THE PROCESSION.
And many a band of ardent youths were seen,
Some into rapture fired by glory's charms,
Or hurl'd the thundering car along the green,
Or march'd embattled on in glittering arms.
_Beattie._
The Regent Arran, with his gay train--their armour, jewels, and lace
all flashing in the sunshine--came at a gallop through the
magnificent glades of the old Torwood, and entered Stirling by its
lower gate, at the moment that the cannon from the lofty castle,
under the orders of Hans Cochrane, the Queen's master-gunner, began
to boom from the ramparts; and the bells of the Dominicans, in the
Friar Wynd, and of the Franciscans, among whom King James IV. was
wont to pass each Good Friday on his bare knees, "in sackcloth shirt
and iron belt," rang merrily; and the vast silver-toned bell which
King David hung in the great tower of Cambus Kenneth, on the green
links of Forth, replied in the distance.
The steep and narrow High Street of Stirling was so densely crowded
by the burgesses and population of the adjacent villages, by country
farmers and bonnet-lairds on horseback, each with his gudewife cosily
trussed on a pillow behind him--and also by the trains of the Queen
and Queen-mother, that it was with difficulty Arran could approach,
with his plumed hat in hand (he had given his helmet to young
Dalserfe), to pay his proper respects and take his place on the right
hand of Mary of Lorraine, while his retinue mingled with hers.
The day was beautiful, clear, and serene; and the charming purity of
the air, with the lofty situation of Stirling, rising on its ridge of
rock from a vast extent of fertile plain, curving hills, blue river,
and green forest scenery, that spread for miles around it, till
mellowed faint and far away in sunny mist and distance, might have
made one think that it was on some such August day that King William
the Lion, in his last sickness, when the prayers of the Church, and
when the subtle medicines drained from his fairy goblet, failed to
save him, thought of Stirling, and begged his courtiers to bear him
there, that he might inhale its delightful atmosphere, and live yet a
little longer.
Amid the ceaseless hum of conversation, the air rang with cries,
laughter, the confused clamour, caused by the trampling of thousands
of feet and iron hoofs in the narrow space, where this dense and
dusty throng, like the waves of a human sea, seemed to be broken
against the abrupt abutments of the houses, wynds, and alleys; the
towers of turnpike stairs and out-shots, or at times by the lowered
lance, the levelled arquebuse, or clenched hand of some exasperated
man-at-arms who became incommoded by the pressure upon his mailed
person.
Every window was full of faces, and every out-shot, fore-stair, and
doorhead, every ledge, moulding, and even the tops of some of the
houses, bore a freight of bare-headed and bare-legged urchins, who,
excited by the cannon, the bells, the crowd, the music, and the
general hubbub, waved their caps or bonnets, and lent their shrill
voices to swell the great chorus of sounds by which the Queen-mother,
her little daughter, and the Regent Arran, were welcomed into the
loyal and ancient burgh of Stirling, whose noble castle was to our
kings of old what Windsor was to the house of England, and Aranjuez
to the line of Castile, a summer palace, and--if such could be found
in stormy Scotland--a place for recreation and repose.
The Earl of Bothwell, outwardly still a loyal noble, with a troop of
spearmen, all cuirassed, helmeted, and on horseback, led the van;
then came the great officers of state, mounted on caparisoned horses,
each with his train of grooms and lackeys, many wearing their robes
or official insignia; thus Bothwell wore at his neck a silver
whistle, and on his banner an anchor, in virtue of his office as Lord
High Admiral of Scotland.
First came the Lord Chancellor, John Hamilton, archbishop of St.
Andrew's, a mild and gentle statesman, of great presence and dignity,
the _last_ Catholic primate of Scotland. He was barbarously murdered
in 1571, at the bridge of Stirling, and in his last moments was
insulted by his enemies compelling him to wear his pontifical robes.
Then came the Lord High Treasurer, John Hamilton, abbot of Paisley,
brother of the Regent; and the Comptroller of Scotland, William
Commendator, of Culross, each in the robes of his order. Then
followed the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, bearing it in a velvet
purse embroidered with the royal arms. This statesman was William
Lord Ruthven, of the fated line of Gowrie, and father of the stern
Ruthven, who looked so pale and ghastly through his barred helmet on
that night twenty years after, when David Rizzio was slain in the
north tower of Holyrood.
The Secretary of State, David Panater, bishop of Ross, keen-eyed and
shaggy-browed, bent his stern glance over the multitude. This was a
learned prelate, poet, and statesman, who was once prior of St.
Mary's beautiful isle, and for seven years was Scottish ambassador in
France. Then came the laird of Colinton, who was Lord Clerk
Register, but who handled his two-handed sword better than his pen,
riding beside the bishop of Orkney, who was lord president of the
Court of Session, and a dabbler in the literature of the day--a
scanty commodity withal.
The Great Chamberlain of Scotland came next. He was Malcolm Lord
Fleming of Cumbernauld, a brave and proud peer, who possessed a vast
estate, having no less than twelve royal charters of lands and
baronies in various counties. He was without armour, but wore a
doublet of shining cloth of gold, with a chain and medal, also of
gold, at his neck. Thirty gentlemen in armour, and as many servants
in livery coats, armed with swords and petronels, and all bearing the
name, arms, and colours of Fleming, rode behind him. Then, amid many
other gentlemen, rode Claude Hamilton, of Preston, with his train of
rough fellows, armed with helmet, jack, and spear, headed by his
drunken butler, Symon Brodie, who had encased his portly person in a
suit of remarkably rusty old iron, furnished with a capacious casque
of the fifteenth contury, from the hollow depths of which he swore at
the crowd as confidently as if he had been an arquebusier of the
royal guard.
Preceded by many barons of parliament, wearing their crimson-velvet
caps, which were adorned by golden circles, studded with six
equidistant pearls, and by many bishops, abbots, and priors, in
many-coloured robes, came M. d'Oysell, the ambassador of France, and
Monsignore Grimani, patriarch of Venice and legate of Pope Paul III.
A Venetian, feeble, nervous, sallow-visaged, and black-eyed, he had
come to urge upon the Scottish hierarchy "the necessity for crushing
the growing heresy, lest the church of God should fall." As if he
had been a cardinal priest, two silver pillars were borne before him
by two Dominican friars, between whom rode a Scottish knight of
Rhodes or Malta, from the preceptory of Torphichen, armed on all
points, wearing the black mantle of his order, and bearing aloft the
Roman banner, on which were gilded the triple crown of the sovereign
pontiff and the symbolical keys of heaven.
The clamour of the populace was hushed as this solemn personage
approached; but it was no spirit of reverence that repressed them;
for, sullen and contemptuous, the Reformers as yet muttered only
under their beards, and scowled beneath their bonnets at the envoy of
"the pagan fu' o' pride;" for the time was one of change--the old
faith all but dead, and the new was little respected and less
understood.
We have said that the train of the Regent Arran joined that of the
Queen-mother. He felt something of pique and envy at its splendour,
yet he courteously rode bareheaded by her side. In taking his place
there, Fawside fell back, and, being pressed by the density of the
crowd against the corner of a house, was compelled to remain there
inactive on horseback while this glittering procession, amid which so
many of his personal enemies--such as Preston, Cassilis, Glencairn,
and Ealmaurs--bore a part, passed on. The sight of these in
succession filled his heart with a longing for retributive justice
upon them--a longing so deep and high, that the emotion swelled his
breast till the clasps of his cuirass were strained to starting; yet,
remembering that he was there alone--but one among many, common
prudence compelled him to remain quiescent for a time.
Led by Champfleurie came the Queen's band of armed pensioners or
arquebusiers, wearing the arms and livery of Scotland and Lorraine.
These soldiers were first embodied by the widow of James V., and
existed as a portion of the Stirling garrison, wearing the Quaint
costume of her time until 1803, when they were incorporated with one
of the garrison battalions formed by George III. On this day they
were preceded by the Queen's Swiss drummers, her trumpeters, violers,
and tabourners, all clad in yellow Bruges satin, slashed and trimmed
with red, and led by M. Antoine, in whom Florence immediately
recognized the pretended dumb valet of his mysterious habitation.
Then came the widowed queen herself, looking rather pale, but
beautiful as ever. She was seated in a chariot, then deemed a
wonderful piece of mechanism. It was twelve feet long by six wide,
and rumbled along on four elaborately-carved wheels. It was drawn by
six switch-tailed Flemish mares, each led by a lackey in scarlet and
yellow, and was lined and hung with "doole-claith, or French black,"
as old Sir James Kirkaldy of Grange, her treasurer, styles it.
Before it, an esquire bore her husband's royal banner, for the
painting of which, in gold and fine colours, Andro Watson, limner to
King James V., received the sum of four pounds.
By her side was a little girl, whose sweet and childlike face was
encircled by a triangular hood of purple velvet edged with pearls.
This girl, with the dimpled cheeks and merry eyes, which dilated and
glittered with alternate delight, surprise, and alarm at the bustle
around her, was the queen of all the land, the only child of James
V.; and old men who had fought at Solway, at Flodden, and at
Ancrumford--aged soldiers, who had carried their white heads erect in
Scotland's bloodiest battles,--veiled them now, and prayed aloud that
God might bless her.
The conventional smile upon the beautiful face of Mary of Lorraine
was like the cold brightness of a winter sun, for many upon whom her
smiles were falling she loved little and suspected much; and thus she
smiled on Arran when he bowed to his horse's mane to kiss her gloved
hand. But the childlike Queen Mary laughed aloud, and held out both,
her pretty hands to the bearded earl, with a smile so sweet and
natural, that even the cold and politic noble was moved, for it was
the simple greeting of youth to a familiar face; while with her
mother he was on the terms of two well-bred people who are shrewdly
playing a selfish game and quite understand each other. Yet, as he
gazed on the clear bright limpid eyes and smiling face of the
beautiful child, he more than half repented the departure from that
treaty by which she was to have become the bride of his son, the Lord
Hamilton, who was then a soldier in France--a treaty which would have
placed the house of Arran on the Scottish throne. Mary's object was
to obtain the regency, and with it the permanent custody of her
daughter till she came of age; while Arran, as next heir to the
throne, was resolved to hold both in his own hands, at all hazards
and at all perils.
In the Queen's chariot were four ladies, who, like herself, wore the
black velvet dool-cloak, the large hood of which, in the fashion of
the time, was pulled so far over the face as to impart to the wearer
the aspect of a mourner at a funeral.
While all his pulses quickened with eagerness and anxiety, Florence
strove to pierce the crowd that stood between him and this great
mis-shapen and slowly-moving vehicle, which contained the two queens
and their ladies; but under their capacious hoods he failed to
discover the face of her he sought.
Suddenly one raised her gloved hand and lightly threw back the front
of her hood. The action gave Florence a start like an electric shock.
"'Tis she!" he exclaimed, on recognizing the soft features, the dark
eyebrows and hair of his unknown. "And now I cannot fail to discover
her, as many here must know the names and rank of the ladies of the
tabourette."
He turned to a person who, like himself, was on horseback, but who,
being completely wedged in by the crowd, sat in his saddle gazing
passively at the pageant, which ascended the steep street towards the
castle of Stirling. He was well armed, and wore the livery and
badges of a trooper of the house of Glencairn, yet seemed, withal, to
be a gentleman. In short, this person, who was gazing, apparently,
with the vacant curiosity of a mere spectator, was one of the most
enterprising actors in our drama--Master Edward Shelly, the
Englishman. To him, all this affair was but one other feature in the
perilous political game he had been ordered to play, and which, in
his soul, he despised.
He knew that the beautiful, noble, and wealthy wife proposed for him
by the Scottish malcontents, was among the attendants of the two
queens; and though, as a soldier, a Boulogner, tolerably indifferent
on the subject of matrimony in general, and, as an Englishman of
1547, especially indifferent on the matter of a Scottish wife, he
certainly had some curiosity again to see this lady, whom, as yet, he
had never addressed, but whom he had repeatedly passed in the
streets, or seen at mass, and once at a hawking-party on Wardie Muir,
when in attendance on Mary of Lorraine, like whom, she was a graceful
and expert horse-woman.
The eyes of these two men were lighted by smiles, and the colour in
their cheeks heightened as they saw the fair young face, so suddenly
revealed from the sombre shadow of the doole-cloak; but an
examination of their smiles will prove that they resulted from
different emotions.
Florence expressed in his moistened eyes all his soul felt of honest
joy and love on beholding one so dear to his heart--a heart as yet
unhackneyed in the ways of the world; and the warm flush came and
went on his smooth boyish cheek, while every pulse beat rapidly.
The smile that spread slowly over the handsome and sunburned face of
Edward Shelly, expressed only satisfaction, with (it might be) a dash
of triumph, that she was all we have described her to be. Even in
that age he was past the years of romantic or sudden attachments.
Shelly was verging on forty; and his latter twenty years had been
spent in Calais and other English garrisons in France: thus, in some
respects, his morality, especially as regarded women, fitted him as
loosely as his leather glove.
"So ho, my future wife!" he muttered, twisting his thick moustache up
to his eyes, in the clear blue of which drollery was perhaps the
prevailing expression.
"My love, unknown love!" whispered Florence in the depth of his
heart, and then a sadness came over all his features and his soul, he
knew not why.
These two persons, the man and the youth, the careless and the
impassioned, the triumphant and the sad, conscious that the same face
attracted them, now turned towards each other, and spoke.
"Worthy sir, can you favour me with the name of that lady who has
just thrown back her hood?" asked Florence, in a voice that was
almost tremulous, as if he feared the secret of his heart would be
exposed.
"And who is now speaking to the little queen?"
"Yes."
"'Tis Madeline Home, the Countess of Yarrow."
"_Yarrow!_" reiterated Florence in a breathless voice.
"Yes, the niece, and some say, heiress, of Claude Hamilton of
Preston, who hath just passed upward with a train of horse, and his
butler, a drunken lout, like a huge lobster at their head."
Had a cannon exploded at his ear, Florence could not have been more
astounded than by this revelation of a relationship so fatal to the
romance and success of his love.
"She is beautiful, my friend," continued the Englishman, looking at
her, with his head on one side, with the air of a connoisseur
admiring a horse, a yacht, or a picture; "what think you of her?"
"That one so fair, so noble, must have many, perhaps too many
lovers," sighed the young man in a voice of bitterness, as he cast
down his eyes.
His manner was so strange, that Shelly now turned sharply towards
him, and from the expression of his face began to gather, or to fear,
that there were in Stirling more lovers already than were quite
necessary; but the Queen's great chariot passed on; the crowd
collapsed in its rear; the two horsemen were roughly separated, and
Florence, bewildered by what he had just heard, mechanically followed
the Regent's train towards the Castle of Stirling. He had but one
thought:--
"Countess of Yarrow; she is the Countess of Yarrow, whose father's
sword was foremost on the day my father fell!"
This, then, was the reason why she and the Queen, with a tact and
secrecy which thus defeated the end in view, had so studiously
concealed her name from him. But what availed their tact and secrecy
now?
To love the niece, the ward and successor, the nearest and only
kinswoman of Claude Hamilton, the man whom, since infancy, he had
been taught to abhor,--the slayer of his father, the slayer of his
brave brother Willie; he whom he had registered a thousand impious
vows to destroy whenever and wherever they met,--at church or in
market, in field or on highway; he whose name in Fawside Tower had
been a household word for all that was vile and hateful; he whose
friendship he had so totally scorned, and on whose white hairs he had
heaped obloquy and hurled defiance!
Alas! it produced a terrible chaos of thought and revulsion of
feeling. Here Father John of Tranent would recognize the finger of
Heaven, pointing a way to soothe the angry passions of men, and to a
lasting peace between the rival races; but then Dame Alison, that
stern daughter of the gloomy house of Colzean, would only recognize a
snare of the Evil One, who was seeking to deprive her of her "pound
of flesh,"--of her just and lawful meed of vengeance!
Full of these distressing reflections, Florence followed the train of
the Queen into the Castle of Stirling, and, dismounting within the
arched gate, which is defended by round towers, that are still of
great strength, and were then surmounted by steeple-like roofs of
slate, he joined the Regent's suite, who were now all on foot. Hence
the loud and incessant jingling of spurs of gold, of silver, and of
Ripon steel, upon the pavement of the yard, the staircases, and the
great hall, where the conference was to be held, proved how great was
the number of men of distinction who followed Mary of Lorraine and
the Regent to council.
As the former alighted from her chariot, there occurred (according to
the narrative of the vicar of Tranent) one of those incidents, which
were frequent in those simple times, when royalty was easier of
access than now.
An aged woman, wearing a curchie and tartan cloak, threw herself on
her knees, and lifting up her hands, exclaimed,--
"Heaven save your grace!"
"What seek you?" asked the Queen, pausing.
"Charity;--my gudeman died on Flodden Hill wi' his four sons and his
three brethren."
"My poor woman," said Mary of Lorraine, detaching a purse from her
girdle, and placing it in the hand of the mendicant, "then we have
each lost a husband for Scotland."
The Countess of Yarrow led the little Queen Mary by the left hand.
The Regent Arran gave his right hand, ungloved, to her mother; their
suites formed in procession; and, while the trumpets sounded shrill
and high, they ascended to the hall, between ranks of pikemen and
arquebusiers facing inwards.
The bells continued to toll; still the populace without shouted their
acclaim; still the iron culverins and brass moyennes thundered in
smoke and flame from the massive bastions and arched loopholes,
wreathing the grey turrets with fleecy vapour, and waking the distant
echoes of the Torwood and the Abbey Craig; while, that nothing might
be wanting to swell the combination of noises, two old lions, pets
and favourites of the late King James, to whom they had been sent by
the Emperor Charles V., roused angrily from their lethargic noonday
dose, were pawing, prancing, and bellowing in that small court,
which, from their presence there, is yet named the Lions' Den.