headed
+multitude stilled by stern resolve into unity and action, are as visible
+as if they had happened yesterday. And after ransacking all the serious
+volumes that tell the story and picture the aspect of old Edinburgh, we
+turn back to that tale, and for the first time see the tortuous passage
+between the church and the Tolbooth, the dark old prison with its lofty
+turrets, the Luckenbooths linked on to its dark shadow, oppressing the
+now wide thoroughfare of the High Street, where these buildings have
+left no trace. No topographical record or painstaking print comes within
+a hundred miles of that picture, dashed in boldly by the way, to the
+entrancing tale. I cannot refrain from placing here one or two
+vignettes, which I have no doubt the artist himself will allow to
+surpass his best efforts, and which set the landscape before us with a
+distinct yet ideal and poetical grace which pencil and graver can very
+seldom equal. The first is of the exterior aspect of Edinburgh.
+
+    "Marching in this manner they speedily reached an eminence, from
+    which they could view Edinburgh stretching along the ridgy hill
+    which slopes eastward from the Castle. The latter, being in a state
+    of siege, or rather of blockade, by the northern insurgents, who had
+    already occupied the town for two or three days, fired at intervals
+    upon such parties of Highlanders as exposed themselves, either on
+    the main street, or elsewhere in the vicinity of the fortress. The
+    morning being calm and fair, the effect of this dropping fire was to
+    invest the Castle in wreaths of smoke, the edges of which dissipated
+    slowly in the air, while the central veil was darkened ever and anon
+    by fresh clouds poured forth from the battlements; the whole giving,
+    by the partial concealment, an appearance of grandeur and gloom,
+    rendered more terrific when Waverley reflected on the cause by which
+    it was produced, and that each explosion might ring some brave man's
+    knell."
+
+The second introduces us to the interior of the city.
+
+    "Under the guidance of his trusty attendant, Colonel Mannering,
+    after threading a dark lane or two, reached the High Street, then
+    clanging with the voices of oyster-women and the bells of pie-men,
+    for it had, as his guide assured him, just 'chappit eight upon the
+    Tron.' It was long since Mannering had been in the street of a
+    crowded metropolis, which, with its noise and clamour, its sounds of
+    trade, of revelry and of license, its variety of lights, and the
+    eternally changing bustle of its hundred groups, offers, by night
+    especially, a spectacle which, though composed of the most vulgar
+    materials when they are separately considered, has, when they are
+    combined, a striking and powerful effect on the imagination. The
+    extraordinary height of the houses was marked by lights, which,
+    glimmering irregularly along their front, ascended so high among the
+    attics, that they seemed at length to twinkle in the middle sky.
+    This _coup d'oeil_, which still subsists in a certain degree, was
+    then more imposing, owing to the uninterrupted range of buildings on
+    each side, which, broken only at the space where the North Bridge
+    joins the main street, formed a superb and uniform Place, extending
+    from the front of the Luckenbooths to the head of the Canongate, and
+    corresponding in breadth and length to the uncommon height of the
+    buildings on either side."
+
+Since then this great Place has become more majestic, as well as more
+open, by the clearing away of the Luckenbooths: but nothing can be finer
+than the touch of the graphic yet reticent pencil which sets down before
+us the glimmering of the irregular lights which seemed at last to
+twinkle in the middle sky. This was how the main street of Edinburgh
+still appeared when Scott himself was a boy, and no doubt he must have
+caught the aspect of the previous sketch on some king's birthday or
+other public holiday, the 4th of June perhaps, that familiar festival in
+other regions, when the guns of the Castle were saluting and the smoke
+hanging about those heights like a veil.
+
+It was one of the privations of Scott's life as it began to fall into
+its last subdued and suffering stage that he had to give up his
+Edinburgh house and the cheerful company which had so long made his
+winters pleasant. He loved the country and his home there at all
+seasons, as the readers of the poetical chapters of friendly dedication
+and communing addressed to different friends between the cantos of
+_Marmion_ will well remember: but yet the yearly change, the natural
+transfer of life in the short days to the cheerful surroundings of town,
+the twinkling of those very lights, the assembling of bright faces, the
+meeting of old friends, were always dear to him, and this sacrifice was
+not one of the least which he made during the tremendous struggle of his
+waning years.
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH]
+
+With no other name could we so fitly close the story of our ancient
+capital, a story fitfully told with many breaks and omissions, yet
+offering some thread of connection to link together the different eras
+of a picturesque and characteristic national life. Had space and
+knowledge permitted, there is, in the records of Scottish law alone,
+much that is interesting, along with a still larger contribution of wit
+and humour and individual character, to the elucidation of the period
+which passed between the end of the history of Edinburgh under her
+native kings and the beginning of her brilliant record under the modern
+reign of literature and poetry. This book, however, does not pretend to
+set forth the Edinburgh of the Kirk or the Parliament House, each of
+which has an existing record of its own. Seated on the rocks which are
+more old than any history, though those precipices are now veiled with
+verdure and softness, and the iron way of triumphant modern science runs
+at their feet; with her crown of sacred architecture hanging over her
+among the mists, and the little primeval shrine mounted upon her highest
+ridge; with her palace, all too small for the requirements of an
+enlarged and splendid royalty, and the great crouched and dormant
+sentinel of nature watching over her through all the centuries; with her
+partner, sober and ample, like a comely matron, attended by all the
+modern arts and comforts, seated at the old mother's feet,--Edinburgh
+can never be less than royal, one of the crowned and queenly cities of
+the world. It does not need for this distinction that there should be
+millions of inhabitants within her walls, or all the great threads of
+industry and wealth gathered in her hands. The pathos of much that is
+past and over for ever, the awe of many tragedies, a recollection almost
+more true than any reality of the present, of ages and glories gone--add
+a charm which the wealthiest and greatest interests of to-day cannot
+give, to the city, always living, always stirring, where she stands amid
+traditionary smoke and mist, the grey metropolis of the North, the
+Edinburgh of a thousand fond associations,
+
+    Our Own Romantic Town.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+THE END
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Printed by R. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh_
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Royal Edinburgh, by Margaret Oliphant
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