THE CONVENTION OF ESTATES.
Oh, gentlemen of Scotland! oh, chevaliers of France!
How each and all had grasp'd his sword and seized his angry lance,
If lady-love, or sister dear, or nearer, dearer bride,
Had been like me, your friendless queen, insulted and belied!
_Bon Gaultier._
This meeting took place in that magnificent hall which was built by
James III. for banquets and the meeting of parliament. It is one
hundred and twenty feet long; and to the taste for architecture,
which led him to embellish it in a style of the most florid beauty
(long since destroyed by the utilitarian barbarism of the Board of
Ordnance), with his love for painting, poetry, music, and sculpture,
he owed much of that malignity which embittered his short life, and
ultimately led to his fatal and terrible end in the adjacent field of
Sauchieburn.
Unlike the rough, rude tower which crowns the tremendous precipice
that overhangs the valley, and from the small windows of which our
earlier monarchs, such as the four Malcolms, the three Alexanders,
and the three Roberts, were wont to survey the mighty landscape of
wood and wold, mountain and rock, through which the snaky Forth winds
far away to sea,--with the giant Grampians, deep, dark, and purple,
cut by the hand of God into a hundred splintered peaks, mellowing in
distance amid the skies of gold and azure,--unlike this rude tower,
we say, from the battlements of which men had seen Wallace win his
victory, by the old bridge, and Bruce sweep Edward's host from
Bannockburn,--the buildings of James III. in Stirling Castle are
covered by quaint pilasters, deep niches, elaborate carvings, and
rich mouldings; by columns and brackets, supporting statues of Venus,
Diana, Perseus, Cleopatra, James V., and Omphale.
The hall had a lofty roof of oak, from which hung English, Moorish,
and Portuguese banners, taken in battles at sea by the gallant
Bartons; by Sir Andrew Wood, of Largo, in his famous _Yellow
Frigate_; and by Sir Alexander Mathieson, the "old king of the sea."
Its walls were covered by gaudy frescoes, or pieces of tapestry, the
work of Margaret of Oldenburg and the ladies of her court. At the
upper end stood the throne, under the old purple canopy of James IV.,
until whose reign the royal colour in Scotland had been purple; and
on a table, before this lofty chair, lay the sceptre, the sword of
state, and the crown,--that crown of thorns, and of sorrow, which
more than one valiant king of Scotland has bequeathed to his son on
the battlefield,--the fatal heritage of a fated line of kings.
During a flourish of trumpets, the little queen was placed upon the
throne, where she gazed about her smiling, while a mixture of
childlike wonder, alarm, and drollery glittered in her dark and
dilating eyes. On her left hand sat Mary of Lorraine, a step lower
down; on her right stood the Regent, in his shining doublet, leaning
on his long sword. Behind the former were grouped the Countesses of
Yarrow, Mar, Huntly, Errol, and Orkney, in their long dool-cloaks;
behind the latter was a gay suite of lesser barons and gentlemen of
the surname of Hamilton, gorgeously attired and armed.
With an emotion of irrepressible sadness, Mary of Lorraine gazed
round the beautiful hall, and on the splendid but silent crowd which
filled it; glittering in armour, lace, velvet, silk, jewellery,
plumage, and embroidery. Then her fine eyes drooped on the child by
her side.
To her, Stirling Castle was a place of many sad and stirring
associations. There, her husband, the magnificent and gallant James
V., was born, and crowned in the same year in which his father fell
in battle. It was his favourite residence, and the scene of many of
his merry frolics, as the gudeman of Ballengeich; and there their
only surviving child, Queen Mary, had been crowned in 1543, when only
nine months old,--crowned queen of a people who were to cast her
forth as a waif upon the sea of misfortune; but on whose annals the
story of her sorrows, and of their shame has cast a shadow that may
never fade.
Many conflicting public and private interests were involved in the
result of this convention of estates, or conference at Stirling.
The marriage of the young queen with the heir of France, or with the
boy Edward VI.; and hence the great question of peace or war with
England; involving the lives of thousands, who were doomed never to
see the close of autumn.
Bothwell looked forward with confidence to the rejection of the
French marriage, and to himself obtaining the hand of an English
princess, when he could exult over Mary of Lorraine, who had trifled
with his love, as with the love of many others, as already related,
for reasons of her own, and slighted him in the end.
M. d'Oysell, the ambassador of Henry II., confidently anticipated the
successful issue of that diplomacy which would ultimately make him a
peer of France, knight of St. Michael, and perhaps lord of some
forfeited Huguenot seigneurie.
M. Grimani, the patriarch of Venice, had also in view the maintenance
of the ancient league between France and Scotland; that the
hydra-headed heresy of the latter might be destroyed by fire and
sword, if the power of the preacher failed.
Claude Hamilton, of Preston, already saw in imagination his coming
patent of the earldom of Gladsmuir, as others of his
faction--Cassilis, Glencairn, and Kilmaurs--did their pensions,
places, and profits, if the English marriage was achieved.
Edward Shelly, somewhat to his own surprise, felt a combination of
selfishness and delight, at the prospect of winning a rich and
beautiful wife--a young countess, and perhaps an earldom, as the
reward of _his_ diplomacy; while poor Florence Fawside, ignorant of
all these secret springs of action, which moved the wise and good, or
the titled knaves around him, looked gloomily forward to the sequel
of the feud he had yet to foster, and to the consequent loss, for
ever, of a love that was all the more seductive and alluring because
such a passion was new to his heart, and that she who was its origin,
had thrown much that was romantic around it. Although the poor lad
knew it not, on the decision of these lords and barons, loyal and
true, or rebel and false, depended, perhaps, the sequel of his love;
for the object of it was to be bartered, as Shelly phrased it, "like
a bale of goods," to a foreign emissary, as the price of his services
in assisting to subvert the liberties of Scotland. In his sudden
grief, on discovering the abyss of old hereditary hate that yawned
between himself and Madeline Home, he forgot even the wrongs he had
to avenge upon the Laird of Champfleurie and others, who had plotted
for his destruction. He forgot all but her presence, and that she
was lost to him!
All Lowland Scotland stood on tiptoe, watching with anxiety the
result of a debate that was to give her an English king, or was still
further to cement the league of five hundred years, by placing the
French dauphin on the throne of the Stuarts; we say _Lowland_
Scotland, for the Celts, ever at war among themselves, viewed with
disdain or heeded not whatever was done, beyond their then impassable
boundary, the Grampians.
Arran looked forward to having the regency placed more securely in
his hands, and resolving that, if it passed, as ultimately it did,
into the firmer grasp of Mary of Lorraine, to resort at once to arms,
and hoist the standard of revolt on his castle of Cadzow.
Let us see how all this ended.
The debate was stormy, for many of the speakers were rude and brief
in speech, rough, unlettered, fierce, and turbulent. Frowns were
exchanged, gauntleted hands were clenched, and more than once the
pommels of swords and poniards were ominously touched, among both
parties; for though the proud spirit and patriotism of many were
roused to fiery action by the great event at issue, there were
others, whom we need not name--the _Scottish utilitarians_ of
1547--whose cupidity and selfishness alone were enlisted in the
cause; but vain were their exertions. The letter of Henry of Valois,
the production of which caused many an eye to lour on Florence, who,
absorbed in his own thoughts, was all unconscious that he was
observed at all,--the energy of his ambassador, M. d'Oysell, and the
eloquence of Mary of Lorraine, when united to her own beauty and her
husband's memory, bore all before them! Hence the proposals of the
English Protector, Somerset, were abruptly rejected, with something
very much akin to disdain. In his letters there was assumed a
dictatorial tone, which could not fail to offend the loyal portion of
the Scottish _noblesse_.
"By his holiness Pope Julius II.," said Arran with a kindling eye,
"it was ordained in 1504, that at his court the king of Scotland
should take precedence of the kings of Castile, of Hungary, Poland,
Navarre, of Bohemia, and Denmark; and that he should recognize no
superior but God and His vicegerent on earth: then whence this
grotesque loftiness of tone from a regent of England?"
The patriarch of Venice and the French ambassador beheld this growing
indignation with evident satisfaction; while glances of ill-concealed
anger and dismay were exchanged by those whose names were affixed to
the indenture which, at that moment, Shelly carried in the secret
pocket of his jazarine-jacket. Cassilis, who had little patience and
less politeness, openly insulted the legate by terming Pope Julius "a
shaveling mass-monger and pagan priest."
"My lord, my lord!" exclaimed the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, growing
pale with anger; "beware lest he excommunicate thee with bell, book,
and candle!"
"I care not," replied the sullen earl, frowning at the primate under
the aventayle of his helmet; "for I am ready to maintain, wi' the
auld Lollards o' Kyle, that the pope is a pagan, who exalteth himself
against God, and above Him; that he can neither remit sins nor the
pains of purgatory by mumbling Latin, or scribbling on a sheep-hide;
that the blessing of a bishop is worth less than a brass bodle, and
that Paul III. is the head o' the crumbling kirk of Antichrist!"
The sallow Venetian trembled with horror and anger at these words,
and raised his thin white tremulous hands to heaven.
"Sancta Maria!" he exclaimed; "silence, thou false peer, lest I have
thee burned quick!"
Cassilis laughed aloud, till every joint in his armour rattled.
"I am Gilbert Kennedy," said he, "and can betake me to my auld house
in the wilds o' Carrick; so send your faggots there; and, hark ye,
sir legate, I, who have hanged a monk, may feed the crows with a
patriarch."
Cassilis was a stern and ferocious lord, so none dared to reply. He
was a tyrant over his vassals, who found his avarice insatiable; yet
it was always exerted in form of feudal law. Thus, on the marriage
of each of his daughters (he had two--Jean, married to the Earl of
Orkney, and Catherine, to the Laird of Banburrow), or the knighting
of his sons, the master, and Sir Thomas of Colzean; or for the
maintenance of feuds with his neighbours, he had mulcted them heavily
by the ordinance which made it "lesome to the lord to seek sic help
frae his men conforme to their faculties and the quantitie of their
lands;" in short, to tax them, and seize the best of the goods in
stable, byre, roost, and cheese-room, whenever the lord pleased, or
found an urgent necessity for so doing.
The arguments and energy of this avaricious peer, of Glencairn,
Kilmaurs, and others, who were in secret the agents or adherents of
Somerset, if they failed to convince the mass who heard them, of the
advantages that might accrue from a nuptial and political union with
England, succeeded at last in filling with undefined alarm the bosom
of Mary of Lorraine, whose finely nervous and aristocratic, yet soft
temperament, was as ill calculated to withstand the turbulence,
cupidity, and savagery of these atrocious peers, as in after-times
her daughter to withstand their sons. She knew the falsehood of
those with whom she had to contend, and who were now collected in a
gloomy group near the council-table. Her soft cheek, from having the
pink tinge of a sea-shell, crimsoned; her beautiful eyes filled with
light, and, with a hand white as marble, grasping an arm of her
innocent daughter's throne, she rose to speak, and then all were
hushed to silence, and every eye was turned towards her.
"My lords and gentlemen," said she, gathering courage from the
emergency of the moment and the presence of M. d'Oysell and the
patriarch of Venice, "the holy religion which was planted in this
soil a thousand years ago, and which flourished so broadly and so
well, yielding good fruit, has been all but uprooted! A cardinal
priest, a prince of the Church, has been barbarously murdered in his
own archiepiscopal palace, and, gashed by wounds, his naked corpse
has been suspended from its ramparts in the light of noon! Already,
by this tremendous act, the altar of God has been defiled and the
temple shaken to its foundation. Through the dim vista of events to
come, I look forward with fear and sorrow to the future reign of my
little daughter, the child of the good King James V.--that King James
whom Pope Julius made defender of the faith, and girt with a sword
sharpened by his holy hand on the altar-stone of St. Peter, against
all heretics, especially those of England,--that James V., whose
young and noble heart was broken by the rebel spirit of his peers, by
their treason to Scotland in the cabinet, and their cowardice at the
battle of Solway. Nay, never frown on me, or rattle your swords, my
lords of Cassilis and Glencairn," she added, waving her small white
hand, on which the jewels flashed like the scorn that lighted up her
eyes; "I am a woman, and claim a woman's privilege to speak; and thus
I repeat again, that I anticipate the future of my daughter, a Stuart
and a Guise, among you with grief and horror! The Earls of Bothwell
and Glencairn have spoken well and plausibly; but apart from all, the
Duke of Somerset's conditions, which are unworthy the Scottish crown
and degrading to the Scottish people, what happiness could be my
daughter's in wedding the son of the apostate Henry,--he who was the
horror of all modest women,--he who espoused Anne Boleyn, knowing her
to be his own daughter, and yet laid her head on the block; who
violated his promises to Anne of Cleves, and sent her fair successor
also to the block; who murdered the aged Countess of Salisbury, and
sent more than seventy thousand of his subjects to await his
appearance before the judgment-seat of God; he who, by his lusts, and
by his treason to the Holy See, made all England turn, in one day,
heretic! Yet it is to the son of this man you would wed her in
helpless infancy; and to the custody of his creature Somerset you
would yield her, the daughter of Scotland and of France!"
A deep silence succeeded this outburst. At last Arran spoke.
"Fear not, madam," said he; "being the next kinsman to the crown, I
am, by the ancient custom of our mother country, the tutor or
custodian of its infant sovereign, and, with God's will, I shall
remain so!"
"None dare dispute this right, Lord Earl," said Mary.
"None, save the king of England or his representative," urged
Glencairn; "and he does so by the right of a treaty for the marriage
of Edward with the daughter of King James, a treaty----"
"Which we do not recognize," interrupted Arran.
"What cared Henry of England for treaties?" exclaimed Arran's
brother, the Archbishop of St. Andrew's,--"he who trampled on all
laws, human and divine?"
"He hath gone to the place of his reward, sir priest," replied the
rude Glencairn; "and now we have to deal, not with a dead king, but
with the Duke of Somerset."
"A heretic as stout," continued the incensed primate, "though perhaps
less lecherous and lustful."
"Lustful enough of our Scottish blood," said the gallant Earl of
Huntly, with a smile, "if we may judge of his campaign among us here
in '44, when we knew him as Edward Earl of Hertford."
"The result of all this chattering will be that we shall have war,"
said Glencairn. "The English will come----"
"With their Spanish and German auxiliaries----"
"Well, let them come," retorted Arran. "Our hills are steep, our
streams are deep and swift, our hearts, I hope, as stout, and the
swords bequeathed to us by our sires from a thousand bloody fields,
are sharp and sure as ever! Let Somerset come, with his English
billmen, his German pikes, and Spanish arquebuses: when true to
herself, Scotland is unconquerable!"
"Thou art right, my lord," added the patriarch of Venice; "her people
are unconquerable. But among her nobles are men ever ready to bend
their necks to any chain of gold, or sell their faith and honour to
the highest bidder!"
Perceiving that their design of having the English marriage
accomplished was on the eve of being hopelessly frustrated,--that the
proposals of the Valois were all but formally accepted by the regent
and Mary of Lorraine, those who were in secret league with England
became desperate, and Kilmaurs at last conceived the artful idea of
embroiling Arran with the Queen-mother on a point concerning which he
knew them to be remarkably sensitive. The smile of this crafty young
lord was a mere twitch of the mouth, an unpleasant grimace at best;
yet such a smile his visage wore when, during a pause in this
strangely-conducted controversy, he said to Arran, in a low and stern
voice,--
"Beware, my lord regent, lest this French marriage be not a plot of
the Guises merely to involve us in a war with England."
"For that I care little. But to what end would it be?"
"An alteration in the regency."
Arran changed colour, and eyeing the young lord askance, asked,
through his clenched teeth,
"That I may be succeeded by whom?"
"The Queen-mother, very probably."
"'Tis false, my Lord Kilmaurs!" exclaimed Mary of Lorraine,
haughtily, "I say so--I, Mary, Queen of Scotland!"
"Under favour, madam," said Arran, reddening with annoyance, "you are
neither Queen of Scotland nor the Scots, but simply queen-mother of
the sovereign. There is a difference, you will pardon me. Henry of
Valois is king of France; Edward VI. is king of England; but our
monarchs have ever been kings of the Scots; for the SOIL belongs to
the people."
"That whilk they soak so readily wi their gude red bluid, may weel be
theirs," said the aged Earl of Mar.
"Bravade as ye may," urged Kilmaurs, "'tis all a plot of the Guises;
and such I will maintain it to be."
"Now, grant me patience to scorn this base calumny!" said Mary of
Lorraine, growing alternately red and pale with anger; for though she
coveted this post in her heart, she knew too well the danger of
making an enemy of Arran. "Good, my lords; I have made no struggle
for the regency, nor have ever ventured to compete with my cousin
Arran."
"Madam," said Arran coldly, "what right could you have pled?"
"Right enough," replied the Queen, veiling her anger by a smile; "nor
am I quite without precedents either."
"Indeed!" said Arran, while Kilmaurs twitched the velvet mantle of
Cassilis, and smiled to see the train on fire; "will you please to
state this right?"
"A mother's right to rear her tender offspring; and Heaven knows that
thought engrossed my whole heart, after the death of my two sons at
Bothesay, and of my late husband and beloved king."
"God sain him! God rest him in his grave at Holyrood!" muttered the
loyal old Earl of Mar, raising his bonnet; "he was the father of the
poor."
"Lord earl, I thank you," said Mary, whose eyes filled with tears,
and whose daughter, on perceiving this emotion, gently stole her
little hand within hers; "after his death, I might have urged the
parliament to remember that Mary of Gueldres, the widow of James II.,
and Margaret Tudor, the widow of James IV., were both regents of
Scotland; then why not I, Mary of Guise and Lorraine, widow of their
descendant, James V.? Yet, I asked you not for this. I love my
kinsman Arran; but I better love my little daughter--the child your
monarch left me. Is it not so, my good Lord Regent?"
"It is, madam; you speak most fairly and truly," replied Arran, whose
smile belied the admission.
"I call God and His blessed Mother to witness, if I had then a
thought in the world, but to rear my babe, as I was reared by my
father, René of Lorraine, a good Catholic, and to guard her from the
intrigues of those who would destroy the liberties of her country and
her hope of salvation, by giving her in marriage to the heretic son
of a heretic king."
"And while united to resist this object," said Arran, courteously
kissing her white hand, "we are invincible; so long live the Dauphin
of France, who shall one day be Francis I., king of the Scots."
A loud burst of applause shook the hall, while the malcontent lords
exchanged glances of fury.
"Beware, my Lord of Arran, beware," said Glencairn; "last year, '46,
Francis I. of France was glad to purchase a peace with England at the
expense of eight hundred thousand crowns."
"We will purchase it at the expense of a few superfluous lives,"
retorted Arran, with a glance of stern significance, which made the
sombre earl yet more grim and sullen; and now Bothwell began to fear
that his chance of obtaining an English princess to grace his castle
of Hermitage, was about as slender as Master Edward Shelly's hope of
obtaining a Scottish countess, for better or worse.
The general result of this conference, or convention of the lords
spiritual and temporal, was a unanimity of sentiment on the part of
the regent and of the queen-mother to promote internal peace and
public order. The former, for the common weal, formally renounced
the contract of marriage between the young queen and his son the Lord
Hamilton, in favour of the Dauphin of France, and annulled all the
bonds given by various powerful peers, who pledged themselves to see
that alliance effected.
The Earl of Angus and the Lord Maxwell, stung with shame, publicly
and solemnly repudiated all promises of loyalty or fealty to England;
and the peer last named was made warden of the western marches.
Bothwell, Cassilis, and Glencairn, with others of their party, were
left in a state of doubt, irresolution, and fear; for there was now
at hand a crisis which would force them to arms, either for Scotland
or against her.
The convention dissolved, and from that hour Scotland and England
prepared for open war!
During the debate the eyes of Florence and of the countess met
repeatedly, and each time she trembled, coloured deeply, and looked
aside. Then, after a time, she durst not turn towards him. She knew
that now he must have discovered her name, and who she was; and her
heart seemed to shrink and wither up within her, in dread lest his
love might turn to indifference, if not to hatred; for she knew the
depth of abhorrence excited by the memory of the death-feud,
inculcated by Lady Alison, in the two sons of Sir John Fawside.
Meanwhile, ignorant of what was passing in the minds of his niece and
his soi-disant enemy, the old Laird of Preston had more than once
surveyed the latter with somewhat of melancholy interest; for he knew
the wild, stern spirit which this youth inherited from his
father--and the ideas he had imbibed with the milk and blood of his
mother; but poor Florence, overwhelmed by varied emotions, and by the
secret he had so recently learned, avoided altogether the keen grey
eye of Hamilton.
The queen-mother made a low reverence to the lords of convention, and
while the sharp trumpets flourished bravely, withdrew with her
daughter and ladies of honour. The eye of Florence followed
sorrowfully the sombre group in their doole-cloaks (for Mary of
Lorraine in public still wore the garb of mourning), and in
imagination he seemed to be bidding adieu for ever to his love, and
the hope it had kindled within him.
In presence of this beautiful girl the young man seemed to be alike
without words or thoughts that had any coherence.
So absorbing was the emotion, that he was quite unconscious of the
insolent and defiant glances levelled at him by Glencairn, by his son
Kilmaurs, and others, as they brushed past and left the hall, to
scheme further plots for vengeance or for safety; for these lords and
their followers were only restrained by a knowledge of the locality,
of its sanctity, and of the high powers of the Lord High Constable,
from assaulting and slaying him, sword in hand, within the precincts
of this royal castle and palace; for princely Stirling, in Scotland's
earlier days, was both.
Within an hour after the convention broke up two horsemen were seen
passing eastward, through the Torwood, at full speed, to lessen as
much as possible the eighty Scottish miles or so that lay between
them and the frontiers of England.
They were the valiant captain of the Boulogners and Master Patten,
the emissaries of the Duke of Somerset, on the high-road for Berwick
and London, to announce that England had no argument left her now but
a sharp and dangerous one--the sword!
The loyal and true foresaw the evils to come with sincere sorrow;
and, under their silvery beards, old men muttered that ancient
prophecy so fatally and so frequently applicable to Scotland:--
_Woe unto the land whose king is a child!_