KING JAMES II.
Oh, men of Scotland, though you cannot raise
Your long past monarchs from the silent bier;
Their deeds are worthy of your highest praise,
And simple gratitude demands a tear.
Let no base slander on their memory fall,
Nor malice of their little faults complain;
They were such men as, take them all and all,
We ne'er shall look upon their like again!
WRITTEN IN 1771.
James II. was one of that old race of kings whom the now forgotten
bard, above quoted, called upon posterity to remember. At this period
of our story he had reached his twenty-first year, but experience
had already made him older. The sole blemish to his very handsome
countenance was that small red spot which won him the sobriquet of
James with the fiery face. He was considerably above the middle height,
and was firmly knit in form; his eyebrows were strongly marked, and a
dark glossy moustache, curling round his finely cut mouth, mingled with
a short peaked beard. His rich brown hair hung, in the profusion of the
time, over his ears, in thick masses called "side locks." He was rapid
in thought, bold in speech, and prompt in action, fiery and impetuous
in temper; resolute and even desperate in avenging a wrong; and of his
wild impulsive nature, his most unruly subject, the Earl of Douglas,
was, ere long, to have a terrible proof; but yet, like the Moorish
knight of Granada, James was said to be,
Like steel amid the din of arms,
Like wax when with the fair.
Some weeks after the outrage which closes the last chapter, on a day
when the sun of June, by its golden light and genial heat, was ripening
the young corn in many a fertile haugh, and on many a swelling eminence
where now the modern city spreads its streets and squares, James was
seated in one of the upper chambers of David's Tower, in the Castle of
Edinburgh. It was the same in which King David died on the 7th May,
eighty years before, and in memory of him there still hung above the
fireplace the mail shirt and barrel-shaped helmet which he had worn at
the battle of Durham.
The vaulted apartment was gloomy, and through the basket-shaped
gratings of the windows which faced the east the rays of the summer sun
came slanting in, filling one portion with strong light, and leaving
the other involved in dusky shadow.
Clad in a long scarlet dressing-gown, trimmed with miniver, the king
was reclining in an armed chair, with his feet on a velvet tabourette.
In his hand, bound in painted vellum, and elaborately clasped with
silver, was one of those old French metrical romances which had been
translated into Scottish for him by Sir Gilbert the Haye, who was
chamberlain to Charles VII. of France; but his thoughts ran not upon
its lines, nor the fighting giants, cunning dwarfs, wandering knights,
and castles of burnished steel which filled its pages; neither was
he attending to the mass of yellow parchments and papers which the
high treasurer, and Lord Glammis, the master of the household, were
arranging for his inspection; nor was he heeding the occasional remarks
of his favourite, the Captain of the Guard, who, clad in half armour,
lounged in the recess of a window; but the king's face confessed, by
the sadness of its expression, that his thoughts were at Stirling,
where his beautiful young queen--his golden-haired Mary d'Egmont, of
Gueldres--was confined to her chamber, sick and ill and weary, after
the premature birth of her first baby, which died two hours after it
came into the world, to the great disappointment of the king and nation.
The great battle of Sark had been recently fought on the borders,
and there fifty thousand English, led by "the stoute Earl of
Northumberland," had been routed by less than thirty thousand Scots,
with the loss of Sir John Pennington and Sir Magnus Red Main, two of
the most celebrated soldiers of Henry VI.; and now, from the window at
which Gray stood in David's Tower, he could see far down below, where
several thousand labourers were daily and nightly at work, enclosing
the capital by its _first_ walls, with embattled gates upon the south,
east, and west; and, for defence on the north, others were converting
the old royal gardens in the valley into a sheet of water--the
Nor'loch of future times; these protections for the city being among
the earliest measures of the young and politic monarch, "in dread of
the evil and skaith of oure ennemies of England," as he states in his
charter to the citizens, who loved him for his valiant conduct and
fatherly care of them.
"I am well nigh sick of hearing so many petty items," said the
king, wearily, interrupting Andrew, abbot of Melrose, the lord high
treasurer, a tall, pale-visaged, and sharp-eyed man (on whose white
head time had long since marked a permanent _tonsure_), who had been
reading over several papers for his information; "yet I suppose I must
hear them: say, lord abbot, how stands our privy purse?"
"I have disbursed to-day to foreign heralds one hundred and fifty
pounds," replied the treasurer.
"Heralds! On what errand?"
"They came on the part of Henry of England, to ransom Lord
Northumberland's son, who was wounded and taken prisoner at Sark by
Sir Thomas MacLellan; who had already ransomed him for the value of
his horse and armour," replied the abbot. "Shall I read on?" The king
nodded, and the abbot proceeded in this manner, jumbling all kinds of
items strangely together. "'Item: for your highness's new suit of Milan
harness 20_lb._' 'For eight score and eighteen runlets of wine from a
Fleming of the Dam, to wit, Master Baudoin of Antwerp, 500_lb._' For
silken stuffs, furs, minivers, spices, and sweetmeats, for the queen's
household, paid to John Vanderberg of Bruges at the fair of Dundee,
800_lb._'"
"Good, my lord--and the total?" said the king.
"Maketh 1480_lb._," replied the treasurer after a pause.
"By St. Andrew! we shall have but little left to keep those Douglases
in check on the one hand, and those pestilent English on the other, if
our household accounts go thus," said James, with a dubious smile.
"'To your highness's chamberlain in Mar, for driving all your brood
mares from Strathavon to Strathdon, 5_sh._'" resumed the treasurer,
reading very fast to avoid interruption; and then followed innumerable
other items, all written in obsolete Scottish (which, like our
dialogues, we translate), such as twenty-nine weeks' pay to the king's
falconer; to the master gunner of Lochmaben, for stone and iron cannon
balls, and for repairs; to Sir John Romanno for a thousand bowstaves;
to Henry, the smith, for dies for the new coinage; to the keepers of
the balefires along the borders; for garrisons there, and for the
hanging of those who supplied the English with horses or cattle; to the
driver of the oxen when the ten bombardes of the wine of Gascony came
from Perth for the court's summer drink----
"And were intercepted by the earl of Douglas, or some of his reivers,
and drunk in Thrave," commented the king.
"To the hunter of wolves in Stirling Park, for three wolves' heads laid
at the outer gate, 18 pennies, according to the act of parliament. This
closes the record; but the monks of Holyrood have sent your majesty a
thousand silver crowns."
"That is well," said the king, who had long since relinquished his
romance in despair; "but the lord abbot hath twenty-seven parish
churches, and might, at this emergency, have lent me a trifle more."
"Perhaps; but even with all the altar-offerings, lesser tithes, pasque
presents, and dues for baptism, marriage, and funerals, there is but
little left to give after the yearly expenses of so great a monastery
are paid."
"There spoke a brother abbot, and _not_ a treasurer," said the king
laughing, while the churchman coloured as he tied up his rolls with a
ribbon. "Laus Deo! I am thankful we have come to an end; but we shall
need all the money we can collect, my lord."
"True; for evil tidings are on the wind," said Lord Glammis,
approaching a single pace and pausing.
"Of what--or whom?" asked James, with a louring eye.
"The Douglases again."
Sir Patrick Gray started from his reverie to listen.
"What of them now?" asked the king impatiently.
"Sir Alan Lauder and a man named James Achanna, both followers of the
earl, have slain a king's vassal within the Holy Gyrth of Lesmahago."
"Treason! But that is a mere nothing now," said James bitterly.
"And worse than treason, for it is sacrilege!" added the abbot of
Melrose, with gathering wrath. "When your highness's sainted ancestor,
King David I., in the pious times of old, granted that cell unto the
monks of Kelso, he wrote, that 'whoso escaping peril of life and limb
flies to the said cell, or cometh within the four crosses around it, in
reverence to God and St. Machute, _I grant him my firm peace_.'"
"And so they violated this holy sanctuary?" said James.
"Yes; and hewed the poor man to pieces with their Jethart axes."
"His offence?"
"Was wearing the royal livery,--being the gudeman of your majesty's
mills at Carluke."
The king started up, and was about to utter some hasty speech, when a
smart little page, clad in a violet-coloured doublet, with long hose of
white silk, drew back the tapestry which overhung the arched door, and
announced that the lord chancellor craved an audience in haste.
"Admit him," said James, advancing a step, as the old statesman, pale
and thin from the effect of his recent wounds and by the advance of
years, entered, propped upon a long silver-headed staff. "You look
grave, my lord," added the king; "but I pray you to be seated."
"I have evil tidings," began the chancellor, hobbling forward and
coughing violently.
"The very words of my Lord Glammis," said the king; "can aught else
come to the ear of him who wears a Scottish crown?" he added, biting
his nether lip.
"Say not so, after our late glorious victory at Sark!" exclaimed the
chancellor; "but, nevertheless, I _have_ evil news," he added, taking
from the velvet pouch which hung at his embroidered girdle several
letters, folded square, and tied with ribbons, in the fashion of the
time. "I have two grave matters to lay before your majesty. We are more
than ever humbled and insulted by this overweening earl of Douglas,
and, through you, the entire nation! The king of Scotland," continued
the chancellor, warming and striking the floor with his cane, "is the
fountain of Scottish honour, and thus I maintain, that if the king
is insulted so are _we_; for if a stream be polluted at its source,
every rill that flows from it becomes so too; but we must end these
matters by the sword--we must wipe out our wrongs in blood, and regild
our tarnished blazons in the reddest that flows in the veins of our
enemies, the men of Douglas-dale and Galloway!"
"These wild men are yet untamed," said the tall thin treasurer, shaking
his bald head.
"But _not_ untameable," responded the fiery old chancellor, with a
spark of rage in his hollow eyes.
"To the point, my lords, under favour of the king," said Sir Patrick
Gray, gnawing his moustache in his impatience.