WILLIAM, DUKE OF TOURAINE.
Vails not to tell each hardy clan,
From the fair middle marches come;
The Bloody Heart blazed in the van,
Announcing Douglas, dreaded name!--SCOTT.
At this time the house of Douglas, one which in past ages had ever led
the van of battle in the cause of Scottish honour and liberty, had
attained the most exorbitant, and in that warlike and feudal epoch,
dangerous power--a power that never ceased to menace the freedom of the
people on one hand, and the independence of the throne on the other.
William, sixth earl of Douglas, and third duke of Touraine, had just
succeeded to the vast possessions of his family by the death of his
father, Archibald, who had been Lieutenant-General of Scotland, and
Marshal of France, and who died at Restalrig, in 1439.
In his seventeenth year, William found himself master of all the
princely heritage his warlike sire had left him, the earldom of
Douglas, with the lordships of Bothwell, Annandale, and Liddesdale;
the county of Longoville, and the dukedom of Touraine, "the garden of
France."
To these he had added the principality of Galloway, the county of
Wigton, and the lordship of Balvenie, by marriage with his cousin,
Margaret, the Fair Maid of Galloway, a high-born girl of great beauty
and spirit, who was one year his senior, and whose proud and fiery
temper made her prove his evil mentor in many an act of folly and
outrage; while Lady Murielle, the younger and gentler sister, whose
loveliness was long embalmed in many a sweet old Galloway song, strove
anxiously, but vainly, to avert them.
Even in that age of pride, vain of his lofty ancestry, which he could
trace back through a long line of brave and loyal nobles to that Sholto
Dhu-glas, the grey and swarthy warrior, who, in the eighth century,
slew Donald of the Isles--rendered powerful by the vast number, the
unity and rank of his vassalage, by the strength of his fortresses
and extent of his territories, which included the richest and most
important districts of the kingdom; hourly told by high-born and artful
flatterers that he possessed wealth equal, and armed forces superior,
to the king, this rash young noble had of late begun to assume all the
state of a crowned head.
On the death of his father, he sent into France two ambassadors to
Charles VII., to make his oath of fealty for the dukedom of Touraine.
These unwise envoys, Sir Alan Lauder, of the Bass, a knight of Lothian,
and Sir Malcolm Fleming, lord of Biggar and Cumbernauld, were received
by the French monarch with a degree of state and ceremony on which the
Regent and Chancellor of Scotland, as guardians of its young king,
could not fail to look with jealous eyes; thus, stifling their secret
piques and heart-burnings, they resolved to coalesce for the public
weal, and to watch, win, or CRUSH this warlike feudatory,
whose power, ambition, and splendour overtopped the throne, and
threatened to extinguish themselves.
On the other hand, flattered by the messages of Charles the Victorious,
despising the Regent and Chancellor as mere knights of Lothian, the
young earl became guilty of outrages, and evinced an arrogance, that
made all tremble for the issue.
When he left any of his castles, he never rode with less than one or
two thousand knights and horsemen in his train, all brilliantly armed
and accoutred; and this haughty retinue frequently carried havoc, and
always terror, wherever they appeared. His household was magnificent;
he appointed his petty officers of state, and within his castle-halls
of Thrave, Bothwell, and Douglas, held courts which rivalled the
meetings of Parliament; while, to the many royal summonses sent him,
scornful and insolent answers, dictated by his friends, or rather by
those who were the friends of his father, the knights Fleming and
Lauder, were returned to the Regent and Chancellor.
Under his banner and name, his followers, many of whom were nobles,
thus filled the land with outrage and tumult. The people were without
protection and without redress, while the court of the young king was
daily crowded by suppliants who cried for vengeance.
"There were," saith Lyndessy, in his Chronicles, "so many widows,
bairns, and infants seeking redress for husbands, kindred, and friends,
who had been cruelly slain by wicked murderers; siclike, many for
hership, theft, and reif, that there was no man but would have had ruth
and pity to hear the same. Soon murder, theft, and slaughter were in
such common dalliance among the people, and the king's power had fallen
into such contempt, that no man _wist_ where to seek refuge unless he
swore himself a servant to some common murderer or tyrant, to maintain
himself against the invasion of others, or else gave largely of his
gear to save his life, and afford him peace and rest."
Not content with having produced all this, the young duke, or earl,
urged by his ambitious counsellors, dared openly to impugn the king's
title to the crown, affecting to prefer the claims of his own uncle,
Malise, earl of Strathearn, who was descended from Euphemia Ross, the
second queen of Robert II.; and he intrigued with Robert Stuart, the
exiled son of the king's uncle, the late Murdoch, duke of Albany, to
subvert the Royal succession.
Sir Alexander Livingstone, the Regent, and Sir William Crichton, the
Lord Chancellor, saw that a crisis had come in the affairs of the
realm; that the throne and their own position must sink together
beneath the overweening power of Douglas unless a dreadful blow were
struck; and thus, with all the dark ferocity and stern subtlety of the
age in which they lived, they prepared to _strike it_!
James Hanna, or Achanna, one of those smooth-tongued political
villains, of whom Scotland has in all ages produced a plentiful
brood--a wretch who for gold contrived to be a secret adherent and
deluder of both parties, was despatched with a royal message to
Douglas's castle of Thrave, in the name of the Regent and Chancellor.
In this mandate, which bore the privy seal of the realm, they
"professed the highest esteem for the young earl's character, and a
profound regret for the petty jealousies which had so long separated
them. They anxiously and earnestly solicited his august presence at
court that he might cultivate the friendship of his sovereign, now in
his eleventh year, and lend his great talents and influence to the
administration of affairs--while the presence of the countess and her
sister, Lady Murielle, could not fail to shed some rays of splendour on
the court, and be a source of joy to the young princesses, the sisters
of his majesty."
This document, so fulsome when addressed to an almost untutored boy,
added, that on the vigil of St. Catherine, a banquet in celebration of
their friendship and the extinction of discord would be royally held in
the great hall of the castle at Edinburgh.
The young earl smiled scornfully on hearing this missive read by the
wily Achanna on his knees; but he tossed from his wrist a hawk with
which he had been playing, and replied--
"My father never yielded to James I., nor will I to James II., and
his two cock lairds of Lothian, who pretend to govern Scotland.
Nevertheless, we shall mount and go, were it but to flaunt our bravery
at court."
Sir Malcolm Fleming, of Cumbernauld, an old and faithful friend of his
father, urged him to mistrust Crichton and remain among his followers;
but the desire to dazzle his enemies by the splendour of his retinue,
and the _arguments_ of his kinsman, the earl of Abercorn, outweighed
all that the more faithful and wary could advance.
And herein lay a secret which death might reveal to him; but in life he
would never discover.
James the Gross, earl of Abercorn, had loved, but in vain, the
beautiful Maid of Galloway, who preferred her younger and more handsome
cousin, Earl William; but James was the next heir to the latter, if
he and Lord David died without children: thus avarice, ambition, and
revenge spurred him on, and caused him to urge the immediate acceptance
of the Chancellor's invitation, and _his_ energetic advice, with the
young earl's vain-glorious wish, bore down all the faithful Fleming
could urge.
James Achanna was the villainous tool who worked for him in the dark;
and herein was another secret; for Achanna had been a page to the
father of the countess, and had loved her too.
This love had expanded suddenly, like a flower that blooms in a night
under a tropical moon, and the coquette soon discovered it.
"You love me?" said she imperiously, reining up her horse, as they one
day rode side by side near the loch of the Carlinwark.
"Yes," said the page, tremulously, and covered with confusion by the
abruptness of the question.
"How old are you, James Achanna?"
"I am four-and-twenty, madam."
"You are but a boy," said she, laughing.
"I am six years _your_ senior," he replied, gathering courage.
"And you think me beautiful?"
"Oh, madam!"
"At your age boys think all women beautiful. But, my presuming page,
you must cease with this folly and learn to know your place, or it may
be changed to one more exalted;" and she pointed with her riding-switch
to a stone corbel called the gallows-knob above the gate of Thrave.
The cheek of Achanna grew deadly pale; he ceased the "folly;" but from
thenceforth thought only of revenge, and afterwards entered readily
into the scheme by which the Douglases were lured to Edinburgh.
Thus, summoning Sir Alan Lauder, his Master of the Horse, the young
earl, with all the impetuosity of a pampered boy, ordered his train to
be assembled, and set forth for the capital.
Achanna preceded him on the spur, and reached Edinburgh a day or two
before him.
The reader will now begin to perceive why those _four_ coffins were
conveyed by him, under cloud of night, into the vaults of David's
Tower; and why a black bull's head, the ancient symbol of sudden death
and slaughter among the Celtic Scots, was concealed by the King's
master-butcher in the cabinet of the Chancellor.