A GLANCE AT HISTORY.
Visions of the days departed,
Shadowy phantoms fill my brain;
They who live in history only,
Seem to walk the earth again.
LONGFELLOW.
The spring of 1443 was ripening into summer around the Scottish
capital. The green corn was sprouting in the fields; the April gowans
and the budding whins made gay the upland slopes and braes.
Many months had elapsed since Sir Patrick Gray should have returned
to court with an account of his mission. The Regent Livingstone and
the chancellor became impatient, and despatched Patrick Lord Glammis,
Master of the Household, to the court of Gueldres, from whence he soon
returned, with a duplicate of the letters entrusted to Gray, of whom no
trace had been discovered, since Prince Adolphus and his retinue had
separated from him at Wees, when on his way to the coast, and at the
distance of twenty miles from the castle of Gueldres.
This was somewhat perplexing; the old chancellor, who had a strong
friendship for Gray, now really mourned for him as one who was no
more, believing that he had been slain in some mysterious manner, and
the young king wept before the Lords of the Secret Council, to whom
Glammis made his report. Crichton knew that the earl of Douglas had
been in Flanders, with all his chosen followers, and their unscrupulous
character made the friends of Sir Patrick fear the worst.
In those days, posts there were none, letters were few, travellers
fewer, and one half of Europe knew nothing of the other; but,
nevertheless, distant rumours informed the regent and chancellor of
Scotland that Douglas and his train, with the forfeited duke of Albany,
after a brief sojourn at the court of Charles the Seventh, had passed
on towards Rome.
In his rage at the abbot John, the earl vowed "to raze Tongland
Abbey to its ground-stone," and to do many other absurd and
impossible things; but one threatening wave of the abbot's hand, and
a denunciation from his otherwise good-natured lips, brought the
superstitious noble on his knees, grovelling, and in prayer, which was
invariably replaced by fury and maledictions as soon as his mentor
retired. He promised to forgive Gray, and within the hour despatched
Achanna with one of his many letters to the Dyck Graf of Bommel, urging
his secret execution. He then ordered the abbot to return to Scotland,
and in the same breath begged he would accompany him to Rome; and the
abbot, being most anxious for a personal interview with the sovereign
pontiff, silently consented to do so, though despising in his heart the
titled penitent he followed.
John Douglas, abbot of the Premonstratensian monks of Tongland, held
for the haughty earl, the keys of heaven and of hell, and made him
writhe in his superstitious soul at the terrible conviction.
In 1444, as Crichton had arranged, the king took into his own hands the
government of the nation, in a convention of the Three Estates, which
met within the castle of Stirling, and at the same time, the papal
legate came from beyond the sea, in great pomp and bravery, to exact a
solemn oath of fealty to Rome from all the Scottish Bishops. Such oaths
were beginning to be requisite now, for already had the smoke of those
funeral fires, to which they had consigned Resby the Englishman, and
Crawar the Bohemian, "infected all on whom it was blown."
The poor chancellor had his hands full of troublesome business, for the
Scottish lords were again at their old hereditary occupations, rapine
and slaughter.
Patrick Galbraith, a follower of the earl of Douglas, quarrelled with
Robert Semple, of Fulwood, about who should command in the royal
fortress of Dunbarton, where one was governor of the upper, and the
other of the lower castle. The sword was speedily resorted to; Semple
was slain, and a strong garrison of Douglas-men occupied the place. The
Lindesays and Ogilvies fought the disastrous feudal battle of Arbroath
to decide whose chief should be bailie of that regality; and there fell
on that bloody field, Alexander, earl of Crawford, six knights, and
six hundred men-at-arms.
Then Robert Boyd, of Doughal, ran his sword through Sir James Stewart,
of Auchminto, at a lonely place near Kirkpatrick, where the summer
woods grew thick and green, and carried off his wife to the castle of
Dunbarton, where she brought forth a child prematurely, and died of
grief and terror in two days after. Archibald Dunbar stormed the great
castle of the earl of Hailes, slew the inmates, and gave it up to the
Douglases, while the moss-troopers of Annandale, lest their weapons
should rust, kept all the western marches in hot water by their raids
and devastations, which were seldom confined to their own border.
The sisters of the king were actually considered in danger, so daring
or so enterprising were the younger knights of the Douglas faction;
thus the princesses Jane and Eleonora departed to visit their sister,
the unhappy dauphiness of France, but arrived too late to see her.
She had died of a broken heart, having sunk under the cruelty of
her husband (afterwards Louis XI., of infamous memory) and shame at
the false charges of Jamet de Tilloy. Eleonora became the wife of
Sigismund, archduke of Austria; but the princess Jane returned to her
first love, who was the Scottish earl of Angus.
"All the mischiefs at home," says Buchanan, "were imputed to the earl
of Douglas, who did all he could to conceal the misdemeanour of his
followers, while he studied to afflict the men of different parties;
in consequence of the vastness of his power, it was almost a capital
offence to call aught he did in question. His influence compelled Sir
James Stuart, of Lorn, the king's uncle, to fly the realm, because
he spoke freely of the desperate state of the people; and his ship
was taken at sea by Flemish pirates, among whom he ended his life in
misery."
Such was the hard fate of the Black Knight of Lorn, the husband of the
Queen Dowager of Scotland--Jane Beaufort, the fair flower of Windsor.
The English, as usual, took advantage of these turmoils to enter
Scotland and burn the tower of Dumfries; so in return for this piece
of attention, the Scots, under Lord Balvenie, burned Alnwick, and laid
waste to Northumberland, reducing it almost to a desert; and soon after
fifteen thousand English, under the Lord Piercy, were cut to pieces on
the frontier, as they were about to cross a second time.
The Cheviots, said by a modern writer, to be "a clasp riveting Scotland
and England together," were then deemed, like the Tweed and Solway
elsewhere, but a natural barrier placed by the hand of God between two
rival kingdoms. War brought famine and disease in her ghastly train,
and so closed the year 1448.
Previous to this, the chancellor taking advantage of the lull caused by
the defeat of the English and the capture of their leaders, the earls
of Northumberland and Huntingdon, assembled a suitable train and sailed
for Flanders, to bring home the young king's betrothed bride, for whose
reception, great preparations were made at court.
Crichton was long absent, as he went by the way of Tours, to renew
the ancient league with France, which was again ratified by him and
other Scottish ambassadors for James II.; and by Thibaud, bishop of
Maillerais, the Sieur de Pretigni and Messire Guillaume Cousinat, on
the part of Charles VII.
After this the lord chancellor rode towards Gueldres.