The ex-Regent now lay a hopeless prisoner in Dumbarton Castle, chiefly
occupied, we are told, in reading the Bible, which, though he had
forced the people to buy it under a penalty, he had hitherto much
neglected himself. One of his servants, named George Fleck, ‘was
apprehended in Alexander Lawson’s house [in Edinburgh], together with
the said Alexander, not without their own consents, as was alleged, to
reveal where the Earl of Morton’s treasure lay. The bruit [rumour]
went--when the boots were presented to George Fleck, that he revealed a
part of the treasure to be lying in Dalkeith yard, under the ground; a
part in Aberdour, under a braid stone before the gate; a part in Leith.
Certain it is, he [the earl] was the wealthiest subject that had been
in Scotland for many years.’--_Cal._
Sir James Melville tells us that, long before the trial of Morton, his
gold and silver were transported by his natural son, James Douglas,
and one of his servants called John Macmoran. ‘It was first carried in
barrels, and afterwards hid in some secret parts; part was given to be
kept by some who were looked upon as his friends, who made ill account
of it again; so that the most part thereof lighted in bad hands, and
himself was so destitute of money, that when he went through the street
to the Tolbooth to undergo his assize, he was compelled to borrow
twenty shillings to distribute to the poor, who asked alms of him for
God’s sake.’
In May, he ‘was brought to Edinburgh, and kept in Robin Gourlay’s
house,[118] with a band of men of weir.’ James Melville says: ‘The
very day of his putting to assize, I happened to be in Edinburgh,
and heard and saw the notablest example, baith of God’s judgment and
mercy that, to my knowledge, ever fell out in my time. For in that
Tolbooth, where oftentimes, during his government, he had wrested and
thrawn judgment, partly for gain, whereto he was given, and partly for
particular favour, was his judgment overthrown; and he wha, above any
Scotsman, had maist gear, friendship, and cliental,[119] had nane to
speak a word for him that day; but, the greatest part of the assizers
being his knawn unfriends, he was condemned to be headit on a scaffold,
and that head, whilk was sae witty in warldly affairs and policy, and
had commanded with sic authority and dignity within that town and
judgment-seat, to be set upon a prick upon the hichest stane of the
gable of the Tolbooth that is towards the public street.’
[Sidenote: 1581.]
Morton was condemned for being ‘airt and part’[120] concerned in the
murder of Darnley. He was more clearly an actor in the cruel slaughter
of Riccio. After doing his best to insnare Mary into a marriage with
Bothwell, he had headed a rebellion against her on hypocritical
pretences. The extortions he had practised during his regency, in
order to enrich himself, shewed an equally sordid and cruel character.
Throughout all the time of his government, he had outraged decency
by the grossness of his private life. Yet ‘he had great comfort that
he died a Christian, in the true and sincere profession of religion,
whilk he cravit all the faithful to follow, and abide thereat to the
death.’--_Moy._ ‘He keepit the same countenance, gesture, and short
sententious form of language upon the scaffold, whilk he usit in his
princely government. He spake, led about and urgit by the commanders
at the four nooks of the scaffold; but after that ance he had very
fectfully[121] and gravely uttered, at guid length, that whilk he had
to speak, thereafter almaist he altered not thir words: “It is for my
sins that God has justly brought me to this place; for gif I had served
my God as truly as I did my king, I had not come here. But as for that
I am condemned for by men, I am innocent, as God knows. Pray for me.”
... I [am] content to have recordit the wark of God, whilk I saw with
my ees and heard with my ears.’--_Ja. Mel._
[Illustration: The Maiden.]
‘After all was done, he went without fear and laid his neck upon the
block, crying continually: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” till the
axe of the Maiden--which he himself had caused make after the pattern
which he had seen at Halifax in Yorkshire--falling upon his neck, put
an end to his life and that note together. His body was carried to the
Tolbooth, and buried secretly in the night in the Greyfriars. His head
was affixed on the gate of the city.’--_H. of G._
The Maiden, which still exists in the Museum of the Society of the
Antiquaries of Scotland, is an instrument of the same nature as the
guillotine, a loaded knife running in an upright frame, and descending
upon a cross-beam, on which the neck of the culprit is laid. It is
not unlikely that the ex-Regent introduced the Maiden; but another
allegation, which asserts him to have been the first to suffer by it,
is untrue.
At the death of Morton, the common people were much occupied in
discussing a prophecy that the Bleeding Heart should fall by the
Mouth of Arran. Morton, as a Douglas, bore the Bleeding Heart in his
coat-armorial. Captain Stuart having been made Earl of Arran between
the time of the accusation and the execution, here, said they, is the
prediction realised, though what the Mouth of Arran meant it would have
puzzled them to tell. It was probably to this unintelligible stanza in
the prophecies of Merling that they referred:
In the mouth of Arran an selcouth[122] shall fall,
Two bloody harts shall be taken with a false train,
And derfly dung down without any dome,
Ireland, Orkney, and other lands many,
For the death of those two great dule shall make.[123]
Morton may be taken as an example of a class of public men in that
rude and turbulent time, who were to all appearance earnest Christians
of the reforming and evangelical stamp, and nevertheless allowed
themselves a licence in every wickedness, even to treachery and murder,
whenever they had a selfish object in view, or, more strangely still,
when the interests of religion, in their view of the matter, called on
them so to act.
[Sidenote: 1581.]
Nothing is more remarkable in the history of this period than the
coincidence of wicked or equivocal actions and pious professions in
the same person. Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney, who performed the
marriage-ceremony of Mary and Bothwell, and afterwards in the basest
manner took active part against her--who was in constant trouble
with the General Assembly on account of his shortcomings--writes
letters full of expressions of Christian piety and resignation. He is
constantly ‘saying with godly Job, gif we have receivit guid out of
the hand of the Lord, why should we not alsae receive evil--giving
him maist hearty thanks therefore, attesting our godly and stedfast
faith in him, whilk is maist evident in time of probane.’ Sir John
Bellenden, justice-clerk, who had a share in the murder of Signor
David, and who, on receiving a gift of Hamilton of Bothwell-haugh’s
estate of Woodhouselee from the Regent Moray, turned Hamilton’s wife
out of doors, so as to cause her to run mad--this vile man, in his
will, speaks of ‘my saul, wha baith sall meet my Maister with joy and
comfort, to hear that comfortable voice that he has promisit to resotat
[resuscitate], saying, Come unto me thou as ane of my elect.’[124]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: JUNE 11.]
An entry in the Lord Treasurer’s books reveals the mood of the gay
king and his courtiers, nine days after the bloody end of Morton. It
is Sunday, and James is residing with the Duke of Lennox at Dalkeith
Castle. He attends the parish church within the town, and, after
service, returns, with _two pipers playing before him_.[125]
[Sidenote: 1581.]
It was, however, only four days after the death of Morton, and while
his blood was still fresh upon the streets, that the man who had
brought him to the block passed through the gay scenes of a marriage.
Captain Stuart--for Scottish history can scarcely be induced to
recognise him as Earl of Arran--had formed a shameful connection with
a lady of high birth and rank now figuring at the Scottish court. Born
Elizabeth Stewart, as daughter of the Earl of Athole, she had first
been wife of Lord Lovat--then, after his death, wife of the Earl of
March, brother of the Regent Lennox. Her intrigue with Captain James,
her divorce of the Earl of March on alleged reasons which history would
blush to mention, her quick-following marriage to Arran while in a
condition which would have given her husband a plea of divorce against
herself, and this occurring so close to the time when Arran had shed
the blood of his great enemy, form a series of events sufficient to
mark the character of the court into which the young king had emerged
from the strictness of Presbyterian rule. When the lady brought her
husband a son in the subsequent January,[126] the king was invited to
the baptism, and we only learn that he was prevented from attending in
consequence of a temporary quarrel which had by that time taken place
between Lennox and Arran.
A contemporary writer, speaking of the countess, calls her ‘the
maistresse of all vice and villany,’ and says she ‘infectit the air
in his Hieness’ audience.’ He accuses her of controlling the course
of justice, and alleges that she ‘caused sundrie to be hanged that
wanted their compositions, saying: What had they been doing all
their days, that had not so much as five punds to buy them from the
gallows?‘--_Cal._
The Presbyterian clergy regarded the frivolity of Lennox and
Mombirneau, their foreign vices and oaths, joined to the coarser native
profligacy of Arran and his lady, as forming a bad school for the young
king. A love of amusement and buffoonery he certainly contracted from
this source; but it is remarkable that he was not drawn into any gross
vice by the bad example set before him.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: NOV.]
At this time, upwards of twenty years after the Reformation, it was
still found that ‘the dregs of idolatry’ existed in sundry parts of
the realm, ‘by using of pilgrimage to some chapels, wells, crosses
..., as also by observing of the festival-days of the sancts, sometime
namit their patrons; in setting furth of banefires, [and] singing of
carols within and about kirks at certain seasons of the year.’ An act
of parliament was now passed, condemning these practices, and imposing
heavy fines on those guilty of them; failing which, the transgressors
to endure a month’s imprisonment upon bread and water.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1582.