Two boys were quarrelling in the privy garden of Stirling Castle on
the Forth. Their shrill little passions rose ludicrously inconsonant
with the majestic gravity of the old historic pile. That had its roots
deep-striking into the mighty rock from which it had sprung; and,
above, every lusty tower, every folded roof, every soaring pinnacle of
the massed congeries of hall and chapel and battlement which comprised
the royal rookery was a living testimony to the fecundity of the
source from which those roots had drunk. Stirling Castle, in common
with other impregnable fortresses of its kind, had grown fat and
strong, like a strapping vine, on the blood which soaked its bases--so
strong that, in this year of stormy grace 1576, it was still the
residence confidently appropriated to a regal minor.
The Castle, massive and somnolent, commanded imperturbably from its
height the beautiful open champaign--with its meandering river like a
silver uncoiled spring--in the midst of which it was set; the angry
small voices vexed its serenity about as much as a buzzing fly might
vex a mammoth. Yet they had this right in common with the great voices
of the past; one of them came from the lungs of a nestling of the
right eagle breed.
He, this nestling--the one destined to be our first Stuart
monarch--was a stubby, commonplace boy of ten. His face was pale and
somewhat meaty, his features were undistinguished in a pawky
good-humoured way, his hair was longish and of a bright auburn, which
was to deepen later on. Now, under the influence of anger, its roots
were flushed red, which gave it an inflamed look, and the young
gentleman’s close-buttoned doublet was sadly disordered, and its lace
torn at the wrists.
And what _was_ the subject of dispute, meet to environments so stern
and so imposing? Why just a tame sparrow, which King Jamie was bent on
appropriating from his young playmate, the Master of Mar, to whom it
had been presented by a diplomatic gardener.
“Gie it me, Geordie,” cried his Majesty, snatching and struggling. “I
wull hae it. Saul of my body, man, dinna ye ken the voice of royalty?”
The other, a ferrety, pink-lidded and ginger-headed boy, lithe but no
match in avoirdupois for his thicker-set antagonist, answered only by
cries and contortions. In the result, the sparrow changed hands, a
crushed and lifeless little body. Geordie broke away, and made,
howling, for a certain room in the Castle.
It was a room well known to him, sombre, rude in its scholastic
appointments, but with the stony acerbities of its walls somewhat
softened by a good lining of books. An old man of seventy, sitting
reading by the bare strong table, raised his head as the intruder
entered.
“Ye’ll be comin’ to tell me of some new act of tyranny, Geordie man?”
he said.
He looked a very shrewd, observant old fellow, in the falling collar
and long black tunic and gown of a grammarian. He had a high, bald
forehead backing into a sparse crop of hair, like a track losing
itself on a hill; a rough, bulbous nose, and rugged cheeks shaven down
to where a thick moustache lost itself in a thicker chin-beard. There
were plentiful bags and crow’s-feet about his eyes, which were like
bright buttons in soft wrinkled leather.
The boy, thus encouraged, made the utmost of his wrong. In the midst
his Majesty entered, a little shamefaced, but defiant. He condescended
to avow his act and to justify it, and he exclaimed on his playfellow
for a “snoovin’ taed,” which was the Scots for sneaking toad.
Papa Buchanan--Majesty’s preceptor--listened very serenely, slipping
in a word here and there where the angry brabble permitted it.
Probably in the end he would have summed up and dismissed the squabble
with a warning, had not Master Jamie, incensed by some hint of
correction, muttered just audibly an invitation to anyone to whom the
peril of the essay might appeal “to come and bell the cat”--a
challenge to which authority, in its own interests, was bound to
respond. It did, in fact, respond promptly, with an amazing vigour for
its years, and with the pliant persuasion of a leathern “tawse” kept
for the purpose; and, when it had done with Majesty, it administered a
similar dose to the other disputant, as the shortest way to restoring
amity through fellow-suffering.
“Haud your rowt, Geordie, like a gude mannie, and rin awa,” said the
breathed pedagogue, as he prepared to sit down and resume his reading.
But it was not to be. Attracted by the uproar, the Countess of
Mar--widowed sister-in-law to Mr. Alexander Erskine, the King’s
present guardian--came hurrying into the room, and gathering, from the
position of the royal hand, the true state of the case, caught the
vociferous victim into her arms, and, rounding on the grammarian,
demanded passionately of him how he dared lay his hands on the Lord’s
anointed.
“The end justifies the means,” responded the pedagogue coolly. “I
marle your ladyship’s confusion of pairts. The Lord shall keep to his
ain and I to mine.”
“Yours, ye presumptuous fool!” cried the angry woman. “But ’tis time
this arrogance ended.”
Master Buchanan, a practised psychologist, decided, in the words of
the proverb, to “jouk and let the jaw gae by.” He withdrew.
The King forgot all about his chastisement, and its indignity, in a
day or two. But not so the Countess. The act had brought to a head in
her a long-swelling process of exasperation. That this audacious
pedagogue should dare to claim a privilege denied to his colleagues,
when a whipping-boy, common to all of them, was provided in the person
of the young Sir Mungo Malagrowther, was simply intolerable. Her
smouldering resentment took fire in a determination to bring this
domineering will to its knees. And, as luck would have it, an
opportunity seemed quickly given her.
One day her son, the young Master of Mar (who had by no means
forgotten, or forgotten to resent, _his_ clouting), came to her,
triumphant, with some notes which he had picked up while spying about
in his absent preceptor’s room. These notes were incriminating, they
positively smelt of treason, and the Countess was fiercely jubilant.
She abode her time.
But Buchanan had in the meanwhile discovered his loss for himself,
and, putting this and that together--Geordie’s new air of defiance,
and his lady mother’s conscious looks--had formed a shrewd guess as to
the state of affairs.
That day he appeared before the King with a sifflication, or petition,
which he desired his young pupil to sign, convinced that the
thoughtless, good-natured boy would never trouble to examine into more
than its purport. And his surmise was justified.
“What is it a’ aboot?” was the indifferent demand.
“Just a bit place at Court, Jamie, my man,” answered the pedagogue,
“for a worthy chield, more fitted than mony to adorn his office.”
The King signed, and the strategist retired with his spoil.
That night the storm burst. A message reached Buchanan, desiring his
immediate attendance in the royal cabinet. He obeyed the summons
without hurry, an odd smile on his dry old lips. He found Erskine, the
Countess, and the young Master of Mar gathered about the King’s chair.
Her ladyship lost no time in opening the proceedings.
“D’ye ken those papers, Maister Buchanan?” she cried, flinging the
notes down on the table under the pedagogue’s nose.
“Vera weel,” he answered--“and who stole them from my room?”
“The Lord shall justify the theft,” she cried, “since it hath revealed
a treason to His anointed.”
Erskine, half bored, half amused, bade the pedagogue take up the notes
and explain them as he could.
“They are for a work I am projecting,” said Buchanan--“_De Jure Regni
apud Scotos_--which is just a compendium of poleetical philosophy.”
“Read,” cried the Countess; and, without hesitation, Buchanan obeyed,
giving the whole of what is here only the gist:
“If a King should do things tending to the dissolution of human
society, for the preservation of which he has been made, he is a
tyrant, ergo an enemy of all mankind. Is there not a just cause of war
against such an enemy, and is it not lawful in such war for the whole
people, or one, or any, to kill that enemy? May not any out of all
mankind lawfully kill a tyrant, as one who has broken the bond made
between himself and mankind?”
“Haud!” cried her ladyship, rabid to seize her point. “What ca’ ye
that, brother, but a direct incitement to treason? Heard ye aye such
sedeetious blether! A bond, the deil hae’t! I tell ye, ye misleared
pedant, there’s na bond save between the Lord and His anointed, and
whosoever thinks otherwise, or designs in ony way to injure the King,
is guilty of treason to the Lord.”
“I submit,” said Buchanan. “It is treason to design in ony way to
injure the King. Oot of your ain mouth, woman, do you stand convict.”
He took a paper from his pocket and threw it on the table.
“Read!” he commanded, in his turn.
Dumbfounded, but somehow impelled, the Countess lifted the paper,
glanced at it, and, uttering a shriek, threw it down before Erskine,
who, also perusing it, gave a sudden snort, and handed it, with an
amused ironic bow, to the King.
It was a document, signed by his own Majesty, vesting his title and
authority for the space of fifteen days in the person of his faithful
servant George Buchanan.
The pedagogue, with a stern aspect, advanced, and, motioning the King
out of his chair--a dictate which the pupil instinctively
obeyed--assumed the vacant place.
“D’ye deny your ain sign-manual, James Stuart?” he asked.
The boy, looking very sheepish, shook his head.
“It shall be a lesson and a warning to ye, Jamie,” said Buchanan. “How
aften have I rebuked, and vainly, your complying good-nature! And now
that easy concession has dethroned ye for the nonce, as ane day it may
for gude and a’. For the future, read your sifflications before
signing them.” He whipped round suddenly on the small Master of Mar.
“As for this young traitor and his mither,” he bawled, “that have
conspired to injure their King----”
The Countess cried out, as Geordie ran screaming into her arms, “No
treason, gudeman, no treason! I allow the truth of your contention. It
is maist lawful, under just provocation, to dethrone and kill a
tyrant.”
“Humph!” said Buchanan, twisting into place again. “I am nane, maybe,
so convinced of that as I was, and we will e’en leave the point for
future discussion. In the meanwhile, as King I decree that the person
of ane George Buchanan, _homo multarum literarum_, is sacred from this
hour and for ever, and that onyone at ony time conspiring to injure
it, shall be adjudged guilty of treason against the King’s Majesty.”
Alexander Erskine lay back in his chair and went into a roar of
laughter.