JANE SETON:
OR,
THE KING'S ADVOCATE.
A Scottish Historical Romance.
BY JAMES GRANT,
AUTHOR OF
"THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "THE AIDE-DE-CAMP," ETC. ETC.
_NEW EDITION._
LONDON:
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS,
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL.
NEW YORK: 129, GRAND STREET.
1865.
LONDON:
SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS,
CHANDOS-STREET.
PREFACE.
The genius of a monarch is said to stamp a character upon his time;
but this can scarcely be said to have been the good fortune of the
sovereign in whose reign I have laid the following romance.
Like all the princes of his house, James V. was far in advance of the
age in which he lived; for to all his forefathers' valour and
passionate love of their native Scotland (for whose soil so many of
them had shed their blood in battle), to their elegant taste in all
the arts, their patronage of science and commerce, he united a love
for romantic adventure, which, like James IV., made him the idol of
the people. But the Scottish nobles, though affording us many bright
and glorious examples of high valour and pure patriotism, have
generally been a race of men too ready to sacrifice the dearest
interests of their country for lucre or ambition; and were really, in
all ages, a curse alike to our kings and the nation.
In the following pages I have endeavoured to portray something of
their savage pride and unscrupulous spirit; and to give a picture of
those dark days of violence when danger was the pastime and arms the
occupation of our people; when it was sadly but truly said, that grey
hairs were seldom seen under a Scotsman's bonnet, and that a Scottish
mother had seldom a son left to lay her head in the grave, for in
civil strife or foreign war they had all gone before her to the land
of the leal.
There is much that is veritable history, and much that is old
tradition, woven up with my fiction; and though the reader may be
able to distinguish these passages, I shall mention, that the king's
adventure in the cavern, the three trees of Dysart, and John of
Clatto, are ancient legends of Fife; while the point on which the
whole story turns--the strange and frantic love of Otterburn--is
taken partly from an incident which is mentioned in the annals of the
House of Angus, and bears a conspicuous place in the early criminal
records of Scotland. It will be found related at further length in
the notes.
The King's Advocate was so named, to distinguish him from the Crown
Prince's Advocate, an office which existed before the abolition of
many of those more important public institutions of which Scotland
has permitted herself to be deprived.
The King's Advocate, with whose name I have made so free in these
volumes, was the son of Thomas Otterburn of Edinburgh, who was slain
at the battle of Flodden, and of Katharine Brown. He was Lord
Provost of Edinburgh from 1524 to 1535, and was our ambassador to
England between the same years. He was knighted in 1534, but was
imprisoned in the castle of Dumbarton for being too partial to
Englishmen. He was highly esteemed by Buchanan, who has embalmed his
memory in beautiful Latin verse.
Vipont, the hero, bears an old Scottish surname, which was famous in
the middle ages, though it has now almost disappeared. Andro
Wyntown, the Prior of St. Serf, mentions that _Alan ye Vipownt_ was
keeper of Lochlevin, and defended that fortress valiantly in the wars
of the Scottish succession. Another, Sir William Vipont, was one of
the two Scottish knights slain on the glorious 24th of June, 1314.
They were barons of Aberdour on the northern shore of the Forth,
where their ruined castle, a massive pile indicative of great
strength and ancient grandeur, is yet to be seen. Roland Vipont is
meant to represent the last of that old race, whose arms are still
recorded to have been six annulets _or_, with a swan's head rising
from a coronet.
Let it not be thought that I have made James V. or his minister speak
too harshly of Henry VIII.'s moral character, when we bear in mind
that Dr. Bayley, in his "Life of Bishop Fisher," has plainly asserted
and proved, that the English king married Anne Boleyn, knowing her to
be his own daughter. So much for the "Bluff King Hal" of romance.
If, on one hand, I have omitted to portray the Cardinal Primate as
the monster we have been taught to believe him, I do not, on the
other, wish it to be thought that I consider the good Father St.
Bernard as a type of the Scottish clergy in 1537. Very far from it;
they were the reverse of all I have made that meek old priest. But,
doubtless, there must have been exceptions; and it must be
remembered, that all our accounts of them and the Cardinal have come
down to us from their enemies.
A Scottish novelist labours under a great disadvantage, when
endeavouring to introduce effectively for English readers old
national characters who speak their own language, which, to a modern
Englishman, would be as unintelligible as Choctaw; hence the
conventional half-dialect usually adopted. It is a curious fact,
that in the days of Alexander I. or Robert I., the dialects of the
two nations were more alike than they are to-day. Since then, the
language of South Britain has gradually been changing, and becoming
what is strictly termed English; while the Gothic dialect of the
North has remained pretty much the same; hence the Scot can read with
ease, and fully understand, the obsolete phrases and idioms of
Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, &c., many parts of the old editions of
whose works are now almost unintelligible to the mass of their own
countrymen.
EDINBURGH,
1st January, 1853.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. JANE SETON
II. MAGDALENE OF FRANCE
III. THE MASTER OF THE ORDNANCE
IV. REDHALL
V. THE WITCH-PRICKER
VI. THE ILLUMINATED SPIRE
VII. TWO OFFICIALS
VIII. THE QUEEN'S MASQUE
IX. LA VOLTA
X. LOVE AND ABHORRENCE
XI. SWORDBLADES AND SALVE
XII. EDINBURGH IN 1537
XIII. SAINT GILES
XIV. THE CHANCELLOR OF SCOTLAND
XV. THE NOON OF LOVE
XVI. VIPONT'S HOUSEHOLD
XVII. A LORD ADVOCATE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
XVIII. THE CASTLE OF INCHKEITH
XIX. THE FORTUNATE SWORD-THRUST
XX. THE BLACK PAGE
XXI. JOHN OF THE SILVERMILLS
XXII. TEN RED GRAINS
XXIII. THE FIRST VISIT
XXIV. THE KNIFE
XXV. DOUGLASDALE
XXVI. THE BARMKYN OF CAIRNTABLE
XXVII. THE POMMEL OF THE POINARD
XXVIII. A DRAUGHT OF WATER
XXIX. THE SECOND VISIT
XXX. SANCTUARY! SANCTUARY!
XXXI. THE PORTE OF THE SPUR
XXXII. THE THREE TREES OF DYSART
XXXIII. THE WEEM
XXXIV. THE DEATH OF MAGDALENE
XXXV. THE COLLEGE OF JUSTICE
XXXVI. THE RACK--THE DEVIL'S MARK
XXXVII. THE GAGE OF BATTLE
XXXVIII. THE EARL'S DARING
XXXIX. THE EARL'S SUCCESS
XL. SYBIL
XLI. A HAMILTON! A HAMILTON!
XLII. DAVID'S TOWER--THE PHYSICIAN
XLIII. DAVID'S TOWER--THE PRIEST
XLIV. DAVID'S TOWER--THE LOVER
XLV. THE BOON
XLVI. THIRST!
XLVII. WHAT THE PAPER CONTAINED
XLVIII. THE CROSS AND GILLSTOUP
XLIX. THE CASTAWAYS
L. FALKLAND
LI. THE KING AND THE CARDINAL
LII. THE LAIRD OF CLATTO
LIII. THE FIGHT AT INVERTEIL
LIV. THE KING'S HORN
LV. THE BLUEGOWN
LVI. THE TEMPTATION
LVII. THE LOCH
LVIII. THE LAW OF THE SWORD
LIX. THE PLACE OF DOOM
LX. CONCLUSION
NOTES
JANE SETON:
OR,
THE KING'S ADVOCATE.
CHAPTER I.
JANE SETON.
"I prithee mark
His countenance; unlike bold calumny,
Which sometime dare not speak the thing it looks,
He dare not look the thing he speaks, but bends
His gaze on the blind earth."--_The Cenci_.
On the 19th of May, 1537, the bells of Edinburgh rang joyously. It
was a day of loyalty and merriment such as never more may gladden
Scotland's ancient capital.
After a nine months' absence, James V.--"the good king James, the
commons' king, the father of the poor," the patron of the infant arts
and sciences, the mirror of chivalry and romance, as he was
affectionately named by a people who idolized him--had arrived in the
Firth of Forth with his young queen Magdalene of Valois, whom for her
dazzling beauty he had chosen from among three princesses, all
possessed of unusual charms, and whom he had espoused in the great
cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, in presence of her father, the
magnificent and magnanimous Francis I., seven cardinals, and all the
noblesse and beauty of France. After spending the honeymoon at the
Hôtel de Cluny, a beautiful old gothic house belonging to the family
of Lorraine, they had sailed for Scotland.
All the capital was on tiptoe, and its streets were crowded to excess
by the retinues of the nobles and lesser barons, who had come thither
to gratify their curiosity and evince their loyalty on the auspicious
occasion.
The day was one of the most beautiful of all that sunny month; and
the summer air was laden with the perfume of flowers, for garlands
and bouquets were festooned from window to window across the main
street leading to the palace, a thoroughfare six-and-twenty yards in
breadth; while the stone columns of the girth-cross of the holy
sanctuary, the Jerusalem-cross of St. John, the great market-cross of
the city, bearing aloft the unicorn rearing on a tressured shield,
and the famous stone statue of Our Lady which then stood at the east
end of St. Giles's church, were all wreathed and hidden under the
spoil of a hundred blooming gardens.
Scaffolds and balconies hung with tapestry and rare carpets of
foreign manufacture, or painted with azure, starred with shining
gold, occupied the sides of the streets in many places, and were
crowded with the families of the surrounding land-holders, the better
classes of citizens, and the baronial dwellers of the Blackfriars'
Wynd and the Canongate; a great part of the latter street consisted
then of turreted villas and strongly-built but detached
mansion-houses surrounded by spacious gardens. Banners innumerable,
bearing the heraldic cognizances of the proud, the noble, and the
brave of Scotland's ancient days, waved from window, turret, and
bartizan; the city fountains poured forth purple wine and nut-brown
ale alternately (for the Scots had the former duty-free before the
Union), and the stalwart deacon convener of the gallant craftsmen,
sheathed in complete armour, with the famous Blue Blanket, or banner
of the Holy Ghost, displayed, mustered the Baxters, the Websters,
Cordiners, Dagger and Bonnet makers, and other ancient corporations,
each under their several standards, to line the High-street, on
either side, from the Butter Tron to the Netherbow, keeping clear a
lane of some forty feet in breadth. These stout craftsmen, who
mustered to the number of several thousands, were all arrayed in
green gaberdines, red hose, and blue bonnets, and were armed as
archers, with a steel gorget, a short but strong Scottish bow, a
sheaf of arrows, a battle-axe, and long dagger.
With the city sword and mace, and his own helmet and banner borne
before him, the Lord Provost, Sir James Lawson, of the Highrigs, with
all the baillies and burgesses clad in gowns of scarlet, furred with
miniver, and wearing chains of gold; the heralds and pursuivants in
their plumed bonnets and gorgeous tabards, with standards and
trumpets, musicians, minstrels, and macers, waited at the western
entrance of the city to receive the king and queen with all due
loyalty and splendour of pageantry; while the priests of rank, the
knights, nobles, and senators of the College of Justice, had all
ridden to Leith to conduct the royal pair in procession to Holyrood.
It is said that the beautiful Magdalene, on landing from the
high-pooped and gaily-bannered ship of Sir Robert Barton, the king's
admiral, knelt gracefully down on the sands of Leith, and lifting a
handful to her lips, kissed it ere she threw it away crosswise, and
raising her large dark eyes to heaven, prayed with deep pathos "to
God, the blessed Virgin, and all the saints, for the happiness of
Scotland, the land of her adoption, and its people."
The bright sunshine of the glorious May morning poured aslant its
flaky radiance between the breaks and openings in those irregular
masses of building, that tower up to such a giddy height on both
sides of the central street of the ancient city; the south was sombre
and grey, but the north was glowing in warmth, as the sunlight played
along its far-stretching vista. Many of these houses were
flat-roofed, flagged with large stones, like ancient towers, or
covered with thatch; but few that overlooked the pageant about to be
described are standing now, as the city was fired by the English in
eight places seven years after, in the war with Henry VIII.
By the skill of a certain cunning craftsman, the High-street, even at
that early period, was well paved; and the monks of Holyrood kept the
Canongate (which is but a further continuation of the same
thoroughfare) well causewayed, for which the reverend Lord Abbot
levied a duty upon every cart, laden or unladen, which entered the
eastern barrier of the burgh. All the open windows of that great
street, the tall edifices of which rise to the height of eight and
ten stories, exciting still the astonishment of every traveller, were
filled with glad faces; every bartizan, outshot, and projection bore
its load of shouting urchins; even the leads and parapets of the
great cathedral, with its hideously grotesque stone-gutters, carved
into devils and dragons, wyverns and other monsters, bore a freight
of spectators, the buzz of whose voices, above and below, imparted a
liveliness to the scene, and relieved the tedium of long expectation
and waiting for the approach of the royal party.
The utmost good-humour pervaded these expectant crowds, though
sometimes a brawl seemed likely to ensue, when a gentleman of pride
and pedigree, with velvet cloak, a long rapier, and tall feather,
despising the authority of the convener and his bands of mechanical
craftsmen, marched down the centre of the street, with a few
well-armed serving-men following doggedly at his heels, with brows
bent, their swords girt up, and that expression on their faces which
seemed so much as to say, "We are Humes, Douglases, or Scotts, or
Setons, and who will dare to meddle with us!"
With these, such was the patent of gentle blood, the burgher archers
dared not interfere; but their unstrung bows and gauntleted hands
pommelled without mercy any luckless countryman or denizen of Leith
or St. Ninian's Row who encroached on the causeway, which by order of
the knightly provost was to be kept clear by all. Such incidental
brawls were generally quelled by the interference of some passing
grey friar or Dominican.
Those cavaliers who assumed the right of perambulating the open
street were, as I have said, almost invariably attended by bands of
followers, armed with swords and round targets, steel caps and
corslets. Several of these were invariably greeted by a yell of
hostility and epithets of opprobrium from those who occupied the
windows, and who found this a more safe experiment than it could have
proved to those who stood in the street below.
These obnoxious personages were generally lesser barons and gentlemen
of the house of Douglas, a clan which, from its numerical force,
pride, power, and turbulence, had long been inimical to the house of
Stuart, and more especially to James V., who after many efforts had
completely broken its strength, reduced its numerous strongholds, and
driven the chief, Archibald sixth Earl of Angus, and Knight of St.
Michael, from his high offices of Lord Chancellor and Lieutenant of
the East and Middle Marches, with all the noblesse of his surname and
faction, to exile in England; where, like all Scottish rebels and
malcontents, according to the ancient line of southern policy, they
were fostered and protected by Henry VIII.
By the knights and gentlemen of the proscribed name those marks of
hostility from the vulgar herd were treated with silent scorn; but
their followers scowled about them with clenched weapons and kindling
eyes, that showed how intensely they longed to react the great
High-street conflict of 1520, and revenge on the rabble of Edinburgh
the insults they now endured. These evidences of hostility and
political disgust were soon lost amid the general spirit of rejoicing
that pervaded the entire body of the people; for loyalty and devotion
to their old hereditary line of princes was then an inborn sentiment
in the Scots, who were devout believers in the divine right of kings,
and had not yet been taught by their preachers to view their old
regal race as tyrants and oppressors.
Among all this mirth and festivity there were two persons whose
sobriety and staidness of demeanour were very remarkable.
One was a young man about six-and-twenty, who had, apparently, just
entered the city, for his boots and leathern gambadoes were covered
with dust. He wore a plain gaberdine, or frock, of white Galloway
frieze, with horn buttons; but beneath it appeared a doublet of
escaupil to protect him from sword thrusts, an unusual garment for
one of his class, for his grey maud, or plaid, blue bonnet,
backsword, and hunting-knife announced him a yeomen or agriculturist.
He carried a great knotty walking-staff, recently cut from some
wayside thicket; but to a close observer it would have seemed
perfectly evident that the profusion of his beard and moustache was
worn rather for disguise than adornment. He was reading a paper
affixed to the cross of St. John of Jerusalem which stood in the
centre of the Canongate, immediately opposite the arch which now
gives admittance to St. John's-street, the ground of which was then
closely built upon.
It was a proclamation, issued by the nobles who governed in the
king's absence, offering a thousand merks of Scottish money for "ye
heid of Archibald Seton, umquhile Earle of Ashkirk," accused of
leaguing with that false traitor, Archibald Douglas, sometime Earl of
Angus, who had recently been on the borders, at the head of some
English moss-troopers, infesting the bounds of the knight, Sir Mark
Kerr, of Cessford.
With a brow that loured, and fierce eye that kindled, the young man
read, from beginning to end, this proclamation (which was obnoxious
to so many), and his hand gradually tightened on the handle of his
poniard as he proceeded. Suddenly remembering that he might be
observed, a smile of scorn, such a lordly smile as never clown could
have given, spread over his dark features; he gave a glance of
peculiar import at a group of ladies who occupied a balcony
immediately opposite St. John's Cross, and, drawing his bonnet well
over his brows, looked round for some obscure nook from whence to
see, in security, the progress of the royal pageant.
"How little can they imagine that I am so near them," said the Earl
of Ashkirk (for the stranger was no other than he), as he dived among
the crowd and disappeared.
The other personage to whom reference has been made, was a tall and
finely-formed man, of a noble presence and commanding stature,
possessing a remarkably handsome face, with a loftiness of bearing
that never failed to strike the beholder with interest. His
complexion was dark, his nose slightly aquiline, his eyes black, and
sparkling beneath two brows that were almost joined together. At
times, a fierce and restless expression lit up these fiery and
penetrating eyes, and knit his smooth expansive forehead, while his
moustached lip curled with pride and severity; and then a languor and
sadness stole over them, as other and softer emotions subdued the
bitter thoughts some passing incidents had roused. He was dressed in
a doublet and trunk hose of black velvet, laced and buttoned with
silver, and trimmed with miniver: a black velvet bonnet, adorned by a
single diamond and one tail white ostrich feather, shaded his dark,
short, curly hair. He wore a short poniard and long rapier in an
embroidered belt, and had spurs, heavily gilded and embossed, on the
heels of his maroquin boots.
This man was Sir Adam Otterburn, of Redhall, the King's Advocate in
the recently-instituted College of Justice, a great favourite with
his royal master, and one who, for his learning, probity, courage,
and office, was loved by some, respected by many, and feared by all.
His features were pale and hollow, for he was recovering from a late
illness, brought on by a wound received in a conflict with the
Douglases, a circumstance which alone, on this auspicious day,
confined him to a cushioned chair at the window of his house, which
overlooked the High-street, where all the beauty and bravery of
Edinburgh had thronged to welcome home King James.
Oblivious of the bustle pervading that long and stately thoroughfare,
the streaming pennons, the waving banners, the gaudy tapestries and
garlands that festooned every balcony and decorated every window, the
Knight of Redhall continued to gaze upon the fair occupants of the
temporary gallery which we have before mentioned as standing near St.
John's Cross.
It was hung and canopied with scarlet cloth and festoons of flowers;
the front was painted with gold and azure, and thereon lay a banner,
bearing under an earl's coronet, and within a widow's lozenge, the
three crescents of Seton, within a double tressure, flowered and
counter-flowered with golden fleurs-de-lis, quartered with "the
bloody heart," the dreaded cognizance of the obnoxious Douglases--a
badge which, though it seldom gained love, never failed to inspire
fear. An old lady and several fair young belles, whose beauty alone
saved them from the insults which popular hatred levelled at all in
alliance with the exiled Earl of Angus, occupied this balcony, and
reclined beneath its shady canopy, chatting gaily, and expectant of
the royal approach.
The elder lady was Margaret Douglas, of the house of Kilspindie,
dowager of John Earl of Ashkirk, and mother of Archibald, the present
earl, who was then under doom of exile with Lord Angus, his kinsman
and ally. The younger ladies were Jane Seton, her daughter, Marion
Logan of Restalrig, Alison Hume of Fastcastle, and Sybil Douglas of
Kilspindie, all noble damsels, who had come to Edinburgh to witness
the splendid entrée of Queen Magdalene.
Tall in stature and dark in complexion, with deep black eyes, and a
hauteur of brow which the sweet expression of her mouth alone
relieved, the Countess Dowager of Ashkirk, though all but unable to
read or write (for letters were then held in low repute), was a woman
of a shrewd and masculine turn of mind; for the inborn dignity of
noble birth, the martial spirit of her race, the stormy life she had
led since childhood among feudal brawls and intestine battles, had
imparted an emphatic decision, if not a fierceness, at times, to her
manner and modes of expression. A stiff suit of the richest Genoese
brocade lent additional stateliness to her figure, while the
diamond-shaped head-dress, then in fashion for noble matrons, added
greatly to her stature, which was far above the middle height. The
inner folds of this angular coif were of white linen, the outer of
purple silk edged with yellow fringe, and it formed a corner at each
ear with an apex at the top, while the folds lay close to her cheeks,
scarcely permitting her hair to be visible, and where it was so its
raven hue seemed turning fast to silver-grey.
A little negro boy, black as Lucifer, but dressed entirely in a rich
suit of white satin, puffed and slashed at the trunks and shoulders,
held up her train. Ugly as a fiend, with a broad nose, capacious
mouth, and long pendent ears adorned with massive silver rings,
Master Sabrino, being the first or the second person of his colour
ever seen in Scotland, was an object of fear to some, disgust to
others, and wonder to all. The vulgar viewed him as an imp or devil
incarnate, and studiously avoided the glance of his shining black
eyeballs; but _the creature_, as they termed him, was affectionately
devoted to his mistress, and to all who used him kindly. Though the
fashion of being attended by a black page or dwarf was not uncommon
at continental courts, and had been first introduced into Scotland by
Anne de la Tour of Vendôme, Duchess of Albany, it did not tend to
increase the popularity of the proud and distant Dowager of Ashkirk,
whom, as a Douglas, the people were generally disposed to view with
hostility and mistrust.
Lady Jane Seton was, in many respects, the reverse of her mother; for
she had neither her lofty stature, her keenness of eye, nor her
haughty decision of manner; for her figure, though full and round,
was, by turns, light, graceful, and yielding. Neither her youth, for
she was barely twenty, nor her beauty, though it was of the first
class, were her chief characteristics. There was a depth of
expression in her dark blue eye, which, by turns, was dreamy and
thoughtful, or bright and laughing, a charm in her radiant complexion
and a fascination in her manner, which drew all instinctively towards
her. When silent, she seemed full of intense thought; when speaking,
all vivacity and animation. Her hair was of the darkest and
glossiest brown, and her neck arched and slender. Simple and
pleasing, sinless in soul and pure in heart, her goodness and
gentleness were her greatest charms; and though she appeared _petite_
beside her towering mother, there was a grace in all her movements,
and a bewitching piquancy in every expression, that made Jane Seton
adorable to her lovers, and she had many.
Her companions were worthy the association, all fair and handsome
girls.
Alison of Fastcastle was a beautiful blonde; she carried a falcon on
her wrist, and from time to time pressed its smooth pinions against
her dimpled cheek. Marion of Restalrig was a tall, flaxen-haired,
and blue-eyed beauty, ever laughing and ever gay; while Sybil Douglas
of Kilspindie was a brunette, like all the beauties of her house.
Her deep black eyes and sable tresses would have lost nothing by
comparison with those of Andaluçia; and though generally quiet, and,
as some deemed her, insipid, her silence concealed a world of
sentiment and thoughts that were exquisitely feminine: but, though
silent and retiring, there were times when this fair daughter of the
house of Douglas could manifest a fire and spirit becoming Black
Liddlesdale himself.
They were all dressed nearly alike, in white satin, slashed at the
breast and shoulders with variously coloured silk, and all had coifs
of velvet squared above their temples, and falling in lappets on
their cheeks. They were all talking at once, laughing at everything,
like Sabrino the page, whose wide mouth was expanded in an endless
grin; but the old countess was buried in thought, and with her
forehead resting on her hand, and her elbow on the edge of the
balcony, continued to gaze abstractedly on the long and bustling
vista of the sunlit Canongate.