THE BLOCK.
I must have
A more potential draught of guilt than this,
With more of wormwood in it.--FIRMILIAN.
A simultaneous cry burst from all on seeing this sure and terrible
forerunner of a sudden death; all sprang from the table, and
instinctively did so, sword in hand; for at the same moment the door
of the 'tiring room was thrown violently open, and a chosen party
of Crichton's vassals, led by Romanno of that ilk, constable of the
castle, Andrew Gray of Balgarno, and others, rushed forward, and with
levelled partisans, separated the earl of Douglas and his brother David
from their more immediate friends.
"To your swords and defend yourselves, my brother and friends; we are
lured--tricked to death!" cried the young earl, with prompt bravery,
hewing right and left at the partisans; "A Douglas! a Douglas! cut me a
passage to the king--to the throne--it is at least a _sanctuary_!"
"Hold, my lord!" exclaimed the chancellor, in a voice of thunder, as he
stood with one foot on the lower step of the king's chair, and firmly
interposed his drawn sword, "it is no sanctuary for thee or thine! and
dare you----"
"Slay a chancellor? Yes, if I can, and this dog regent, too, like false
hounds and fell traitors as ye are!" replied the brave youth, with
a scornful but heartrending smile; while, by the press of partisans
levelled in a dense rank, he and his brother, with Sir Malcolm
Fleming, Sir Alan Lauder, and all others disposed to resistance, were
thrust close to the wall, yet they shouted resolutely, "a Douglas! a
Douglas!" The chairs and banquet-tables were overthrown, and all became
a scene of confusion, destruction, and dismay, from which many fled by
the doors, not knowing how the brawl would end.
"Guards and gentlemen!" exclaimed the tall grim regent, as he towered
above the armed throng, and roughly but firmly grasped the left arm
of the bewildered king, who thought he was about to perish, like his
father, by the hands of regicides, yet, like a brave boy as he was,
had rushed forward to save Douglas; "guards and gentlemen, disarm this
traitorous peer and all who have drawn their swords by his side in the
royal presence. Put up your blade, I command you, William, earl of
Douglas--the king is here, and this is his royal castle!"
"Dishonour blight it for this day's deed," exclaimed old Sir Malcolm
Fleming, "and may its roof-tree be the gallows of all thy race,
accursed Crichton! thou cogging villain, thou cheat and assassin! And
as for _thee_, Lord regent--hah! the sword that knighted thee was never
notched in battle!"
"A very carpet squire!" said Lauder, scornfully.
"Liars are both; the blade that knighted me was our Scottish sword of
state; a king's hand gave me the accolade--a king murdered by traitors
false as you! Now hearken to me, Douglas. Fate has this day placed the
destinies of your rebellious and overweening house in the hands of
a justly-offended king and his resolute ministers, so prepare for a
doom upon which a short but ample career of evil actions has hurried
you--that fatal doom which incensed justice is about to mete out to
you and the adherents of your father. Disarm them, guards I say; by
_my_ voice the king commands it!"
Seeing the futility of resistance, the venerable laird of Cumbernauld
tossed his sword disdainfully to the Captain of the Guard, and Sir Alan
Lauder broke his blade across his knee, and flung the fragments down in
sullen silence; but the earl and his brother hacked and hewed at the
shafts of the partisans, inflicting many severe wounds on the hands
and arms of their assailants, before they were beaten down, disarmed,
when mad with fury, and secured by silken cords, torn from the curtains
of the hall windows. Achanna, while pretending to save the earl,
hung treacherously upon his sword arm till he was captured, and the
sorrowing and bewildered Captain of the Guard had to interpose his own
sword between the furious boy Lord David and Romanno, who had drawn his
dagger, having been exasperated by a slash across the face. Prior to
this the abbot of Tongland, the earl of Ormond, Douglas of Pompherston,
and others, had all been dragged from the hall and forcibly expelled
into the city, where they spread alarm and consternation through every
street and alley.
The poor little king, who, with the six princesses his sisters, had
been given up completely to the care of Livingstone and Crichton,
since his mother Queen Jane had contracted her foolish marriage with
the handsome Sir James Stewart, usually known as the Black Knight of
Lorn, surveyed this terrible scene with the bewilderment of a startled
boy; but, on beholding the two brothers manacled with cords, bruised,
bleeding, and faint, after their brave but futile struggle, he burst
into tears, and clutching the robe of the lord chancellor, besought him
"to spare them."
Then, according to Balfour, in his "Annals of Scotland," and other
writers, the chancellor replied sternly:--"You are but a child, and
know not what you demand, for to spare them would be the ruin of you
and your whole kingdom!"
"Forgive them; oh, forgive them!" continued the princely boy, wringing
his hands, and appealing next to the regent; but he too replied
grimly:--"Your grace knows not what you ask."
"I _do_ know what I ask, and what I command. Am I not a king?" was the
passionate response.
"Well, rather than obey," replied Crichton, through his clenched teeth,
"I would walk barefoot over seven burning ploughshares, or over the
seven times heated furnace of hell," he added, with terrible energy;
"our time for vengeance has come!"
But the little monarch continued to sob and say:--"Lord regent, lord
regent, I am a king."
At last he appealed to Sir Patrick Gray, commanding him to draw his
dagger and cut the cords which bound the brothers and their two
faithful friends; but the unfortunate captain, confounded by the
suddenness of the catastrophe, impelled by his love for Murielle on one
hand, his duty to the two highest officers of the crown on the other;
his regard for the young king, and a remembrance of how insolently
these Douglases had ever treated himself, leaned on his sword, and
covered his face with his hand, to hide the emotion that warred in his
breast.
Suddenly he approached Crichton, to unite his entreaties to those of
his young monarch; but was roughly repelled.
"Oh, chancellor," he exclaimed, "is this my meed--this my reward for
faithful service as the king's liege man?"
"If such you be, I command you, peace, Sir Patrick--guard the king,
and leave the punishment of his rebels to us."
Now the voice of the regent was heard above the throng, as he shook his
clenched right hand aloft.
"I arrest you, William, duke of Touraine, earl of Douglas, lord of
Annandale, Longueville, and Galloway, on charges of foul treason;
and you, Lord David Douglas; you, Sir Malcolm Fleming of Biggar and
Cumbernauld; and you, Sir Alan Lauder of the Bass, captain of the
castle of Thrave, on the same serious accusation."
"Treason?" reiterated the young earl, as he proudly raised his head;
"in what have I been guilty of treason; and who dare accuse me?"
"I--the chancellor of Scotland," replied Crichton.
"Read the charges," said the regent, sternly.
"They are here," replied Crichton, unfolding a document, while all
leaned on their unsheathed weapons, and listened breathlessly.
"Treason, in the daily oppression of the king's subjects, at the head
of two thousand horsemen, most of whom are outlawed moss-troopers and
thieves of Annandale, who sorn on the king's lieges, and commit every
outrage; and this ye do, though the parliament held at Perth, in 1424,
ordained that _no_ man should travel abroad with more followers than he
could maintain. Treason in dubbing men as knights who are but sorners,
limmers, and masterful rogues. Treason, in holding _cours plénières_
after the fashion of parliament; and treason, in sending two gentlemen
to France as your ambassadors to Charles VII."
"It is false, as all the rest!" exclaimed the earl. "I did but send
them as my father desired me, when he lay dying at Restalrig, to renew
his oath of fealty for the duchy of Touraine, the fief of Longueville,
and other lands we hold in France; and to fix the yearly rental of the
former at ten thousand crowns."
"He speaks most truly," exclaimed Sir Malcolm Fleming and Sir Alan
Lauder in the same breath.
"Well, all this, though too little for a king, was too great for a
subject," said the regent, haughtily.
"The extent of your power and the misuse thereof," resumed the
chancellor, "with the lawless character of your followers, are pretexts
enough, without others, on which to arraign you. No religion, no
threats, no prayers or pretended reformation, no oaths or promises, can
alter the inborn character we inherit with our blood; and what have
_you_, Douglas, thus inherited? Pride, treason, contumacy, and the love
of open rebellion against the crown; and these evil qualities will
remain true to the fount from whence they spring; so, my lord regent,
to the block, I say, with this viperous brood. If the boy is thus
dangerous, what would the man be?"
"We demand to be tried by our peers," said the earl, firmly; "arraign
us before the Estates."
"You have got nearly all the trial and shrift we mean to give you,"
said the regent, bluntly. "Romanno, away with them to the castle Butts."
The trial, if it can be called so, proceeded rapidly, for the judges
had long ago resolved on the sentence, and, as one historian says,
"were determined to make no allowance for the youth and inexperience
of the parties--for the artifices by which they had been lured within
the danger of the law, and for their being totally deprived of
constitutional or legal defenders."
So, without counsel, jury, or written documents of any kind, these grim
proceedings went on; but never once did the brave boys sue for pity,
for mercy, or even for one hour of life.
From the hall, where the king, amid the _débris_ of the banquet and
combat, sank weeping on his canopied seat, the unfortunate earl and his
brother were hurried down the back stair of David's Tower, and dragged
to the greensward of the Butts, where the new barracks were built
in 1796, and there, in the presence of the regent, the chancellor,
Sir Walter Halyburton, the lord high treasurer, and other officers
of state, after being barely permitted to embrace each other, they
were thrown down on the block in succession, forcibly held there, and
beheaded!
This terrible deed was scarcely done ere all the friends of the regent
and chancellor, save their garrison, hastily quitted the castle; even
as those who _now_ witness an execution disperse rapidly as if it were
a relief to get rid of emotions so deep as those which are excited by
beholding a violent death, however judicially done.
For two days Sir Malcolm Fleming (ancestor of the earls of Wigton) was
respited only because he had wedded Elizabeth Stewart, daughter of the
old duke of Albany; but ultimately he too was beheaded on the same
block that was yet crimsoned with the blood of those he loved so well.
Sir Alan Lauder, through the friendship of Romanno, effected his
escape; while Fleming was interred in the coffin which bore the name of
Murielle Douglas.
In a wild spot on the north-western slope of the castle rock, where the
wall-flower and thistle flourished, and where at times the grass was
spotted by the _witch-gowans_, those yellow flowers which are filled by
pernicious sap, and are supposed to cause blindness, grew luxuriantly,
they were all interred in one deep grave.
In 1753, when the foundations of an arsenal were being dug there, some
human remains were exhumed, with several coffin-handles, and three
inscription-plates of pure gold. With these relics were found the skull
and horns of a bull, thereby identifying them with those victims of
misrule who perished on the vigil of St. Catharine, in 1440.