MARY OF LORRAINE.
An Historical Romance.
BY
JAMES GRANT,
AUTHOR OF
"THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "THE AIDE-DE-CAMP," "ARTHUR BLANE,"
ETC. ETC.
"It was English gold and Scots traitors wan
Pinkeycleuch, but no Englishman."
OLD RHYME.
A NEW EDITION
LONDON:
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS,
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL;
NEW YORK: 129, GRAND STREET.
1865.
Contents
I. THE TOWER OF FAWSIDE
II. WESTMAINS
III. THE DEATH FEUD
IV. AN OLD SCOTTISH MATRON
V. THE "GOLDEN ROSE."
VI. CURIOSITY
VII. THE BRAWL
VIII. THE REGENCY OF ARRAN
IX. MISTRUST
X. IN WHICH THE PATIENT PROGRESSES FAVOURABLY
XI. THE OPAL RING
XII. MASTER POSSET
XIII. HOME
XIV. PRESTON TOWER
XV. THE LETTER OF THE VALOIS
XVI. THE COUNTESS
XVII. A SNARE
XVIII. THE DEATH-ERRAND
XIX. CADZOW FOREST
XX. MILLHEUGH
XXI. A BOTHWELL! A BOTHWELL!
XXII. THE SCORNED AMITY
XXIII. CADZOW CASTLE
XXIV. THE JOURNEY
XXV. THE PROCESSION
XXVI. THE CONVENTION OF ESTATES
XXVII. MADELINE HOME
XXVIII. CHAMPFLEURIE
XXIX. THE DOUGLAS ROOM
XXX. THE ROMAN ROCK
XXXI. THE JOURNEY HOME
XXXII. THE CHATELAINE OF THE TORWOOD
XXXIII. THE NEISH'S HEAD
XXXIV. THE NEISH'S HEAD--STORY CONTINUED
XXXV. A RIVAL
XXXVI. THE RETURN
XXXVII. LADY ALISON
XXXVIII. THE CHAPEL OF ST. MARTIN
XXXIX. THE LURE
XL. THE WAKENING
XLI. A BLOODY TRYST
XLII. THE PASSING BELL
XLIII. THE CROSS OF FIRE
XLIV. THE INVASION
XLV. THE MEN-AT-ARMS
XLVI. THE PARLEY
XLVII. THE BLACK SATURDAY
XLVIII. THE BATTLE
XLIX. THE FLIGHT
L. HAWTHORNDEN
LI. JOY
LII. PEDRO DE GAMBOA
LIII. THE GUISE PALACE
LIX. THE DEPARTURE
LV. SEQUEL TO THE INVASION
LVI. THE ISLE OF REST
NOTES I: FAWSIDE OF THAT ILK
NOTES II: THE BATTLE OF PINKEY
PREFACE.
In the following pages I have endeavoured to describe something of
the manners and inner life of the Lowland Scots at the period
referred to, modernizing the language, which, to my English readers,
might otherwise prove unintelligible.
For the political corruption of the Scottish noblesse at that--as at
every other--period of their annals, ample proofs to support me are
furnished by "Rymer's Foedera," and "Tytler's History;" while the
fact that Henry VIII. and his successors too often employed in
Scotland other and very different emissaries than the two I shall
introduce to the reader, has been amply proved by the Calendar of
State Papers on Scotland, lately published by Mr. Thorpe, who shows
us that, in addition to the devastations and burning of his lawless
invading armies of English, Spaniards, and Germans, he was base
enough to hire secret assassins, to remove all who were inimical to
his matrimonial speculations in Scotland.
Incidentally, I have introduced the terrible episode of a Highland
feud which occurred in the time of James V. The story of "The
Neish's Head" is still remembered in Strathearn; and I believe a
different version of it appeared some years ago in a work entitled
"The Scottish Wars."
The mode of torture mentioned in the adventure at Millheugh Tower,
was not uncommon in those barbarous days. My attention was called,
by a friend, to a paper which is preserved at Cullen House,
Bauffshire, and which furnished the idea.
It formed part of a collection of MSS. which belonged to the late
Rev. John Grant, of Elgin, and which, with his library, he bequeathed
to his chief, the Earl of Seafield. It refers to the feud between
the Earls of Huntley and Murray (which ended in the murder of the
latter, at the Castle of Donibristle, in Fifeshire), and is a copy of
a petition from the latter noble, the chief of the Grants, and
Dunbar, sheriff of Moray, praying the government of James VI. to
grant them protection against Huntley and his followers, and craving
redress for injuries which they had sustained at his hands. After
narrating many instances of fire-raising and bloodshed perpetrated by
the Gordons, it demands justice "for the cruel slaughter of John
Mhor, son of Alaster Mhor Grant, a kinsman and follower of John
Grant, of Freuchie, who was hanged and _smeikit in the cruick, till
he died_, by Patrick Gordon, brother to William Gordon, of Monaltrie,
and five or six others, at the instance and command of the said
George, Earl of Huntley."
In this document, which was dated 1591, there is another barbarity
which I care not committing to print; but such were the cruelties and
recklessness of life, about the times immediately before and after
the Reformation, and the regency of Mary of Lorraine.
In the notes I have given a list--the gradual collection of years--of
some of those Scottish gentlemen who fell in defence of their country
on the 10th of September, 1547; and I have little doubt that many of
my readers may discover their ancestors amongst them. I have seen no
similar list so ample, save one that I possess of the brave who died
at Flodden with King James.
26, DANUBE STREET, EDINBURGH,
_May_, 1860.
MARY OF LORRAINE.
CHAPTER I.
THE TOWER OF FAWSIDE.
The castle looketh dark without;
Within the rooms are cold and dreary;
The chill light from the window fades;
The fire it burneth all uncheery.
With meek hands cross'd beside the hearth,
The pale and anxious mother sitteth;
And now she listens to the bat
That, screaming, round the window flitteth.
_Mary Howitt._
Ten miles eastward from the Cross of Edinburgh, and two southward
from the sandy shore of the Firth of Forth, stands an old and ruined
fortalice, named the Castle of Fawside, on a green ridge which rises
by gradual and gentle undulations, to the height of three hundred
feet above the sea.
In summer the foliage of a group of venerable trees generally
conceals much of this ancient mansion, which occupies a lonely and
sequestered spot; but its square crumbling chimneys and round
turrets, cutting the sky line above the leafy coppice, are visible to
all who traverse the roads which lie at the base of the aforesaid
ridge. Covered with wood, and a little to the westward, is the hill
of Carberry, the scene of Queen Mary's memorable surrender (some
twenty years after the period of our present story) to those titled
ruffians who styled themselves the Lords of the Congregation.
The more ancient part of this mansion is of unknown antiquity, and
consists of a narrow and massive tower, entered by a low-browed
archway, built of deep-red sandstone, facing the north. The arch
gives access to a suite of those strong dark vaults which form the
substructure of all old Scottish houses, and from thence, by a steep
wheel stair (which contains a curious and secret hiding-place) we may
ascend to a hall, the groined stone roof of which is still remaining,
though covered on the top, where once the stone bartizan lay, by a
coating of rich grass.
Here, in this grim and narrow tower, in the twelfth century, dwelt
William de Fawsyde, a baron in the first parliament of King David I.;
and his son Edmund, who stood by that brave monarch's side, when, in
the monastery of the Holy Rood, he gifted the lands of Tranent to
Thor, the son of Swan. The more modern parts of this ruin are on the
south, and consist of a huge gable, having two massive turrets, a
steep and narrow circular stair, and several large windows, in which
the enormous harrow-shaped iron gratings are still remaining. Stone
water-spouts, finely carved, project from these turrets; but no date
gives an index to the time of these additions, which are in the
Scoto-French style of the sixteenth century.
Like all such edifices in Scotland, this castle is haunted. It is
the abode of a spectral lady, who wears a dule-weed, or antique suit
of mourning, and appears once yearly, flitting among the ruins, on
the anniversary of that Black Saturday in September when the fatal
field of Pinkey was fought on the green slope and beautiful plain
between the ruins and the sea. Benighted shepherds, gipsies, and
other wanderers, who have ventured to seek shelter under the
crumbling roof of the old hall, have more than once encountered her,
to their terror and dismay; but this restless spirit molests no one.
Pale, sad, and silent, she generally sits in a corner of the great
northern window, with her wheel or spindle, and like she of whom we
read in the "Battle of Regillus," it has been said of her that,--
"As she plied the distaff,
In sweet voice and low,
She sang of great old houses,
And fights fought long ago;
So spun she, so sang she, until the east was grey,
Then pointed to her bleeding heart, and shrieked and fled away."
This quaint ruin, which is still engirt by the remains of a high
barbican wall, entered by one of those strong yetlan iron gates
peculiar to all baronial houses in Scotland, after the portcullis
fell into disuse, was the residence and stronghold of the Fawsides of
that ilk--one of the oldest families in the Lowlands of Scotland.
And now, with the reader's pardon for this somewhat archæological and
architectural preamble, we will proceed at once to open our story.
In the year 1547, when the little Mary Queen of Scots was a chubby
child of five years old, and her turbulent and rebellious kingdom,
then wavering between Catholicism and a new faith, for which there
was no other name but Heresy, was governed by the somewhat feeble
authority of a regent, in the person of James Hamilton, second Earl
of Arran, and next heir to the throne, the tower of Fawside was
inhabited by Dame Alison Kennedy, widow of Sir John Fawside, who had
been slain in a feud by the Hamiltons of Preston; and this stern
woman--for singularly stern she was by nature--was a Kennedy of the
house of Colzean, and cousin of that ferocious Earl of Cassilis, who,
thirty-three years _after_ the epoch of this our history,
deliberately roasted Allan Stewart, commendator of Crossraguel,
before a blazing fire, having first denuded him of his clothes, and
basted him well with grease; and there, sputtering like a huge
turkey, the hapless priest was turned upon a spit, until, with his
scorched and shrivelled hand, he signed a charter, gifting all the
lands of his abbey unto the earl and his heirs.
On the evening of the 1st of August, the Feast of St. Peter ad
Vincula (or the Festival of the Chains), 1547, this lady was seated
at the northern window of her hall, gazing with fixed and anxious
eyes over the tract of country that lay between her castle and the
sea. Untouched and neglected, her ivory-mounted spinning-wheel stood
near her; close by were six other wheels of plainer construction,
evincing that she and the women of her little household had been
spinning since the time of dinner, which, in those stirring days, was
taken at the hour of twelve.
The sun was setting beyond the purple hills of Dunblane, and its
golden gleam lit all the far-extending shores of Lothian and of Fife,
with their gray bluffs, green bays, and sandy beaches, the straggling
burghs of Grail and Kinghorn, and many a fisher-village, all dark and
weather-beaten by the stormy gales that blow from the German Sea. At
anchor in Musselburgh Bay were a few of those small craft which were
then termed topmen, from their peculiar rigging, and which traded
with the low countries in wool, skins, salmon, cloth, silks, and
wine. They had huge square poops, and low prows beaked with iron,
and were always well equipped with falcons, crossbows, and
arquebusses, as a defence against English pirates and Moorish rovers.
Save where a few cottages and a clump of trees dotted the slope here
and there, the country was all open between the tower in which the
lady sat, and the green knoll crowned by St. Michael's Kirk of
Inveresk, and the high antique bridge and the thatched or
stone-slated houses of the "honest town" of Musselburgh. This
venerable municipality was then terminated on the westward by a
beautiful chapel, dedicated to our Lady of Loretto, to whose shrine
the late King James V., with taper in hand and feet and head bare,
had made more than one pilgrimage for the health of his first queen,
Magdalene of Valois, and of his second, Mary of Lorraine; for this
old shrine shared all the fame and sanctity of its elder prototype in
Italy. A great part of the adjacent town was in ruins, just as it
had been left by the English after their invasion under Lord
Hertford, three years before the date of our story.
Below the hill of Inveresk lay a deep and dangerous morass, named the
Howe Mire, then the haunt of the heron, the wild goose, and coot, the
water kelpie, and the will-o'-the-wisp.
Three miles distant from the window at which Dame Alison was seated
rose the high and narrow tower of Preston; and when her wandering
eyes fell on its grim dark mass, they flashed with a hateful glare,
while the gloom of her pale anxious brow grew darker, and its stern
lines more deep; for she hated the race of Hamilton, to whom it
belonged, with all the hate an old Scottish feud inspired.
On the green slope of Fawside Hill the shepherds, grey-plaided and
bonneted, were driving home to fold and penn the flocks which had
browsed there the livelong harvest day; and these were all of that
old Scottish breed which is now completely extinct, but was small,
active, and keen-eyed, with tawny faces, hairy wool, and well-curved
yellow horns.
The quiet evening aspect of the pastoral landscape on which the lady
gazed was not made more lively by the grisly forms of two dead men
hanging upon the arm of an oak tree about a bow-shot from the tower
gate, where the black rooks and ravenous gleds were perching or
wheeling in circles round them. These unfortunates had been "hangit
in their buits," as they phrased it in those days, by order of the
baroness; for there was then a law "that ilk baron might cleanse his
lands of trespassers thrice in the year;" so, on finding two on her
estate of Fawside, she ordered them to be hanged, and, in five
minutes thereafter, old Roger of the Westmains, her bailie, had them
dangling from an arm of the dule tree. Her neighbours averred that
this severity was exercised because the culprits bore the name of
Hamilton; and a greater horror was added to the episode by the
discovery that certain portions of their limbs had been abstracted in
the night,--"Doubtless," said the bailie, "by the witches of Salt
Preston, for the furtherance of their damnable cantrips."
"Half-past eight," muttered Lady Alison, as the last segment of the
ruddy sun sank behind the dark peak of Dumeyat, "and no sign's yet of
horse or man upon the upland road. Woe to you, Westmains, for a
loitering fool! Thou art too old to scourge, and too faithful to
hang, or, by my husband's grave, my mood to-night would give thee to
one or other--the rod or the rope!"
As she spoke her thoughts aloud, in that manner peculiar to those who
think deeply and are much alone, she beat the paved floor
passionately with the high heel of her shoe. There she sat alone in
that quaint old hall, with the shadows of night closing around
her--alone, because she was a woman whom, from her stern nature and
wayward humour, many feared and few loved.
For the hundredth time that day, she anxiously consulted the
horologue. This clock was a curious piece of mechanism, which
occupied a niche in the hall, and was supported on four little brass
pillars, surmounted by a metal dome, on which the hours were struck
by a clumsy iron hammer. It bore the date 1507, and the name
_Leadenhall_, having been found in an English ship, taken by Sir
Robert Barton, who had presented it as an almost priceless gift to
her late husband.
Nine o'clock struck from this sonorous horologue; and then the pale
mother, who, in those perilous and stormy days, waited for an only
and long-absent son, struck her hands despairingly together, and
again seated herself at the grated window of the hall, to watch the
darkening shadows without.
Suddenly a sound struck her ear, and a horseman was seen galloping up
the narrow bridle-path which traversed Fawside Brae and led direct to
the castle wall.
"Nurse--nurse Maud!" said Lady Alison impetuously to an old woman
wearing a curchie and camlet gown, who joined her; "my eyes are full
of tears, and I cannot see--is that horseman our bairn, or only old
Westmains?"
"'Tis Westmains--I would ken his grey mare amang a thousand."
"He rideth fast, nurse, for a man so old in years."
"Yea; but a drunken man and a famished horse come fast home to bower
and stall," responded the Abigail crustily; "the hour is late, and
Preston's men were at Edinburgh market to-day; so, perhaps our bailie
had a shrewd guess the way might be beset between the night and
morning."
"Beset!--and my son----" muttered the pale mother through her
clenched teeth.
"Fear na for him; he has friends----"
"Friends?"
"Yes, madam--his sword and dagger, and stout hands to wield them!
But here comes that drunken carle, the bailie."
As the nurse spoke, the horseman trotted his nag into the paved
barbican of the tower, and dismounted.